Planeden

I'd say it's kid friendly, have you seem that fort?

I think some of the display tanks at aquadome use them, too. But I don't think they are really set up for viewing at build my led. When I called she told me that the website is very true to what you'd see in real life. If your monitor shows colors right.

Wait till you get the doors on it. Then it'd be an even awesomer fort.

Very nice Kim.

When I left A FW tank fallow for a while I keep feeding it so the bacteria would have something to eat. Required? Maybe not, but I didn't want to take the chance of the population reducing and have a mini cycle when I added fish in, which I did more quickly than normal.

I bet if you added some bioballs you could avoid this dennis...

OK, so my first thought was "hahaha". Followed by "why you gotta bring this to my thread, isn't two enough?" I then landed on "who cares, that was funny".

But bio balls may fit nicely in my sump if I do end up pulling the macro out of the skimmer compartment.

If you have any smaller food, like frozen cyclopeeze or baby brine, even filter feeder food would be good for the heads without many tentacles. I've also read that the heads can support each other. I bet you'll get it back in shape.

I just shoved a couple of pellets in its mouth I scraped the glass and stirred the sand playing with algae. So as lot of whatever is released when I do that spread around the tank for the filter feeders.

Thanks Kim. Yeah, me and water changes, odd I know

I ended up not pulling out all the old macro. As I went through it, some of it was still dark green and kinda mushy. So every thing that was in the skimmer section is replaced. Most of what was in the center compartment was green and crisp, so I left what was healthy in there.

As for sunny d, I tried to feed him yesterday, but I'm not sure he ate anything because his tentacles were lower than the rim. They are a little over the rim today (in the big head), so I'll try to give him supper tonight. None of the other heads have tentacles anymore. But I think they are all connected, so if the big guy starts eating it may bring back the little ones. There is still a lot of tissue to bounce back, if he survives.

just retested - Nitrates at close to 5 ppm. so, tonight i'll go ahead an pull the rest of the old prolifera and put in new. also, i've been meaning to add some of the gracilara hayi i've been growing out. it wont mind higher nitrates, so may as well do it now. this is for the pretty, i don't think it grows fast enough to really do a whole lot of filtering. so long as the red macro predator (brittle star i think) doesn't break it into little decomposing bits. if he is going to mess with it, i hope he just eats the whole thing.

also, the nem is looking better (bigger) and he seems to be moving back to his home in the palys. he got so small one of his crab friends moved out. it's funny, i guess he thought he could get away from it, but got about 9" away and gave up. kinda forgot to mention him in the diatribe above.

so, i did something really dumb (learning is good, though). after finding a balance between feeding and nutrient export i did a few problematic things. my attempt at a bullet-proof system got shot .

my sump is designed for a skimmer, but i filled that compartment with mud/macro as well as the main center compartment. but my light does not exactly cover this area and some of the macro is lit with light going through the pane of glass separating the two compartments. but i have let that pane of glass fill up with algae film, coraline, and some white stuff that i don't really know what it is. so, some of the light is obscured.

then, on a whim i bought some chaeto. i didn't really have a good place to put it, or a good reason to other than checking it out. so, i just put it on top of prolifera i have in the skimmer compartment. so, more light blocking.

the combination of these two things caused a die off of the prolifera that was in that section.

the next thing i did, which was just neglectful on my part. i let the prolifera in the center (main section) go too long without being pruned. so, it kinda ran out of room to grow, and started killing off the shorter leaves underneath.

three weeks ago my nitrates were less than 0.5 ppm, phosphates undetectable, and all the macro was growing nicely again. i started to see my corals not too happy and tested everything on monday. everything looked good except my nitrates were off the charts (at least 160 ppm). phosphates were up to about 0.25 ppm.

so, i pulled out about 60% of the macro (more than i intended, actually) and did a couple of large water changes (maybe 30% and 20% - ran out of salt on change 2...). i extended the photo period on the sump. oh, reduced feeding, too. my nitrates were back to about 20 ppm yesterday. since not everything looks happy again, i went ahead and did another large water change and will retest tonight. two things occurred to me today: the blocked light from the glass panel, and i probably still have some dying macros (or at least not fully recovered).

