Achilles Tang

You can't force clownfishes to take up residence in anemones. In reef tanks, they may be hosted by torch corals, brain corals or even a piece of liverock and the clownfishes will totally ignore the anemones nearby. Strange but true. It's not automatic by nature and the relationship may also be determined by species. Some anemones eat fishes including clownfishes, especially if their body slime are not adapted to adjust to the stinging cells of the anemone. You will never see a tube anemone host a clownfish!

Yeah, it does look a little odd seeing people smell acropora like durians but its a key indication of coral health when sometimes lighting conditions do not allow you to see if the coral has began to RTN or have minor tissue recession etc. Stinky SPS is confirmed rotting flesh. Sweet smelling ones will probably see RTN happening in due time... this is from my personal experience. AT

You have to overdose to compensate for the many nooks and crannies that the flatworms hide in... some may not get the full dose of the medication to kill them and they will come back again, stronger than before. After about 5 days after the first treatment, you have to dose again to wipe out any remainders. I hate flatworms!!

Live rotifers are excellent zooplankton food for SPS corals.

Thanks for sharing! I avoid that website because it will increase my frustration levels... hahahaa!!!!

Lightningstrike... on the contrary, a healthy SPS should have have little smell. IME, the strong sweet smell is also a sign of unhealthy SPS, similar to the stinky smell. Don't know if fellow SPS reefers agree with me on this. Anyway, this thread has gone off topic at least twice... so let's not talk about polyp extensions here except in a new thread about it? Thanks! AT

Hmmm... I don't know how necessary it is to delete the feature showing the history/posting rate of everyone. Is it really necessary to evaluate how 'senior' the member is and how many posts he has made to see how he conducts himself as a person or to see his motive or to see his contributions? Looking at how many posts he/she has made is well known to be a poor guage of how we should respond to that person as he/she can make 5 posts of valuable/helpful or he/she can make 10,000 posts of pure rubbish. Why should these be the gauge of a person and what does it have to do with how we choose to respond to them? For example, there are really senior reefers like Morgan who is a man of few words and we have many chatterboxes who are nice people too. If we all got along well with one another and know how to be nice, unselfish and helpful, looking at number of posts/signed up date... are all moot points. This is my opinion and you are free to comment.

Ahh.... I see now why certain things are not meant to have fallen through with that mag & SRC. Whew! It's fate!! I had a friend who used to work there, quit within a few weeks. And he didn't return the photo of my tank yet!

Roger, Thank you for your words of support & good suggestions towards building a better community but can I request that you also control your tone a little also? Thanks!!! AT

Based on feedback, I have deleted the last two threads by Acroporidae and Reefaholic to keep the thread on topic and due to certain implied words that are worded to cause more inflammatory backlash. Apologies to all. Acroporidae and Reefaholic, your remarks have certainly been insightful but I recommend you contact me via PM if you have any further suggestions on how to make SRC a better place.

What's the root? Please expound on this, dear Flubby... or we'll be forever lost in the proverbial desert. We all already know what caused the eventual decline of the SRC community and now we have to find solutions to our problems.

STN = Slow Tissue Necrosis RTN = Rapid Tissue Necrosis Tissue Necrosis means that the living tissue is sloughed off the coral skeleton and it is triggered by tremendous stress brought upon by diseases, drastic enviromental change or the other many factors. The rate usually is either slow or rapid.. hence the terms used. It usually refers to SPS corals. It is different from tissue recession where the living tissue slowly recedes away as a slow die-off.... usually as a result of poor lighting underneath the coral or poor water circulation. Fragging corals usually is advisable to save whatever remains of a coral. When RTN is spotted on the tips of a few of the branches, you must break them off away from the main body to save the body. When the base is RTNing.. you can frag the branches and discard the base. The frags can be saved to grow into new colonies. AT

For starters, I propose the nomination of a few more moderators to help lighten the load of running of SRC. What sayeth the helpful people?

Now that the jokes are over and we know who are seriously keen on helping to do something for SRC, lets proceed on, shall we? Any more comments that are still obviously posted to attack me will be deleted as I have mentioned a few times to PM me or to meet up with me to discuss the error of my ways. From now onwards... we talk about progress and solutions and not about blame and fault-finding. Most of us are matured enough to know where the priority lies. If you can't contribute towards the reefkeeping community, just stay out of this serious discussion. I seriously think that SRC is not the place for some people and there is no clause binding them to stay here. Kindly PM me to delete your accounts if you feel you need this symbolic gesture. AT

Apologies to all for ranting. I have to learn how to be more emotionally detached when I run a board like this.

Enough already. Anyone who wishes to criticize me on my exclusive faults can do so via PM or speak to me face to face. I like to meet people who have the guts to speak up to my face and find that its the fastest way to spot the sincerity and to thresh out any problems. I repeat... this thread is NOT about me UNLESS you are saying that I am 100% responsible for how everyone behaves, thinks and interact in SRC. I am not a controller over robots nor am I a hypnotist who can manipulate people's emotions nor am I able to force anyone to do what they don't like to do. SRC is NOT about the way I make the rules, how I enforce it nor my interaction with members, nor my business, nor my personal life. No one here feeds me and I am not obligated to anyone in any big way. I have far more better things to do in life than to run an organization that gives me more trouble than anyone will believe. I repeat: SRC is about YOU and the guys around YOU who form PART of the COMMUNITY and NOT JUST ONLY ABOUT YOU. There are problems to solve and there are solutions to find. We are here in this thread to discuss and to find answers. CONCENTRATE, people, CONCENTRATE!!!

