Achilles Tang

There is no purely algae food that is 100% perfect in every way. You will need a blend of foods to balance your fishes' diet. eg. meaty foods like mysis, brine shrimp, fish meat, raw prawn, fish roe, mussels, squids all provide good protein and HUFA (Hughly unsaturated fatty acids). Spirulina, nori and other marine algae provide other forms of nutrition like protein, fibre, vitamins, minerals etc. High quality pellets can be good too. Some even come with anti-parasitic properties. It is best to wash some of the frozen foods to strain our tiny bits or liquid additives to preserve them that could potentially add a lot of phosphate salts to your water. Strain them and then add Selco/Selcon for HUFA and vitamin loading, add garlic extract for anti-parasitic boost, let the mixture soak for a while before feeding. Your fishes will thank you!

use your hands or a pair of pliers. Break as far down the skeleton as possible.

X-Japan is using the modified berlin method... barebottom with lots of liverock. He probably has a good skimmer as well to make it work. Strong lights is a must too for berlin method. Nitrates will go down but slowly as compared to DSB. Augustine, Impatience will get you to a fast end quickly. Take it slow. Grow thru the setup steps thoroughly. Have you got all the right equipment in place? Lights, filtration, skimmer, water circulation? Got the test kits and meters to test water parameters? Washed the sand clean to prepare for the sandbed (if you want to go the DSB way) Water supplements? Kalkwasser? PH buffers? To answer your questions: Deep Sand Bed. How to do one???? What do I need??? How to grow good, useful bacterias???? 1. Just pour clean #1 sand in till you get a minimum of 4" sandbed. Bacteria will be introduced via the liverock or you get those bacteria in a bottle to colonise your sandbed asap. 2. To cycle your tank, you need to introduce ammonia into your system and that should kick start the cycling process. It will only be considered complete when you have tested for zero ammonia > zero nitrites > zero nitrates. Just remember that if you introduced poorly cured LR again later, you could have an ammonia spike and start another mini cycle. But if your tank is matured (ie. having all the necessary bacteria to process all the parts of the nitrogen cycle)... then it may not affect your tank as much. Remember, for a new tank, you will have to stock slowly.

Ah yes, I made a mistake on that... what I wanted to say was a plenum has water at the bottom, a DSB doesn't. Must be very tired already coz it was so late!

Salt, garlic and sugar in reef tanks... pepper next?

Firstly, let me clear up a misconception about bioballs. They are used in place of live rock for nitrifying effects eg. converting ammonia to nitrites and to nitrates by allowing the right kind of bacteria (aerobic bacteria) to grow and these thrive on a moist environment with lots of oxygen. They do their job so well that they are called nitrate factories. In a FO tank or a heavily-stocked reef tank, they work wonderfully well to convert toxic ammonia and nitrites to the much less harmful nitrates. Unfortunately, due to their physical makeup, function and location, they do not allow anerobic bacteria to breed on them to process the nitrates to harmless nitrogen. But due to research that DSBs and ample LR could be better and more natural biological substitutes, many aquarists have considered bioballs as 'old school'. There is no reason why a wet/dry filter with bioballs would not work hand in hand with a DSB to provide a total solution. In fact, if you use liverock in a wet/dry filter situation, that is probably no different from using bioballs. Unless you are using a very dense and big piece of LR where the centre can house a very low oxygen environment for anerobic bacteria to breed. That said... many aquarist are moving to more natural biological methods. For your questions: 1. A 'small' but tall DSB is better than a poorly setup pseudo DSB. Yes, it is proven that DSBs reduce NO3 effectively. I don't think you should use a CD cover, perhaps something more inert like a glass pane would suffice. 2. Yes. The only flow of water should be over the top of the DSB. 3. No fast flow through the DSB and out thru the bottom, unless you are talking about a Plenum system.

So you're into American juvenile pranks huh? I was wondering whether you were a fan of Wedge Antilles.

Your avatar not compatible with your nick leh...

Lucky it wasn't Female magazine!

It is going to be one very messy project. Good luck! But I think the way you describe is the only way to do it. How thick is your MM sandbed? If it is already very deep, chances are the bottom layer would be 'deadly'. I think with a MM layer on top, your DSB could be effectively funtional from as little as 2.5 to 3", as the MM layer would be very fine and mudlike, preventing too much oxygen from reaching the bottom layer. You have to stop the filtration from going to your main tank for a while to check that no ammonia spike was created. You will need to wait for the dust to settle first... you have low flow anyway right? coz if not, the MM dust will go in your main tank.

He says that the hard corals and clams are not for sale. They are just in transit for one of his import/export customers coz they came from far away... and he wants to ensure that they are ok before receiving from. They don't intend to get AVA cleared hardcorals/clams in for sale as they don't have the facilities for them yet. Also they are unsure about local demand and how the market and industry will react to the high prices. AT

When I was fishing in pulau Tioman many years ago... we net caught many baby octopuses... and they make excellent bait. They are the only bait which can crawl out of the pail and walk across the boat deck and back into the water!!! Their suckers are extremely strong... once they stick to your skin, you'll be sorry! hehee!

LOL! No prob... it's good to ask first! It's not a question of studying harder when younger... it's a different knowledge altogether..! Don't pump CO2 into your reeftank... not only will your sandbed rapidly dissolve but possibly even coral skeletons! You will get a very high calcium level though! CO2 will also quickly lower the PH of seawater, killing your livestock due to shock! High levels of CO2 will also drive out the oxygen in your tank... and your livestock will die of oxygen deprivation. This is very different from FW planted tanks!

