Gonzobob

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perhaps not needed, but looks good.

Please update us as to your status. As with others my 'disasters' with anemones and pumps have largely been innocuous. At worst the anemone has lived, at best it's propagated.

Agreed with victoloy, any valve inline in the secondary flow (it makes no difference beyond the influence of back pressure) will work fine.

Holy Schnikes:

Unless I missed something in the three pages of comments you're still talking about a 6 gallon tank. Presuming a lot of equipment and substrate you're still talking about less than 10 lbs per gallon. I'm a big fan of overdesigning* but art / style aside this is pretty simple. The point being that even to me it seems like a lot of respondents have over engineered their responses. Go to your local Walmart, Petsmart or other big box pet store. Look at how their 10 gallon tank stands are designed, then think about how they would be sued if these stands weren't very generously engineered.

NOTE: In re: my statement of overdesign I've built my own stands for 6, 10, 20, 29, 55, 180 tanks as well as stands for 46, 55 and 110 gallon tanks. I've never built a stand that wouldn't conservatively support 2x their design weight as a minimum.

Downsizing the sump is an option. On the other hand, you could easily go with a larger sump.

OK, admittedly I have a 40g display running on a 120g sump so I may be biased.

The GPH turn over is fairly well documented for frag tanks (I leave this to you to look up based on species you're planning on hosting) given a fixed GPH and presumably a fixed height (head) the basic math gives you the overall (per tank) GPH. Review http://flexpvc.com/WaterFlowBasedOnPipeSize.shtml to identify the pipe size needed based on flow.

Looks great.

Having reviewed the information I may have missed something what is your heating capability for fall and winter. I also am curious about bio sustainability, it looks like 30 gallons of refugium to support 6970 gallons, make me concerned about sustainability.

OK so we're dealing with at least two factors"

Skin 'toughness" The skin on the pads of your fingers and palms is MUCH thicker then that of your arms (especially the inside bits) or other surfaces.

Overall sensitivity: Strangely over time you may develop either immunity or sensitivity to different stimuli. As an example I'll offer my own experiences with poison ivy. For as long as I've known (documented as far back as 4 year old) till last year I was demonstratively immune to poison ivy and oak (I pulled, folded and trashed vines on the front of my house as recently as September of last year) a year later pulling and disposing poison ivy in the exact same location has indisposed me for two weeks so far. (rash, blisters ect) I've had similar experiences with anemone (hell fire) where initial exposure was innocuous but months later the same exposure produced a rash.

Clownfish hell. I've equipped er, armed my starfish (er, sea stars) with razor blades and guns. I'll hold explosives in reserve for the hermits.

By now obviously you've been on your vacation. Can you share your experiences?

I've dove nearby Bonaire many times by trying to compare my diving vs snorkeling experiences is difficult.

Please add your experiences.

In addition to my prior recommendation for experience, as a manner of practicality I'd add that I recommend whenever possible travel and dive with friends or at least with people you are familiar with. There are at least two reasons for this:

First, you will have a supporting network of individuals with mutual interests. People who have at least met each other prior to the trip are much more likely to support / look out for, each other on a trip. While rare people have been left behind on dives before. (even if you end up on a boat / trip where you know no one I STRONGLY recommend making a distinct impression on your fellow travelers. The point is in this situation at least to be someone who is or will be distinctly missed / noticed if something unfortunate happens.

Second, correct or not groups count more than individuals. On my first few Bonaire trips the group I dove with had the numbers to basically direct any dive boat to the dive site we had an interest in. As long as we could come to agreement we had the numbers to successfully request services more specific to our group.

OK,

I'm have a PADI certification and 400+ dives, about half of which were in salt water. I'd personally recommend getting your certification in full here in Austin. I'm a pretty firm believer in training being harder than reality whenever possible. If you're used to dealing with temperatures and visibility here in Travis the diving in
Mexico should be much more relaxing. Typically, from a functionality standpoint the difference between Travis and typical saltwater diving is a huge increase in visibility but, depending in where you dive, current.

Personally as long as you get your open-water, you may as well get your advanced as it gets you several more closely monitored dives.

From an experience standpoint I'd recommend anyone be as self sufficient as possible when diving abroad as the quality of divermasters or other dive support varies greatly between locations. I've had everything from excellent to outright dangerous with benign indifference being about average.

Belinda, a very happy belated birthday to you.

Just a quick tip or three:

I keep a few pieces of pottery in my sump, or behind live rock percolating. This gives me something both easy and disposable to put in a quarantine tank. Pottery is a good substitute for live rock in most circumstances.

A quick water change produces an equal or better volume of water for a q tank. I like to use a 75 / 25 mixture of old tank water to fresh made saltwater for a q tank

Forget all the fancy stuff a quarantine tank is nothing more than a safe place to quarantine suspect or new livestock. I've used 5 gallon tanks or buckets, 10 gallon tanks, 12, 14, 15 gallon Rubbermaid vats, 15, 20 gallon tanks. (size should be based on a priority / preference matrix). Add a power head and regular water changes and you have an effective q tank.

As Rob's comments have suggested, algae is all about nutrients. Algae is caused by too much / many nutrient's in the water. That source can enter the tank via food, water ect. Provided extra nutrients are already in the water additional light (via more intense light or more hours of light) will make the situation worse. If you have algae in a tank the goal would be to clear this up before taking any steps which may provide more nutrient's for the algae.

At this point your goal will be to cut the added nutrients. In general terms this can be done as follows:

Minimize feeding. As much as possible limit your feeding as follows:

Fish and inverts, feed only what is consumed in 3-5 minutes. Remove any unconsumed food.

Coral, target feed as possible. Again, remove any unconsumed food

Cut the time on lights on the tank.

Manually remove as much of the nuisance algae as possible.

Water changes to remove as many nutrients as possible.

Just saw the Acid Drop Acans, how long is this offer good for? Don't know when the group buy is going to get set...

hey guys, while we're waiting for this group order to solidify, any rhizos?

Heck yeah!!

I've ordered from Will several times and always been happy.

I'm in.

As most of the Elph's don't seem to have a standard viewfinder another option would be to attach, via velcro, adhesieve ect, a dark shield to keep the screen in the dark. see the link below for an example:

http://www.dealtime.com/Lee-LEE-Filters-SS200-Screen-Shade-for-Digital-Cameras/info

Yup, with both ceriths and nassarius's I generally wait 24 hours before I call them dead.

My death tool looks a lot lighter than I feared

Fuzzy chitons (all) (have isolated in HOB fuge but pretty sure they're dead)

Red leg hermit 1

Blue leg hermits 1

turbo (1 possible, have isolated in HOB fuge but doesn't look good)

Nassarius holding evaluation till tomorrow.

fighting conch (1 possible, have isolated in HOB fuge but doesn't look good)

With the more delicate tangs even once they are in the tank it’s a good idea to leave them alone for several days. Try to resist the urge to constantly look behind rocks to check on them. Once you’ve verified the tang is alive move on and give them time and space to get settled.

Ok gently / gradually cover the container he is in. Darkness will help minimize the stress which is probably what is causing the behavior. As much as possible resist the urge to keep checking on him, also anytime you move a fish from one container to another do so as gently as possible.

yup, just tie the airline in a loose knot, tighten or loosen to regulate the drip

I use the same method used above rather than drip acclimation.

Ryan,

Thank you so much for running this group buy.

I know that I and others will have lost some of our livestock but we are very aware that you have gone above and beyond both setting everything up and communicating to us throughout the order.

Thank you again,

Russell

In my experience they do a pretty good job. But so do turbos and other less expensive CUC members. I like them as they help with algae but also add something interesting to look at in the tank.