i guess the plan for today is retesting. i will definitely scrape that glass panel. if the nitrates are still at 10 ppm or more i will do another water change. if it is less than 10 ppm i will pull out all of the prolifera that is in there and start anew with stuff in my QT. if it is not low enough, i will probably pull out an equal amount to what i can add back in or just add some of the healthy stuff and try to pick through to find dead stuff. i don't want to reduce my filter that much. overall i am happy that i have been able to reduce the nitrates from >160 ppm to around 20 ppm in four days.

good news - LPS and softies are back to full extension. my shrimp and crabs have all weathered the storm (who knows about the pom pom crab i see every six months or so, i guess i'll know in august).

not so good news - my favorite coral (sunny d, the dendro) is continuing to fade. five small heads are all but gone (but still have white fleshy bits and some of them still have orange) and the main head has no tentacles out and starting to get some white patches.

bad news - i have lost my clam and sun coral (both were persnickety to begin with), a blue digi may or may not come back (starting to grow coraline i think is a bad sign), and my molly died. i'm not sure that all of these have to do with the nitrates, but it seems likely. the molly is the main one i am not sure about because i am notorious for committing molly-cide. the fact he lived two months is a bit of a miracle in this house.

so notes to self - if it's working, don't add chaeto and be sure to prune when things are getting full.

this has once again started my thinking about reworking my sump to get rid of the skimmer compartment and remove the glass pane between it and the light. it is really hard to keep that clean since more than half of it is covered by the bubble catch baffle thing. something i should learn from this, but probably wont (if i'm honest), is to test things when i see that i have a problem. usually when things start looking the way the do it is because my alk is low. so i dosed some of that and let it go a couple of more days. when it didn't help i decided to test...whoops.

well, it had been a while since i did a long rambling post, so i guess i was due. it was hard to add too much humor to this one though, but i tried to sprinkle some in here and there to make it worth it for you guys .

i live down by dittmar park (off dittmar between S first and manchaca). i'm kinda new to the area (15 years) so i don't know the names of all the neighbor hoods. mine's something british; maybe royal something. buchingham, maybe. shrug. i'd be down for a sunday bbq sometime. i'm a good last resort for tank watching. but as someone who doesn't leave the house much, and works odd hours, i may check at noon one day and midnight the next.

hey, if you get bored, there are a couple of tanks here you can piddle with . no sense starting a new hobby when there is enough work in the one you love.

Too late Planeden, I already recommended myself. I am choosing my free frags as we speak.

I bet you give yourself all the best stuff, too.

Welcome to the club. To bad about your tank loss but the new set up looks great. Good luck with the move.

Jeeper, if I recommend you as a real estate agent do I get the frags?

It says your video is private.

Sorry to hear about your disabled status (sorry, not sure how to put it, so please take it in the sincere, non-offensive, context if you can), but thanks so much for your service.

you will find plenty of people that are eager to share their wisdom around here (not so much wisdom in me, yet). and many that live in the cedar park area. so, good luck to you and enjoy.

did you just add the links or am i going bonkers? i was going to ask for it because my google skills falling short.

i thought the cbb was banished from the land

he's got it in water.

tank looks great ty. but jeeper liking softies, LPS, and fish. i'm having that "victoly got a display macro" feeling again.

ok, first you are grumbling that not enough of us are using videos and now you are being picky about format? did i miss the announcement about jeeper being put on staff?

I think he means biopellets.

Oh, I thought it was PM. I can make 1:30 AM.

I got my money on the other guy!

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OH! I thought I was going up against you with the premium aquatics thing. But OK, my money is on him, too.

Ahhh, there's where my wealth of ignorance on LEDs shows up. Haha.

yeah, i don't know what he's talking about either. but apparently one of us found a better deal then the other. i'll let shoppers figure out which one .

Did ya get one?

no, too ruch for my blood. i just have seen a lot of people talking about wanting kessils the past few days, so thought i'd share.

if you're asking about the email link, i'm on the mailing list. i thought i'd opened the email to their website, but it turns out i hadn't.