SirReal63

It is fun picking bulbs...it all boils down to what your goals are. If you are keeping sps in areas other than the top of the tank bulb selection gets more complicated. I have done the bulb/ballast/reflector game too many times and it gets frustrating. Different ballasts will fire bulbs differently, reflectors play a part too, better designed ones can help overcome bulb deficiencies to some extent.

What ballast do you run, which reflector and what bulb are you currently using?

Gabriel...the Hammy 14K has awesome color but very low par. It was one of my favorites for color but the low par makes it unattractive for growth.

The bad type are very rare in aquaria. You should also know that the article is very old, it was written in 1998 and our knowledge of these creatures has increased greatly.

If you catch some that are 6" or smaller let me know, I will come get them. Bristles are the best part of a good cleanup crew. If yours are that large then there is more than enough food for them as their populations and size are self limiting. Loads of food and you will have loads of them and they can grow large. When the available food is limited their numbers reduce. From what I have read...their mouth structure is not adapted to eating living tissue but decaying tissue. I have never seen them eat anything alive and in my old 125 I had one that in his constricted size was about 16" (got him in a shipment of rock) and I never saw it eating anything alive.

Excellent...god job Rich...I thought I had one but I have no idea where. I am glad you found one.

Doesn't have to be great, it is temporary. What have you got in the closet?

85 watt would be the new VHO T5's. Cool, I haven't seen those yet. I agree with the blue + bulbs, excellent par and not a bad color.

Icecap 660 will drive 4-48" (54 watt is correct for 4' bulbs) T5's to approx. 80 watts each. This will cause the bulbs to run hotter and active cooling of the bulbs is needed to keep them from losing life and par. There is no need to send in the ballast to icecap, it will only drive 4 bulbs though. FWIW an icecap 430 will only drive two bulbs. Par will be greater than the VHO's...much greater...if the correct reflectors such as icecap sls or ati reflectors are used.

The color is different on the 420's with T5 than it was with the URI Superactintics. Be careful with what you order from DFS as they do not always have the latest and greatest in lighting and tend to sell lesser stuff for premium prices.

Thanks for the sand, rock and chaeto Jason.

If anyone else has a cup of sand to spare I would appreciate it, I need some diversity. :-)

Limestone will work but there is one problem that sometimes crops up...iron. It could have traces of iron in it and can leach into the system and that isn't a good thing. A very inexpensive option is marco rocks. I just took a 25# box of it and it is beautiful stuff. Very cheap and no worries of what is in it. Marcorocks.com

Good to know...hob overflows are so simple yet you would be amazed at how many people have a hard time with them.

If it looks like this...

...it may be diatoms. Was the tank set up with new sand? I had it on a small tank I set up a few years ago and the snails wiped it out and what they didn't chow on went away in a few weeks after it appeared. Puffers are messy eaters and nutrient control is very difficult...you need some serious skimming and try and get as many bristle worms in that tank as you can.

A turkey baster will work if it is airline tubing size, if it is bigger it may not have enough volume for the vacuum.

I haven't seen in but I have heard they are cheaply made and one person on RC could not get it hold water. Most likely it was user error on his part but I have used Amiracle, LifeReef and Quiet Flo's and if set up properly they are excellent. My last QuietFlo was in operation for 3 years and never failed to start up after a power outage. One thing to note is to make sure you have enough water flowing through them to let any micro bubbles flow through. On a 600 gph unit this would be about 350 gph.

Ouch!!!! Costly food. If that becomes a habit you may look into acclimating black or sailfin mollies to salt and letting him feed the nem with them. I did this for an S.Tapetum I used to have. Mollies are a brackish and estuary fish and thrive in a full salt environment. I use them to cycle and have a couple of dalmation mollies in my 58.

Mollies make the perfect live food and breed like crazy in full salt.

Here is a pic of my old anemone enjoying a freshly caught snack.

i moved the tank and the sand bed was thrown up. how long should i wait before stuff goes baack in? so far its been 24 hours. i know i have to wait for stuff to settle. im goign to go test the water for the ammonia etc but for the hydrogen sulfide. how long does that take to disolve\settle\disapate?

If you had sulfides they dissipated in a couple of minutes as it is a gas. The ammonia is all you need to worry about and it may take a day or two to peak but if the biological filtration is strong you may not even see a mini cycle. If the sand was kept live and you have enough rock things will settle down rapidly.

Your PM box is full.

Thanks Jason, tonight should work fine. I'll make sure and call before I come. It should be close to 6:30 unless the g-f wants to come then maybe closer to 7. I will call either way to let you know.

Jack

Most of the ocean is just plain saltwater and almost completely void of any life at all.

