Enigma13

This was my thought on both accounts. What is the chance that all four bulbs are faulty (two from each set). And what is the chance that both ballasts are bad. Also don't understand how they work with one set of bulbs and not the other. I know certain bulbs are not compatible with pulse-start electronic ballasts, but have never heard of bulbs not being compatible with magnetic ballasts (especially XM bulbs). Anybody else ever hear of something like this.

Thanks Steve. I am stuck in a deposition right now (thank god for laptops to kill the monotony), but I will give you a call later this afternoon.

I am having some problems with my MH lights on the reef tank. Changed bulbs to XM 250 DE 10K from the original Current bulbs. The XM bulbs only seem to be reaching 75% intensity. I returned the initial set of bulbs to Hellolights, but the replacement bulbs look the same (only 75% intensity). Starting to think the ballasts (magnetic M80) may be bad and not defective bulbs (though the ballasts fire the original Current bulbs at full intensity). Is there anybody who has an extra 250 ballast laying around that I could use to run a test? My ballasts are still under warranty so I really do not want to buy another ballast yet, but I would be willing to pay a convenience/rental fee for the hour or two I would need the ballast. In the alternative if someone has a used XM 250 laying around I could test that to on my system to check things from the other side of it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks BTW- Lighting system is a Current USA Outer Orbit HQI/T5 combo. The one w/ 2-250W DE MH and 4-54W T5 actinics. Has anybody else had any experience with this fixture or heard of similar problems?

Thanks for finding this information and sharing it with the club. I had never even thought of this possibility before, but I think I will be changing all of my non-controller power strips as this sure makes it easier.

Also remember that the higher your salinity the longer the acclimation process probably needs to be. Most LFS or online fish shippers tend to run salinity a little bit on the lower end of the normal range. Therefore, if you are way high there is more shock to the fish.

Part of the problem (probably not the whole problem) is that the last couple of days have been warm and humid. As the humidity rises tanks evaporate less which is the primary means by which they cool. I know that my chiller has been running like crazy on my reef the last two days. Most things will be adversely effected by temps at 85, including the zoos. I would get some fans over the tank ASAP. That should help considerably.

If it stays closer to 9 than 10 I should be able to help. I will monitor the thread and confirm later in the week.

If Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate have been 0 the whole time you have not cycled yet. What you should see is the ammonia spike and come down. At about the same time the ammonia comes down you should see the nitrite spike up. It will then come down with a corresponding tick up in nitrate, which will slowly decrease. I find it hard to believe that with two fish dying in the tank there never was an increase in any of these parameters. What kind of test kit are you using? I would give the tank a little more time. Feed it and let the food help with the cycle. Look for the spikes and declines discussed above to let you know the cycle is actually occurring.

One of the better local dive locations is Aquarena Springs. You have to take their special course and can only dive when you schedule to do so, but my understanding (never actually done it) is that visibility is wonderful. You can find a lot of info if you just Google Aquarena Springs and diving. Obviously, while not exactly local, two popular places that are at least in or around Texas are the Flower Gardens off the Texas coast and Balmorreal S.P. The local dive shops all have fairly regular trips to both. We have been planning to do the Flower Gardens trip for quite a while, but are waiting until the kids get a little older since it requires leaving them with friends or family for the weekend (two-day liveaboard is the standard way to dive this area).

Just wanted to see if those who had volunteered in the previous thread were going to be able to help out. Please shoot me a PM if you can help. Thank you again.

My yellow will give new fish some "extra attention" for a couple of days, but has always settled down. I have added a Regal and Achilles Tang successfully with my Yellow. In fact the most aggressive the Tang has ever been is when I added my barred rabbitfish (S. Doliatus). The Yellow, Naso, and Achilles are all from different genus, so that should help. I really wouldn't recommend an Achilles in anything less than an 8' tank. It isn't their size, but their nature that is the problem. My Achilles did not make it much to my displeasure. You can check any board and find the difficulty of keeping an Achilles long term.

A naso will need a bigger tank at some point and an Achilles would need one to start with. I think that they can be compatible in the right setup, but that setup is not one under 240.

