Achilles Tang

To clarify... massive water changes done in a hurry (esp saltmix) may induce shock and stress to SPS corals if the water parameters are drastically changed, esp. temperature & salinity. Its only done in an emergency eg, to remove toxins & poisons... but the corals may not be able to take it.

The diff between the effectiveness of a plenum and a DSB is: *tada*... none! You only have to spend a lot more time setting up a plenum and there's a risk of the layer collapsing and you get a.... *tada*... DSB! You probably have to sacrifice more tank depth for a plenum system too. IMO, why bother?

RTN can strip a colony bare in a minute... you will see the flesh literally peeling off and flying away from the white skeleton before your eyes.

STN = Slow Tissue Necrosis. As long as the SPS tissue is not flying off.... it could be just growth tips or maybe tissue recession.

If I was a TP cop... I wanna work for Italy!!! Lamborghini Gallardo

Hmmm... legalised racing... chasing street racers... and you don't even have to pull up ahead of them... you will always win!

About 2 inches. Saw a nice green prata there too!

OK... I can now add that massive flatworm deaths leading to toxin poisoning and a drop in water quality, combined with massive water changes and clam spawning will lead to RTN in corals.

SG Traffic Police has Evos?? Ever seen what the Japanese TP are driving?

I'm pretty ok about it... I was due to begin massive fragging anyway due to overgrowth... oh well... no cost recuperation now! ARRGH... is eAquanature coming in with the SPS cherries this weekend?? I'M OUT OF TOWN!!!!! ARRGGH!! Seeing cherries in the wild!!!! ARRRGGH!!

Having used a screw-cap for my old DIY FR design... the cons would be that tiny grains of media will cause difficulty in closing the cap... you get a lot of grinding sounds when that happens! So you will have to use a wet colour to wipe away any grains from the screw threads.... a little more leh-cheh.

The variables from this 'replacement time' reporting will be the feeding amounts/types of food/freshwater composition (topups)/levels in tapwater during saltmixing, which will affect the saturation rate. I think if you report on rate of reduction within a 24hour period, it'll do! Hmmm, the colour of the media looks like the 50% brown-coloured component in the Aquaconnect Contraphos, which is mixed with the black ferric oxide (Contraphos Konzentrat/Rowaphos)! Yeah... one more product to try try!

Its suitable for small tanks as it can't hold that much media. Haven't seen it yet but I believe one sponge is supposed to be sitting at the bottom? AT

Such orgasmic sounds, really embarassing when you hit the 'hot spot'!

No cam.

Clams are fine. They sure made a real mess of my tank with their orgy.

Hmmm, there is one skimmer at Bio-Ocean Aquarix using an airpump to force more air into the venturi valve to get better peformance because the thicker foam mixture. Generally what Eric said is true...you have to play around with the amount of air you can inject into a needlewheel pump and you have to see the impeller design too.

WOW!!! COOL!!!!

Crash? Nah.... just a big bout of doom.... not so serious that everything's gone. Actually, I'm taking it rather easy..... gonna be going for the long weekend.... dive trip! Next week onward's going to be exciting for me personally actually.... ! I'll be taking my time to restock some corals.

I've stopped playing Doom3 as I find my current very very outdated Geforce 2 card is stuttering along even at 1028 x 768 res and low detail. I'm in the waitlist for a Nvidia 6800 Ultra or GT.... I can't wait to run my games at 1280 x 1024 High Quality with 4xAA/16XAF!!!! Should be next week or the week after!! Going to cause a bomb though... about $800 plus!

Doom 3. Who's playing it now? I have never seen such an awesomely rendered game before!

Figured that the long anticipated official release of Doom 3 coincided with the mini-doom episode in my tank!

Clams are known to spawn when there's a drastic change in water conditions. In my case, its was what pushed things out of control. It was traumatic enough for my reef tank as it is. Oh well.... time to be VIP big spender customer again at LFS again! Oh... to get over this episode... I went out and bought myself a nice new Samsung 193P 19" LCD monitor.

