Achilles Tang

Oh I see. Well, to inspire newbies or not, there is no intention of influencing and encouraging newbies to attempt keeping them by diving into the more difficult and demanding world of SPS-keeping WITHOUT the practical knowledge of even keeping a 'standard' reef tank that is more forgiving if they are not able to maintain perfect water quality conditions that is more often than not, affected by the size of their wallets to get good equipment like strong lightings, water circulation devices, good skimmers, good test kits etc etc. It's our responsibility as reef-keepers to teach the right thing and not unduely influence wrongly. My 2 cents, AT

"I must be hallucinating again... talking to my own stomach... and WHY IS THERE A VOICE IN MY STOMACH???!!" - he thought to himself... he began to cry...

Agree with fuel too. Its stupid for any LFS person to feel that he doesn't like to sell corals to people who eventually frags them. So how? When your SPS colony grows too big and you have to prune it to prevent inter-coral aggression, you throw the frags away? I think its up to the reefer to decide if the money spent on lights, calcium additives, skimming etc would be calculated into the cost of growing the coral and therefore the price of the frag! Compared to softies and LPS, keeping SPS corals is NOT cheap. What's the problem in selling frags and that's the discretion of the reefer anyway. I don't hear any pet shop people saying: "Oh, I won't sell my hamsters to people because they will breed them and then sell the babies and then I lose business"!!! If there are people buying corals to frag immediately into many pieces and then sell these pieces just for immediate 'profit'... that person is mad but I have not seen anyone do such things yet. Anyway, most of us in the reef club know each other and would be able to spot such people in a flash. When corals land in the shops, most of them are stressed enough already... if it doesn't RTN immediately, fragging it within a very short time MAY cause even more stress leading to the loss of frags/the colony itself. But luckily, I think most of us treasure the specimens we pick up and would like to grow them until they overgrow. From our experience, most people frag their corals to save them and regrow them when RTN happens and the colony is about to be lost. Flub, As for reefers who purposely break off frags from colonies just so that the LFS will give it to you... SHAME ON YOU!!! Putting myself in the LFS shoes... I can understand their frustration in this matter. Perhaps that is why a "hands off policy" by LFS may be good to protect the corals from damage... intentional or unintentional. But it will be hard to implement.

http://cdn.dearyou.com/eads/main/card_2172.swf Also here is translation, not by me: A new boy arrives. every girl in their school, EXCEPT HER, is crazy in love with him because he's so "cool" and can beat up every guy he meets in their school. she thinks that he's a bully and fights for no reason and when her best friend confesses that she likes him, she dislikes him even more. she storms out of her friend's house at night and bumps into the guy's bike and he helps her up. the next day, the new boy is challenged to fight by the school's star soccer player and he beats him and all her friends are yelling how cool he is, while she's off to the side saying that she's the only one in her right mind. when she's sleeping, she hears this noise at night and looks out to see the new boy working as a garbage man with his dad. the next day, her feelings for him are different since she realized that he's not all that bad. then she screams NOOOOO saying that she can't think that way. She gets detention and has to clean the bathrooms and the new boy comes in acting charismatic and telling her not to tell anybody about his "secret" and the girl slaps him saying she's embarassed enough already and scolds him for fighting every day. she thinks about it at night and wonders if she was too harsh. the next day the new boy is challenged by this tae kwon do group and he loses and all of the girl's friends change their minds and say that the tae kwon do group is cool and ditch the new boy. the girl sees him sad and down in a corner and when the guy comes around at night again to take her garbage he sees the chocolates in the window with a note that says"eat these chocolates, be strong and feel better! keep this a secret too"

"Eeeks... this tequila... I'll never buy this brand again... Mexicana De Skimmate... why is it so foamy?".... falling on his hands and knees...

Looks good! Maybe I should get into this!

There are more important things in life than spending time and effort in meaningless negative activities... learn to love and treasure the MORE important things in life... there are only 24 hours a day and you can't predict tomorrow. Wish Octo all the best.

Hmmm... great shots but pity you didn't get closeups!! Would love to see the pygmy seahorse closeup!

FME (from my experience), coralline algae can still grow inspite of filamentous algae around. Both algae require different nutrients but the coralline algae will always be at a disadvantage because they grow very slowly in comparison with filamentous algae, thus it could seem like coralline algae is not growing. Also, the conditions for good coralline algae are higher... better water quality and as for filamentous algae, it is usually the reverse, with more nutrients causing more growth in filamentous algae and less or no growth in coralline algae. Bright light of the lower K spectrum will be more condusive to filamentous algae growth and it may even inhibit coralline algae growth.

THUMBS UP for the SPS shipment this morning at Verdun Rd! Good price and very nice quality!

*cheep cheep!* early bird trying to catch the worm?

How do you define a newbie?

Looks like a stomatella snail to me.... can you take a photo of its back?

The one above is the eel, the ones pictured before that by Bwilly is the fang blenny. I think this info was buried somewhere before... perhaps in Wei Leong's thread... and some of us including myself, correctly ID'ed his fish as a fang blenny.

And the man realizes he is hallucinating again.... because he woke up to find himself lying on his cactus plants in the garden holding a toothbrush..

Many of us love marine fishes as much as we love our corals and inverts. We spend the same amount of time hunting down nice specimens or rare ones... and buy... and buy... and buy! But when it comes down to the crunch... we know that there are limits. These can be space constraints in our tanks, characteristics in different fishes and there's also the issue of humane treatment.... etc Do we know where the limits are? Let's hear your views! *opens up can of worms*

The tang policeman ought to be shot. Putting a sohal into a tiny tank like that!

.... making lunch for you, he replied to the bristleworm...

with all these thoughts flashing through his mind as he pummelled her to death, he saw a bristleworm approaching saying....

Huh? Looks like some error msg!

"Arrgh!!" He cried and promptly slapped her across the face with a slimy tang called....

"MY GOSH", he exclaimed!!!! "You look just like..... !!!!"

But she wasn't hungry... so she casually flicked the yucky stuff off her and...

Its definitely one of those ocean tangs, those that I see hanging around big schools of barracudas, jacks & trevallies. Coz I remembered this was hooked up immediately after landing a nice big trevally! BTW, this was at the Similan Islands in Thailand about 9-10 years ago I think... my favourite fishing mecca!