We will be moving my new 240g setup from Donny's home in SA this Saturday (Feb. 2, 2008). I definitely could use some help unloading once we get it here to Austin. Probably four people will be sufficient in addition to the help I will have here at the house. I expect that I will get the tank to my house in the range of 2-3 p.m. I am located at 11716 Hobbiton Trl., Austin 78739. Several people have already indicated that they may be able to help, but if you could confirm now that I have time and place that would be great: Shooterqs Lurker Tomanero Joseph Le tentatively-GKarshens I will happily be providing snacks and beverages for all of those who come out to help. Thank you all. Jason

I have never had a conch go predatory on snails before. It is usually my larger hermit crabs who will take out the weaker snails or those that find themselves upside down. Even having seen what you did, I would still place the blame on the crabs for some of the snail death.

I am trying to figure out the same thing. I guess a key question is what is your color preference. Do you prefer brighter white lighting or cooler blue lighting?

Welcome to Austin. Good luck with the 8g. I'm sure people around here have a good number of frags to get you started again.

This is my first crack at a blog, so I hope that I do not violate any of the normal protocols or customs for managing one. Deciding where to start is always the most difficult . . . . Well I have been in this hobby for a little over two years now, and I have decided that I wanted to double my pleasure. Therefore, in addition to my 144g half circle reef I have decided to add a 240 gallon FOWLR system. Unlike my reef tank, which was a brand new setup, this system has been up and running in another reefers home for about 4 years. While I am certain to make certain modifications to customize the system, the setup is pretty much there. Along with the system I will be inheriting a number of truly awesome fish, including a mated pair of crosshatch triggers, aussie harlequin tusk, majestic angel, queen angel, polleni grouper, and several others. I think I have my work cut out for me to get this system moved and back to running properly. I obviously will make some posts on the move and progress setting the new system up. For the tank that already have . . . To quote Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . ." The past two years with the reef has seen me learn an incredible amount about this hobby. I have gotten pretty close to the perfection of my plan for the tank to see it all start slipping away, and there I sit now trying to hold it together and start moving back in the good direction. Some of you know the story. I received my tank as part of a filming of TLC's While You Were Out and due to a lot of persistence by my wife Ashley. Brian (from Kingfish), Aaron (from Aquatek), the folks at Oceanic, and Current USA all provided products and labor to appear on the show. I received a Oceanic 144g Half Circle reef tank. When I received the tank it had the basic Oceanic Sump, Coralife 2X150W HQI MH fixture, with PC actinics, a Tunze 6100 stream, 1/4 HP Current chiller, Eheim 1260 return pump, 150# live rock, some nice softies, 8 damsels, 8 chromis, 2 yellow tangs, and 1 copperband butterflyfish. I was excited, astounded and knew nothing about how to take care of the tank. I had Brian maintain the tank for the first six months as I poured over every article I could read on Wetwebmedia and other sites. I watched the tank cycle, lost a yellow tang and the copperband within my first week as a reef keeper and kept going. Brian also proved to be a mentor and a friend and taught me much as he did his work. I quickly moved to upgrade and in the first several months I added a Euroreef 6-2+ skimmer, a refugium, switched the Eheim 1260 for a 1262, and added an Iwaki 55RLT to run the chiller. Within the first year I also remade the fish lineup by removing all but one of the damsels (a very timid yellowbelly damsel remains in the tank to this day), and adding a pair of clown fish, a barred (S. doliatis) rabbitfish, bangaii cardinal, blackcap gramma, pyramid butterflyfish, regal tang, clown fairy wrasse, and sunset basslet. I also was slowly adding some hard corals (primarily LPS) and perfecting my parameters. By the end of the first year I was maintaining the tank by myself and pleased with its condition. I hosted an ARC meeting at my house and thought I was well on my way to entering the tank for TOTQ in the coming months. The first half of year two continued to go swell. I upgraded my lighting to a Current Outer Orbit 250w HQI/T5 actinic setup and added my two show fish, an orange spot rabbitfish and Achilles Tang. Still didn't enter for TOTQ because I wanted it to be perfect and had a couple of corals to add. Then things took a turn for the worse and has started a string of bad events that I am still fighting. First, due to personal occurrences my maintenance of the tank slipped as a result of time away from home. My tank went from weekly 10% water changes and almost daily chemical dosings, to one water change per month and occasional chemical dosing. The Achilles Tang was the first livestock to suffer and he passed around Labor Day. Soon algae started taking hold and claimed some of my corals. After resolving some of the threshold problems that were causing the lack of maintenance, I had Brian and John from Kingfish come out and see if we could get this tank back to right. We did a lot of fragging of what was dead, did our best to clean up the algae and started over with good maintenance. Back on the right path, but still battling a lot of algae. Then needed to move the tank for a flooring install. Brian and John again assisted moving the tank to a stock tub and then back over the course of the week as the fish room floor was redone. I lost the Sunset basslet from that move. As part of the resetting of the tank I added a Geo calcium reactor and an Aquacontroller Jr. to the setup to cut down on the chemical dosing needs. Brian and John did a great job with the new aquascaping, but the algae was back after a couple of weeks. Then on Christmas Day, my prized Clown Fairy Wrasse decided that he was going to commit overflow suicide. Fast forward to today: Still battling this crazy algae that is trying to overtake all of my corals I decided maybe new light bulbs would do the trick. (After adding a bulked up clean up crew). I have had good experience in the past with XM bulbs so I went with some 10Ks. Installed them yesterday and they still have not fully fired. They fire only to that initial point of when the lights first come on and then do not get brighter. Do not know if they are defective or just need longer to burn in then ones I have previously received. Regardless the frustration is building. I will do a water change tonight, hope the bulbs look better tomorrow, and then try to stay positive. Best part of this blog . . . . A place to vent my frustrations.

