George Monnat Jr

A lot fewer people are diving at Windy Point and Mansfield Dam, because it's a real climb down and up rock cliffs to get to the water and back. That meant a lot less traffic at the Lake Store, plus they didn't have a pool for classes. It was right on my way home from work, I mean I drove right by it every day with it on my right side, so it was supremely convenient to get my cylinders refilled. The North Store not so much.

I've been using RCA DI for topoff no problems. I use it for water changes, too, but that's because I'm trying to get low pH and hardness for West African fish (not cichlids).

Ouch. I bought mine from PetSmart in FW and converted them to SW. The ones I lost got stung, too. One of them I converted back to FW, and he's still in my DT. Two years FW->SW->FW.

Lots of people love blennies due to their personalities. One of my favorites is the Tail Spot Blenny (Ecsenius stigmatura). A lot of people like Midas Blennies (Ecsenius midas), but they need a bigger tank.

If you get a watchman goby, a fun thing is to pair it with a pistol shrimp, like the Tiger Pistol/Snapping Shrimp (Alpheus bellulus). The symbiosis between a pistol shrimp and a watchman goby is an awesome and entertaining thing to watch.

I like Firefish, and if you get a mated pair you can have two (two of the same sex will fight), but they're jumpers meaning you need a cover to keep them from carpet surfing.

I never had a Pincushion Urchin. My wife and I loved our small Blue Tuxedo Urchins (Mespilia globulus), because they pick things up and wear them.

Here's pictures of my Peacock Tail Shrimp (Periclimenes brevicarpalis) associating with Maxi-Mini Carpet Anemones (Stichodactlya tapetum).

My Porcelain Rock Crab who always came out during feeding waving its fans.

A Porcelain Anemone Crab (P. maculatus I think).

Did you see my post above (#41)? Coral Banded Shrimp can eat fish, hermit crabs like all true crabs are scavengers that can kill and eat anything they can catch (including snails), clams need good parameters and good light, the Lawnmower Blenny requires a lot of algae which means a bigger, mature tank. Brittle Stars are good CUC. Any wrasse (other than possum wrasse) will preclude most ornamental crustaceans. Check out LiveAquaria.com for good minimum tank size recommendations (they're pretty good), like for the Flame Angelfish. Speaking of great crustaceans, check out Pom Pom Crabs.

Even in small tanks, you can get some fun ornamental crustaceans, too.

Sexy Shrimp (Thor amboinensis)

Porcelain Anemone Crabs (Neopetrolisthes ohshimai)

Porcelain Anemone Crabs (Neopetrolisthes maculatus)

Porcelain Rock Crab (Petrolisthes galathinus)

All of them are 'reef safe' and won't harm anything else in your DT. The Sexies are cleaners (for eels and mantis shrimp not really normal fish). The Porcelain Crabs are filter feeders so are safe crabs. Both the Sexy Shrimp and Porcelain Anemone Crabs will associate with anemones or even corals (anemones host and fish/crustaceans associate). They are also clean-up crew (CUC) but pretty ones and are great conversation critters.

My next question of the night is if there is such a thing as saltwater plants? Like.. the green stuff lol It would be super cool if I could grow my own seaweed or some sort of SW plants as well. I havent come across anything saying if there are or arent such a thing for tanks.. Thought it would be best to ask.

Yes, it's called macro-algae.

Beyond the Refugium: A Macroalgae Primer

Checkout Patrick's great starter post.

And this for places to find LR:

Welcome! There's Stinky's Fish Mart in Manor. Are you more north or south? Northwest there's River City Aquatics (RCA), my favorite and ARC supporter, and south central is Aqua-Dome (AD). There are also Fish Gallery, Fishy Business, Gallery of Pets and Aqua Tek in north, central Austin.

The key ingredients are patience and research, including reading these forums and asking lots of questions. I'm sure Tim will point you to the best book sources. Welcome to the ARC forums.

Welcome! The first thing you need is patience. It will take months for your tank to fully mature and stabilize before you can keep the trickier stuff. You can get some interesting and fun crustaceans, like Sexy Shrimp, fairly soon. Some hardier corallimorphs like mushrooms can be nice, too.

Welcome! There's Stinky's Fish Mart in Manor. Are you more north or south? Northwest there's River City Aquatics (RCA), my favorite and ARC supporter, and south central is Aqua-Dome (AD). There are also Fish Gallery, Fishy Business, Gallery of Pets and Aqua Tek in north, central Austin.

