FluxCapacitor

I've been running a 3G pico for the better part of 2 years now. Evaporation, for some reason, has not been much of an issue for me. I'm using an AutoAqua Micro ATO on the tank and only have to refill the 5G carboy that feeds it once ever 3 months or so. It consumes fresh water VERY VERY slowly and it is not covered. I also have a small heater controlled by an external temp controller keeping the temp at 78*. Inhabitants are a clown goby, a hermit crab, a whole army of amphipods, and some RBTAs. YMMV, but I've seen very little evaporation problem from my 3G tank. If I could go do it over from the beginning I would not have gotten a bowfront because it's a PITA to clean.

^^ You can get them, you just have to find other means of income. I've noticed that many jobs and occupations people have don't allow for a very good work life balance. That means that if you're working 60h weeks and not making enough salary to play the way you want or having enough time to do what you went then what's the point? I don't live to work, I work so I can live. I think people either become trapped in a way where they cannot do anything except work and then come home to do chores/cook. I desire not to live that way. Doing small things on the side that you enjoy doing many times lead into other things that can make you extra money, but again, you have to have the time to do these things. For instance, if you love tweaking aquarium hardware there's a potential that other people will pay you to work on their stuff (probably because of a lack of their own time/energy because of their jobs). I'm looking at taking a contracting position right now that will double my salary that I'm currently making.... and I'm already doing well enough to play the way I want. The only "toys" I could want right now are having a house that I design and built on my own (don't want to rent or buy someone else's house in a neighborhood next to other houses) land or some sort of pricey super car. I'd have a new 911 Turbo if I could afford it right now but my Mitsu "boxes" will do for now. I'm not tooting my horn, I'm just trying to instill the fact that life doesn't have to be like what everyone else does. I've worked hard to make sure I can maintain my happiness AND do work that is lucrative. If I cannot do that I cannot enjoy my home life.... and that's really what's important to me, not working. I work hard so that I can do whatever I want when I'm not at work. I've also adopted the idea close to 7 years ago now in this city that I refuse to work 9-5 hours. This blows about 2h of my time a day in traffic. If you count your hourly wage for 2h that's a lot of money to not get paid to just be stressed out at other people not paying attention during their commute and causing traffic. My hours are 6AM-3PM and this allows me to avoid most of the annoying stuff.

Thank you for the tip, that is actually the exact certification program I'm using. I worked with AWS a lot at my last job provisioning servers and monitoring them but now I'm working to have it on paper to say I know how to do those things. The base salaries for AWS cert holders starts in the low six figures range so it's no wonder they're sought after like they are. I hope the market doesn't become flooded with people doing it but I've seen that happen before and knowledge + experience usually trumps the college kiddos pretty quickly. Linuxacadamy videos are super long and boring IMO and they cover every aspect of the AWS stuff. If you're looking for thorough that is good but if you want to pass the exam the cloud guru site is more on point with what you need to know to test out.

I've jumped ship since I last posted in this thread and I now work as a Systems Engineer for a HIPAA compliant hosting company. I guess you could say I "save lives" by "slaving over a hot keyboard". My work is easier than my last job, provided me with far more stock options than my last job, gave me my second unlimited PTO policy I've had the pleasure of enjoying, and a substantial raise over what I was making at my last job. I'm part of a smaller team of engineers here and my boss practices "servant leadership" which is a new concept for me. It basically means he's not here to tell me what to do but more to treat me like an adult and help me if I need something done. Still working in downtown Austin so I come into work very early in the morning to avoid traffic. My goals are short-term to get Amazon Web Services certifications and in the long-term to start my own business. Another goal of mine is to start making and packing my own lunch so I don't spend $30/day downtown on the expensive food there is to eat for breakfast and lunch around here.

Does anyone here play Street Fighter 5?

Holy fish, what kind of fish is that? And yes, Reburn... it's a challenge. Lol. I need to maybe re-aquascape my 34G because a lot of stuff is taking up realestate on the sand. * Yesterday I cleaned out the 75G because the last little 1 inch of water in the bottom had all the crud that wasn't siphoned out with the vinegar water I cleaned the tank with. * I want to move everything I have into the 75G and get it set up but I'm not prepared to spend a small fortune on the salt water needed to fill it up yet. I think it will be close to $100 in salt water if I don't get my RODI set up and buy a bucket of salt to mix myself. * I hooked up my Cebu Sun T5/MH fixture yesterday, all the lights work great in it so it's probably time to order some replacements to have on hand. I'm sure this is going to be in the $200 range to get all of the lights (at least). The ballasts are kinda loud once they're plugged in. * I want to mount the light hanging from the ceiling and I'd also like to measure the power draw on the entire fixture. It has 5 power chords for it total: 2 for the one-sided MH bulbs, 2 for the T5 fixtures (4 lights total), and 1 for the intake/exhaust fans. I expect this light to put of quite a bit of heat so it will be situated directly below where one of the home's a/c vents is blowing to scrub off the heat in that area. I just don't know that I'm ready to pull the trigger on setting up the 75G. I have a feeling if I do I'll be spending money again and the last month or so I've been able to NOT spend money on the tanks because they're full. I like this because it's allowed me to do some other things I wanted to do like Pre-Order the new Destiny Rise of Iron and the new BattleField 1 games. I dunno, I don't suppose I'm in a rush.

