JEN H

Zen Reefer, That would be great, I would love your help on this. I am not against a traditional overflow box. I would love to see your designs or get your help. Thank you again all, Matt

Thank you guys, I have come to the realization that it will probably not work. I am going to see what I can do with an overflow box. Maybe one of the small ones from EShopps [6 in x 3 in x 10 in]. I just cannot seem to get one of those PVC W looking siphons to work. I have tried but once the siphon breaks it just does not seem to restart. Does anyone have an overflow box on their biocube, I am interested in how well this works? Thank you everyone, Matt

I have a general question for anyone. I have a couple tanks, a 210 saltwater with a standard siphon overflow box with U-tubes that move water to my sump. The other tank is a smaller biocube (29 gallons) and I am working on putting a sump on it. I want to use a small Rio pump in chamber 1 to move water to the sump, is this a good idea? If not can some one give me an idea of why? I have tried building one of those W siphon overflow ideas that I have seen on the web, but it does not seem to work. I am probably building it wrong or priming it wrong but I thought maybe use a pump instead (I have plenty lying around). So if anyone has any ideas please let me know I would love to hear ideas about how someone has added a sump to their biocube. Thanks everyone for the help, Matt

So my husband came back from the LFS about a month ago and decided to bargain for a piece of xenia. He has always wanted this coral....so I couldn't say no. We put it in our 29 gallon biocube and it was doing fine. Starting this week it has started to look a little funky. Not opening up like it used too. There were also two types on the frag we bought and it seems like one of the types looks more shriveled up than the other kind. We moved it from lower in the tank to the top of our rocks so that it is closer to the lighting. We are also making sure that it is in a decent current (we have read mixed ideas on this). Our other corals in the tank are just fine.....so.....not sure if we should be dosing daily with iodide? We did our water change tonight, and I have convinced my husband to start doing weekly water changes on this tank. We are also in the process of moding our biocube to include a refugium in the stand. I think that we will be putting this together in the next few weeks. IN the meantime, I would like to see this Xenia healthy again.

Sound like snail eggs to me. We get that in our big tank, but they usually get eaten off of our glass from our long spine urchin. We have a bunch of small snails in our small tank that are slowly getting bigger....

We do not run the MH on the smaller 29 gallon tank, only on the 210. Our 29 gallon we just use the T-5's and keep them on for about 10 ours and then run the actinic lights. It works just fine and our corals are fine and healthy. Hope it helps, Matt

Mitchel, Who are you asking the question to about the 29 gallon tank and the MH lights?

Hello. We do run them. We keep the MH on for 8-9 hours, remember that a full photosynthetic day is about 10-12 hours. After the big lights click off we keep the actinic lights running till about 9pm then they automatically switch off and the moonlights come one. If is important to run the actinic lights to give all your smaller creatures the extra light that is not as intense as the MH. So, just run them so you are essentially getting a total of 10-12 hours of combined light and you will be fine. Hope all works out for you.

The hubby and I have a couple of these types of urchins. They have never bothered our live rock. They eat algea, which is great....even the coraline stuff that gets on the glass.

After having an issue with a fish who got pop-eye in our tank and then died, we have been doing a quarentine on all fish prior to putting them into our tanks. It is the right thing to do. It's a good thing too, because we got a fish one weekend, and it had fin rot or something that didn't show up until we had it in quarentine. Our set up is as follows: 1. 10 gallon tank 2. Basic over the side filter (all carbon removed) - I usually just put some poly in this filter 3. A few small plants that suction to the bottom of the tank for the fish to hide behind 4. A heating element to keep water temp correct 5. A thermometer stuck to the side of the tank to know it is the correct temp. We put copper in the tank, because this really kills anything. Just be careful not to mix this water in your quarentine with anything in your main tank (unless you want to have an issue with inverts and snails etc). Only fish in the copper solution. We change out the water every couple of days to ensure that the water quality is good. We add copper over a 2 week period. Honestly, if the fish seem to be healthy after a week, we don't always wait for another week. Another thing we do....if we have issues with ich etc) is a freshwater dip. Essentially use fresh water and put the fish in it for 60 seconds to longer depending on how bad it is. We put a fish in for 10 minutes one time (the fish with the fin rot had other issues too). It helped.... Good luck!

Thanks for the reply. He was still in part of his tube, which I thought was strange. So, we just took him and put him in our smaller tank. We'll see how he looks in the morning and go from there. If need be, we will try to get him back in his original tube...

My husband and I give our vote for Aqua Dome. I happened to find it online when we were moving from Columbus, OH down here. We had to ship a tank of fish down here overnight, and Hunter made sure to give them a tank and take care of them until we were able to get our tank set up. After that, we have been a customer there 100% of the time. I don't know of any LFS that would have done that for us. Hunter, Gary, and Terry are all great folks, and they have alot of experience in fish keeping between all of them. They never steer us wrong when picking anything, and we have had great luck there with livestocks and corals.

