Derry

There was also an RC thread awhile back where a couple of people mentioned using a razor blade to cleanly cut through the basal strands. Might be worth researching.

Ugh, 2X for the turbo vote...

I can't make the March meeting, but I'm very much interested in doing this locally. My main problem with the MAAST program was that only two of us from up here signed on, and driving four hours round trip for a frag seemed a little over the top to me. ; )

More reading for y'all. This is a fairly detailed write-up in Reefkeeing Magazine on a technique for keeping dendronephthya.

So it turned out to be a bad bulb after all. When I swapped out one of the non-working bulbs for a working bulb, I had the bad luck of swapping a good bulb for a good bulb. I simply got lucky while troubleshooting the rig after taking the reflectors off and loaded up four good bulbs into that middle set. After some more noodling, I figured out one of my actinics wouldn't fire up, and that was preventing the bulb paired with it from lighting up, either.

Note to self - when two neighboring bulbs fail to light, swap BOTH bulbs to confirm that the fixture is working, and go from there.

Hey, Entropy! Actually, it's pretty common on these T5 systems. I've got two power cords and two power switches in order to control the inner and outer groupings separately. That way you can create a dawn and dusk effect by timing the two outer lights to come on earlier and stay on later than the four inner lights. I'm assuming two ballasts, one for each grouping, but I'll have to pull the casing off to be sure.

Rey, thanks for the tip. I'll take a look and see if it's possible to shuffle the end caps around.

Yes, it's been a bumpy few days for the ol' fish tank. After two pump failures in two days and the loss of a green monti to agents unknown, I noticed today that two of my T5 bulbs aren't coming on. I'm running a Tek Light with six 48" bulbs. All of the bulbs are less than three months old, and the fixture itself is less than two years old. The attached graphic shows how the two outer lights are wired together as a unit, while the four inner lights are wired together as a second unit. The two bulbs in the inner unit marked with a red X aren't coming on. I swapped a working bulb with a non-working bulb and verified that the problem is with the fixture, not the bulb.

Can anyone tell me what might be causing this and how to fix it? I'm not a total electrical noob, but I've never cracked one of these light rigs open before, either.

Thanks!

Derry

My tank usually cycles from 78 and 81. I first saw the bleaching yesterday evening. Of course, last night my return pump seized up and my tank temp dropped to 73 this morning, so that's certainly not helping any.

I left town for the weekend and came back to find a green monti cap with a big white patch in the middle of it. The bleached area in the middle is ringed by a light brown area that looks like the coral expelling its zooxanthellae. From this morning to lunch, it does look like the bleached area is expanding. I've got a second green cap and an orange cap in this tank that are both doing just fine. Any ideas what might be causing this?

Derry

Current params:

Salinity 1.026

Ammonia 0

Nitrite 0

Nitrate 0

Phosphate 0

pH 8.3

dKH 13

Ca 320

(I got a bad Ca test kit that was throwing my readings off for a while - need to bring dKH down and Ca up)

Only been used for about six weeks. I've got too much blue in my light rig right now, so I want to sell this one and replace it with something with more red to it.

Here are the tech specs for the bulb provided by Marine Depot.

Asking $15.

Nope, outta shrooms for now.

That's my understanding. Dig around on RC a bit - I remember some good threads on overdriving not too long ago.

One warning is a dramatically shorter bulb life.

I'm up in the Ranch at Cypress Creek, behind Elizabeth Milburn Park.

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love MAAST! It's just that as a married father of two, it's hard to interact face-to-face with folks who are two hours away. I'm looking forward to getting to know the reefers up here, especially the MAAST crossovers like caferacermike, whom I've known about "virtually" for a while now.

How about some of this in exchange for the shrooms? Is that kenya tree coral?

Derry

Please excuse the less-than-stellar photos, but I'm working with a rather outdated digital camera. All of these frags have had a minimum of three weeks to grow in, and all are showing new growth. The pictures were taken with the full tank lighting on and the camera's flash.

The first is about 10 brown buttons on a scallop shell. I've never been able to determine if they're zoas or protopalythoas, but they've done well at all depths in the tank.

Brown buttons, $10

Next, I have 8 GSP frags. They're bright neon green polyps growing from a purple/lavendar mat. The small one is about the size of a half-dollar. The three medium-sized frags are 2-3" in length and almost as wide. The three large ones are about the size of a tennis ball. The "fancy" one is the biggest, growing on a couple of rocks that have some nice burgundy coralline, some orange sponge and a decent-sized tube worm growing on them as well.

GSPs, S/M/L/fancy, free/$5/$10/$15

Lastly, I have some mushrooms that I believe are actinodiscus. They're a purple/mauve color with sky blue highlights. They've done well at all depths, but they extend more fully at the bottom of the tank. Conversely, you'll get more of the blue highlights in stronger light. The frag is circled in the photo and has two half-dollar-sized shrooms, one big one that's 3-4" and two little babies about the size of a pencil eraser.

Purple and blue shrooms, $15

WILL HAPPILY NEGOTIATE TRADES!!! I'm particularly interested in green nephthea, green slimer, pink birdsnest, blue or yellow milli and any zoas that aren't green or brown.

Hey, there!

Just a quick note to say hi. I've been active on MAAST for about a year and a half, and I decided I should hang with the locals a little more. ; ) I'm running a 140-gal mixed reef up in Cedar Park.

Derry