Who's going to the Lone Star Lemans race next weekend? I'm gonna go out there on Saturday. I've freed up some of my expendable income since I've filled my tanks with stuff here at the house. Can't buy more expensive things if I don't have room for them .

Pretty awesome MDavis!

Couldn't help on that one but I used to go to Zars as a kid a lot on the '95 XR100 I had. http://clubdbsa.org/riding.html Also, for the person that asked about HAM radio, it is a way of communicating with other people over very long distances made up of DIY infrastructure. Basically when the cell towers are f'd for some reason the people that have HAM radios will be the ones helping everyone else coordinate and communicate. I purposefully didn't mention zombie apocalypse because it's silly and brought up a lot in the discussions about how/where HAM will be most important. If you have line of sight to another radio within 20 miles or a HAM tower you can communicate. There are people that talk to others on the other side of the world for "free" (only the cost of your radio equipment). You have to get licensed to transmit because there are rules but there's nothing keeping you from buying a 2 pair set of $30 baofeng radios and listening to what old nerds are talking about. I'm probably going to be one of those old nerds one day, my uncle has a HAM tower that he built in his back yard and a ton of crazy equipment.

Ham radio, that's cool.... I have a couple baofeng's. They're cheap radios and I just listen to them as I'm not allowed to transmit.

Ahhhh I get it now, you're talking about getting them to attach to something without using superglue.... and the problem is that they'll frequently "let go" and decide to go somewhere else. If they're in a "net" then they can't do it. Sometimes I'm a little slow to connect the dots.

I'd be interested in purchasing some of the babies when they're ready if they'll be for sale. Good luck!

^^ What do you mean? How do you use it in that manner?

Interesting, I've never had the issue with pics posting sideways, but I have all of mine rotated before trying to upload them. There is a pending significant upgrade to the site software that ARC uses. I've delayed upgrading because of bugs, missing features, etc., but will most likely be pushed into using it by the end of the year. There are quite a variety of changes that will come when that happens. I have to rotate every image I post 4 times back to it's original position and save it to prevent them from posting sideways.

I would think all crustaceans will molt. I've even seen little amphipod exoskeletons floating around my tank when I hadn't fed anything.... so I'm sure they're in there growing. It's also a good sign that their shell is kinda healthy, they usually won't molt if there's something making them unhappy.... or at least that is the way my tarantulas were when I was a kid.

I used a piece of egg crate today and two clothes pins (ghetto I know) to "shield" the bubble splatter coming off the surface of the water from my bubble stones. I've also been putting a perfectly cut piece of egg crate to line the bottoms of all the new aquariums I've been setting up. I think this will allow the live rock to securely sit in the squares, and it will also keep rock from "grinding" against the bottom glass or acrylic. I considered that this could cause some sort of nitrate layer or something, but I don't think it will be an issue.

I used the shower loofa idea I cooked up above for some rubble rock to keep it from being a pain to move around in my rock curing tank. It worked great and the thing never ripped even though I snagged it a few times on rocks. I killed an aptasia with one of the pointy plastic tipped syringes and some really hot vinegar. I just put the rock in a bowl of water and injected it right near the mouth. It immediately receded and that was yesterday. It hasn't extended back out and I think it's dead. I have one more to do today that came in on a frag I got from tidal gardens.

^^ Very interesting.... I too like single malt scotch neat. I haven't explored it enough to know what a peatier scotch is like but I can say I've had some "islay" ones before that I didn't like at all. They had a very strong almost burnt wood flavor to them.... not easy to sip at all. Do you have any recommendations for an amateur? I'm guilty of buying macallans sometimes.... not very often though. Bobcat - is that a PK? Here's our bikes. The gold/blue one is Bry's and the other two are mine. The gold one and the red one are both Sunday bikes and the gray one is a Standard Trailboss w/ 21" top tube still period specific to the early 2000's in terms of what parts are installed on it. I did see you the other day as you went into Just Reef and I should have said hi and introduced myself. Aaron said it was you as you were walking up. You may be able to improve the feel/handling of your bike a bit by making the handlebars parallel with the headtube/forks and lowering the seat a bit. I'm not talking about jacking the seat post all the way down into the frame as far as it can go like all the new kiddos are doing. I like to sit down when I ride my bmx because I don't use it only for doing tricks and jumps... it's also a means of enjoying the outdoors. It frequently gets taken to the trails in the green belt and I'm no stranger to bombing dirt trail hills that should be way too rocky for a suspensionless bmx bike. Someone older than me gave me a good tip a long time ago when I was still young and scared of doing bigger jumps. They told me, "Take your hand off the brakes." I couldn't believe how right they were.... you get so used to using them as a crutch and allowing yourself to chicken out on stuff instead of committing. Anyway, I'm rambling.... BMX is a great hobby and I'm considering getting into racing since they built a track up in Pfugerville. Racing is also a little "safer" in terms of other things you could do on a bmx.

