midgetwaiter

people generally regard the sea clone as junk but the Remoras are quite good. For the sea clone do a web search, there any many pages that detail modifications done to them by various people that might help you. The remora can take a bit of fiddling with to get it to settle down, it can also take some time before the skimmer "slimes up" and the bubles are reduced. If you continue to have problems after a few day I'd suggest contacting AquaC through thier web page, they have pretty good support.

This is impossible, the city does not have the ability to impose sales tax. What it said on the news was that certain city imposed user fees that have tax included like transit passes and dog licenses will not have their price adjusted to reflect the lowered GST. The city will keep that 1% probably because the monies collected would be much less that would have to be spent to re-price everything.

I've heard that too. I do have some extra AC 300 or 500s around so could do something like that... I'm a big advocate of using macros to filter this would be a great idea. Getting rid of this stuff from a display can be a big PITA though, if you do decide to go that way think about just giving the rock to someone with some tangs or something.

First thing is macro algae, a caulerpa of some kind. Second thing is a coral belonging to the zoanthid family, probably a protopalyotha. Whitish things are a tube worm of some kind, at least the ones on the rock below the coral is the one you indicated in the picture probably is the same thing but it isn't very clear. Look up feather duster for a full explanation.

The basic WPG rule starts to come apart when you are looking at newer fixtures like T5s. They are probaably almost as intense as VHOs, CO3 injection is a good idea.

The target sand is awesome but don't try the Burnco if you can't find it, all clay. we have the target sand in a display it Riverfront with a big aro and some rays. I swear there are times I could sell the stuff for $50 a bag, people love the look of it.

There is no reason this can't be done, you should had enough active bio film in the filters to support the tank. However if you have anything more than the thinnest of gravel beds as soon as you start stirring all that gravel up you will want to do a 100% water change. Twice.

Just put them in the tank, no need to screw around with aclimation. I used to do that but I decided to try and dump the mollies I get for feeders directly into thier SW holding tank one day. Works fine, I've never lost one. If your brackish tank is above 1.012 or so I wouldn't worry much about QT, there isn't any parasites or bacteria that can survive the transition.

We got some really nice stuff today, here's a high light list. Volitan Lionfish Zebra Dwarf Lions - nice size almost 5" Fu Manchu Lion Baby Clown Tiggers - loonie size Juv. Emporer Angel French Angel Bi-Colour Angel Flame Angel Sohal Tang Powder Blue Tang Powder Brown Tang Orange Spotted Rabbitfish - just plain cool looking Longnose Butterfly Raccoon Butterfly Fiji Devil Damsels Gold Canary Gobies Skunk, Bi-colour and Purple Psuedochromis And a bunch more I can't immediately recall. We also got some inverts. Bubble Tip Anemone Purple Long Tentacle Anemone Blue Carpet Anemone - W-O-W this thing is awesome. We have lots of turbo snails (red foots too) scarlet hermits and peppermint shrimp as well. Still a few Sea Hares available.

Here's some new pics of my 20 gal reef. It's been running for about 2 months now but I've made some changes since the last time I posted pics. I'm also starting to figure out my new digi cam so the pics are of much better quality. Here's a closer picture of the right side where you can see my new critter. try and guess which one! That's right., a teardrop maxima clam! Here's a closeup only slightly ruined by a hermit crab. You can't see it really well in the pics but it's got some really neat fluorescent green highlights along the edge of it's mantle. Here is my new favorite coral. I got about 8 polyps from the Frag Factory some time ago, they always looked nice but since I got them settled in the new tank and under the T5s they are amazing. I'm quite happy with that pic, my HS photography course is starting to come back to me. Only thing I'm frustrated with now is getting a decent balance in my cam settings. As you can see the zoas look great but that brown clump behind them is actually bright metallic green star polyps. For some reason I just can't capture that phosphorescent green colour yet. Couple more interesting pics. Here's a cropped pic of my clownfish Not the best pic but you can see the deep colour he is starting to develop. I am pretty convinced this is because he's been eating only NLS for 6 months now. IME deep colour gradients like that is rare in captive clowns. Here's a teaser pic of the anemone I picked up on Wednesday. It's still settling in and only comes a little bit when the lights are off. I ambushed it to grab this pic I really hope it picks a spot that doesn't face the back of the tank eventually.

