Peter Gott

That's funny; my ORA pom-poms have been under 24/7 lighting since the day I got them, in my refugium.

Welcome! What a great gift you've inherited!

I've never had any problem with these little corallimorphs; I actually seek them out. They're great in picos.

Part of the point with circulation in a tank where you are keeping just LR for now is gas exchange; to that end, following brian.srock's comment, I don't think circulation is crucial at this stage, as long as you have good gas exchange. At least, I don't think that your live rock is all going to die off if you go without circulation for a few days. Instead what I would do is just get an air pump and an airstone in there. The bubbles will cause some salt spray as they pop, but that won't be too big a deal. I've done this before with a 55g as well when my pump died, and it kept everything alive, including fish and corals. Incidentally, I've also run many a pico with only an airstone, and in that small a water volume the motion of the bubbles also causes enough circulation for the growth of coral. Anyhow that's my input; others may disagree, but from my experience, this will keep your live rock healthy at the least, and that's all you need.

Holy deliciousness! I love the glowing crystal!!!

They're an awfully pretty colour morph.

+1 So true...those suckers get unexpectedly big, too!

Will you have any left by tomorrow evening, do you think?

Woohoo! He's gonna be a beaut when he grows some more. Nice save. 8}

Man, if only this wasn't my worst month financially EVER...

I forgot to say thanks for the replies--thanks guys! 8}

***Note: I've been told I'm long-winded, so feel free to skip the background/context and go straight to the actual question below if you're otherwise not going to read my post. It is similarly marked with asterisks. Soooo I made a mistake I swore I'd never do and made an impulse purchase without sufficient research. I am making a pest aquarium, and at AquaTek today I found some scattered blue clove polyps amongst the substrate and talked the staff into fishing out a few small shells with five to ten polyps each on them for my lest aquarium. Now I have read that these guys spread like wildfire, and that's part of why I got them. See, my pest aquarium is somewhat of an experiment in nutrient export. It actually started with Xenia and crabs. So it is hooked up to my main display tank. Here's what I did not realize: these guys are so invasive because they *spawn*. I have peppermint shrimp in my DT to take care of spawning aiptasia, but from what I have read, there isn't really a good predator available for these guys. So unless I act fast to remove them (kind of a hassle since my pest aquarium is basically a dumping ground for live rock rubble), I probably have to deal with them ending up in my DT. And here is where the question comes in: ***I have read conflicting reports as to whether they will grow on/choke out SPS, and my DT is primarily SPS. In your experience, will they harm SPS or just cover the live rock around them? Thanks in advance for your answers!

Awesome sauce! I sent you a pm. 8}

And by interested, I mean my heart just leapt out of my throat in excitement and then I yelled, "WOOP WOOP!" And danced around the room and my friend was like, "???" Because I have been wanting an event horizon/PPE for months now, haha!

I'm interested in a PPE frag for sure.

Darn, I'm sorry I'm going to miss that! Happy birthday!

Everything he has looks amazing, and not just in his tanks--they have held up beautifully in the transfer to my fairl new (2 months old) system.

This tank is looking super beautiful, man. I love your aquascaping and livestock choices. 8}

I just got the package for my aquarium too! It is incredible eh? Richard goes WAY above and beyond in terms of customer service. He have me so much more than what I ordered that I actually had to bring some to Aquatek to trade in for store credit...and I have to admit, were it not for the specific coral I want to grow in here, I'd be happy just to let the already existing species that came with the rock grow out! His rock is like a whole reef in itself, waiting to happen!

Beautiful AND wicked cool! Btw, I'm really impressed with the different forums ARChas created. This is definitely one of the more impressive reef club websites I've had the pleasure of being a member of. 8}

I'm really glad to hear you figured it out! A bacterial bloom definitely seemed to fit the description you gave. As far as UV sterilizers go, I believe it really depends on your school of thought when it comes to setting up your reef. Personally, I like to have a lot of plankton in the water column (as much as possible in an aquarium, which is admittedly much less than occurs naturaly) as this approaches a more natural environment, and many of a reef's inhabitants are suspension feeders. This comes with its own share of problems, though; for instance, one shouldn't half@ss this--if you want to have as much plankton in the water column as possible, you're going to have to create the means to get it there, like a deep sand bed, which must be set up and maintained properly to work, and a refugium, which often needs to be supplementarily fed phytoplankton (depending of course on the initial bioload of your system and your feeding schedule) for it to fully function as an actual refugium, and not simply a means of nutrient export via macroalage as refugiums have largely become, where the growth of prey organisms is a side benefit. Another school of thought which is very popular is the (to my mind) highly artificial environment created when stocking as minimally as possible, i.e. beginning with dry rock and dry sand and not having a lot of obligate suspension feeders in the environment, as they are frequently hitchikers anyhow. Note that I said obligate suspension feeders--a lot of our photosynthetic animals are suspension feeders also, but with this minimalist approach, people tend to either semi-starve their coral and let them do most of their feeding from the bacteria growing on the detritus formed from remnants of fish food and poop in the water column along with what is released naturally from their live rock and sand (if they have it) or feed their coral via adding food to the water column periodically and compensating for the resultant spikes in nutrient content by frequent water changes and heavy mechanical and/or chemical filtration. Again, this is not very natural, but of course neither is keeping a tiny piece of a reef in a glass box with electricity producing the photons and water motion that also energize the system. And then there are people who hybridize the two approaches and let what will grow and survive do so to the extent that it is able to on their own intentional additions of food to the water column. And of course this is oversimplified, and based on my own experience and observations in the hobby; most people are actually some combination of the three approaches in different parts. But people who tend to use the latter two approaches more as the framework to approaching their own systems wouldn't have any (or as much) problem with a UV sterilizer; whereas if your system is set up to maximize the amount of planktonic life present, a UV sterilizer would be counter-intuitive.