Achilles Tang

Just remember this tip. Higher wattage MHs can penetrate a lot deeper than low wattage ones. You will get much better growth and colouration due to the increased intensity and UV. Using low wattage MHs mean you have to place ALL your acros high up.

Hey congrats!!

I use a very large syringe. You get more control.

Wow! Clams spawning! How rare! Congrats on witnessing this! The last time I saw this was at Morgan's place after we did a massive water change of NSW after a flatworm nuking exercise more than a year ago! Your green maxima looks exactly like the one I have!

Very beautiful dendro you got there pal... but you know it won't survive long-term in any tank!

I am a Dory too! LOL!!

From my experience, my alpha males are slowly losing the very strong colours they once had. Anthias in captivity are known for losing bright colouration as they do not have to stand out in a crowd like in the wild, and it has to do with their diet too. Cyclop-eze will help a lot with this aspect.

Define 'wrong things'. Is expressing doubt in the claims of a product a crime? If I don't see coralline algae growing after using a Marc Weiss product that claims it will, can't the user express his disappointment and give a poor review? That clears everyone's doubt that you're related to the product somehow then. Personally, there are some products that I endorse and promote to other reefers to try. I also go through a process of learning what makes it work and what's effective about it compared to other options. I then give my own personal observations coupled with information on what the manufacturer claims. However, I won't 'defend' a product like how you would. It's quite unique for something that's hard to quantify or qualify. A bit like how burning essential oils is responsible for clearing my headaches. Or is it because I am relaxed enough so it goes away? Yes, we both use calcium reactors and the occasional use of calcium chloride, kalkwasser, sodium bicarbonate to manage our tank's calcium needs. I don't know what Tanzy's studying exactly but I know for a fact that his career path will see him making drugs (legal of course) and bringing him loads of money in the future. He is studying to be a chemist or pharmacist and that makes him far more qualified to expound on chemistry issues. He also helps in his dad's pharmaceutics company (oops Tanzy... confidential info?) Funny that you say it but are you comparing yourself to him because this debate is about a product that has YOU and HIM talking about the qualities of a product and dissecting how it works. I take my hat off to him because this guy never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge and experiences. And I am not saying that because his my best chum or something. Or that he is a mod. Theoretical knowledge aside, he has been reefkeeping for some time too, keeping acroporas too. IMO, his grasp of advanced reefkeeping is not that of a newbie. He has practical knowledge. How do you want to quantify your practical and theoretical knowledge with him? Compare tank photos? I give a written test on reef chemistry to the both of you? See who has invested in a better setup? Gee... Err, yes. Which is why many of us don't even dose trace elements anymore once we understand their 'importance' in the grand scheme of things. Err... tanzy.. take it away. A newbie reefer will probably buy every product that promises miracles to try out. I know what it's like because I was once was. An experienced reefer will know what DOESN'T need to be bought. What DOESN'T work as claimed and most importantly, KNOW why it doesn't WORK or how it DOES WORK. What has instructions on how to dose got to do with believing what the product says it does?? QUOTE "You don't have to use a product to know if it works or not." I loved the hokkien mee at the coffee shop until i discovered a cockroach inside. I tell everyone I know to be careful about that store. To date, my wife will never buy from that store again. The mee is still delicious. Okie, I will ignore my sixth sense and eat the cockroach mee. Seriously man, your logic is flawed. You want to wait till your reef tank crashes before you deduce a product sucks? Have you ever heard of placebos and snake oil? It doesn't just apply to reef products. I still laugh at my wife's purchase of the Osim fat reducing gadget with the sticky pads to help trim an inch more off her tiny waist already. It's our concern because there are some things as consumer rights and unlucky for many of us, we don't have consumer protection laws like the USA because there are many products that I have bought in my life that don't work as advertised! Surely, if the company can prove beyond a doubt that the product WORKS 100% as claimed and the consumer's claim is baseless. A thousand reefers and myself are still waiting for a lawyer's letter from the people who created Marinesnow and Combisan because we tell others what we know about the almost zero nutritional values of these products. Heck, I even know the distributor of the products here in Singapore and he was in my house yesterday! He should have killed me there and then! I don't even know why I'm drawn into this healthy debate... I must be too free! See you later, dude!!

I'm gonna edit your thread to make the quotes stand apart. It's quite confusing to read. Hope you don't mind.

