Derry

I think "amusingly tolerant" would best describe my wife's relationship with my tank. It's actually her favorite room to read or study in b/c it's pretty to look at and makes soothing water noises. She's generally interested in how all of the critters are doing, she gets excited for me when I get excited about something that's going particularly well, she's sad for me when someone goes carpet surfing, and she patiently glazes over when I start rattling off Latin names for things. I've asked repeatedly over the years what she'd like to see in the tank, and she honestly doesn't care. She just wants it to look nice. Exactly what I choose to put in the tank to achieve that goal doesn't matter very much to her. She's even letting me set up a 110-gal predator tank and is graciously living with a six-foot aquarium sitting on the floor of the fish room while I build the tank stand. There are, however, two things that will make her upset about the tank. As many have mentioned already, spending too much time on the tank for too many days in a row will get her grump on. The other is aesthetics - if I leave water change equipment lying all over the room, or if you can't see the fish for all of the algae growing on the front glass, then she wishes that I would find a different hobby.

Send me a PM, Koe - I've got several frags of my pink birds nest available right now.

I've tried making my own food a couple of times, but I've never been happy with the results.

I saw on GlassBox that PE Mysis finally came out with blister packs, so they're definitely on my to-try list.

For starters, please don't take this thread down the "I hate frozen, and here's why..." path. I understand that there are pros and cons to using frozen, and I've made the decision to accept the cons for the sake of the pros. I'd rather save the use frozen/don't use frozen debate for another thread. Having said that, what's your preferred frozen food (specifically, which brand/vendor) and why? I've been using SFBB varieties with good results, but I'm looking for something that uses fewer binders. I'd like to hear others' experiences with other brands.

Likewise! Can't wait to see how these guys do.

Bump - each is now free, but trades are welcome!

PM'd for Red Planet.

I've got a couple of extra bulkheads floating around that I'd like to get rid of. One is a standard tank bulkhead. I'm not real conversant with how these are sized, so I took pictures next to a ruler. I can break out the calipers if anyone needs the hyper-specifics. Both sides of the bulkhead are slip. The other is a probe bulkhead designed to hold a 1/2" probe. I was going to use this to hold my pH propbe on my Ca rx until I discovered that the lid of the reactor is too small to accomodate the bulkhead. Warning: the threads on this bulkhead appear to be metric, fwiw. I'm MORE than happy to trade for these - I just want them gone. Free, trades welcome.

Oof... Painful in more ways than one!

My beloved 6" male blue jaw trigger tried to go amphibious on me about two months ago with negative results.

Does anyone know where I can find a high-powered magnifying glass? My 3x-5x doesn't really magnify enough to do a thorough inspection of new frags. The teacher supply stores don't have anything stronger than what I already have.

Oh, Chrissie, the betrayal... ; )

So I've had my tank for about three years now. You'd THINK that after all this time, I'd have a pretty good idea of what's in it, right? Well, I was having trouble falling asleep, so I headed downstairs and figured I'd check out the tank at night, which I don't do very often. What to my wondering eyes should appear but a gorilla crab, calmly breaking off bits of rock to chew through. I had NO IDEA he was in there - no molts, no missing fish, nuthin'. Guess I'm going crabbing for awhile...

I completely rebuilt my closed loop last fall using spa-flex and unions. I glued it all up with the blue wet/dry PVC glue, and it worked great. I now swear by the stuff - the flexibility was a life-saver for me.