Has anyone tested their calcium mediums, like Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime, for phosphates?

just out of curiosity, those who have had a problem with cyano and are dosing kalk, were you using Mrs.Wages Pickling lime?

I used Mrs.Wages Pickling Lime, but I only had cyano problems when I added vinegar. When I cut way back or stopped adding vinegar, which is carbon dosing, my cyano problem went away. For about a year before other issues made it come back. I went 4-8 months adding Mrs.Wages Pickling Lime in my ATO without problems with cyano or algae.

A few weeks ago my favorite dive shop, Scubaland's Lake Store, closed. Two weekends ago we dove Mammoth Lake in Clute, because it's my wife's favorite green-water diving spot. The owner told us it's closing for good next month.

Yes, when I was using vinegar to pack more lime into the water. Are you using vinegar to saturate your KW? If yes, then you are carbon dosing at a high rate meaning explosive cyanobacteria and other bacteria. I had problems with GHA, too, but I don't know how algae uses carbon or the algae growth is a result of more CO2 from the increased bacteria or something else.

My DT pH typically swung from 8.18 to 8.23 when I had it centered on 8.2. I don't have graphs saved for when I upped it to center around 8.3.

For over a year I had two 5g buckets filled with RODI, 10-12 tsp of Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime and ¼ cup of 5% white vinegar and an $8 Fountain Tech FT-70 pump from AutoTopoff.com. I'm still using that pump. When the bucket with the pump in it got low, I'd mix the KW in the other bucket, let it settle for at least a few hours, then move the pump over.

Because that pump has higher flow than typical dosing pumps, I had the Apex outlet for the ATO programmed as:

Fallback OFF

Set ON

If Switch1 OPEN Then OFF

If pHsump > 08.20 Then OFF

If pH2dt > 08.28 Then OFF

If pHsump < 07.40 Then OFF

Defer 000:05 Then OFF

That maintained pH around 8.3 in the DT. If I lowered the pH cutoffs or lengthened the deferral time, then the pH would spike really high (8.6 or higher), because there was a delay between the KW pumped in and the pH sensors detecting it. Even with the ATO pumping into the skimmer section of the sump right by the sump pH probe.

That worked really well, and I never had a failure with those components. If you want details on the amount of pickling lime and using vinegar to pack more lime into the water, see these:

What Your Grandmother Never Told You About Lime

"...three level teaspoons of solid lime per gallon of limewater, and 45 ml [9tsp] of vinegar per gallon of limewater."

A Simple DIY Kalk Dripper

All about kalkwasser

The Degradation of Limewater in Air

“Some aquarists add vinegar to their limewater in order to increase it potency...In terms of the degradation of limewater by atmospheric CO₂, the addition of vinegar is not expected to have a big impact. The vinegar lowers the pH of the resulting solution, and the lower pH tends to decrease the driving force for CO₂ to enter the solution, and for the CO₂ in the solution to show up as carbonate (as opposed to bicarbonate at lower values of pH; bicarbonate is less of a concern from a degradation standpoint)...The use of very large amounts of vinegar, where the pH drops below about 11, would be expected to reduce the likelihood of precipitation of calcium carbonate. In no instance should vinegar make this problem worse.”

The vinegar also carbon doses, so that needs to be slowly introduced!

Lol I'd be curious to know how many of us are guilty or ARC'ing and driving

I don't have to ARC and drive because I'm on this site all day at work!

+1

Dangit, I'm traveling for work, so I can't go.

Since I was new to reef keeping, I went by Dr. Randy Holmes-Farley's recommended parameters. He bases his off of NSW.

As of this writing, I was getting 503 errors on his article, Reef Aquarium Water Parameters by Randy Holmes-Farley.

When my tank had salinity...

Crap! I haven't had problems with diseases or parasites. Until now. I just noticed that my pair of German Blue Rams have white spots! Now I'm cleaning out and restarting my UV (been off since it was SW).

I don't have sick fish, yet, but looking at the pictures bummed me out. Try these.

That blows. I looked at several freshwater fish disease pages (which bummed me out, like totally). This one has:

Description Small black specks on skin.

Symptoms Black Spot

Cause Small fish worms (Diplostomulum).

Have you done a necropsy on any of them? I'd type Diplostomulum into Google Images and see if that looks like it.

Edit: table looked good in preview but messed up on submittal.

I loved my dual reactor (RX) running both GAC and GFO, and it's easier to use than the TLF single RX.