AlexKilpatrick

I have heard of a few lucky people who have been able to get by without skimming, but I am not one of them. Almost universally when my tanks starts to look bad, it is because something is wrong with my skimmer. I fix the skimmer, and everything quickly starts looking good again.

I started running carbon on my system and it did wonders for clearing things up.

I have run carbon for the past 24 hours. When I went in to check on the tank this evening I thought something funky was up with the lights because the tank was a lot brighter than I am used to. Then I realized it was just the extra clarity of the water because of the carbon.

My ORP has also gone up after running carbon, but I not sure how reliable that is.

Pretty cool.

One thing I hadn't considered was running carbon in bags inside the reactor. That would certainly make cleanup and changing carbon a lot easier.

Mark -- your reactor wouldn't have worked for me anyway. I did look at that same one on MD, but it is too small for my tank.

Thanks guys.

The articles at BRS are a good read. I remember the issues now -- mainly that the carbon will built up filtration bacteria such that when you change it out you will make a big hit on the filtration capacity of the tank. I guess if you replace it often enough that is not an issue.

This is the reactor I got: http://www.marinedepot.com/NextReef_MR1_Media_Reactor_Chemical_Reactors-NextReef-NX1111-FIFRISCR-vi.html

Inexpensive, and seems really well made. I hate those thumbscrews though. They tear up my fingers.

I am getting ready to treat my tank with Flatworm exit, so I bought an inexpensive carbon reactor to help minimize the stress.

I was wondering if anyone here was running carbon as a general practice? If so, how often do you run it? How long can carbon sit stagnant before it is bad?

I have never really heard of people fragging LPS. Do they actually grow enough to make that worthwhile?

Nice little wrasse. As soon as he hit the tank he started picking at the rocks.

This was my first time at Fishy Business. That's a really nice store.

I am planning to treat the tank with Flatworm exit. The wrasse is supposed to keep them in check afterwards.

I have heard healthy fish can easily go 1-2 weeks without feeding. It isn't the same as a dog or more typical pet. They can forage around the tank for stuff as well. Personally, I would prefer to take my chances with that than to have someone who doesn't know what they are doing feed my fish. You can also get one of those automatic feeders for flake food. Not the best food, but you can control the portions.

A controller is great too. I was able to monitor my tank from afar during the recent Thanksgiving holiday.

I was thinking it would be nice to build up an "emergency contact" list for ARC. That way you could use a normal pet sitter -- friend, neighbor, whatever to watch over things. But if you some kind of emergency popped up you they would have someone to call. That would get over the weirdness factor of having some random ARC-er in your house because they would be there with your trusted pet sitter. But they would be someone who would know their way around a tank and could probably quickly spot problems than a non reefer pet sitter wouldn't notice.

So is a 12-line twice as efficient as a six-line?

I am looking for something to keep flatworms in check. Do you know if yours eats them?

ok. I will keep checking. I guess I have just had bad luck lately.

Anyone local (store or otherwise) have any?

Thanks!

Store goes topless for Black Friday | KXAN.com

Anyone go to Amazonia on Black Friday? I had no idea this was happening.

Yeah, I checked the prices again and you are right. It is expensive stuff. Definitely worth it, though. I used it a few years ago and it worked wonders.

THanks for the offer, but I think I am going to get a carbon reactor with it, to help minimize the damage of the flatworms dying. That will make it expensive enough to justify the shipping.

Are there any local places selling Flatworm Exit? I have not seen it at AquaTek or ARC. I don't want to pay $9 shipping for a $9 product...

I don't have any growth shots, but I do want to mention that my hair algae disappeared (90%) within a few days of starting the Polyp Lab stuff.

It is interesting because you are dosing so little. In my tank (156) I put in about 2.5 ml per day. Hard to imagine that makes a difference.

I have been experimenting with a method to keep my pH from dropping too much at night. I dose two-part through an aquacontroller tied to a dosing pump, so I can control how much it doses, and when. Currently, I have it dosing for 15 minutes every other hour during the night. I'm dosing a total of about 90 mL on a 156, but my dKH is still low.

If you look at the graph below, the big pH peak is during the day. The "sawtooth" peaks are from my dosing during the night.

Anyone else attempting this? Any comments?

For reference, white flatworms are OK. Reds and browns typically are not.

I have always heard that flatworms are just annoying. They don't actually harm anything.

flat worms are tiny -- about the size of a pencil lead. WHat you have looks like regular old corraline. It should be making your rocks purple also, which most people like.

Corraline algae. It is the sign of a healthy tank, but it is a nuisance. You have to scrape it off with a metal scraper (assuming you have glass, not acrylic)

A lot of times diatoms are caused by the water you are using to make saltwater. Are you using tapwater, or do you have RO/DI?

My tank is actually pretty decent, but I wanted to chime in and comment that this is a really cute idea. Kudos to you for sponsoring it.

On a related note, does anyone know how to make it only send out one email? Mine keeps sending out an email every couple of minutes until the alarm condition stops.

You aren't really having gmail forward anything.

Here is how it works. To send an email, the client (in this case the Aquacontroller) needs a SMTP server in order to send the email. It can be any SMTP server that will accept the request. The SMTP server will communicate with the recpient email server and transmit the message. This really has nothing to do with RoadRunner, except that they provide the network connection.

Graphically:

Aquacontroller -> GMail SMTP Server -> Recipient SMTP Server -> Recipient email client

I think when you are normally sending email (using roadrunner), your email goes like this:

Your email client -> RoadRunner SMTP Server -> Recipient SMTP Server -> Recipient email client

Short answer -- using Gmail as an SMTP server for your Aquacontroller won't affect any of your other email.