caferacermike

PBNJ, are you positive that those outlets are not "lamp" outlets? IE: Controlled by switches on the wall? It was very common for homes to be built without lights on the ceiling in some rooms. These rooms have a tab broken off in the outlet and then that makes your 2 outlets work independently. One is live all the time and the top one is commonly wired to a switch on the wall. This is the outlet you would plug your lamp into. You leave the lamp in the "on" position and use the wall switch to turn the lights on and off as you enter/leave a room. My tank is wired to one of those switches. It can be a pain sometimes when you are trying to find the right light switch in the dark and end up turning the tank off. But on the upside I have all my pumps connected to that switch and all my lights are on the live outlet. When I want to service the tank I only need to flip that switch to power down all the pumps for feeding or for water changes.

I did not read anywhere in that post were somebody was actually espousing the virtues of running it front to back, it was merely a suggestion to try it. I don't know. I mena I actually own a few of them and run them in my tanks, but hey what do I know right?

Phosphate test kits are very inaccurate. Seems most of them always say 0. The Merk tests are extremely accurate down into the decimals which is usually where the phosphates show up.

Sea Hares are not magic bullets, kinda like how not all Tangs are either. The worst part is that they tend to live only a couple of weeks and then die. Their death contributes yet more excess nutrients for the algae to grow. I've heard both sides of coin with algaefix. One poster said it wiped out his tank and another swore it was the best thing ever. As always I believe that with any treatment, the attentiveness of the hobbyist contributes greatly to the outcome and or success.

It won't work pointed forward. The principal is set so that it works better the longer the tank

I'll bet they would be fine if I quit buying $50 home built specials. What can I say, I'm cheap.

LOL, sorry Andrew my reply was for the question above yours. Paul thanks for the offer. My PC works ok and all but I've killed so many of them and I'm so computer illiterate. My Windows keeps telling me I have a fake copy, I don't know it was on the PC when I got it, and has been running slower.

Green hair algae. Check out all the old threads for more info.

OK maybe that's a little more clear. Ric, why do you not believe me that that is my signature and I like it?

I have a 300GPD unit hooked to a 150g storage tank 4' off the ground. I then have a 3/4" valve plumbed to another Eheim 1262 pump with 50' of vinyl hose attached to it. I can reach all the way into the back bedroom that has our 125g tank and refill 100g of water in about 8 minutes. One of the bathtubs is about 12' feet from that tank so it's easy to drain it. The easier it is to perform a water change, the more apt you are to do them.

I really like having a dozen emerald crabs in my 75g. I prefer them to the annoying habit of hermits killing all the snails and each other.

Did a 15g water change after writing that yesterday. Just thinking about it all again had me dashing to the garage for my Brute can and hoses. I've simplified my water changes and up to 50g only takes me 5 minutes to get it going and a quick 5 minutes to do the water change after the salt mixes. I only wait 1 hour. I have 2 identical Brute cans so as I drain the tank I can keep an eye on exactly how much is in the other can. Takes all the guess work out. I use a Tunze 6060 Stream pump to mix my water and an Eheim 1262 to push it from the new water can to the tank.

I can barely keep my PC running. In fact I never turn it off for fear it won't work. I'm a little embarrassed with my plain meeting announcement pages. If you can help teach me how to overlay fancy pictures with topic details and post them in the announcement section I'd greatly appreciate it. I'd even be willing to donate some corals for your time, not frags. Did you see last month when I figured out how to change the size of the font and colors? Yeah I was quite proud of that victory. Yes it took me about 30 minutes to figure it all out. Just want to keep the place classy.

Most tend to run long. Andrew is right around the corner from RCA. I'd bet it would still be prudent of you to join us shortly after 4:00pm. The 3:00pm time is set for those that might arrive a little early, 2:30 or so, and those that like to linger. It helps to wrap it all up near to, or a little after 5-6:00pm so as not to aggravate the host. Of course if the host has a pool table, darts, and a mini fridge with a small keg in it, anything goes after that 5:00 o'clock mark.

My sand bed is about 3.5 inches and had absolutely nothing to do with my problem. What I do feel was the problem was inattention to the water parameters before adding the tainted frags, and a lack of understanding of how bad it was going to be. Basically I rinsed the tank to an almost sterile state to cure my GHA. I had gotten lazy prior to the outbreak since everything in the tank looked great. I had been doing water changes of 10g every other month. When I noticed the problem it was to late to really get back the tank as it had been. I should have cut my losses earlier and stopped trying to find a magic cure for it. I tried using 3 phosban reactors all tied together with phosphate remover, carbon and Seachem Matrix all being replaced weekly. I added about 100 small snails and 6 turbo snails, as well as 50 hermits. I tried to skim wet. I added an ozone reactor. Increased my flow to 4,500GPH in a 75g. I replaced all my bulbs. Some sea hares. On and on. You name it I tried it. What I now feel happened is that I was constantly stresing the tank by swinging from one extreme to another. I feel that the critters were adding a bio-load to the tank that only helped fed the algae.

As a sidebar to the announcement, please feel free to make food suggestions so we can make arrangements to keep the food that is offered from getting boring. And as always members are encouraged to bring a dish, an item, or drinks to share. Thanks from the Coordinator.

