pledosophy

I haven't player pool since I was at your place either, which is ironic because my studio has a pool table. I'm always down to bring beer. I'll text ya tomorrow

I lost between 30-55 gallons of salt water on the floor in a coupla minutes once. I was home and about 4 feet from the tank when the 2" bulkhead for the closed loop cracked and split (after about 5 years). The remodel of the room went well though after having to replace the dry wall and the subflooring. Put down a vinyl floor just so I could pour water on it and laugh.

If you wanna hang out I can give you cheato with free aiptasia and let you win at pool again . Oddly enough the Cheato in my QT system is full of flatworms so you could have some of that to if you really wanna have some fun

I have been running a Jaebo 1200 for a year and a half or so. No issues. I also run a Diablo 5500 which was much more expensive and way louder. Neither have ever failed. I generally pull the pumps and soak in ro and vinegar every 3 months or so. Top of the line would be a Red Dragon I think, but $$$$$. If it is for that little tank you could do a Maxijet 1200 for a return. I ran a 34g tank off of one of those for years with no issues. If your getting a bigger tank hit me up if you need some other stuff. I'm tryin to clear my little stockpile in the garage. I'd really like to ditch a couple hundred lbs of rock

I mean you have to consider the source a little bit since they are trying to sell you something. I think it is at about the 5 minute mark they show their experiment.

Magic Erasers are very useful, especially if you have a strong magnet cleaner like a magnavore and you can slice a piece off the eraser and put it inbetween the magnet to clean. Large pickle jars seem to come in useful for me to for growing cultures, dosing, and for feeding (thawing) frozen food. I use a piece I cut off a plastic hanger and a rubberband to feed Nori. The Hanger floats so it's kinda perfect. Dollar store super glue is many a reefers favorite. Panty hose to cover intakes on powerheads in tanks with fry or walking anenomes. Eggcrate is good for measuring frozen food when you make your own food. Speaking of making your own food the seafood medley from Trader Joes is pretty good....

I always thought this too, but after watching a video of someone actually testing it, I found out that what I thought was true was wrong. The reactor and passive bag don't have to much of a difference, just a couple of hours or so if I remember right. Although the test did not go for days, as it only took the carbon hours to clear the containment.

GLWS BTW, this is one of the reasons I have a 90g QT tank

I think Leng Sy would want you to believe that it is the Miracle Mud for sure. Part of that might be right that with good filtration and more nutrition (assuming the mud is being used as a refugium to grow various size of pods and shrimp like Leng does) that it will put the fish on the road to recovery. BUT also removing the source of irritation which many believe to be the carbon, is also going to help that road to recovery. Leng doesn't run carbon on his systems, or at least he didn't back when I hung out at his shop, he might have changed in the last 12 years since we used to chat frequently. There are several examples of necropsy being performed on fish from systems that use carbon that show that the carbon fines can end up lodged in the fishes gills and under the fishes scales which cause irritation resulting in other complications. That is known pretty well accepted. Some of the more responsible manufacturers like Byod's will even warn against using some of their products with certain species of fish. While a micron bag might be the solution over say a mesh bag, without knowing the size of the carbon "fines" or dust particles that really is an assumption. While it may be an accurate one, it also may not be. Just because there are carbon fines stuck to the bag does not mean that thousands of other fines entered the system. If the fine size is .1 micron and your using a 1 micron bag then there is still ample room for them to enter the aquarium and affect the fish. I had been looking for an answer to the size of a carbon fine but have not been able to find it anywhere. I did find a video put out by BRS that showed the difference between using carbon in a reactor and using it with passive flow through a mesh bag clearing a test tank with a known containment and while the reactor was faster the mesh bag did catch up pretty quickly and did just as good of a job clearing the system. Since most of us would use a bag for a couple days and not a couple hours it seems from the results of their video that a passive mesh bag compared to a reactor does not have that significant of difference, although they do warn that for prolonged use the carbon can "clump" making it less effective. Currently I do have carbon on "stand by" if an emergency arises,(the same way I have Diamox, Praziquentinal, and Triple Sulpha) but it is not something I have used in over a year now. JMO

This is why I like a limit to the edit button, makes people stand behind their claims.

That is about the size I have on my 120g now and I think it is great.

My Mom who lives outta state called Upscales and they were nice enough to mail me a gift certificate to their shop. I was pretty stoked on the GC, but also that they went out of their way to mail it to me for Christmas. I have a 90 in my office that might be getting a new fish soon

Merry Christmas everyone.

Welcome back Joel, Good to see you hear again. The other major advances have been in DC pumps and power heads dramatically cutting electricity costs and offering more options in terms of wavemaking.

I do not use it, and have stopped for several years now. I prefer carbon dosing which doesn't go to well with GFO. IME back when I was using it I found it unnecessary for me if instead I cleaned my skimmer neck everyday. I know other people have had similiar reports after using the swabbie product for their skimmer necks, but I am not that fancy yet. So I rinse my neck off every morning which improved skimmer performance dramatically. I still clean my skimmer everyday now, but with the carbon dosing (I use vodka) my phosphate levels are always very low now despite my constant over feeding. JME

I do need to trim my tank. All the SPS is starting to grow into/over/through each other. Maybe after the first of the year, or if you wanna see pics from us diving the gulf the begining of Feb

How have I not met Tulip yet? Oh the tank looks alright too... I guess... I mean... where are the corals? In the garage still.