I've been thinking about giving it a shot but I'm still dithering. If you need stuff to sell I can point you to a pretty good company in BC.

This is not at all unusual for a tank that has just finished a cycle, I don't know of anything that does a good job of eating it. What you need to do to avoid the issue dunl went through is lower the amount of nitrate and other nutients in the tank. Do a bunch of water changes, add some macro algae, zoanthids or feather dusters. Maybe some Purple Up to get the coraline growing. Skim really wet for a while and wash out all your sponges. A sure way to control algae in any tank is to add stuff that out competes it for nutrients. This is what your live sand bed can do for you as well but you want want to think about that a bit. Real live sand with all the good little critters in it is VERY difficult to come buy around here and any time you are moving it from one tank to another you can expect to have a certain amount of die off and end up with the whole cycle going again. If you still have everyhting setup the same as on the pictutres you posted you might want to add another powerhead for better flow. It seems like a lot at first but that was the one thing I did that had the most impact on my tanks when I started.

What colour is it? If it's brown just diatoms, wait a while and it will go away. If you started with some uncured live rock you have a lot of disolved organics in there, nothing to fret about.

I was thinking it would be an interesting endevor, the thing that stopped me from ever suggesting it was the realization that it opens another avenue of customer contact. That's not a bad thing by itself but you do have to think that if people are seeing things there they are going to be asking questions about it and expecting timely replies. I just didn't have the time to devote to it. If you take a look at what I did for Tim's website (no, I didn't pick that colour) you can get a good idea of some of the off the shelf bits you can use to organize things. I like that one because you can host it on almost any web space, you don't need a DB on the backend. To bad we never got out sh*t together with it. You could do a vendor type forum like reef central too, that might be interesting. Maybe we shoudl talk about this a bit, you going to be around the store Friday?

It is an interesting idea but there are usually shipments 3 or 4 times a week. Given the arcitecture of the current website it would become one hell of a task.

If you follow the direction on your 2 part addative it should sort things out, it might take a litttle while but you'll get there. Now that you have things in balance resist the uge to do anything dramatic. Better a little low and slowly inproving than way out of wack again. Glad I could help.

I'm pretty sure that the Hagen kit measures alk in ppm CaCO3, I'll check when I get home tonight. In that case your alk is low, you want about 125 to 200. Your calcium level is a touch on the low side as well though most people usually aim for 400 ppm or so. Of course this is actually a good thing, your alk and Ca levels are pretty much perfectly balanced! You should be fine just the way it is as you don't have any big calcium uptake in the tank. If your change water is at the right level it will bring both up a bit until they are in the right zone. If you decide you want to fix it fast what you need to do to is wait a few days and then dose with a 2 part addative or maybe some kalkwasser, something that will increase both alk and calcium. Here's a handy table you can use to convert between the 3 units. http://ozreef.org/library/tables/alkalinity_conversion.html

t Ocellatus. They look really good, way better than the batch last spring but a touch smaller. A couple of them have really wild pattern variations.

Why do you need a substrate at all? It would be easier to keep clean without. Otherwise I can't see why playsand wouldn't work.

I had some brown star polyps do that to me once, just up and died. How close is the colony to your other corals? You could have a chem warfare problem. If you are having an algae problem what are your nitrogen compound levels like? Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate?

That should work okay. You will prbably just have to wait it out.

The pH buffer is what caused this. Your calcium has been precipitated out of the water as Ca03 by the alkalinity buffer. The 2 part additive isn't fixing things because you are increasing alk along with the calcium, then having calcium precipitate out as Ca03, and so on. This link explains the issue better than I can: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm In the article the author has a zone graph that shows common issues, your problem is Zone 3. There are some good recommendations there. I would probably do a few partial water changes before I did anything else and then try an correct the problem, if you have trouble finding the calcium chloride I can probably get my hands on some Turbo Calcium for you.

I don't think that's it. Can you take a screen shot and post it?

If it is a kit based on a nessler reagent then it not reliable for SW, the actually are not very good for FW either IME. The Aquarium Pharm kit with the single bottle of reagent is a nessler kit.

While chatting with Tortis today I complained that I never get to see my Frogfish eat anything. Just a few hours later I moved him into my fuge to make way for a new project and I got to see him grab something, I must say that is very cool. On a related topic, if anyone knows a way to peppermint shrimp proof an overflow I'm all ears.