jbharlan91

@victoly - I've replaced the ballast with a new one from RCA. I've replaced the bulb. That's all I can find that I can actually replace without cutting wires. I checked both fans, both fans are working. The light is getting power, because it starts to light up at the end near the plug, but it just turns an odd shade of yellowish pink, like maybe it's overheating, and the rest of the length of the bulb never lights up, and it doesn't put out any light. The blue light still works fine. I do have a little time now to figure it out, a friend is letting me borrow a spare light that sits over the top of the aquarium. So we have that installed for the time being.

Hmm...not sure if this is getting beyond my abilites or not. I have a soldering iron, but haven't soldered anything but stained glass. Not sure if it's too big for little wires like that. I'd love to try to fix it though, I'm worried that my mushrooms and anemone will get upset fast without their light. What guts would you recommend trying?

Yes, looked up the parts online and we replaced the ballast. I thought the ballast was the piece that the bulb plugs into, guess not. We switched out the ballast, and the bulb, and no luck. It's obviously getting power, and both fans come on. The weird thing is that the bulb looks like it is trying to come on, at the end where it plugs in it will start to light up and turns a weird yellowish pink, and it heats up. It just won't light up all the way. Can the capacitor be replaced?

We have a biocube, 29 gallon, and the light won't come on. It's the main light, not the actinic. We switched the lightbulb, still doesn't work. Both fans still come on, and the blue light comes on. We went to RCA and got a new power cord, still doesn't work. The end of the lightbulb, where you plug it in, will look like it's trying to light up and turn pinkish yellow, but the rest of the lightbulb won't light. Has anyone had this problem, or know how to fix it??? Thanks!!

I have some iodine that they gave us at RCA if you want to try some....

Thanks for all of the good information! I will give the turkey baster and siphoning a try - so far there isn't any on the rock, just sand, glass and 2 of the corals.

Okay, another question pertaining to manually removing it. There's not a lot of space between the rock in my aquarium and the glass, definitely not enough for me to get my siphon hoze nozzle in there. Are there smaller tip siphons you can use to siphon the gravel in salt water tanks? Is it a good/bad thing to do to siphon the sand? I have noticed that the red extends down in to the sand in some areas.

Okay, if it doesn't clear up with water change or gets worse, I'll check out the chemiclean. Thanks!

We've got a lot of snails, they don't make a dent in it. Also, I don't think it's at the point that I would consider bad, I was just concerned that it seemed to be creeping up the base of those 2 corals. Will it hurt the corals? If not, I'm not too worried about it, and will try more frequent water changes and cutting back on the lighting. I don't really want to add chemicals unless it's truly a big problem, which it isn't right now. I've got a lawnmower blenny, a peppermint shrimp, one other type of shrimp, lots of snails and quite a few hermit crabs to clean stuff up. There is also a bristle worm in the back somewhere.

We're starting to get a build up of what looks like the red cyanobacteria on our sand bed and climbing up the glass a bit. I haven't been too concerned about it, but then I noticed that it seems to be climbing up 2 of our corals, the green eyelash and the fairy dust palys. Is this bad for the corals, and if so, how do we get rid of or reduce it? We just had our water parameters checked, no phosphates or nitrates, everything looked good. It's a 29g biocube.

I'll see if I can make it - I have a van, and my jeep is currently stuck in our parking lot at work, so I'm not totally out of transportation. I am still at work though, so it depends on how that goes too! As for the jeep, I just replaced the starter recently, and am hoping maybe a wire is just loose - getting power, just no starting! Maybe I can try to tighten stuff up tomorrow and just forget about it for today....

Not sure now if we're going to be able to make it. Had to go to work this morning, and my Jeep won't start. May have to spend the time trying to fix it....

jbharlan91 is + 3 - I originally thought my 3 year old would need a sitter. It will be me, my husband, 11 year old son and 3 year old daughter. My kids don't eat that much though!!

We're bringing a canopy for shade, chips, a dessert, and some drinks! I also have some plastic cups to help out with cups.

Sorry to hear about your sea hare! Maybe your superman is just mad at you....

We'll bring a tent and a princess cup just for you!!

I have an old canopy - seen many a soccer game and is dirty and faded, but it should still give some good shade if you would like me to bring it. My daughter has a small "princess" play popup tent that would be good for a couple of kids if there are going to be more "little uns". We can easily bring chips, or how about a dessert? Or will you have tons of those? We can make cookies, or chocolate cake, or a chocolate pie.....

That sounds awesome - thanks for including kids!! We'd love to come, can we bring food? Anything?

My husband and I would love to come and check it out, we're very new and unfortunately don't have any frags to share, and we have an 11 year old that may or may not be interested in coming - would he be okay or is this better kidless? We also like to ask tons of questions and pester people with them......

Is Round Rock considered North Austin or Elsewhere? North of the river really isn't anywhere close to Round Rock......

Timfish - I have all the equipment and supplies to do this, I could very easily make this solution.

Expiration dating can be debatable - 4 months out should be fine!

I don't think it would be necessary to have the water samples all have the same salinity. I do, however think it is absolutely necessary to have a control solution with known concentrations to use to compare the test kits. I think you either have to make control solutions, or just pick one water sample to be a control and establish it's concentration before you start the test comparisons.

Here's my opinion: I think this is interesting and very "doable". We just need to get it together and decide the best way to proceed. I think we should do the following: Everyone that's interested - figure out what kind of information you want to get out of the testing - what parameters you want to check, etc. Get a list together of everything we want tested. Get another list together of all the test kits we have available to use. Once we know that, we can figure out what kind of control or multiple controls to use (pre made salt water, calibration fluids etc...), and get them ready. Then we just have to get together and run all the tests. They definitely all need to be done at the same time, under the same lighting conditions, and with a few people that can agree on any questionable results. Putting the data together would be easy, once we have it, we can report it any way we want just using excel.

I have a micro scale at work, it would be easy to make a control after hours, I just don't have all the raw materials. I have access to some of the components, for example we have some calcium that is past our expiration requirements and is going to be disposed of that I could use, but not all of the components! If we could gather up the raw materials though, I could measure them out and make solutions.