If your fish has popeye, I would recommend getting it out of your tank and into quarantine to treat it. We had a bannerfish that got popeye in our big tank. He didn't make it, and it is hard to say if they will make it or not. No one seems to be sure what causes that problem. We have read that it could be a bacterial infection to worse. We got a powder med that we put into the QT water. We dosed as it said. The fish didn't make it, but hopefully yours will. Good luck!

My husband and I have two tube anemones in our large tank. We just put two new schooling bannerfish in the tank on Thursday night. We just noticed this evening that one of our tube anemones (the larger one) was out of its tube (or partially out) and on the other side of the tank. My husband went to put it back to the side of the tank where it was from, thinking it would reburry itself. He noticed that the bannerfish were picking at it. I had no idea that they would do this, and now I am concerned that they will do this to our other tube anemone. For the time being, we are going to move it to our smaller tank, but has anyone heard of this happening before? We were under the assumption that a tube anemone would sting any fish. On top of that, these schooling bannerfsih are supposed to be reef safe. I just don't want our other tube anemone to get eaten as well..... I hope our other one will be o.k. He was doing so well, and growing so large....now alot of his long tentacles have been eaten off. Thanks for the help.

We had issues with our cleaner shrimp when we first got them. It took a couple batches to get two that hung around... And then we lost one of them after Christmas.... So we are down to one cleaner in our 210 gallon for now.

Could you possibly put an emerald crab down there for the bubble algae? I know that they are one of the few inverts that actually eats that stuff.

Give the guys at the Aquadome a call. Talk to Gary or Hunter. They might be interested in buying it from you. Do you have any pictures? My husband is interested, but wants to see what it looks like etc.

Try getting a product called Ick Attack, but make sure that it is the kind which is o.k. for inverts and corals. It is an herbal remedy, but my husband and I had great luck with this product. Hunter at the Dome had also heard good things about it. You can probably find it online....just make sure you get the kind which is safe for corals and inverts...(sorry to repeat myself, but I just want to be sure you don't get the wrong kind if you choose to go this route). I think something must have happened in your tank to stress them and cause an outbreak.

My husband noticed this evening while feeding our fish that we have a blue/green chromis hiding in the rocks under and slight overhang. In the process of observing the fish, it kept moving around one specific area of the overhang. There was also another blue/green chromis that kept going down to that fish in what seemed like a chance to check on the other fish. I thought that maybe the fish was injured, but my husband seems to think that maybe the chromis has laid some eggs and now the male is protecting those eggs. It seemed to be picking at food that would get near it, but it was not leaving the area to go feed with the 10 other Chromis we have (along with our other fish). If we find out it is spawning....how could we possibly get the fry out and segregate them prior to the other fish eating them? Thanks!!!

My husband and I just completed the creation of our first under tank refugium. I have to admit that it is not as pretty as the kind you buy for around $300, but it is going to work the same, and we just really want it for the benefits it gives to having a larger tank. Here is what we did..... Picked up a clear 24 L storage container from Wal-Mart for around $7 Picked up a 1 3/4 inch bulk head from the Dome (cheap) One 10 lb bag of miracle mud from the Dome ($60) One bag of various salt water plants from the Dome (not to pricey) Smallest Rio pump at the Dome 3 feet of 1/2" hosing ($2.50) 2 buckets we weren't using 2 smaller pieces of live rock from our already established tank We heated up a tool with the gas stove to melt out the circle from the container for the bulk head to go through. Put the container on top of the two buckets (to support the weight) under the tank right next to the sump. Ensured that the bulk head was over the sump so that the refugium would drain back into the sump. We then used the Rio to pump water up from the sump into the Refugium. We didn't let the water start overflowing into the sump right away so that the soot from the miracle mud would not get into the tank. The next morning, we were ready to start the pump and the refugium is up and running. We lucked out, because the two live rocks we put into the refugium had some copiopods on it as well as those very small white brittle stars. So, we will now allow them to populate the refugium along with the salt water plants we put in. Total cost - probably somewhere under $100. YEAH!

If the maroon has fin rot, I'm not sure if there is any treatment that can cure that. From mine and my husband's research...that is not a curable disease and you don't want your other fish to get it. We had to return a butterfly fish that had this problem....and we found out that it did in fact have it and did not make it. Sorry.... I hope maybe it's just a bad case of ick or some other parasite that you can kill with copper and a QT tank.

It's aptasia. We got about 4 pepermint shrimp....we have two left now. They took care of them along with Joe's Juice. I think that the shrimp did the best work though. Good luck!

One thing that we have used in the past which has helped alot is the Chem Pure bag. We needed to replace it this last time and went with Purogen instead. It doesn't do it when it comes to keeping hair algae at bay. We are going to get another Chem Pure bag to help combat, as everything else we have tried (additional clean up, water changes, etc) hasn't really helped much. Good luck!