FarmerTy

Your face!

Giant colony of Ice Fire Echinata please!

As far as I know, they're bristleworms. No?You got me! Maybe?

Wow, have you identified what worms they are?

Agreed on the UV, run it on its own pump and according to Timfish, he's had better success actually running the feed pump in the DT pulling water in the lower portions of the water column. My CaRX runs at 10 ml/min currently.

I got your back if you need it bud. [emoji4]

Ugh I'm thinking the same thing too. Maybe I'll start with the two isolated pillars and find some rock that I can build a bridge with eventually?Mine used to change every 6 months so you're probably not going to get much solid advice from me. [emoji12]

I kind of like the separate islands better. Though I do like the thought of adding more height to both as you mentioned.

It's called a pump and a hose man! One man job! Maybe +1 wife.

Hey, I have time to lift the tank now if you want. Oh wait, what, you already did it? Darn! I missed out! [emoji16] Looking good on the plumbing! Let's get this thing wet already! [emoji4]

I saw this tank in person. It's a stunner!

It's no plywood, but it'll do. [emoji6] Looks good man.

Something tells me when I add more nitrates to my system, I'll reach a more harmonic balance of nitrate to phosphate. It's so odd to remove fish and the resulting higher nutrients that come with them, and end up with MORE nuisance algae then with lower nutrient levels in the tank. I feel like the imbalance is causing the algal growth, not so much the nutrient level itself, even though it's lower. Of course the fish do eat a lot of the algae but I'm also seeing more growth in my sump where it didn't really grow much before and that area was always free of grazing fish.

You are exactly correct. It does look like a kenya tree. The tripod looking thing definitely looks like a single zoa polyp with a few runners growing to attach to the substrate and grow other polyps down the road. Here's the meeting thread. http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/35937-february-meeting-at-farmertys-22016-2pm/ To respond to the poll, you'll have to view it either on a regular browser or on your mobile, but not on Tapatalk. And no, you do not need to have a premium membership to vote on the poll or attend the meetings. Hope to see you there this Saturday. -Ty

I think all of your conclusions are on point regarding nutrients in your system. This is the perfect time for TimFish to pop in and say, I told you guys to feed your corals!!! I think the advance of technology has allowed us to be way more efficient at removing nutrients in our system, and as a whole, the industry is realizing this and starting to go the other way a bit and allowing some nutrients back in. I still aim to keep my nitrates at around 5-10 ppm and my phosphates at 0.03 ppm. My phosphate level is a bit more rigid than I would say most need to aim for, it's just because my tank is SPS-dominant. I'd imagine anything around 0.08 ppm for phosphates is ideal. I haven't dosed my stump remover yet. I was just thinking about it 2 days ago when I took a step back to look at my corals and noticed how light all my corals look. The colors aren't as deep as they were when my fish were in there and the nitrates were hovering around 5-10 ppm. I plan to soon, but I'll just wait until after the meeting this Saturday at my house in case something goes wrong and everybody has nothing to look at but acro skeletons. Though I employ a very aggressive nutrient removal strategy, I highly doubt I'd ever have a problem holding some nitrates in there. My fish population leans on the side of borderline excessive, not just heavy fish load but even more than that, so I think I'd be hard pressed to not be able to keep some nitrates in the system. If I somehow can't, I'll just decrease the amount of biopellets I run and that should give me some of my nitrates back.

Looks like you got your first test corals. Those look like zoa polyps and possibly some type of leather coral.

Hey Brooks, I actually did it last year when I ran some experiments with controlling nutrient levels with biopellets, GFO, and dosing Spectracide Stump remover. I played with being able to adjust my nutrient levels on the fly and to see if I could use biopellets as a sole source of nutrient removal by dosing additional nitrate to the system to force the biopellets to remove even more phosphate in my system (as carbon dosing is heavily skewed towards nitrate removal), hoping to remove GFO altogether. While the ability to control nutrients was achieved, the ability to remove biopellets entirely never really manifested. At a certain point, I could have continued to dose even more nitrates to the system but it seemed like a lot more work than it was worth, not to mention adding the extra element of human error and potentially overdosing nitrates. I thought it safer and more practical to stick with my biopellets and GFO regiment and so the experiment ended. Funny you mention this, because when I put my corals back in the tank about 2 weeks ago, I noticed that the colors were pretty faded. It correlates with my decreased nitrate level as I'm currently reading about 0.25 ppm of nitrate in my system using the Red Sea Pro Nitrate test. I was planning on dosing my nitrates back up again (just have to find my old bottle of stump remover) and get it back in the 5-10 ppm range that was treating me so well before. I'll probably only maintain this for a couple weeks because on March 3, my tank will have hit the 76 days of being fallow and I'll slowly start reintroducing fish. At that point, the bioload associated with the fish and feeding them should be able to maintain my nitrates at the 5-10 ppm that I was achieving prior with a full fish population. If I had to guess, 70% of the tanks in Austin probably don't need to be thinking about dosing nitrates. It's only when you're being really aggressive with nutrient removal do you need to think about adding nitrates back into the system. The other thing to think about is just because you're reading 0 on your nitrate kit, doesn't mean you don't have a nitrate problem. If you see excessive algae in your system and you're reading 0, the algae is really uptaking all your nitrates... so if you start dosing nitrates because you think you're deficient, you'll see an algae bloom in the tank and your nitrates STILL may read 0. Either case, I'm glad you posted it as information like this helps to further our knowledge of reef keeping and brings the discussion to ARC. I caution though that most will probably never need to do this so make sure you do your research before you start dumping stump remover into your system.

Gorgeous! If I didn't have a naso already, I'd be all over this! Oh, and I think its a "she". [emoji6]

He's alive! Tank looks like it's coming together well!

Well you let me know when it's time for the next tank raising (pun on barn raising in case anybody didn't follow... It's usually a sign of a bad joke when you have to explain)!

I thought it was party on the outside for you, old man on the inside? Wasn't that you the other day drinking lemonade on your front porch, mowing with your push mower, and screaming at kids to get off your lawn?

It's like having flashy fabric inside your suit. All business on the outside, party on the inside!

Oiled bronze has my vote.

Very sharp looking indeed!

All Hail!! The Mayor of Fairy Wrasse City entersI like it Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I hear distant calls of kazoos sounding your approach...