pledosophy

We had rolling blackouts in California one year. Tanks would be off for a few hours at a time, a few days a week. I had a MJ 1200 as a return pump and plugged it into a CPU battery backup, got me through all of it just fine. I love the government today, we just did our taxes. Amazing how giving me 5% of what we paid back makes me happy.

Homie you're trippin. I will put you to shame. I have even made muffins on a BBQ, just to prove I could. I lived in a garage for a few years in college, so everything I made was on a BBQ. Salmon with beure blanc, asparagus with hollandaise, and a cake for dessert from my weber. When I'm not showing off I prefer a nice steak from the grill. Have made some nice turkey's and corned beef as well. I got skillz on the grillz! Back to favorite restraunt, spendy but Ruth Chris is tops, I like steak. Dragon Fish is the best for Sushi. Jopaz for Italian American Cuisine.

I have xenia in beaverton if you can't find some closer.

My bad. Room has been made

That sucks Mark.

I think all of those things are awesome. I am located in Beaverton Oregon.

7.71 pH! Yikes!

On second thought Jason I might be assuming to much. I do know that that line exsists, but can't really say if Andy's particular frag is from your leather. It is possible Matt got a frag elsewhere. Anyways I do think it is cool how so many people got one from your single leather. Guess this club knows what it's doing.

It is most likely a harmless worm but it will multiply. What exactly is "real good shape". It's just hard to put those words next to your stocking list and tank size. Can you give us the alk, ca, nitrate and pH fluctuations in real numbers?

Your pH is dropping kinda fast too. Down to 8. Hey if your gonna show off your fancy toys and make us jealous, we're going to pick on you. Pretty sweet.

I have the MPE's is you want some. Open to trades for anything I don't have.

Looks so familiar. (scratch)(whistle)(clap)(laugh) It's a fun coral, you'll be pleased with it. My clown hosts in my mother colony. It's kinda awesome. Dsoz, the Tyree has long polyps. Mine are up to two inches, but a frag of mine in Franks tank has even longer polyps. The other green toadstools have shorter polyps. For some reason there is a huge difference in price. IME having more flow can encourage polyps to extend more, and lighting can also pay a factor. They do grow fast. I got mine from Jason, have given frags out to Frank (who gave one to Matt), Mark, and Benny (as well as mailing some out). I have more if anyone want them. My mother colony is about 7" across and drops a frag every month or so.

5 days is a stretch. Could go either way on that one. Depends on the corals and there overall health IMO.

My wife got me a hi-fin goby for Valentines day a few years back. I put him in never saw him again asumed he was dead. A few years later I had to move, emptied the tank, there he was. I had a lawnmower blenny take a ride down the over flow in the same tank, found him in the refugium. Had been at least a year. It was kinda weird on moving day to find I had two extra fishes going to the LFS I didn't know I had. I have a blood shrimp now that I only ever see the whites of his antenna's.

I wouldn't blame the worm just yet IMO. It appears as there are some other things off in your husbandry that may be to blame. My tanks have many bristle worms, and many corals. I have only ever had 1 bad worm IME. Might look at water quaility with that stock you have. That is a lot for a 15g. Check your alk to for the leathers. Make sure they are getting enough flow to blow off the mucus on there head.

Buy frags, grow them, enjoy them, sell the colony for more then you paid for the frag, buy a cooler coral, grow them enjoy them, sell them for more. Been working for me for some time.

Kudos to you for letting others know.

I have grown zoanthids under a compact florescent 9w spiral bulb in a 20g tank. Power compacts are going to be just fine IMO. Many of us have extra's zoa's around if you need some help getting started.