What eqipment are you running now? I have done all refugium filtration, mixed, and all equipment. All have their perks and drawbacks. Right now I ended up with mostly just equipment, although I do have a small refugium. A small refugium will help things like your protein skimmer work better, and it will provide somewhat of a food source for the display, BUT if it is between that and a protein skimmer for example, IME I preferto have the protein skimmer. It also depends a bit on what you are looking to gain with the refugium, and if there is an easier way to do it IME. HTH

I hope they do get to reopen someplace more suitable. http://www.kptv.com/story/30778797/portland-aquarium-in-milwaukie-area-to-close-down-in-february#ixzz3udIozaiu

Oh ya, I agree not all sponges are created equal. Just speculating if your using a micron bag small enough to catch the particles your what like under 5? If the inlets are that small how much water is actually moving into and out of that bag? We know water takes the path of least resistance so I wonder how much is actually moving through the bag passively. Take into account the clogging of particles I wonder what the diminishing return is. I would guess not much water moves through the bag, but I don't really know. Compare that to a reactor where a couple hundred gallons or more is pumped through hourly. I wonder that the difference actually is in effectiveness of the different methods. While the PH.D guys talk about carbon dust attaching to fish etc, I can't find mention of the size on a second read through. I don't know if a 10 micron filter sock would be enough to stop the dust or it would fly through like a pea through a hula hoop. I really don't know. Maybe a 1 micron sock is to big. I'm curious now. If the filter sock is sufficient to stop the particle dust from entering the system then I would guess Bill has the best of both worlds in getting the carbon to have hundreds of GPH pass through it while still having the benefit of the filtration so the dust does not enter the display. I'll ask a couple of the homies about it and report back.

I have a forest fire monti that is 20-30x the size when I got it a year ago, and a very nice rainbow millie that has grown about a 1/2 in the same time period. Same tank. They started at the same 1" frag size too. Some corals do better in different tanks, different spots. Just how it is. Gotta find the sweet spot. I think some species also do better with different parameters and nutrient levels. I feed heavily which is probably why the monti is growing faster then the millies, even though my blue mille I got the same size as the rainbow at the same time is probably 15x the size as when I got it. Corals are just different. Don't get my started on my orange lobo that went from 1 head to 2 heads over the course of 9 years

You really should do more then just rinse it. That will not be enough over time. The peer reviewed study was published back in 11' in the North American Journal of Aquaculture. The study was conducted by Jay Hemdal. There have been other studies before and after. Noga references it, Dr.Belli references it in the book Working Notes. It's funny to me it took so long to get funding for scientific research with control groups to be conducted, published, and peer reviewed as Leng Sy was stating the correlation back in the 80's. People used to send Sy Large expensive Angel fish to put his Ecosystem tanks as his tanks would cure the fish of HLLE. I remember being in his shop once with several 3-4k Angels he had been sent to cure in the 90's. Sy's systems did not use carbon as he was using taxifloria to remove waste/toxins from the system. If you have ever seen slides from fish necropsy from tanks with carbon, that dust gets under their gills and causes problems. You can see it in the tissue of some of the fish as well, depending on the species. Ancedotal reports from specific types of GFO are actually much worse than carbon, no research study that I have been privy to has addressed that yet. However Boyd (Chemi Pure guy) does not recommend Chemi Pure Elite be used in tanks with certain types of fish based on their testing. He doesn't recommend it, but he does make the product. We don't have to guess anymore, or give opinions on certain things. They are studied, researched, tested, published, peer reviewed, proven. The information is made public. While 10-15 years ago there was a lot of guess work in this hobby, much of that has been removed now. Carbon is one of those things.

I would be concerned if running carbon passively means placing it in a filter bag in your sump IME. The problem with carbon and why many hobbyists went to reactors that uses sponges is because the "dust" or small particulates that break off of the carbon over time have been shown to get trapped in the gills of many fish. This creates a respiration problem that has been linked to many fish diseases. This is also true of other products like GFO, Chemipure-Elite, etc. IME they really are much safer when used with a nice little sponge intended to block those particulates from entering your display. That said. I do have a carbon reactor setup on my tank, but it is not running. I only see the need to run carbon if I notice a problem By having it setup and ready to go at the flip of a switch, if I do see that problem them I am prepared. When I was keeping leather corals with SPS I found running carbon continously at about a cup a week in a 320g system did a good job with negating the chemical warfare released between the animals. Hope that helps.

This is what worked for me with my Koralin CA reactor.

IME selling larger colonies is harder because people don't want to pay the price for them, and people usually sell frags because they get more money for the corals. For example I had a colony of a candy cane coral that was about 300 heads. I asked for $300 for the colony. I got no biters. However I did sell 20 or so frags of 4 polyps for $20-$30 a frag. So I made the money I wanted and kept 2/3's of the colony. Similar thing with a Tubinaria I had. It was easy to see 2" frags for $20 but when I tried to sell the 20" round piece (wouldn't even fit in a bucket) I got $95 for it. It is very similar to selling a system as a package or parting it out piece by piece. JME