barderer

1) I'm now at 3-4 weeks, my tank has cycled and I've added 3 yellow tail damselfish, 2 electric blue hermit crabs, and a snail. How much more can my tank's capacity take? You are going to want to take the damsel fish out then your tank can handle the 2x clowns and watchem/pistol combo no problem. I would recommend keeping this fish load for a 6m to a year and keep feedings to a minimum. This will greatly reduce your maintenance and potential problems. Its very hard to resist adding that other fish but trust me, you want the tank to be a enjoyable thing not a extra job. So go light on fish and light on feedings. I only feed my fish 2-3 times a week. There are a few fish on my list which I would like to get, but the capacity limit is still unknown to me. Here is the list: - Cleaner Shrimp - 2x Clownfish - Yellow Watchman Goby/Pistol Shrimp (I'm also a bit worried about the cleaner shrimp and pistol shrimp deal, about how the pistol shrimp eats other smaller shrimps. I hear that if I feed the pistol shrimp to it's satisfaction, it will lessen the chance of it killing my other inhabitants. Overall, I want to know everyone's opinion on if I should do it or not) pistol shrimp can become nasty. But I have best luck with the tiger pistol shrimp. They do well with watchman and I have never had them attack anything fish wise. he might nuke your cleaner shrimp though. I would choose either a pistol shrimp or a cleaner but not do both to start with, until you get another tank that you can dump the other in if and when there is a problem. Don't worry you will have another tank soon Sucka. 2) I can't find much info on marine hermit crabs, so I'm hoping to get some answers here. Right after I introduced them into the tank, they were more active than I am running on starbucks double shot after eating some candy. They explored and ate everything in the tank, and it was pretty amusing watching them. Suddenly however, they became inactive after a few days, which worried me until I found out they're actually getting ready to molt. Problem is, they molted already but they're still kind of inactive. My tank has good circulation and is around 75-77 degrees F. My question is, are they sick or is this natural behavior and I should expect them to be active again soon? And they do change shells like normal land hermit crabs right? Any info I can get on hermit crabs will be great! hermit crabs are practically bullet proof. Don't worry about them. After they get established in a tank they tend to be the most active at night. 3) I purchased this nano cube from someone on this forum, and she was generous enough to give me all these extras. Problem is, she didn't give me the instruction booklets or original boxes, so I can't do thorough research on them to properly use them. There is a surface skimmer thing that came with the cube, and I have no idea where to put it or even how to use it. The filter is a UV Sterilizer with a powerhead on top to suck in the water through the UV bottom piece and blow it back out; it makes a good circulation throughout my tank, but I really don't know how or when to use the UV part. Should I leave it on all day and everyday? or should I conserve it for when outbreaks of disease occur? UV Sterilizer is not necessary and if its a hassle or reduces flow I wouldn't bother with it. Mainly because most cheap ones don't really work. But if you are going to use it the idea is to use it all the time to avoid the potential of a build up of the nasties. I would research your models reviews and see if others think it worth messing with. The surface skimmer goes on the top intake, the nano ones usually clip on. 4) I see a lot of people have nice tanks, and a lot of those tanks have very nice and colorful zoanthids/poylps/corals. I find myself roaming through the Want To Sell section in the forums and finding people selling these interesting frags and the like, and really wanting to buy a few. Problem here is that I have no clue how it works. They list prices for "heads" and so far I've come to the conclusion that its the oral disk with the little mouths. I don't mind buying these for the prices they've listed, but how does it work? Do they cut the heads off and just hand them to me as it is? I'm also curious about how to frag; I've gathered that people cut the heads at the core and super glue them to rocks. What kind of rocks can you glue them on? yep a head is a really general term but usually refers to one unit, mouth, or branch of a coral. Depending on your lights I would recommend starting out with some hardy soft corals. Then when your ability to tune your water improves try your hand at some easy SPS like birds nest or montiporia. The best advice I can give you is don't do anything fast. Don't add fish fast, don't add new chemicals or equipment fast. Do things in long controlled intervals so when a problem arises, and you will have many , you can isolate and fix the problem in a logical fashion. Also, a small 10gal QT tank for new fish is def a good idea. Its easy, when you get a new fish just take 5 gal of water from a water change and throw a few rock ruble pieces in there and you will have a instant QT. Get the fish strong in isolation for a few weeks at a low salinity to kill off external parasites and then put him in your tank. This will bring your success level WAY up and keep ick and other parisites out of your display. DO the QT, do the QT! I never used to do it but after many headaches and money out the door I am now very methodical and patient and it really pays off. QT!!! Also, when buying corals from other members be very picky about what you choose to put in your tank. You don't want to catch nasty algae and pests and distribute them through out the community. Just adding one infected coral to your tank can wipe out your whole stock and months of hard work. Ideally you would QT coral as well but in most cases this is just not practical, so just error on buying from healthy tanks and knowing what to look for (slugs, bugs, and unhealthy specimens in general.) Good luck and welcome, Nick

