Mike M.

Did you receive my information on the calcium reactor?

Sounds like the consensus is for using dead stuff these days. I have had my live rock eight years or so and put the tank together back when dead rock wasn't even being talked about. All that said, I recently purchased 50lbs of the BRS dead rock. I used it to fashion a rock facade around the frag rack I built for Fat Jack, our little 60 gallon LED experiment tank. I really liked working with the "cheap" rock and used an auger bit to drill holes to mount frags in and such. It allowed me to customize the rock work for the tank in ways that I have not been able to do with "live" rock. Now, when I put it in the tank...holy mother of algae blooms Batman! It cycled out with the carbon dosing I was doing at the time in about three weeks, but the mat of algae that it propagated was truly unbelieveable. So what you are being instructed about curing it is completely correct and I would urge you to use a good 6-8 weeks to cycle your tank. I would recommend something like microbacter 7 or zeobak and a carbon source to help things along and then you'll probably need a sea hair, emerald crabs, and snails down the road to deal with the algae. I was amazed at what work the emerald crabs did on the hair algae once I put them in the tank. They are great janitors!

Concerning your concern about PAR, there is a growing group of opinions that we over light our reef tanks. Your 250W DE lamps are A-okay. Putting a higher K lamp will lower PAR so take that into consideration. The Reeflux lamps you were using will grow SPS and anything else...so will the Phoenix 14K. If you feel like you are not achieving ideal growth rates, look to your chemistry stability and husbandry as the source of the problem. Most young reef keepers believe that a certain lamp or circulation pump or wave box will solve the growth rate problem. It just isn't true. If it was, we'd all have tanks of the month! I have grown more and more convinced that you can use whatever lamp you want and get good growth. An excellent example is the current fad amongst the local SPS guys for using these $20 Plusrite lamps. Shoot, I may even change to them next when my ungodly expensive Aquaconnect 14K's get to their replacement point. Another interesting change locally is Hydro's move or rumored move to 250W lamps from 400W. Once again, growing opinion that we overlight our tanks. So I'm not trying to cause a poop storm, but instead, keep you from feeling like you need to chuck huge dollars into a variable of your husbandry that in all likelyhood is not as critical to growth as you have been led to believe by all the attention paid to what lamp people us and their obsession with dissecting the "numbers" on the ballast and lamp pairs. Mike

The Apple Air Ports work flawlessly with the Apex controllers. Not the least expensive, but the user interface is for mere mortals as compared to that Windows based PC stuff. Just FYI.

APEX-Neptune Systems They lost the marketing war to DA. They are a bunch of engineers, not business oriented at all and its why they lost the marketing race. They DO, however, have a good product. I have run the Apex controller over a year, I've added a WXM module and a Dimming module and an HD4 outlet box in addition to a second Energy Bar 8. I did have a heck of a time with the HD4 box so I won't lead you to believe that I haven't EVER had an issue, but we were able to get it straightened out. I CAN recommend the APEX controller and Neptune Systems. I have been satisfied overall and have a fairly complicated application of the controller with 20 outlets plus WXM and Dimming functions. The system runs well as long as you program effectively. The advanced programming language is not entirely intuitive and does require one to use their noodle to make sure an outlet works properly. That said, the advanced programming language allows you a great deal of flexibility. I hate hearing how much trouble you had Stephen. WIth a system like yours, appliances should make your life easy, not add hassles. I would recommend the Neptune systems controllers to you and I know you have probably talked at length with Mark about your DA woes. Mike

One more...the most quiet external pump out there is a Poseidon T1 or T2. SILENT! I'm running one and it is whisper quiet compared to other externals I have "heard".

The vent hole you drill should be on the bottom of the return line up in the tank. That way, the little pee stream of water is directed towards the tank. Should the return pump fail, it will back siphon until air is pulled through the very small hole which will then arrest the back siphon.

See Mark's link below!

You are welcome to come check it out Friday-Sunday. I got Bruce to order me a DSA at Aquatek. Had to be patient, but glad I was. It is a very nice tank.

Since you don't have experience with advanced progamming of an Apex, I'd order your Apex and Sol from Callahan. He will be willing to supply the after sales service to help you avoid setup headaches. It'll be worth the 10% or so more in cost you might save by price shopping. He is an APEX rep and quite knowledeable. I think he also reps the SOL fixtures. PM him.

There isn't a correct answer on this one. LPS will do fine under compact fluorscents. They also thrive under VHO's and lower wattage MH. Your three best bets for LFS's would be in my mind: South: Aquadome North Central: Aquatek:Craig and Bruce know way more than I have forgotten about lighting and reef tanks in ten years NorthWest: River City I've not been a big fan of Gallery in eight years of dropping by there. I think their primary interest is in birds and cichlids. If you have any interest in LED lighting, Mark C. has a pretty deep knowledge base on available products and pros and cons of each. He would be a good resource. If you just have to have lighting right away, a four lamp t5 fixture would be an okay start. If you are going to grow SPS, you might want to consider a little more horsepower.