Wow, I'm seriously impressed but, at the same time, not surprised by how active everyone here is. I definitely can feel what everyone's saying about the injured athlete thing. I'm WAY less "gutsy" than I used to be on my BMX. I will jump the dirt jumps up north in Walnut Creek but I usually don't try to do anything too impressive. It's just fun/good exercise for me when I can get out there to do it. I also forgot to mention I'm "kinda good" (cough) at Street Fighter. Does anyone want to play for money?

Hello everyone, I was curious as to what everyone else does for fun. I know the reef tank hobby is why we're all here but what other hobbies are you into or have you been into? Mine are: *BMX *Early mitsu turbo cars (91 Eagle Talon, 90 Mitsu Eclipse, 89 Dodge Colt GT) *Painting either with spray paint or with brushes on a canvas. *Linux

Ex microbiologist - full time network engineer. Follow the money....! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I do agree here. I wouldn't go make less money somewhere else. I'm comfortable where I'm at but working on linux problems doesn't excite me like it once did. I've said for a long time that if the worst thing you have to complain about at your job is that you wish you were paid more money then you've got a good job. Everyone wants to be paid more no matter how much they make. My goal is happiness in the work place and I have that now. The challenge for me is going to be finding a job that I could do without sacrificing salary or happiness. For instance, I could make more money if I wanted to learn under water welding.... but i'd be working 70h long weeks away from home for weeks on end to do it. At that point I wouldn't care about how much money they paid because if you cannot enjoy your life then it's not worth it. My younger brother is a CCIE and he just bought a Cayman GT4.

My job consists of slaving over a hot keyboard from midnight until 11AM for 4 days a week. I get paid 12% shift diff for doing this which makes it kinda ok. My sanity is definitely suffering from months of "running on fumes" when it comes to sleep. I'll be moving to second shift soon. Anyway, about my job... I'm a Linux Engineer working in Network Operations at WPEngine.com. My job consists of ensuring that our customers can house their websites on our servers in a fashion that makes them happy. This boils down to fast, reliable, and premium support. I came into the company as a Tier 3 Support Tech and after two years transitioned into the engineering department. I did enjoy talking with customers but at the same time I'm glad that I don't have to do that very often anymore. I make sure that the servers are under control in terms of high system load, disk i/o, memory consumption, network throughput, and disk capacity. When there's nothing going on in that regard, I check to make sure there aren't any requests to build new servers on the various cloud vendors we use. We do use all the newest and best technology in terms of what's available and being actively developed on. This is one of the things about this company that has kept me excited to work for them. They're not resting on their laurels like, "we've made it and now we can coast." We're always improving things and I'm a part of the team that gets to develop new ideas and squash platform related code bugs. My previous jobs have consisted of cook at KFC, cook at Bill Miller, computer technician at Lockheed Martin, on-site computer technician for a small company in Arlington, TX, diesel mechanic for a year, linux tech at CIHost.com, and linux tech at HostGator.com. I went through my younger life not knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up. Well, here I am.... I'm kinda grown up now.... and I'm doing what I had as a hobby as a way of paying my bills now. Recently, as in 2 months ago, I got into this hobby of salt water aquariums. I haven't been more excited to learn new things in a long time and I'm now considering going to school to get a degree in marine biology. I think it might be my calling. Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading.

That is a good idea NeonReefer. My idea is, and I don't think I've seen anyone saying this anywhere online yet, you can use a shower "loofa" with the string cut off as a long tube of nylon netting "bag". I haven't used mine yet but I remember I had one that fell apart a long time ago and it turned into just this lone piece of tubed netting. Anyway, years later I have a use for it. My plan is to just cut it in sections and ziptie the ends shut. I'm going to fill some with rubble rock so that it doesn't make a huge mess in my sump and it's easy to move around. You could also use this with a larger grain media of your choosing I'm sure. This would make it easy to throw bags inside of your filter bag to force water through whatever it is that you're using. Anyway, I hope someone finds this useful and thank you for reading.