chatfouz

good luck. shoo waitin is so boring

i assume you plan on a reef tank? the gph turnover rate depends on what you want to keep. for reefs i believe you want 8x - 12x. seahorses down to like 3x. so for 100 gal tank you want that water being filtered at ~800 gal\hour. there is always loss of power with pumps, time, head etc. and too much power can be compensated with 8$ of a ball valve and tubing from lowes. personally i would go with the strongest one that was not rideculous.

stuff disolves faster in a solution with heat and turbulance. may just be easier to go buy a few power heads or even bubblers. or you can always help turn it yourself. use a clean broom handle and churn the water yoruself. you spinning all the wtaer at once is a lot of flow. as long as the bottom of the bucket is moving then the salt will stay suspended. the more suspended it is the quicker it disolves. adding heat only increases the energy to break the bonds of the salt. the heater you can turn up as much as you want. the only problem is waiting for it to cool afterward and increased evaporation. worry first about circulation. that probably be the easiest way to do it. beretta is right, it may be more to mess with than needed.

pods are hardy, they can survive almost anything. iand a population explosion in the tank is not really a bad thing. you would not probably even see them. they hide on sand, rock and plants. the size of brine only your fish will probably notice. but they will stay a long time in the bucket. and it is easy enough to pick up some 5 gal buckets from home depo. you can always pick them out with a coffe filter and freeze them. then your own source of frozen foods.

where is the frag swap? never honestly heard of the store before.

adding heat increases the ability for water to disolve salt. it may help it dislove quicker. just remember to cool it.

i turn it on when i wake up and off when i sleep. as long as the light goes off for a while stuff will grow.

pods are just about as easy to grow and WAY more nutritious!! in what ever container you use (personally i use a 5 gal bucket) fill it with salt water. pour in some live green phyto plankton. put a light above it and bubble it with a bubbler. lightly, slow enough to count the bubbles work. drop in a bottle of pods, 20$ will get you a bottle of tigger pods. drop those in and let it run. the pods will explode in population after a few weeks. keep the water clean and green and you will have a healthy population of pods to feed anything!

from what i've learned over on the seahorse community brine is a useless food for marine fish. they contain almost no HUFA (highly unsaturated fatty acids). HUFAs are abundant in marine foods like krill mysis etc. switching from brine to gut loaded made a very noticble difference in the seahorse life, lifespan, and health. being as they are marine fish i could guess the same goes for the rest of marine fish in general? does anyone have any experience with this? does anyone regularly feed brine? gutload? or is this something in the way of old knowlege? i've only ever delt with horses but i've been wanting to start researchign for a reef tank with BTAs. ive read quite a bit that people suggest brine as ways to feed the creature. i just saw what looked like mild contradiction..

pictures say a thousand words it honestly is hard to figure what your problem is other than it doesnt work. at least i cant invision it.

im kinda interested in some xenia, and colt corals. places here in austin sell this stuff? preferably cheap & small?

i have a ten i want to move to another desk. now i can lift it with the water, its not that heavy. but if i remember its not safe to move it with the water because it could cause the tank to crack?

seahorsesource and draco marine are the best places for seahorses. but i have a question. are they in the same tank???? i thougt barbouri were cooler water horses. or is that brevicus?

ive also noticed removing thier light source. so clean it well then turn off the lights and drape the tanks in towels etc. leave for 3 days and a GOOD bit will of shriveled up. i believe tere are chemicals that target cyno but aalways be carful when adding anything!

coraline algee. it usually is difficult to get rid of. scraping it will temperarly get rid of it. but if any of it seeds it will spread again. its not a bad thing at all. just asthetic

honestly i have no idea what it is. what is it? when where?

really? honestly that doesnt sound too suprising but where was this? 3 days, shoo.. is that 3 days in water or 3 days in air? 3 anything?

