sharuq1

I had a fluval 404, and found it persnickety and a real pita. Once it got older it also started to leak and could not be fixed. The Rena's, I have the XP2 and XP3 and they are really easy to maintain and I have had no problems with them at all. The only thing I don't like about them is the manual sticking the water in the hose to get the siphon started. I tend to make a mess more often than not. Fortunately it does not usually lose it's siphon unless I drain the water past the input tube. The FX5....well it is just so darn big. I found with ours that if you put filter floss type material in it, it invariably clogs and then stops working, which is very annoying, as floss or fine media can be so handy to polish up the water. For me personally it is difficult to want to maintain it just because it is such a lugger. That and I hate the screw in dealies on it. (lost a piece of one just recently and can I find a place to get a replacement? nooooooo) Never used an eheim so I can't comment on them.

Welcome

Cherry shrimp A few clownfish fry may be available occassionally (saltwater)

Thanks all I have worked very hard to keep it as nice as I am capable of. I wish I had a picture of what this tank looked like when I first picked it up. The change is really quite miraculous. The rocks were all covered in gha and it really was a mess. After a year in sw I still feel like a noob much of the time and there is lots to learn. My next mental obstacle is going to be truly understanding the relationships between pH, Mg, Ca, buffering capacity and whatnot in my water. I was not the best in chemistry in school but I think I am just starting to get an inkling on things I need to start doing to see my Ca levels rise..and kind of understanding it, lol. I don;t want to just follow someone's recipe, I want to know how to change things to what needs to be done. Previously the tank was fine with just water changes but I am finding now that the Ca levels are in the 300's somewhere and I am going to need to start figuring out what I want to dose and how much. (Plus I need a test kit for Mg, I don't have one yet) Yup, they are from the reef shoppe. Kelly treated me really well and I was a very satisfied customer and would not hesitate to get stuff from him again. The bippinata is doing really well (lower left), but the ribbon (mid-right) keeps getting some algae growing on it (maybe not enough flow) and doesn't like the mushrooms touching it. I trimmed the mushrooms yesterday, so hopefully the polyps will start coming out again fully as soon as it sheds. I did try at one point upping the flow but then my nearly all my other corals were quite unhappy with me, so it is going to have to stay as is until I finally get everything into the 120g. (progress on that project is stalled for now) Bosshog: Pretty sure you must live around here somewhere, if you ever want to come over and yak you should. Just don't look at my messy house, lol.

Some bad pics of cichlids

Wow, are those ever gorgeous. Pardon my ignorance, but these are shell dwellers? If so, they are the prettiest I have ever seen.

It's soo cute!

I prefer it the way it is. I like both fw and sw and this enables me to look at everything available in one shot instead of more.

I was cleaning out the fluval fx5 today and I lost part of the lid fastener; one of the little orange things that keeps the bolt from sliding/moving around on the lid fastener thingie. Anyone know where I could get one? (You know how the bolts screw into the lid? It is that little orange piece on the underside of each one).

Bizarre :boxed:

That is awesome.

What kind of cyps/paracyps do you have African Fever? I was looking at some of Charles' fish, more specifically the Paracyprichromis Nigripinnis. Anyone know where I could find these without having to ship from another province?

How to frag frogspawn?

So I'm not sure what I should stock my 72g with. I want to be able to breed something that people actually want, but not something that is going to take a ton of maintenance and work to keep the fry alive (like rainbows). Under "see reply" if you could please reply on this thread your suggestion that would be great.

Nice to see another local :welcome: to the forum

According to several sources (books, magazines, reef central) I have read this is not an unusual occurence. from "The Marine Reef Aquarium Handbook". as well as This short link on cleaners Also if you are interested: Cleaner shrimp thread Another thread Raising them is difficult, but breeding them or having them breed in your tank is not as uncommon as one might think. from This link

That really sucks sorry for your loss, he was a very nice fish

Well, out of my first batch of killies I had seven surviving fry. The boys are coloring up very prettily. Unfortunately I lost my main breeding female due to a child-caused accident, so I am going to have to wait before I can try again for breeding. (Maybe I can find another gal somewhere that is not genetically related). Here is a little slideshow with a few pics. The pics with the bare-bottom tank are of the daddy killie.

They look great in there! Lovely tank. I had a good time too. I thought I might spend a little money but of course I spent too much My "prize" of the day was 4 little crystal red shrimp. I have been wanting some of those for a looong time

Hi there and welcome

I would recommend talking to Albert at Gold's in Calgary. Great customer service, awesome prices, and they know what they are talking about.

Looking beautiful, as always

I think that all depends on who you talk to. In sw the general view seems to be that moonlight in a cycle will stimulate certain natural responses. One man I talked to said that unless you only put on your moonlights during full moon and a day before/after that you were "doing it wrong". Another said you would need a moonlight controller to "do it right". Other folks have said they keep theirs on all the time just so they can see the night activity in the tank, and of course things do look rather cool under those lights.

welcome to AA