Achilles Tang

holothuroid is sea cucumber (for those who are scratching their heads right now)... Anyway, the only reef-safe holo.. ur... sea cuke, is the donkey dung sea cucumber (totally black) or the tigertail sea cucumber (seldom seen in LFS). In most of my dives, you can find the black sea cucumbers on sandy bottoms... but they do not grow as big as the more colourful ones... which can be as thick as from your middle fingers of both hands joined with both thumbs... as thicker than a firehose... In nature, the more colourful the creature, usually the more toxic it is... What colour was yours, Coelacanth? Btw, I have never seen a living coelacanth yet... and probably never will... heh heh!

I can ask for you... what model?

I know their distributor in Singapore... they have not found local retailers for this line of pumps yet... I got the sample pumps from their US principal when they were in town. They are bringing in some more new stock in a couple of weeks... why? Are you interested in them?

2nd on the top of the list of hard to keep corals are the genus Goniopora (flowerpot coral). They are imported in huge quantities by the LFS and with their attractive polyps coming out from their round football-like stony skeleton, looking like a Medusa (mythical woman with snakes for hair) and being relatively cheap...Gonios are commonly bought. They last for up to 6 months before mysteriously dying. First you will see the polyps retract and then you see brown patches and tissue decay... and before long, you have a round football in your sandbed... all covered in nuisance algae! They are believed to perish due to slow starvation before usually succumbing to brown jelly infection. In my dives, I can see them waving around happily in murky sandy bottoms. I will post a shot in the underwater photography section... They seem to thrive in such environments where the sediments and DOM (dissolved organic matter) are very high... such conditions are unrealistic in our home aquariums as other coral species, especially acropora, will perish quickly. Their main diet is phytoplankton and very small zooplankton and aquarists who provide these foods can see them lasting from one year upwards... I used to have a beautiful red goniopora... it lasted almost a year before it perished slowly... and back then I wasn't feeding much planktonic food. If you *MUST* buy a goni, do what you can to feed this species with suitable foods, or keep a 'dirty' tank where they can survive... heh! If you can't, don't buy them. Leave them in the sea for others to appreciate!

Wow! Hong, you're pretty well-read for a young man... well done, well done indeed! I see a budding marine biologist in you! Heh! Top of the list are the dendronephythya and some scleronephythya species (frequently called carnation corals or cauliflower soft corals), which are non-photosynthetic filter feeders. You'll need to frequently feed it phytoplankton EVERYDAY to keep it alive (but even that is not a guarantee) and maintain good water quality. They are normally kept upside down as in nature they would be found under ledges and overhangs... out of light and they do need a lot of current to bring them planktonic food, preferably by surge... For the aquarist who don't have the discipline or the means to provide tiny plankton on a daily basis... you can expect this coral to last for not more than a few days or a couple of weeks max before they start dying... shrinking every day before collapsing into a pile of mush and little spines.. and could potentially affect your tank as they are known to have chemical defenses against other corals. They are in my opinion, one of the most beautiful soft corals in the world (they come in orange, pink, red, yellow, purple.... really amazing to see them in huge garden like patches when I go diving!) but in the history of reef-keeping... the most impossible to keep. So... don't buy a carnation or cauliflower coral. It's a waste of your money for a few days of admiring a rapidly shrinking mush.... If you see a LFS bringing in HUGE quantities, tell them not to bother ordering them... as people who buy them will never sustain them... not even the LFS themselves). Achilles...

What if you use the film coating used on car windshields to reflect heat? Ahh.. what's it called... I forgot!! Apply it on ordinary glass and it should work right?

This is someone who I have been in contact with in the States... and this is his tank! It's based on his tank that I had my inspiration for external overflow boxes... but luckily I didn't make my tank so deep... or I'll have to snorkel everytime I touch the sandbed!

Me loh!! I am culturing phytoplankton and rotifers... didn't you read about it? Just give me 2 more weeks to get my worktable up and my culturing station running again coz my fishroom is so messy now.... my father-in-law is helping me with my electricals now...

I took my basic with 51 Scuba... greg's a good teacher. We went to Dayang, next to Pulau Aur. I took my advanced inclusive of night dives with my uncle-in-law who is a Dive Instructor at Kota Kinabalu. Try to find a buddy to go with you... at least you can count on each other to buddy with u/w... rather than a complete stranger.. who in my experience can be a real blessing or real pain (depending on the character with the guts and brains to learn and practise what he/she learnt).... your life will depend on it.... of course... if you get a babe to be your dive buddy, it will be a good opp for you to give her remedial lessons... heh! Kenna one gorilla with peanut brain and scared of the water and totally 'gabra'.... you will have one hell of a bad experience! Unless you turn out to be the gorilla to your dive buddy...

I haven't heard of anyone chilling water for liverock yet! So it should be ok at that temp. Corals which do not need strong lighting includes mushrooms, colt corals, leathers, sun corals and non-photosynthetic gorgonians or sea fans. They find their nutrition by feeding... so you have to study and provide whatever their diet requires to maintain them. 8 Gallon tank? Wow... that's a nano! I think whoever wants to setup a nano is either very brave or very foolhardy... heh! The parameters are so unstable with so little room for error that it will take a lot of monitoring and immediate action or the tank will crash... temp, PH, dKH, pollution, calcium levels etc... best of luck!