First, dun call me boss, I don't like it and I don't know you at all. 2ndly, thank you for all your negative feedback on pointing out other people's failings as it gives extremely insightful information on your character and how you think and reminds me that I have to please the minority who have not been coddled well enough by me to like me and my style of running my own forum. 3rdly, kindly put your energies now into proposing what YOU can do as an individual to make this community a BETTER, FRIENDLIER place where people do not need the Administrator to intervene in problems caused by people who don't know how to make this a better friendlier place. I have said many times already to focus on solutions... can you comply please. Thank you.

You really really want to open up a can of worms? Five months you are here, posting mainly in sales/pasar malam forum and you complain that you made no friends but but instead made quite a few people ticked off and now you'll complaining EXACTLY what Acroporidae did? I favour Bwilly because he is a customer??? What a joke... Bwilly is one who speaks his mind out but even he has the decency to tick me off in private over the way I SEEMED to favour you in THAT tiff you had with him!! And FYI, Bwilly was never a customer of mine till recently... way long after your run-in with him over your rudeness about how you treated a fellow SRC member who felt you wasted his time by providing wrong information on an item you were selling. BOTH of you were warned by me because you two started a flame war. It was nothing more than that because I didn't take sides... please read this thread again... I have been MORE than gracious and I don't think YOU if YOU are the moderator would have been so nice. What happened? You and Bwilly started a flame war in another thread and I was forced to issue you both a warning to make you both stop. Did I suspend your account? I have every right to but I did not. You BROKE my rules in my forum. I suggest you read this topic title all over again... and consider if you're part of the problem now or you're the solution to all our problems. AT

Reefaholic, Are you sure you want to open up a can of worms? I'm curious.

"I have to stop eating at my in-laws' place" he thought... "I keep getting hallucinations!!".... what a powerful skimmer he thought... to be able to skim out fishes...!!

I think from the few postings that have been made by a few of you.... the community knows that there are problems, and that things have declined. It's not just a question of entirely the (mis)management of SRC but also how individuals interact with each other and how they contribute TOWARDS the community that makes SRC what it is today. We all play a part. Respect must be given, boundaries must be drawn and not crossed. Expectations have to be realistic. So can we look past the misgivings and look at the positives and restore the goodwill? I think I have dwelt upon the negatives of our community so much that I have forgotten the good things that have happened within SRC! It is appropriate that I should mention them and perhaps bring a smile to all who remembers these! 1. We have risen up as a club to successfully fight against the negative outcomes of 'Finding Nemo', the subsequent marine craze and countered the mass media that has helped propagate wrong & misleading information provided by some LFS. The most rewarding part was that we have highlighted back to the public the importance of responsible reefkeeping via the same mass media and even got a LFS to see the error of its ways through gentle persuasion and member visits. (WE DID AN ENORMOUS GOOD!!!) 2. We have seen occasions where members needed help for their tank problems and many of us came forward to help willingly, to dirty our hands and share the work load... ie. flatworm killing exercise, tank crash resetting, loan of equipment to those who needed help. (What a bunch of great people!) 3. We have members offering rides to those without wheels for LFS visits. (You guys have our deepest gratitudes!). 4. We have housevisits where we open our doors to sharing with total strangers our homes and reef tanks to gain valuable insights (and most importantly, made new friendships). 5. We have rallied together unselfishly at events like Aquarama to promote responsible reefkeeping to total strangers who were newbies to the marine hobby (its all teamwork!). 6. We have promoted the love of the marine environment (look at the growing number of divers in our midst!). 7. Reefkeeping has become so much more affordable and easier with the commercial offers made here in SRC! The information platform here has benefited the LFS industry tremendously, and raised awareness that people's expectations on good service, good livestock and feedback is vital for them..... and thus benefitting EVERYONE! 8. We ALL learnt a great deal from one another online! Each other's experience, each other's tips and advice, each other's guidance!! (No book or LFS advice can beat this!!) I don't know what other great things have happened in SRC that has benefitted you that I missed out but remembering all these things has reminded me the GOOD that our personal unselfish contributions have rendered to the community!! I think we have just forgotten the silver lining when dark clouds loom.... perhaps we have been so bored with inactivity that we turn on ourselves... perhaps it is time to come together for a common cause? I think we have spent enough time talking about what went wrong already and its now time to talk about for a CHANGE to happen. So shall we rally ourselves together again as a people united by our love for the marine hobby (yeah yeah... national day's coming and all that but I'm not trying to be corny), put aside all the bad things and make a decision to start anew... start afresh... and to think about it... come September, in a month's time... we celebrate our 2nd Anniversary!!! WE HAVE TO REVIVE THE OLD SRC SPIRIT!!!!!! What sayeth thou???!!!

Alright everybody, please lay off Acroporidae. He seems to have some personal issues with me that I feel will distract from the subject matter and we should settle this via PM.

It's a probe that is in my main tank (and not my sump for obvious reasons that if my main returns should fail) attached to a thermostat that monitors the main tank's temperature. If it hits 29C, it cuts off power to my MHs automatically. When the temperature drops back below 29C, the MHs are allowed to come back on. My water temperature can hits 29C no probs with the windows all closed, my chiller blasting hot air into the room, my room door is closed and the fan over the tank switched off and all the pumps running. It is absolutely crucial that my chiller functions. Without it... and without this 'thermal protection' installed, it is guaranteed that my lights would 'cook' my tank. It has happened to me at least 3 times before (the overheating causing a tank crash) and to date, it has saved me twice when I accidentally forgot to switch my chiller pump on after turning off all water circulation to my tank for viewing/photography purposes. Human error will always be there... but with this installed, I cut down on the probability by almost 99% (the remaining 1% being the probe/thermostat failing to do its job).

My condolences. I wish I could have helped. I am only 5 minutes walking distance away from where you are. Oh well, a setback that doesn't kill you only makes you stronger! You'll be back!

Happy Birthday!! Your tooth all polished up nice and shiny?