I suppose you have documentation to support that somewhat wild theory? Someone should tell those poor baline whales that the planktonic food they have evolved throughout time to sustain themselves with is actually not alive at all. lol

It is true that corals inhabit a very small portion of the total ocean and the influx of the main body of water is in many ways a water change. Creatures at all depths of the ocean and in all temperatures have evolved to consume the life that is there, it is far from void of life. I think we have let ourselves get off topic. Keep your temps where you are comfortable with them and your livestock thrives.

It has been said many times there is more than one path to success. I have spent the better part of 5 years studying everything I can find and one thing is certain...we have a long ways to go before we know all the answers. Mixing species that may never come into close proximity with each other has nothing to do with temperatures but does prove that these creatures are very adaptable. In the end it doesn't matter if you keep your temps stable or let them vary, both will work as long as you can keep the regimen up. I'll continue to listen to the scientists whose goal is to further the hobby but always with a grain of salt...they may change their mind on things in a few years.

I think the first 15 people got all the 4's. I managed to get a 3 and it will work ok for now. :-) The place was packed and it was good to so such a great turnout of local reefers. :-)

Oops...sorry Gabriel...that should read I am not disagreeing. lol

I am disagreeing...actually I do agree for the most part. From the moment corals are collected they are held in a constant temp and this continues down the chain until it ends up in our tanks. This is part of the problem. It is not natural for the corals. I am not sure if anyone keeps up with the drama on RC...I try and avoid a lot of it, however there is a great deal of information available there. This is a recent thread where this very subject was discussed...

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.p...hreadid=1258865 I first learned that some of the things we do because they have always been done that way were wrong when I was fortunate enough to listen to Calfo speak and give us a frag workshop in St Louis. He is a very non-traditional and sometimes controversial "expert" in the reef community but most of what he said made sense. We were blessed with Borneman the next year who also debunked a lot of the myths that he helped propagate years before. This is one of my favorite articles that Shimek wrote...note the chart of the daily temp swings.

http://www.reefland.com/rho/1105/reefc7.php

Popular myths discussed... http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.p...mp;pagenumber=1

The beauty of this hobby is there is no right or wrong way for the most part. Corals are not fragile and delicate creatures...they come from a very rough and hostile environment. If you can meet the basics for their survival you will be amazed at what they can endure. My only point is not to stress out about your tank. Keep the water, light and flow appropriate for the creatures you have and enjoy the hobby. :-) Now I need to get back to setting this tank up.

There are varying opinions on this subject. What we do know...reef temps are not constant, in fact they can swing as much as 10-15 degrees rapidly. Because of this the corals in the wild are able to handle temp. fluctuations, just as saltwater fish are more able to handle temp fluctuations than freshwater fish. The problem we face is once collected corals are usually kept in a temp. stable environment and lose the adaptive ability to handle temp. fluctuations. We spend a great deal of money on equipment to keep our temps stable and ultimately something will happen such as a power outage, controller malfunction etc. and the temp changes from our target and the corals bleach, die or suffer greatly. This is because they no longer have the adaptive ability to deal with fluctuations. In short we are helping to create our own downfall when temps do change.

The good news...corals have this ability to adapt built in, but they must be exposed to changes in order to keep their adaptive abilities working. In my prior tank I ran a chiller, it was set to come on at 83 and in the evenings my tank temps would drop to about 77-78 and during the day heat to a normal high of about 82, hence the chiller set to come on at 83, it was the insurance policy. The daily swing in temps did not hurt them at all and when I did have something go wrong such as a warmer than normal day the corals faired just fine. I had a power outage last June from a tripped breaker that cut the a/c off. The tank temps rose to about 90 before I got home and re-set it. I lost two little frags of sps and nothing else. I have no idea how long the tank was at 90 or how long it took to get there but my colonies were just fine as were the clams, the inverts and fish. Do I believe in letting a tank go through a normal swing in temps...definitely.

If you were to take a coral that has grown in a constant temp and started changing the temp to have a 5 degree fluctuation daily it would kill it...you would have to start slowly and build up to it much in the same way this 44 year old body would not get up right now and run a 20K marathon...it would probably kill me. lol. But if I trained for it I could do it again. (maybe)

Old myths in this hobby are slowly fading away...this one probably came about from more than 20 years ago when coral keeping was still new. It has been recommended for years that we keep our temps at 77 and this was probably because at that temp sps expend less energy than at 80+ degrees. It let them live longer than a higher temp would back then. Today we understand these creatures a little better and can keep them alive and healthy.

Of course this is just my experience and that of many others that have also discovered that a constant temp is not always a good thing. Corals do not come from a constant temp. environment.

Looks like our water in general is pretty good. Good to know. :-)

That is good news Carlos!!! I'll be there at 10 if I get up in time.

That is not bad but a different water supply...I think.