trying to keep within a 1 degree range might stress out your fans if you don't add some logic that is smart about putting the proper timeouts between temp change events and fan on off events. Or a auto adjusting algorithm that tunes its timings. I don't think there is a need to keep that tight of a range anyway. Its almost MORE natural to have a 3-4 flux through the day. Right? N

your best bet is to go to port aransas and visit the main jetty or the packery channel at low monthly tide.

cooling coil cooling coil in water bath

I will post pics later. Basically I made a cooling coil out of RO poly tubing hooked up to a lower power desk water fountain pump. I put effort into making sure the coil construction quality was good. Then I used a old mini fridge some one off the club gave me for free and submersed the coil in a bath of cooling water. You could also use one of those little portable 12v 40 buck car fridges. Right now its about 24' of tubing in the coil. And it drops the water temp a staggering 3 degrees average in one round trip. That is temp taken at intake, 5sec trip through 24' coil and 3 degree drop at output. Compound that over and over and it does a good job cooling. I'd imagine this type of chiller could handle up to a 50-60 gal tank if I wanted to devote the entire mini fridge to coil. The fridge could prob hold 150' feet of coil if I needed that kind of capacity. But I wanted to save some room for beer. So this tank used to get up to 86-88 now it stays down at 76-77, thus the need for the controller. I also changed the essentially crappy design of the nano tuners fan layout. They basically ship their hood with one fan blowing in and one blowing out right next to each other. Which makes for 0 air flow over lights. Simply making both fans blow out and moving their "fuge" mod to the back of the tank makes the hood MUCH more efficient at removing heat off the lights. I also removed there TEC cooling solution as its totally useless because of its lack of insulation. I am in the process of making a shaving jig which I can use to shave the poly tube down to minimum thickness making the heat transfer even more efficient. I think I found my cheap temp controller. This guy with a sealed test tube over the sensor should do the trick. http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?...t=control.shtml N

Can anyone recommend a cheap temp controller? I made my own chiller and I have a unexpected problem. It works too well! I just need something that will turn a small pump on and off at a specified temperature. Can this ice probe controller be used to control any arbitrary switch? Those sell for like 40 bucks. Any suggestions welcome.

thanks for being honest about finding them. We all have to work together to take these pests out of distribution.

hmm its annoying when admins take their job too seriously. I would just let it blow over, maast is a good thing.

put me next in line for a slimer, I just recently lost mine.

very nice. keep us updated on how they retain or change that color.

I am making my own chiller for a small tank and am going to be using 1/4" poly line from the tank to the chiller about 3ft under the tank. The water needs to be pushed through the line down through a big cooling coil and up back to the tank. What kind of small pump I can fit in the tank can handle this? Any other recommendations will be taken! Thanks, nick

completely dependent on species and previous diet but I have had a sargent major damsel go for 4 months with no direct feeding. Of course they eat what grows on the rocks etc so as long as your tank is growing algae it should be able to stay alive.

I am interested in the power center. How many timers does it have on it? 2?

ahh nice, they do have everything. Would be nice if they had a catalog so I could form ideas without knowing what I want.

Where do you guys buy your acrylic supplies here in town?

Azcummins, you can take me off the list, I got a GBTA, now if you start getting RBTA clones let me know!

I can attest to the fact that these turbos are in fact LARGE. The H is doing good btw.

83 shouldn't be too catastrophic what type of coral is it? I have had acros up to 86 with no problems. Its more about the fluctuation in temperature. Avg reef temps are usually in the mid 80s. Its just so hard to keep a tank at 79...

maybe he just got a chunk ripped out of him or had a bad encounter with a piece of hardware. As long as he keeps eating and his behavior doesn't change I wouldn't worry about it. If you want to be safe I would put him in QT.

I want them!

in.

that is a sick pump.

Starting a new 10gal cube and need a little sand. If you have some extra lying around here is your opportunity to sell it. Dead is fine as I will most likely boil it to eliminate any chance of pest algae. Unless its just crawling with goodness then I will HAVE to keep it alive... Thanks Nick

I have monti as well. how about a frag of red monti, frag of tri color acro or a pom pom xenia colony?

awesome, well lets work something out then. I have a nice tri-color acro or we could do cash. Nick