NonSequitur

+1 to the kalk paste. The commercial products (aiptasia-x, joe's juice, etc) work as well, but a heaping tbsp of kalk powder mixed with just enough water to make it flow through a syringe is cheap and effective, just turn off your pumps, let the water become still, and squirt the kalk onto the anemone, being careful to minimize collateral damage.

Looks awesome! Is that buttercream icing? I love the strawberry marshmallow blend idea. I gave up trying to make marshmallow icing when I couldn't find a marshmallow fluff that didn't have a gritty texture, plus it was kind of hard to spread, but using it as a filling is a great idea. Chocolate buttercream blended with strawberry is worth a try as well if you haven't yet. Plus, kudos on not covering the whole thing with fondant. Never understood why people use that stuff. Yuck!

Neither of my flasher wrasses would eat them, but then the eel ate the flashers so that was the end of them. My blue/green chromis doesn't seem interested, mandarin didn't touch them. I've heard a yellow coris wrasse will eat them, but I can't keep one in the tank long enough to make any difference, the yellow tang keeps chasing it into the overflow. Tried less feeding, more skimming, no go, so I'm going to tag along on this one.

Awesome looking tank!

Have you looked at the Reeflo snapper? Costs a bit more than the mag18, but has a higher flow rate (1900 vs 1200 gph at 4" head, 2500 vs 1800 at 0') and only pulls 98 watts vs 145 for the mag18. Plus it's pressure rated.

Also interested in getting in on this one, need more CUC since something seems to have eaten most of my snails.

That's awesome! Sure, you could have gotten a new one, but there's something to be said about preserving something to be passed down through the generations, and when your son is old enough to understand the difference, he'll appreciate that you *made* it for him rather than just whipping out the plastic to buy it for him. And you're right on about getting kids outside and off of the game console.. so many kids now will never understand the joy of playing around outside, or riding bikes with friends, or just standing in the front yard and spinning in circles until they collapse. Sounds to me like you're on the right track.

Not to sound like a smartass, but eels are like that. In my experience their inquisitive nature often overwhelms their sense of self preservation. If they're not exploring places they shouldn't, they're jumping out of the tank.. my snowflake has jumped twice since I had him, toppled the rockscape a few times, nearly breaking the glass, etc, but he's still one of my favorites. They're amazing creatures, but more like toddlers than predators. I'm really sorry for your loss, but if it helps any I don't think you did anything wrong, eels are just like that some times.

River city usually has it, not sure who else in Austin, but Darby's Tropicals in New Braunfels has it, as does Aquarium Designs in San Antonio.

I went home on my lunch break and switched all of my pumps over onto the generator. The model I have will run 6 hours on a tank of gas at 50% load, so a full tank of gas is plenty to keep it running until I get home this evening. I figure when I'm there I can manually transfer the load as needed, but while I'm away I'd rather have the peace of mind of knowing that even if the power goes out my pumps will keep running without having to call home and explain which cords to move and where to plug them in.

Yup.. he carried it around for a few weeks, then dropped it into a powerhead.

I asked my wife this question, and she wanted me to ask you what you mean by "love your tank." What is it that you want your wife to love about it? Comment on how it looks? Help with maintenance? This coming from a wife who bought me my first tank, then immediately regretted it because that's all I would talk about for months on end. She actually insisted on me joining ARC so I would annoy someone else with my obsession. Fast forward a year and a half, and she just suggested sticking around San Antonio for an extra hour so she could wait until her favorite fish store opened so we could get another skimmer to support the tank upgrade she just suggested I do. While we were there and I was deciding what to do skimmer-wise she picked out an urchin, and a new pistol shrimp so the watchman goby wouldn't be lonely since his shrimp died. She decided against a hippo tang after looking it up on her phone and deciding our tanks weren't big enough to keep it happy and healthy. She attributes her change of heart to a few things. First, when I joined ARC and could "talk fish" with someone other than her it took the pressure off of her to listen to me babble on and on about water chemistry, filtration, etc. As the newness started to wear off I kept tinkering with the tank, but didn't obsess to the point of neglecting the family. Just when I thought she'd had it with the entire hobby I mentioned wanting to add a clownfish to my already overstocked 12gal tank she replied "No way, it'll spike your nitrates!" Huh? She'd been listening all this time? It was backing off, not pressuring her to love my tank, that actually let her start to enjoy it, along with putting things in the tank that she liked. The symbiotic pistol shrimp/watchman goby relationship fascinated her. SPS corals bored her, but colorful zoas, softies, and LPS were huge hits. And then she said the words every married reefer wants to hear: "You need a bigger tank." And so our family has gone from a single resented 12gal to an interconected 90, 27, and 55gal system (plus multiple planted freshwater tanks), with her being an active part of tank care. I still service the skimmers, do water changes, etc, but she loves feeding the fish, watching to see how they're doing, seeing the interactions between creatures, she even noticed my lawnmower blenny was losing weight and rehabbed him to his former fat self.

I borrowed one from Jake at River City a few weeks ago, I think they charged something like $5, and I kept it for a week.