Octopuses are very intellligent and good escape artistes.... they can even learn how to move tank covers to crawl out. I read of one story where an octopus learnt to crawl out of his tank into another tank to steal baitfishes or some other food to eat and then crawl back into his tank... the owner caught him doing it at night after wondering why the other tank's stuff kept disappearing overnight! NO KIDDING!!! Anyway... octopuses have very short lives too... slightly less than 1 year. NEVER GET THE BLUE-RING OCTOPUS!! They are extremely poisonous, one bite and you'll be dead in a few minutes. I don't know how in the world they can still get through customs occasionally, myabe they don't know how to ID them!

Nudibranches are not sea cucumbers! LOL! Nudibranches have very short livespans... 3 mths averagely. They eat coral polyps, especially the one posted above. Only a few eat macroalgae, like the brown/reddish one in my refugium.

Achilles Tang is my favourite surgeonfish... highly prized and hard to sustain... a difficult fish... unlike me!

Well... it's not particularly nice to hijack someone else's thread... perhaps that's why no one really answered you. Perhaps you could highlight your question in a new thread?

Small is better??? What kind of lousy advice is that? Lets go even smaller then.. a teacup? Tell your friend that it is common knowledge that the bigger the tank the better and more stable it will be. Of course, a bigger tank will demand better equipment... but your long term goal is stability and easy maintenance right? Plus the space to put in more corals and livestock right? How are you going to accomplish that with such a small tank? The art of keeping nanotanks demands more husbandry and care. IMO, I don't see the attraction of a nanotank unless you intend to keep one on your computer desktop. I strongly suggest you learn the basics of reef-keeping before you embark on your new tank before you waste more money and also to prevent more livestock losses through sheer ignorance. Sorry if I sound quite hard but beginners MUST research first before setting up a marine tank. Do your homework. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. AT

Really? I'll call him to find out more... also... about that official farm visit he promised our SRC... AT

Welcome to the Singapore Reef Club. We'll do our best to help you but you have to do a bit of homework first. Have you done any research before embarking on this hobby? Do you know your limitations... budget, equipment, tank size can affect the kind of marine livestock you can keep? We have covered many such topics about setting up a tank for beginners so pls take the trouble to research these before you post asked-before questions as we won't really like repeating ourselves over and over again. But I'll help you with your questions: 1. i have a 2ft tank at hm, but i have found out that is better to setup a 3 ft tank. so for the min thickness is abt how many mm? 10mm enough? - 10mm should be ok for safety. 2. FILTER, a sump or a canister filter, which 1 is better and is lower in budget. - sump is better if you have the space. Canister not recommended for long term easy maintenance and effectiveness. what if i get canister filter, eheim, Jagno, Fluval, which 1 is worth to get. - Eheim is a good brand, get the best you can. You get what you pay for. any worth buying model to intro? if i do a sump, i must have 2 protein skimmer? 1 in sump, 1 in my main tank huh? - 1 good protein skimmer is better than 10 lousy ones. 1 is sufficient. 3. PROTEIN SKIMMER 3ft tank, if i use 1 orca skimmer, izzit gd enough? - like I said... get the best you can... either save enough money to get a good one or don't start your tank first. Don't waste money upgrading later. Listen to us experienced ones who have gone down the same road... $$ wasted can only be regretted. 4. CHILLER 3ft tank, izzit a must to have chiller? i can use av fan to cool it down at constant temp rite? - you are limited by the kind of corals you can keep long-term. Fish and invertebrates like crabs and shrimps can tolerate higher temps. 5. LIGHTING white FL gd enough for 3 ft tank? how to calculator it huh. how much lighting i shld put, i will be keeping mainly liverock, soft coral n fishes only, maybe a bit of hard coral. - Get MHs if you can. FL/PLs don't provide the best lighting corals deserve. And knowing the tendency of us hobbyists, we will be yearning to get species which need MHs.... clams, acroporas, etc. 6. TEST KITS Sera, Tetra gd? how much it cost per set? izzit recommand to get 5 in 1 testkit? - get the best again... salifert brand is highly regarded. 7. LIVE ROCK, at this period of time, veri hard to find liverock rite? correct me if i m wrong. any recommanded place to buy cheap liverock, how many kg shld i buy? - our unspoken policy is that we won't broadcast where to get those. Maybe you can call up marine LFS to ask from time to time. Buy as much as you can if you cannot provide a DSB for your filtration. i hope all this problem , u guys can help me. i m just a student, so on veri low budget, $400> i can get all my euqipment? - hmmm... $400 is kinda too little to get quality stuff... not to discourage you.. but perhaps you may need to budget at least $1000 for a 3 ft tank to make a good enough setup to last for sometime before you need to upgrade. any reliable lfs or farm u guys can intro - There are no reliable LFS around... trust me. You are better off surfing for info from the internet. i heard that nature aquarium selling equipment at cheap prices, izzit true? - dunno.

Black 'Donkey Dung' cukes (completely black, looks like black DUNG!) Tigertail cukes. (haven't seen any in LFS) Don't get the small colorful ones, they are pretty but poisonous. The black donkey dung cukes are great sand-stirrers... they eat bacteria in the sand and poop out nice clean sand! I love my black cuke!

Prevent further infection by using Seachem Reef Dip. It's iodine based... good for killing protozoans, bacteria...

Yeah I read that somewhere too, Robe!

As long as the river whence it came from izzn't sited next to a chemical plant! Actually, if you intend to use it for a DSB, particle size would be the concern. Is it as fine as #1 coral sand? I doubt if it is coral sand/chips/aragonite based.. it could be silica sand, or maybe crushed gravel... I dunno. Just be sure it doesn't leach anything into the water... basically be inert as possible.

Yeah... that is not a brain species... Blassos will grow well when conditions are good. I love them!