I love the Hed Kandi series... disco, beach house, winter chill, Anyone else listens to Mandalay, Blue Six, Chicane, Groove Armada, Morcheeba? Chilling out now....

Happy Sat back to you! Shouldn't you be hitting the books? You have a major exam round the corner right? Go study hard first! You won't regret it when you can start earning big money later for your hobbies! Heh! Was supposed to go down to Bar None to hang out with some gal friends!

**OUT OF TOPIC!! ** This thread is about chillers for FOWLR! Not feeding worms to mandarins! Someone open another thread on this!

Perhaps this topic should be better discussed in a new thread. Jellyfish and fragging don't go together.. squish! Oh... when I was in Bali, I saw a mahjong table size jellyfish stranded on the beach... it was at least 15 cm thick and was like rubber! I threw a branch at it with all my strength and it bounced a few metres in the air... and there were not one or two but about at least 6 beached! It was freaky man! Should have taken a pix!

Sad to sad the acro was one of the first to bleach over my chiller episode. Sigh... my heart still hurts. The easiest to frag is gorgonians... just gel-glue the exposed part into a piece of rock.. and you have a new gorgo! There are others fragging.... come out all of you and admit your crime! Heh heh!

I popped back the old starters and they work! Seems like the change of bulbs work.. so its the bulbs... Well... I can take my time to ask around when I visit electrical hardware shops.

Morgan, I bought it for around $73 from PetMart. Hong, Thanks for highlighting that.. amended the " to '. Heh! The big aqua tongs are not jagged compared to the small tongs... I only use the small tongs nowadays to remove small stuff. The aqua tongs are for landscaping purposes.

Haha... I'll tell Kenny and have you banned from stepping in to his shop! j/k lah!

Hong, I doubt if the pump will fail. It's Little Giant... well known in the states for quality pumps... it's definitely better than Ocean Free... hahaha! So I won't worry about removing my rocks... anyway, the reeftec unit will be midway so like its not right at the bottom. Well... corals are sensitive creatures... so it could happen to anyone whose chiller didn't come on due to carelessness or equipment failure. Chanbi, The pump is heavy and measures 88mm length (seen sideways) and 70mm wide. The height is around 80mm. Comes with a long cord: 12ft cord! The reeftec is much bigger: 140mm length (seen sideways, inclusive of outlet and ledge to even out the vertical alignment), 82mm wide and 153 excluding the bracket. The bracket is 212mm long. Hope you can visualise it... here are some photos taken off the Reeftec site. I have resized it to be almost actual size so you can better visualise it.

I use this for my marine tank and it helps me move large pieces of liverock and corals with ease. The grip allows precise pressure so you don't damage corals with too strong a grip. I have held off the purchase of this large tongs and had actually damaged the tissue off my sun corals when the small tongs that I have used for years couldn't maintain a grip on them. Highly recommended and vital piece of equipment for those with deep tanks.. eg. 2'+ depth.

I think putting cleaner shrimps might be cheaper and more humane than buying cleaner fish.... Both serve the same purpose but the cleaner shrimp will be with you for many many months as compared to the life of the sensitive cleaner fish which can be measured in weeks or days in our marine tanks. We should stop the demand for cleaner fish as they are clearly unsuitable for captive life. Spread the word.

Because my fishes and shrimps are extremely greedy during feeding time... there is no way any food, even if placed directly on the polyps of my sun coral, will be left there for even 2 seconds! What I have resorted to do is to take out my sun corals, and place them into a shallow container and put my mysis shrimp cubes in them and swirl around till all the polyps have grabbed one to a piece of mysis... when they are done feeding... I put them back into the tank. A little troublesome but I had no choice! Oh... on a little note... there was once when I forgot to put them back into the tank and went to bed... next morning, the container was full of mysis shrimp again... they have vomitted everything out and the water was very polluted! They must have been very unhappy and there was a bit of die-off of some polyps.. I was kicking myself so hard because my sun corals were beautiful!

Yes, the residue is similar to plasticine. Can be washed off.. but you still get the icky feeling... Alternatively, you can try Aquapatch wet surface epoxy putty from Wessbond from hardware shops. Only $5 for a small stick. Exactly the same as holdfast, but of course the assurance that its reef-safe is not mentioned. I bought my Holdfast from Sealife.

Here is a pix of a Kreisel tank. Kreisels (German for carousel) are tanks where water is directed in a circular current. The current is created by a series of water pumps within each kreisel. The pumps direct water in the same direction around the periphery of the tank moving jellies in a gentle circular fashion. Looking in from the gallery, jellies will appear to fall from the top of the viewing window and slowly disappear, where they will then catch the current and travel back to the top. Looks like a lot of work doesn't it?

Hey win13, thanks for the compliment about this site! I guess the Singapore Reef Club should be able to fulfil its objectives of being THE leading and trusted source of reef-related & reef-keeping info in Singapore. Thanks for the contribution of all its members here! BTW, if you really want to investigate jellyfish, search the web. I do have an interest in jellyfish but I do not have the time or resources to build a Kreisel tank for them. Ahh.... I can see you are gonna ask about the Kreisel tank... go forth and search.... and ye shall find... and if you really can't find the info... I'll be here to help!