Following right on the heels of 2 great meetings, I'd like to announce that April's Meeting will be held at the ARC headquarters of ACampbell's home. Andrew has been so pumped with the fresh enthusiasm at the last few meetings and with all the new members joining ARC that he requested, demanded, that the April meeting be held in his home. When? April 18th at 3:00pm Where? address removed I think this would be a good time to try out our abilities at frag/fish/coral swapping. Not an official swap meet but an invitation to bring out your extras and see if you end up trading or selling items. With the response we get and with some ideas and guidelines that we can come up with, we can can organize a real swap meet in the future with all of our guidelines and goals implemented.

Nothing beats constant water changes to rid a tank of hair algae. I got some frags from a person when my tank was at it's nicest. Then came the hair algae. Seems his frags had spores all over them. His tank had pockets of hair algae. The frags were all fresh cut and came unmounted, so where the algae came from is anyone's guess. Within 2 months most of my SPS were suffering and all my zoa were being choked out. I tried everything including an ozone reactor. A few months after adding the reactor it did something that choked my entire tank to death and by morning every fish, coral, invert was dead. I was kinda mad that day. Within days the tank looked like I was a green hair algae farmer. Out of frustration I unplugged the lights and quit on the tank. I let it run so my rock's bacteria and micro critters that might have survived could continue on. After about 3 months with no light you'd think the algae would die off right? Wrong. Nope. Just as bad as the day I turned them off. This is why I think the "3 days without light" threads are bunk. I know a lot of people that have tried that without any success whatsoever. The only threads that can support the no light theory all have one thing in common, the water changes. Immediately after doing a lights out period they begin doing frequent water changes to their tanks. I finally got rid of my algae problem. No real quick cure. No magic stuff. No magic critters. First thing I did was to kind of overskim my 75g with a EuroReef CS12-5-RC with Eheim 1262 mod upgrades that I had lying around. For a solid week I turned over all my sand and sifted it through a strainer to remove all the old frags that had gotten knocked loose, dead snail shells, and rubble from the sand. Then I left a Tunze 6060 over the sand bed and that kept the sand stirring like crazy. Every day I'd come home to about 2 gallons of skimmate to toss down the drain. I did 50g water changes weekly during this time period. I removed what rocks I could and physically removed the algae by hand. After 3 weeks I removed the CS12 and turned on my RS-130 and continued with the 50g water changes weekly. 2 months later my water is crystal clear and my rock has zero hair algae on it. In fact I've dumped about $1,200 on corals and think my tank is starting to finally look great once again. The sand is freakishly clean and my water is clear as RO/DI. I now do a 5g water change every 3 days and a 20g water change every 2 weeks. I also bought a dozen filter socks and placed one in my sump and one on the output of my skimmer. These I change every 3 days when I do my mini water changes. I also bought all new filters for my RO/DI unit.

Standard 75g. 48x18x20. Not only do I have 1 but 2 Waveboxes. I have another one for my 400g tank at 84x33x36. 1 wavebox on a 215 is killer because you can make a much nicer wave than I can on my 75g. On a 215 you might still want a couple of Streams pointed around just to up the amount of GPH of the flow. The wavebox will still do a killer job by itself. My Girl got me one for Xmas a couple of years back for the 400g and I then went straight back to Aquatek to buy another one. I wanted 2 waveboxes and 2 7200's on that tank. Bruce sent me home empty handed and swears that the one wavebox will do the job by itself. Someday when I get the foundation on our home repaired I will find out if he was right.

Watch the 2 part putty epoxy. That's what I tried using for my first corals. It took a few times to figure out why my skimmer would suddenly go nuts. Then I noticed it was within a minute of placing the epoxy in the water that my skimmer would violently spew forth brown water all over the inside of the tank and on the floor. Super glue for me.

Chris an in wall GFCI takes less than 5 minutes to install and I just happen to have about 30 of them for some reason. If you want one to try, let me know.

I've spent about $1,000 on different pumps from manufacturers like Tunze and Vortech. I will not buy anything other than the Tunze wavebox again. Period. It's that good. The continuous movement in the tank scrubs every surface clean and won't allow any detritus to settle in the back or under the rock work. It has even sifted all the old snail shells from the sand bed and caused them to rise to the surface and collect in one corner of the tank. I even had my Tunze 6060 pump running for about 2 weeks after adding the wavebox and removed it because the wavebox did a much better job by itself.

Entropy a properly set up GFCI will indeed save a tank if a light should ever fall in. They measure outgoing current to that which comes back. If the voltage is off by something like 0.000000006 millivolts they will instantly shut down. Being in "real" construction, IE: commercial and industrial not residential, we must abide by OSHA rules which insist upon all tools being plugged into a GFCI. Now keep in mind that your 6 plug surge protector is not a GFCI and will continue to allow voltage to leak out without shutting off. I see to many people relying on their surge protectors to save the day in error.

+1 for the truth that was spoken above.

Because there are GOOD hitch hiker crabs such as the acro crab. This critter lives among the branches of SPS protecting it from small intruders and also helps keep the coral clean. In return not much can eat the crab as it is well protected amongst the branches. Not easy to come by but definitely worth keeping.