Thank you all for the offer of help. We will need all we can get. As the date gets a little closer I will e-mail out the address and a little bit more detail on time etc. Shooterqs: The cart would be very appreciated. There will be some equipment that I part out, but I have not totally figured out how I will be setting it up here yet so the plans are not finalized.

Thank you Donny. I am the proud new owner of this system and I am going to do my best to live up to the standard that Donny has set with this tank. We will be moving the system from San Antonio to Austin on Feb. 2. Will probably be later in the afternoon by the time we get it back to Austin. I will happily provide food, beverages, and beer to any volunteers who can assist with the unloading here in S. Austin. This is obviously a big tank so any and all help would be appreciated. Please send me a PM if you can help. Thanks.

PM Sent. I am very interested.

Thanks, Lurker. Hopefully he helps my tank out. It looks a lot more like seahorsejl's tank then bananaqs's at this point.

If he gets your tank algae free and you are worried about starvation, I would be happy to house him for a while and allow you to recoup your purchase cost. Then I will pass him on to the next person in need. A tank move and re-set in January has caused a large algae bloom in my tank. Took two years to get it perfect and now it looks worse than it ever did.

Just checking to see if anybody on here has a 150 gallon Rubbermaid Stock Tank they are looking to sell before I go out and buy one from the farm supply for $125. I am needing to break down and move my tank for a couple of days for floor installation and only need the stock tank for about a week. Don't know if anybody on here has had a similar situation and now has one of these things laying around. I have to get the tank tonight at the latest, so a quick response is key if you want to get rid of one. Thanks. Feel free to give me a call 925-3574.

I really like Eheims and used one for quite a while. The downside is that they do not have a pressure rated pump that can handle the head pressure of a chiller and still deliver good flow. Therefore, I used a Japanese motored Iwaki RLT. It is quiet (unlike many of the American motored Iwaki's), reliable, and works perfectly for my tank.

It was Tropic Marin normal. I had one batch that tested really low (similar to your results, ~300), but most batches were between 380 to 400. Given the number of batches I made during the months I used Tropic Marin I threw out the low result as an outlier or possible human error. Similarly I had a low Ca batch the first time I used Red Sea Pro. I rolled the bucket around the next week before mixing and the last two batches have been around 400. Low alkalinity and magnesium have been the much more consistent problems for me.