Achilles Tang

Woah... how big is your tank again?? You'll be arrested by the Tang Police if you venture into RC with that! LOL!

Just to make my day... can you post a full pix of your sunken ship? I want to see if your motley crew onboard.

Tanzy, Morgan, AT, Spade, Spiderone, Bawater, Rumor.... not in order!

Like our protein skimmers?

The Professor should be easy to ID! And the Spider too!

Was gonna give a wisecrack but since you requested good clean advice.. Make it walk the plank! Shiver me timbers! Gee... you actually have a ship inside your reeftank? Where's the treasure chest of gold? Seriously... what you can do is to take a nice clean sharp razor blade and cut off the bysal threads that help the clam attach to the surface of your... ship... *chortle*... and then... it should be able to get free and *choke* abandon ship (pun intended). Be careful and not cut its foot or it'll be cursing you louder than Blackbeard's parrot(fish). Hahaha.... sorry... good mood today... we're gonna PARTY tomorrow!

Erhmm.... nudibranch and sea cukes are different species of inverts!

Arrgh... the photo doesn't have Abu in it!

I use the business end of my pincers to give it a death blow. The corpse will release its grip in the acro branches and fall out/be pulled out easily.

hi, guess you didn't read up on nudibranchs before buying. We don't encourage buying nudibranchs because of their specialized diet of corals, sponges and algae depending on species which very little info is found... so its hit and miss and mostly miss resulting in starvation. They have very short lives anyway... about a few weeks max. And they are toxic. So be careful or they may even wipe out your tank if they get grinded into bits by your powerheads. They are best left in the wild.

Hi seamonkee, I don't think you can find a natural predator for these nudibranchs easily in a reef tank. Manual extraction seems to be the only method. You may have to dedicate time to hunt them down with a big syringe to suck them up or use pincers.

Phytoplankton and zooplankton would be good food. These are filter feeders.

Hey, that's Tanzy's backyard!! You guys got conned into wasting time staring into that photo! LOL!!

Roger that! Don't confuse that with country regulations and laws... regulated by your favourite local wildlife control government dept called AVA (Agri-food and Veterinary Authority). CITIES is Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

You know what... I need to know if its illegal to place this in front of a car, right above the fender...

Ahem... AT - blue tort.

I classify you as a ultra-cynic then. Actually, yeah... that's what the theme of the Matrix is about. We humans are so arrogant that we actually destroying the earth for our own pleasures. Agree wholeheartedly with you on this! Just to clarify that you meant commercial sales from sponsors and permitted people only? Gee... CITIES only covers commercial trade between countries, not in-country sales and certainly not between private individuals like hobbyists! Sale of weaponry on the other hand, is regulated by the respective citizen's country laws. In Singapore... you'll be in jail faster than you can say: Char Kway Teow.... in gun-loving countries like the US, it's probably ok if you have the proper papers. Corals are protected, not illegal. There's a difference like Marijuana is illegal, cigarettes are restricted/taxed/controlled.

Oh these guys... i had them before... yeah they love to attack zoos. I don't recommend squashing them with your finger. One reefer in RC did just that and ended up in hospital ICU because of toxicity reaction.

If he dares to cut me, I will go to my kitchen and show him my chopper scapel!

It's a mimic tang, Acanthurus pyroferus. Also known as chocolate tang. This extract taken from: http://www.exotictropicals.com/encyclo/mar...s/chocolate.php Pictured above are juvenile specimens of the mimic tang. It appears the tang on the top is mimicking C. flavissimus (Lemonpeel angel) while the tang on the bottom is mimicking C. vroliki (Pearl-scaled angel) or Eiblii's angelfish. When they get older their dorsal, ######, and tail fins become outlined in dark blue or black while the body changes from yellow to orange to light blue. These fish mimic the pygmy angelfish like Centropyge eiblii, C. flavissimus, or C. vroliki, when they are young. Presumably they mimic these angelfish because they have a better defense against predators than the tang until the spines on their caudal peduncle matures. -------------- Actually, it's not that blue. It's more of a nice slate grey colour under bright yellow light and appears blue when only the Radiums are on. It looks more beautiful in photographs which is really amazing... I did no colour touchup or editing... what you see is what you get. My adult Chocolate Mimic Tang is very friendly and will swim around my hand when I am arranging my rocks or corals. Juvenile mimic tangs are quite ugly but become beautiful later! I found the liveaquaria link here

I think plenums are just DSBs that are set up the harder way! They are supposed to function the same way with little or no difference in effectiveness. Most people just tell you to setup a DSB right away and don't worry about setting up the plenum plate and then worry about the plenum plate collapsing later... which gives you... a shorter DSB!

oops. ok.. trust Tanzy to set political leanings right! So...out of curiosity... where do u stand with regards to this issue?

Bio = Biological Load = The demand for performance made on a system. Put the two together and you have your answer.

The issue has gone beyond Day (unlucky chap)... it's encompasses anyone who collects/harvests wild livestock for commercial sale. I know that there are a few guys here in SRC who are always offering livestock for sale. As this leads us to the issue of protecting the environment from uncontrolled unsupervised collection, we are even more encouraged to NOT purchase from them even though it may be a lot cheaper to do so than buy from LFS (which or may not have gotten livestock that are collected within CITIES regulations: which is another issue altogether). This boils down to personal conviction that it all starts with one person: ME! If each person says NO... I won't participate or encourage 'illegal' trading or trading of livestock which are suspiciously/obviously harvested without permission from the authorities... then where there is zero demand, supply will stop. The more cynical amongst us will say: What's the big deal, the world is going to end anyway. Global warming will wipe out coral reefs in a decade. The waters around our country is so polluted that the corals will die anyway. They have a better life in my tank. The heck-care ones will say: I don't give two hoots about coral reef preservations. It's all about the money. I pay the money and I get the goods. The cheaper the better. Free is best. I'm happiest when I get things at a bargain. The apathetic ones will say: So what if they are illegally obtained? How are we to know? It's so hard to demand proof from collector to wholesaler to middleman to retailer before buying anyway. As long as the LFS brings in in, they should know what they are doing anyway. I am just a consumer. The righteous ones will say: To play my part in the worldwide conservation movement in protecting the environment and providing sustainable resources, I will support CITIES and its laws and will only support trade with reputable retailers who get their corals from reputable sources who harvest livestock according to conservation guidelines. The more ultra conservative will say: We shouldn't be in this hobby at all. We are killers & pillagers of the earth. We are hypocrites! Save the earth... give up the hobby! I think most of us fall somewhere between the ultra right and left wing... the time now is to ask ourselves that question: where do I stand personally and what can I do about this?

hmm... so it doesn't burn as white with a tinge of blue like the blueline ballast does to Radiums?