mFrame

Nice job and a very nice how-to.

Mike ours split again (this is the third time) put the other one in the 58. They are so cool!

Whoa, they split?!

So checked into it. The 30g horizontal tanks at Tractor Supply are $99, which is just too stinking high. However, I did find this a few miles fromy my house:

(see craigs list listing for "Food grade barrels and totes for rainwater collection (Austin)"

They sell 15g (14"d x 26"h) for $15/ea or $13 for 5 or more. I plan to get 2 for myself, if there is interest in another 3 we can save each other a few bucks.

I also plan to get one 30g (19"d x 29"h) for $20, they sell them for $18 for 5 or more.

I'll wait until Wed or so to buy them in case anyone wants to jump in. I don't have a problem holding them a few days if you want to paypal me and arrange pickup for later.

Mike

How you gonna keep it?

I leave very small damsels in my tank for mine to grab at will. Emerald crabs, hermits and medium snails will do well. I also will drop in a thawed tiny clam or half a silverside.

Mike, can you tell us a little about yours (and what species this one is)? I've heard that they're very intelligent and can sneak through any opening. I can't imagine having one myself, but I'd love to know more from someone who has kept one.

Thanks Andrew, seems happy so far!

I'd love to be able to use gravity to push it to the tank, that would save me buying an extra pump.

The tip about the hot chick wasn't useless either.

Looking forward to have as many of you as can fit, we have plenty of room!

I've had a few questions about kids and the short answer is that they're welcome. We have a Wii and a media room that we can put some Disney shows on, so if they're of an age to be safe to be left alone please feel free to bring em! We do have one dog and one cat (both super-friendly, well... at least the dog is), so make sure that they're okay around animals.

I've finished work on my laundry room to stack my washer/dryer to make room for my ro/di. I currently have a 55g plastic barrel but it's really larger than I want for the space and I'm wanting something different.

I don't have room for two 55g barrels but I would like to be able to store 25-30g of R/O and have a second container for mixing the same quantity of salt water. I have several 5g jugs but want something larger. Rectangular would be even better for stacking.

Anyone have ideas or know where I can get something like this?

My polyps are open, orange tube open, and my spikey cuke is cool as all heck. Looks like a 30 point buck!

I know southside45 is looking for one, sounds like what he needs.

Actually, it's referred to as "brown jelly". I lost an entire torch colony to it and recently lost 3 out of 15 heads of my duncans.

There are a few things that I tried, I'll detail them and relate my experience.

1) Frag off the infected heads - worked on the torch the first two times I got the jelly, didn't the last time. The key to fragging off the infected area is to not allow the infected slime to touch the healthy heads. This means siphoning off as much jelly as you can before removing the coral from the tank to perform the operation. The second key I've found is that you have to cut into some of the good heads to make sure you've removed the infection. Just cutting off the infected head could mean that the surrounding heads are infected and not showing signs yet. Be pessimistic and cut off more than you think.

2) I treated the remaining healthy heads in a Lugol's dip and then treated with liquid vitamin C. You can google "Brown jelly" +"vitamin C" and you'll get hits on how others have done this. I'm not sure if this helped or not.

3) Before reintroducing the frags, do as much of a water change as you can. This seems to remove free-floating bacteria from the water and tries to clean the environment that you're introducing the frag back into. If you have the option of a QT tank then I would put the healthy heads there to see if they can recover. That way you're sure not to be introducing them into an environment that still contains the bacteria.

4) With my most recent duncan colony I had about 15 healthy heads when I obtained it. I put it in my tank and everything was fine. Then a frag from above fell and landed on the duncan hitting some of the heads. Within a few days I noticed one head covered in brown jelly. The colony is very tight so I didn't want to frag and figured I would just watch. Within a day that head was gone and the jelly was on to the next. I siphoned off as much as possible. Day three the 2nd head was gone and jelly was on to head #3. I siphoned again, a day later lost that head. The jelly has not since appeared on any additional heads.

My conclusions so far are as follows: brown jelly is a bacteria that seems to target weak and/or damaged soft corals of this family. You can try fragging the coral but you risk stressing the colony and inadvertently damaging additional heads which will just perpetuate the problem. In most cases I think you're better off just constantly siphoning off the slime (prevents it breaking free and floating through the aquarium where it can infect other softies) and monitoring the situation. You can treat the tank as a whole with Vitamin C though I'm not sure if that will help. My duncan showed that the healthy portion of the colony can fight off and survive the jelly. In retrospect, my torch colony was handled and moved a lot and I believe it most likely was damaged which made it vulnerable to the jelly. The other thing I can say is that in EVERY case of brown jelly in my tanks that the infected coral was in an area of low flow. I truly believe that these corals need at least a medium and probably a high flow to aid their natural defenses to ward off the jelly. When it is allowed to sit on them it propagates quickly and makes it that much harder for the coral to resist. Hence my recommendation to siphon off as much as possible.

In summary, I would siphon off all that I could from the coral and carefully move it to a section of the tank with higher flow. Anyone that can share info on their experience would help us build a knowledge base on how to treat it. Maybe we could have a section with FAQs on specific coral illnesses and the consensus of how to treat? That might address common topics of Ich, Brown Jelly, flatworms, etc.

I do think that I saw a post on here about someone who was able to get an antibiotic from their vet that they used to treat the tank as a whole. They seem to have had great success with it. Hopefully that person will chime in here.

Checking interest on an RCA Portable Hi-Fi stereo, 8 track tapes included, that callahan refuses to purchase....

I thought your offers were of that type that people COULDN"T refuse!

How about mixing different sized clowns of the same type? I have an ocellaris (the one in my avatar) that is about 2" long. I'd really like to get another, but all the ones I see at fish stores are teeny tiny. How likely is it that the bigger clown would really hurt the smaller one?

Liz

With Osc you should be fine getting another, just make sure it is significantly smaller. The larger will become female if it is not already and the smaller the one you get the greater the odds that it's a male. To try to insure this, don't get the largest clown from the store in the tank, get the smallest in a tank with other clowns. Do that and they should pair up no problem.

Saw leroy's stuff this weekend, his live rock has tons of live (colored sponge and hundreds of tiny feather dusters). His candy canes are bright neon green and healthy. Fish are all disease and ich free and the monti cap is HUGE. Good deals on these guys!

I'm interested as well. How many mini-carpets do you have?

If the sponsor is Vivid, will they be able to get in on the group order?

I love it (and our sponsors should as well)!

Sump not an option?

I'll be in for something...

I used to live in Cedar Park, then specifically at Parmer and 1431. Traffic is already a nightmare and will only get worse. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but I strongly bet that the CTMA (toll roads) had a lot to do with this decision as it will greatly increase their revenue. Five years ago you could use Parmer as an alternative to 183, they have effectively killed that.

Happy B-Day John, get a new tank yet?

Happy B-Day Hamp!

My fighting conch is one defintiely one of my favorite critters. I've been contemplating getting a second...

Awesome meeting, thanks again to our wonderful hosts!

I recently played in a hold-em tournament with an entry fee of $10. It was my first time, and a lot of fun.

However, it seems like it would be a little hard to play without re-buys. Otherwise if you get knocked out early you are just done for the night. At the tournament I played, they had a cash game for the people who were out of the tournament.

That's exactly how I run mine, plus having a Wii or Xbox 360 in the background helps.