There are a few problems with that scenario. Project Seahorse has published info that they have observed species of seahorses eating up to 3000 small shrimp in a day. The way a seahorses digestive system works, they will eat when there is food. They can eat all day long and never get full. If there is too much food, they can actually eat all day and loose weight as they never fully digest anything. There have been some ancedotal reports of seahorses pooping out live artemia they were eating so fast, but I'm not sure if I buy into that. Point being, they can devour all of the pods in your refugium in a few hours, and they will. I have been able to keep an alright supply of amphipods in my system by having large piles of rubble rock where the seahorse can not hunt, and directing flow so it is uncomfortable for them to get there, and my refugium is the same size as the display. Another problem arises with temperature. IME/IMO seahorses really do need temps under 74F. Long story is that seahorses are often asymptomatic carriers for bacteria's IMO. The bacteria's they carry are most often strains of vibrio, although there are other not as pleasant strains such as myco. There are several strains that have been cultured out of seahorses (by Dr. Martin Belli a board certified pathologist who happens to have a love of seahorses, lucky for us). When Labdoc (Dr. Belli's SN on most forums) grew out the cultures he found a significant higher growth rate at higher temperatures. The bacteria's that come into play with seahorses also became much more virulent/aggressive at these temperatures even altering there protein configurations (i.e. IIpp would now be IIPP). The seahorses would have little to no previous resistance towards the more virulent bacteria's. While under normal circumstances this would not be the biggest deal with most strains of the bacteria, if there is an initial stressor, say lack of food, a vibrating pump, or a scrape from a rock a secondary bacterial infection would follow. You can read more about the findings in the book "Working Notes", but if you have any questions, I can probably answer most of them. If not I can pass them on to Doc, he's proven to be very helpful and patient in explanations to me over the years. There is not a lot of hard data on this as there is no money to research these things in relation to seahorses in the home aquarium. Much of what we believe to be true comes from the research of Labdoc, and the ancedotal reports of keepers across the world as they are reported on forums. As we all know forums are not the best place to gather real info, but they can be very useful IMO. When I started with seahorses they were known to live a year or two. Now many people have seahorses 5+ years. IMO it is the combination of diet and temperature that is the key to this success. I was able to keep an adult WC for 5.5 years in my aquarium, if I can keep a WC alive that long, we are definetly onto something IMO. I'm not the best keeper in the world by far.

I was speaking of any species available in the hobby, except dwarfs. I guess you might do a 20g tall with fuscus. I do know of people keeping dwarfs in larger systems. There was a local guy who converted a 72g bowfront into a dwarf tank, but he never reported back on how it went. There are many people keeping them in 20g's, including breeders. While it is hard to imagine them finding food in larger systems as they seem to only eat what is right in front of them, they do survive in the ocean which is a bit bigger then the standard 5g.

It can take a week or so for them to anchor IME. I've only had a couple clams to base that off though. HTH

I think the only way to leave them over the weekend would be with live feeders myself. Either white shrimp or mysis. Some keepers do incorporate a fasting day to a seahorses schedule where they feed twice a day 6 days a week, and then skip the 7th day of feeding, or use the 7th day to enrich brine shrimp with vitamins or supplements, but I have no personal knowledge of anyone keeping seahorses with a two day fasting schedule as a matter of course. A seahorse's digestive system is not very complicated. Once they eat they are empty soon.

If your thinking of keeping any species other then zots, you can forget about brine, it's not a food source. Brine is good for seahorse fry, but even then you try to get them off of brine ASAP. Brine shrimp is very hard for seahorses to digest, and rather low in nutrients they can take from the brine. You can gutload brine shrimp to feed a seahorse certain supplements (i.e. beta glucan), or medication (i.e. panacur), but for the most part it is not included in a seahorse system. Some of my adult seahorses have not even recognized brine shrimp as food. They would hide under the rocks and accelerate there breathing. Apparently sea monkey's can be scary for seahorses. Transporting them home on weekends will not work. It will cause them to much stress IMHO. IME with transporting seahorses even a short distance, like a mile to the store where I was selling them, or down the hall from the QT tank to the display, can cause enough stress to put them off food for a couple days. If your moving them twice a week )once out of the display, and once back in), well no good IMO. Also your going to need something in the 30g+ range. IME the best way to solve the feeding problem is going to be live salt water feeder shrimp. There are a few kinds, white shrimp and mysis are both popular. You can put the shrimp in Friday night and it should keep the seahorses fine until Monday. I would put in 10 shrimp per day per horse. So if your having a three day weekend and have a pair of seahorses your going to need at least 60 shrimp. I've cultured mysis before, and it is a pain, but it can be done, other wise you can purchase them, but it might be cost prohibitive. IME they only need to be fed once a day. I feed frozen mysis, but have fed wild caughts live fresh water ghosts for years at a time. Tanks do better with temps 74F and under. IMO they are not that hard to take care of if you set the tank up right. All I do to my seeahorses system is add food, pruin macro every few weeks, and add water to the ATO every two weeks. I do a water change every 3 or 4 months at this point, and usually for flat worm control, not nutrients. I will include a shameless plug as to what I think can be kept with seahorses. http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/tankmates/tankmates.shtml I would have to say seahorse.org is a great place to get information, not that I'm biased. If you happen over there my username is Kevin. I'll help out here whenever I see stuff too though. HTH

Dip it in fresh water for a few minutes, see if anything comes off, or if they open afterwards. JMO

Thanks for the trade.