Hmmm... you have a rig too? My whole lighting setup is on a rail to slide away from my tank and can be adjusted up and down too. You ought to try the Diamond Lumenarc II reflectors for your single 400MH, they are awesome but too big for even my tank. I'm using spiderlight reflectors too.

I saw your recent photos.. they should be males. The most brilliant ones are the alphas. Take a look at my dive photos of them in the wild. The colours are far out! My Sipadan dive trip photos.

You can't use saltwater for evaporation top-up. Well, as long as you keep the saltwater with enough air/water oxygen diffusion, it should be fine. Just make sure that there are no stuff it in that will rot.

Nope, he's from the UK.

A bit slow lah you! This has been out in SRC for some weeks already!

Wow! 4 ft wide. Would like to see your lighting config to cover that amount of width!

Come on marinebetta, don't kid yourself. Even if I gave you one now, you won't set it up till next year!

Man... how big is your tank?

Funny, Flubby, funny. I don't have to eat flatworms, nudibranchs and mandarin fishes to know that they are bad-tasting or toxic right? *knocks flubby on the head with a frozen block of cyclop-eze* HINT!!!

Who cares? Add in lemon juice if you want.

Nope. That doesn't give us modern reefers the right to be arrogant. And it also doesn't give 'old school' reefers the right to think they know better too. They can spend a decade still struggling to get a reef tank in a stable condition with archaic methods but a reefer these days can setup an awesome tank within a year. What's happening here? Seniority doesn't mean anything these days. The middle-aged Manager sitting at the head of his section may probably feel a lot more important & experienced than the new fresh-grad managers under him who knows how to use the latest software to generate spreadsheets and churn out statistics in an hour. When it comes to work applications, the old manager may not even know how to turn on a computer or read emails! He can't apply his old work skills during his younger days in today's hectic and modern pace UNLESS he learns FAST how to USE and APPLY today's tech and know-how. When the GM comes up to him and asks for something immediately and no one's around to run the figures for him, tell me how big will his sweat droplets will be! I do fear about the future because you have primary school kids these days who can program a turnkey application and I sometimes don't even know how to fix codes to align an image properly! Knowledge is THE key to success, not just in reefkeeping.

I used to get free samples of Korallin S-plus from my HK Korallin distributor friend and I don't recall any visible results, negative or positive. I tried other trace elements solutions and again, I see no diff too. I personally think that dosing of trace elements overated. Heck, sometimes, I don't even dose the extra trace elements packet included in Coralife salt! I just monitor the more important calcium, alk, ph parameters. Magnesium, iodide, strontium occasionally or it can be even neglected for long periods. I don't sweat the small stuff. But since the topic is more about two-part calcium additives. It's an easy solution for those with small tanks. But because every tank is different... Calcium, alkalinity and PH may drop at different rates, using a two-part may still not address how to fix too much of an imbalance. You may still have to get seperate calcium and alkalinity additives to correct any imbalances.

I look forward to logical debates, so, everyone, please contribute your point of views! But pls your check in your emotions at the door. Heated debates are fine as long as no rudeness or hostility is allowed to break the peace.

Nope. Nothing eats cyano. It tastes bad.

Don't dilute the vinegar... it's already very diluted acid!! Just run it pure!

What's there to say? The advances in this hobby for the last couple years has been nothing short of amazing! Example: Today, keeping of acropora corals and growing them is so much easier compared to a decade ago! You can credit it to the IT age, where speed and ease of communication and information sharing has made learning so much easier. The leaps and bounds in research and engineering of equipment has benefited the industry too. If you want me to point out the major gap between the last generation and us, is that they have no access to such updated information or don't know how to harness technology like we do. Ask a youngster reefer about the nitrogen cycle and he can rattle off the differences in aerobic and anaerobic bacteria's functions and what kind of environment they thrive in eg. different layers of a DSB. Ask an 'old folk' (no offense) and he'll probably give you a blank stare and say 'bacteria is bacteria and bioballs can grow bacteria" and "I know because my father taught me that". Anyway, we'll probably have some young punks a couple of years down the road trying to teach us some new fuddy duddy method and calling us 'old goats'! It's amazing how much smarter mankind is today. Today, we have sent probes to Mars, tomorrow we'll develop technology to have a reef tank in zero-grav!