AlexKilpatrick

Shane at Fishy Business (also an ARC sponsor) runs his own business.

Price drop to $400.

I have to second the sentiments. I ordered a medium open brain and they sent me a large -- one on the biggest I have ever seen.

Maybe they like us because we make such big orders, but they sure seem like a great company. However, next time I am going to be disappointed if I actually get what I ordered.

Vivid had everything we ordered...except what I ordered!

That sucks. What happened?

@chark -- I don't think it is on the market yet. It is supposed to be something they are releasing soon.

@DaJMasta -- I don't expect it to save costs. I just think it might be easier to manage, and certainly cheaper to ship.

The grain size would also have an affect on the quantity of salt you'd mix in. Seems like a nice idea. I think I'll try it.

Actually, you hit on a potential problem. I mix up saltwater in a trashcan, and I don't have a precise measurement on the amount of water. I just put in salt until the salinity gets to the right point.

That approach won't work if your saltwater mix is in two separate parts. You would have to put in the exact right amount of the trace elements, and then you could adjust the salinity with NaCl. But you would have to know exactly how much water you had.

I would assume food salt. It is just NaCl without anything else in it. I would guess the difference would be the level of purity.

I'm going to be up in Dallas. Can you drive up and drop off my order?

Weird story related to this.

My mom was an ICU nurse; she retired in the mid-80s. They used to have a lot of "expired" blood because it has such a limited shelf life. (as an aside, a HUGE amount of donated blood is not actually used) Some of the nurses used to take the expired blood to put on plants. They said it was hugely beneficial.

Dunno if they still do that now, but I doubt it.

I haven't looked, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard. NaCl is NaCl. It just needs to be relatively pure.

I thought you were supposed to calibrate it with a solution because it is not linear over the entire range, just over the smaller range (say 1.020 - 1.030 or so).

I had a problem initially calibrating mine because the solution was using different units than the refractometer. I had water at something like 1.018 for a while and couldn't figure out why corals and snails kept dying. Fish didn't care, though.

This is a clever idea. I wonder why no one thought of it before.

http://reefbuilders.com/2010/03/18/neomarine-kalibrate-saltwater-premix-brightwell-making-seawater-bulk/

The idea is that they can ship and store saltwater mix much cheaper if they don't include the salt, which is 80%. You can get the salt locally.

I would love to not have to deal with those huge buckets.

Mark, you do video work for a living, right? How can you watch that? It's horrible.

I would advise getting a simulator (about $200 or so) and do lots and lots of practice. Helis are pretty challenging to fly.

Here is my order:

Scolymia $899.99 (ok, just kidding)

http://www.vividaquariums.com/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=10-0450&Category=Coral%20And%20Invertebrates:WYSIWYG%20LPS%20Colonies&SortBy=Price

$32.99 Large Green Brain

$16.99 Tiger Tail Cucumber

$49.99 Naso Tang (medium)

Oops. Just to clarify the prices at the top are the list prices for those items. The total system price is $450.

I am not willing to part out at this time.

Sorry, picture didn't make it into the original post.

JBJ 28 Gallon 150 W HQI (about 6 months old) $400

Stand $125

Aqua-C Remora hang-on skimmer $170

JBJ 1/15 HP Chiller (includes pump/plumbing) $400

About 20 lbs (guessing) live rock $60 (2 5 Gallon buckets full)

Live Sand ??

Everything you need but fish and coral. It has been a great tank, but I am selling it so I can concentrate on my 150. You really do need a chiller on this tank because of the HQI and the mostly closed top. Chiller keeps everything +/- 1 degree and is very quiet. The skimmer is the only think that makes noise on this tank.

All for $450.

Call me at 512-296-4130. I'm near at 2222 and 360.

Lots of neat jobs here.

I just left the corporate world a few months ago to startup a new company working in the biometrics field: www.tacticalinfosys.com

We are still in the "ramen" stage, so I can't afford much for my tanks. My big splurge this week was to buy 10 snails.

Alex,

I have played poker with more than a years salary in the pot. Bluffing is what seperates poker from play. I should have said let us pretend to play poker and have fun. We can raise the limit, I just did not want any one to be put off or to get hurt financially.

Patrick

Wow. I can't imagine playing at that level. Was that just a ridiculously high pot, or did you have a huge buy-in to begin with.

I agree with you, though. I just wanted to advocate $10 or so buy-in over nickel-ante type stuff. I can't imagine any reefer is put off by $10 for a night of entertainment.

Is it possible it was sold and just not recorded properly?

Have you thought about just having a simple camera pointed at the door?

Also, it was entirely possible it was just stolen by someone who happened to be looking for an opportunity to steal The idea being "if it is big it must be worth something" It wasn't necessarily a local reefer.

I actually have this same sump, but mine is old and scummy so nobody report me.

I don't know if I would call a $10 buy in "serious" But I think there is a balance to be had between completely farting around and playing poker.

I have played nickel-ante poker and it was fun, but I don't know if it really captures the flavor of poker. When I played nickel-ante, it was almost impossible to bluff because people would call on just about anything because the amount of money involved was so trivial. Bluffing is an important part of the game, IMHO.

$10 seemed like the sweet spot to me. With $10, the pots are decent enough to represent "real" money, but not high enough to where you are really sweating it if you lose.

I recently played in a hold-em tournament with an entry fee of $10. It was my first time, and a lot of fun.

However, it seems like it would be a little hard to play without re-buys. Otherwise if you get knocked out early you are just done for the night. At the tournament I played, they had a cash game for the people who were out of the tournament.

Did you know the iPhone software for interfacing with aquacontrollers is not connected to Neptune in any way? It was just written by some guy.

Some of the other top-off's have a "max" timeout, where the pump will only run for a certain maximum amount of time -- 15 minutes or so, and after that they will lock up. You have to unplug them and reset them to clear the lock. The JBJ ATO and (I think) the Tunze osmolator both do this.

Tunze uses an optical sensor which can't jam.