?? are you talking about activated carbon, the black stuff? if so then how often it needs to change will depend on your specific tank. factors in how long or how often the carbon should be replaced, the first part that is probably most important is understanding how it works. activated carbon is just that a lump of carbon. i believe most used is originated from wood that is burned at extreme heat without oxygen. (i really am not that great at chem so if i messed this up please say so.) that lump then when exposed to elements, air water etc it begins a chemical reaction. it has all these electrons it swaps around and bonds to all sorts of organic chemicals. this is why you really should never buy carbon that is exposed to air. always buy it sealed. so like those penguin filters where the carbon is just istting in the box, that carbon has been reacting from the time they shipped it from the plant. buy carbon that comes sealed in little bags or in those vacum sealed tubs. also keep in mind that the carbon get exhaused or used up when all the free sites on the carbon have been taken up by organic compounds. then that is when it needs to be replaced. on a side note about carbon keep in mind carbon only deals with some organic compounds. i really have to be honest im not sure which but i believe it will not react with nitrites, nitrates or even amounia, just with the organic waste of the animals so if you depend on carbon as the main filtration of your system realize what you try to accomplish, you are trying to absorb all the poop and biological waste before it turns to ammonia. the rest after that is up to biological filtration. zeolite a common chemical filtration used in freshwater tanks to absorb ammonia will not function in salt water. the salts present reverse the process so its no good in salt water tanks. it does nothing but grow bacteria. back to carbon. there are a few factors that influence this need to replace the carbon. -amount of carbon if you use a lot of carbon it would not need to replace it so often because it has not exhausted yet. the idea is if you use 2x the amount than needed it takes 2x as long for all of it to be used. -size of tank\ bioload bigger tanks have a larger volume of water. this decreases the ppm or concentration the same volume of waste. basically this means it takes a lot more waste to build up to be noticable, also the carbon is going to last longer. the same is said for bioload. the more bioload the more carbon is needed. or the larger the bioload for small tanks the quicker the carbon gets used up because the concentration of waste is higher and increases faster -brand of carbon not all brands of carbon are equal. the biggest point is if the carbon is vacum sealed. if not then that carbon has been reacting and is already partly used up. its like buying used batteries, no idea how long they will last. not to over exaturate this reacting with air is a much slower and lesser process than water, so it will last a while but it has reacted some. some of my favorite brands are the aquaclear carbon packs. they are cheap, come presealed in nice little bags that are great for packing cansiters, piling in sumps, slipping into HOB filters, putting in internal filters, just so versitile. -purpose of carbon this basically is what do you want to do with the carbon. is it a part of a filtration system, used to skim off some discoloration, smells, or bits of waste or is it the main focal point of the filtration system. if it is the main point i would not suggest waiting more than a month to change it to be absolutly sure. if it is a side note dont worry so much. this really is as much an art as science. you cant visually tell if the carbon is used up or not. "scientist" or "researchers" according to the web articles and company websites suggest that if you use little carbon for large bioload, or have a very large bioload with carbon being the focal point change every 2-4 weeks. if carbon is part of the filtration and a strong bioload 4-5 weeks. if carbon is something that you add just to kill some coloration, random chemicals or light bioload it will last well into 2 months. best of luck! and if you were not talking about carbon... i apologize for rambling on in your thread.

YES!

anenomes are simple creatures. well not really simple but thier systems are not that complex. thier bodies are mostly water. thier main body cavity is where everything happens. this may sound off but try to find a zoology book and check out the chapter on em. understanding how the creature works may help you more than anything. this is my experience and what i remember from the zoology lab. another good place to check out is about.com. they have a good collection of articles. i dont remember how recent but i so far havve had great luck with thier advice. but here is what i have come to understand. light is important but not THE most important, they get a majority of thier energy/nutrition/etc from feedings not the light. water quality is everything with these systems. they do not do change well. let it be. one of the best things you can do is keep the water at the cleanest properties it can be at. if the light is too strong try adding a screen above the animal to cut some light. whatever you end up doing letting it rest is probably the best. any change you do do it slowly. shock is really something that will kill this creature. best luck.

research is the best friend in keepin salt stuff. about.com i think has a bunch of decent info. articles are well done. corals i dont think are terribly easy. some are pretty simple but others can be really delicate and rather expensive. check over there. personally i think it is easier on yourself and pocket book to start small and easy and upgrade. use a setup that will accomodate a moderate level of stock and start with the easier end of the corals and just get the more expensive and delicate ones as you get a hang of the whole deal. as long as the equipment is abe to handle the transition the only factor is your experience. mabye for that 28 gal a small canister, heater, PC light, sand, live rock. after cycled try some zoo's and if those are alive for a month start uppin it from there. but then again i really dont like jumping in the deep end of the pool. i worry to much about crashes. best of luck! and again welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the school what you need as far as filteration in my opinion is in my view dependant on what you want to do. if you only want to keep salt water fish, salt water invertabrates, corals, live rock etc. if it is your first time always concider what you want to keep. if you just want fish and live rock you could get away with a much more simple filtration type, like hang on back or canister. if you want to do plants like the macro algea and sea grass then go for deep sand bed and lights. if you want corals etc that is when you need to go high tech. powerful lights, top level filtration like the refugiums etc unless your going for the corals, clams, special inverts etc then keeping saltwater fish is like fresh water fish. just keep in mind your filtration needs to keep the tank a lot more stable than in fresh water.

do you have to have frags to attend? do people trade other things etc or this a coral people only thing?

i dont really have some of those options. the light i use is actually the desk light built into the desk here in the dorm. so it is a switch. i have nothing to regulate it with other than myself. so i can leave it on or off. evaporation is minimal. very very very very little. ok so i definantly need to buy a new bubbler. well then i guess ill leave the lights off but the window open. ambient room light will have to suffice for 3 days. how bad could a tank turn in three days. i dont feed it or anything yet. just turn light on and off. thanks for the advice

question on the ph swings etc on tanks. the light on or off has effect on growth ph and stimuli on a tank correct? i will be gone for labor day weekend. so im thinking about leaving the light on for the whole time. i believe it will spur the growth of the macro algae, production of pod population and hopefull growth of coraline. also in the buckets i have green water with pods trying to culture them. i believe if i leave the lights it will be easier or more productive on the system. right now the tank is bare, just some live rock plants. and only thing i have seen come out of the rock are a few pods. thiink it be better to leave lights on or leave em off?