Yesterday was a sad day. What started out as a flatworm eradication exercise has backfired badly. 3 to 6pm - manual siphoning of all visible flatworms. Rocks are cleaned of flatworms. Standby 20% new saltwater for water change and activated carbon. 6pm - administered Salifert Flatworm Exit (had to double-dosed with 8 bottles to wipe out very resistent flatworms as an earlier test showed that they required triple dosage to work). 6.02pm - flatworm by the hundreds started floating up. (hmm... expected) 6.03 - flatworms by the thousands started floating out from under the rocks. (hmmm.... they really hide well). 6.05 - flatworms by the hundreds of thousands started floating out (OMG... were they really that many?) 6.10 - flatworms by the thousands of thousands started floating. Water started turning orange as flatworms started dying. (OH SHIT!) 6.13 - placed 1 litre of carbon to absorb flatworm toxins. 6.15 - 80% of the flatworms are dead, 20% still moving around. (why are some still alive??) 6.18 - tank water very orange... skimmer has churned out 1 litres of orange juice already. Fishes are hiding. Fishes are all hiding. Noted that a lot of brittlestars and bristleworms are all immobilized & dead/dying. Suspect a lot of microlife are also dying as I see amphipods jerking about in the sandbed. (10% flatworms still moving around!!!) 6.20 - fishes are seen coming out, jerking in spasms. Immediate ###### out of dead flatworms flying on sandbed. 20% water change. Skimmer has churned out 2 litres of orange juice. (5% flatworms still moving around!!). 6.30 - water change complete... fishes started dying one by one. Another 20% water change done immediately. Skimmer has churned out 3 litres of orange juice. 6.40 - more fishes started dying. Suspected cucumber nuke. Fished out stunned tigertail seacuke. Couldn't find black sea cuke. Panic. Corals started to look bad as colours are disappearing... bleaching in progress (expected as per last flatworm killing exercise). Skimmer has churned out 4 litres of orange juice. (At least 20 very shrunken flatworms are still moving around) 7.00 to 9pm - water turning clearer from orange. (no more flatworms seen moving). Corals look bad. No more fish seen. Fished out at least 5 dead fishes which died with the mouths wide open. Can't find more dead bodies. Break for delayed dinner at in-laws at 9pm. 10pm - returned home. water turning murky white. Strange. Skimmer has churned out 5 litres of orange juice. 11pm - water turning even murkier. Looked closely. Saw millions of tiny dots in water. Checked for microbubbles from skimmer and return pump. Not the cause. Looked again. ALL MY CLAMS ARE SPAWNING!!! 11pm to 3am - CLAM SPAWNING non-stop, spewing clouds of eggs and sperm at regular intervals. Water is almost 70% opaque white. Another 20%water change. No effect. Gave up. Switched skimmer skimmate collection container to Coralife bucket as water bioload has now shot through the roof. Amazed at spawning episode. Half-amused at thought of harvesting loads of ultra-grade clams later on. Dead tired. Today morning - Tank water just as murky white as previous night. Skimmer has churned out a lot of dark organic sludge instead of orange stuff. Turned on my lights. Some corals have RTNed.... estimated 30% loss of corals. Acroporas mainly affected. Pocci, monti digi, stylo, some LPS all ok. Lobos are shrunken. Clams are fine too. A few chromises and two wrasses are the sole fish survivors. The rest are all dead. Water quality continues to drop as corals started losing more tissue as RTN spreads. 20% water change again today. Polyfilter added to aid in removal of toxins. More Seachem Prime added to cope with suspected ammonia surge. Tonight - lost another 50% of my acropora corals. Monitoring water quality as water is still murky... suspect tomorrow will be another bleak day as I discover my SPS corals are still RTNing. What happened: I killed the flatworms. Flatworm medication + flatworm toxins killed my fishes, and affected my corals. Water change affected my clams. Clam spawning made water condition worse. Flatworm toxins + dying livestock + clam spawning killed my corals. FACT: Good things take years to happen. Bad things happen very very quickly in reef tanks. Conclusion: I REALLY REALLY HATE FLATWORMS (100x more than marine velvet and 50x more than the monti-eating nudibranchs in my tank) Regrets: I should have removed my sea cukes prior to Salifert Flatworm Exit treatment but how was I to know they would have been affected that badly? Or was it just the flatworm toxins? Regrets: I should have killed the flatworms when they were first spotted some time ago instead of letting them breed into plague proportions. Regrets: I should have followed up a week later after the first flatworm killing episode with more medication instead of letting the survivors build enough immunity to resist this 2nd treatment exercise. Who knows if their toxins have gotten even more deadly? Conclusion: Beckett skimmers show their worth in situations like this. I have never seen so much skimmate being churned out so quickly before with other skimmers. Upside: probably all the monti-eating nudibranch parasites perished as well. Lesson to all: KILL FLATWORMS EARLY!!! FACT: AT's Reef will rise again!

So he went across the street to Budhha Bar, where he noted....