Here's the nut from the article: Finally, there is the very real problem of the mixed fauna and flora found in many of our systems. Aquarists tend to mix animals from different geographical areas with joyous abandon. This results in a tank full of animals with a variety of ranges of tolerance depending on whether the animal was from the very warm waters of Indonesia or the cool subtropical waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico. A modification of an old saying would apply here. As a “Jack of all trades is a master of none,” generalized conditions are not good for any tank inhabitant. Maintaining a tank in the upper 70 degree Fahrenheit (24 to 26 degrees Celsius) range will stress any reef inhabitants from the central Indo-Pacific, as it is too cold. And, because this is near the upper limits for subtropical organisms, it will stress them as well. It would be better for all concerned if aquarists concentrated their efforts on maintaining separate systems for organisms from geographically disparate areas. So as you review the article, we see that our IndoPacific creatures probably don't care too much for our 77-78 degree tanks. Since we are sliding into the summer months and the drought seems to have started, I'm amenable to sliding my temp control up a degree or two to the near 80 mark so maybe our new Aussie colonies and frags will feel more at home!

Hey buddy, The WAYBACK machine isn't pulling up the page for me. Can you briefly, I mean brief and tersely summarize the article?

Who says you have to be 80 degrees year round Hydro? Run it warmer during the summer months and then ease if down in to the mid to upper seventies from November to March.

When I used one of the pink wavepoints, I found it's spectrum degraded faster than the Fiji Purple KZ lamp. Makes me think of the saying...you pay for what you get!

That was not a dumb question by the way. This stuff is not intuitive in my opinion.

Correct and as much as I like the AI unit, I hate their controller. It is one knob and a lot of clicking to set up the light schedule. The Apex interface is pretty clutch. It has a very friendly GUI that has fields for ramp time and dimming time for the lights. Supposedly, the latest Apex Beta software also has control for the Royal Blue leds on the unit. Right now, you only control BLUE and WHITE. I am playing with the idea of upgrading my software to try it out. Scary though to upgrade software from my point of view.

NEPTUNE APEX=THUMBS UP/MUST HAVE!

Based on our par readings of one AI Sol fixture over a 24" deep tank, I'd say that a single SOL fixture would be outstanding for a mixed tank with mostly LPS. I bought a Derasa clam and have it down in the lower end of Fat Jack so we'll see how it does. One AI fixture over a 24x24x24 tank is 1/2 of their recommendation for a tank that size. Hoping to get a second fixture. The control by Apex feature is truly clutch and I like watching it dim off in the evenings.

Okay, so if we are going to play the "I check on my test kits game", the only truly smart, repeatable, and trustworthy method to verify test kits is through the use of a standard solution. Mr. Keen showed this to me and I was truly impressed. He orders a standard solution, something like alk of 7.3 similar to the standard solutions we use for pH probes and salinity refractometers and verifies his test kit in this manner. This is how lab equipment and assays are certified and if you truly want to check on your kits, this is the one and only way to be SURE. Wish I could take credit and maybe Stephen will post where he gets the standard solutions as we should all be doing this to Walk the Walk so to speak. As Mark said, you cannot "Know" what your salt mix will produce on a given mix because of the unknown of how your mix has settled out during shipping. It is a decent guess, but you can't know from a test like that. So thanks Stephen for showing us how it ought to be done. If I had been more of a scientist about my reef keeping I would not have lost $2500-3000 worth of stuff! Mike

When they are available, don't even message to ask, just get me one of each in! Mike

Hate to admit it, but I like the Hanna Alk checker. I'm sold on it so to speak. Takes some of the guess work out of interpretation. Now, if they just had a Magnesium and Calcium model! Soon I hope!

A calcium reactor is truly a pleasure when you can get it to run consistently. I have run a Korallin and a Precision Marine. I am back to two part. Never could get them to run on cruise control. I agree that there is something sexy about the idea of the trace elements putting stuff back in the water that dosing two part leaves out, but that being said, I have had good luck with growth using both methods so my anecdotal report is they both work well for the folks they work well for and that your growth will be more dependent on your lighting spectrum/intensity/photoperiod, and the nutrient levels in your tank. I think those two areas are where I would place the emphasis for someone wanting optimum growth, not cal/alk dosing method. there's a two cents worth for free! Mike

Oh yeah, so I'm back to running two part with a kalk reactor. At least I know what's going in the tank now.

I had been using a Tetra and an API alk kit. In addition, I had been having a heck of a time getting the calcium reactor to function reliably so a dip in alk was easy to achieve with the reactor vapor locking so to speak. Anyway, the test kits were telling me my alk was high to the 6.5-7.5 that I was trying to run the tank at so I kept turning the reactor output down. Fed the beast so to speak. I bought on the Hanna Alkalinity checkers that I am on record making fun of in another thread. Oh well, if you can't beat'em, join them! Callahan is still smiling that smug grin about it to this day!