Achilles Tang

My contribution: 1.SPS require good quality water that is free of high dissolved nutrients. This can only be achieved with good skimming to remove them. Having nutrient-laden water affects the colouration and they tend to become brown because the zooxanthelia are absorbing the nutrients and are growing to the point of saturation. 2. Good water circulation is important for SPS. Turbulent as possible like surges that push divers left right up down. SPS corals tend to slime a lot and the layer of mucus that is over them can 'choke' them ie. affect light penetration, affect removal of wastes etc.

Dun tell me.... YOU HAVE FLATWORMS????????????!!!!!!!

Got this in my email, Any Malaysians who love Dr M, plz refrain from reading this!

Robe, I was thinking of getting 6 bulbs eventually. Confirmed -> 2 x 400 watt radiums for colouration. More or less confirmed -> 2 x 10k DE for the white look I like. To be confirmed -> 2 x 6500k iwasakis for max par. The sakis will be switched on when I at work for a couple of hours as I dislike the yellowish-green colour it gives but want it only for its coral-growth acceleration benefits. When I return home, I should be enjoying the 'white with a tinge of blue' look given by my 10k and radiums. Potentially, I could reduce my photoperiod to 8 hours instead of 10 or 12 if I blast high intensity for at least 3 to 4 hours. The only thing now is to decide the wattage for the 10k and 6500 sakis. Your opinion?

Iwasaki 20k white?? Can you show me of how white is white? I am thinking of 6500k sakis to complement 10ks and radiums.

how about before releasing the prawn into your tank, while still in the bag, give a guided tour of the tank! Gee, Tango, that has to be one of the funniest thing I heard.. hee hee!

Confirmed. Patrick is bringing in T5 units. They will be in the shops in March. Standby for more news. AT

Yeah... each MX70 pump is at least 6 to 7kg... urrgh! Luckily it's not BULKY! Dun know how you manage to convince your wife to help you carry 3 back... my wife already made a hell a lot of noise when she helped me collect my Korallin Kalkreactor with eheim pump and reactor media from my HK friend. I purposely kept quiet on the size and weight! So much weight and space that she said she could have used on shopping.... She had to tumpang her shopping stuff with her friend. Needless to say, all the naggings from her friend, she unloaded on me x 10! Like I said, I wish I have a private cargo plane... a lot of good cheap stuff!

Do have anything to break up the water surface? Powerhead?

yup. It's natural.

Some macroalgae are known to release stuff which could be toxic (not that serious but could affect a few corals) and could crash your tank or cause a nutrient overload. That is why using carbon and skimming is important to remove them.

Hmmm that's true... recommend putting in 1 inch every few days.

There is a limit you can close, too little air going in and the venturi doesn't work efficiently.

Dino, height is given above. Yazid, this skimmer can be placed in sump or outside sump. All this time, I had mine inside my sump. If you want to plump it externally also can... you just need to use plumbers tape on the external flow pipe. Ok guys, regarding the reserve price... will PM you now. AT

Dodo.... don't panic. The black one is the same exact one we eat during chinese dinners. When they say reef-safe cukes are toxic to fish, it may be other forms of warfare... ie. puking out their intestines which the fish will eat instead of them... and that is toxic to fish. Reef-safe cukes are only two species. Donkey dung and tiger-tails. Any other species like the sea apples (highly toxic) and the more colourful sea cukes are not guarantees as they may release toxins when stressed or when they die. Just get the right kinds and you will be safe. AT

The proper term is a union gate valve or a union ball valve. The unions are quick disconnects (and can even help retain water on one side provided you close the gate or ball valve. Diff between gate and ball. Ball valves can be instantly shut off with a quick turn, but hard to do precise tuning of flow. Gate valves can give very precise control of flow but is difficult to close completely instantly... requires many many turns.

Thick gunky skimmate from my H&S skimmer.

Put the shrimps into a container with the bag water, drop a bit away, and take some of the tank water and put it in the container. Do this a couple of times over 15 - 20 minutes, and the livestock will acclimatize to your salinity and PH levels. Oh.. temperature too. Why do this?... livestock already undergo a lot of stress during shipping, and imagine taken from the nice clean sea and placed in a bag, undergo a long journey where it endures an ammonia-filled bag with depressed PH levels, gets dumped into the LFS tanks (which may not be kept at optimum parameters) and then dumped into your tank which could be having a higher salinity, high PH and low temp.... Get the idea? System shock.

Yup.

Heheh.... I was gonna say you started the Cult of the Turtle over there... Anyway... I agree with the different theories on DSBs/plenums and their functions. I just want to clarify certain things before they get misunderstood. Especially if we (the more advanced hobbyists) don't speak up to clarify stuff. Anyway, debate is interesting, and so is thebait you put at the end of a hook.

Sinn, If you buy snails or shrimps from LFS and dump it straight into your tank, chances are they will drop to the bottom, in shock and be dead almost instantly. Trust me, it's a newbie mistake.

Oh I forgot... I bought it at Sealife for $650.

The wise resident turtle speaks! Let's terminate the debate and worship his royal baldness! You just joined the Hare Krishna sect didn't you?

Maybe the trend is shifting to expensive denitrators to keep nitrates at very low levels? I may seem to be a DSB proponent but in my early days, I was advised that 1" of sandbed was enough... struggled with high nitrates produced by my bioballs.... later on, I increased my sandbed size to 4", and it became low quickly enough to convince me that DSB work. Believe me, I have used up a huge amount of AZNO3, carbon and salt in the beginning and if I have come across DSBs in the beginning, I may have saved myself some serious cash. They are more pros than cons in DSBs! Why argue about a good thing? If it's time to change out the sandbed... change out the sandbed! Talking abt cash and crash... The question is: why do tank crash? Crash because of what? How do you define a crash? So many factors come into play ie. size of tank, feeding habits, maintenance, stocking levels, additives used, water changes, circulation, filtration methods etc etc. Pospeh.... tanks with shallow sandbeds, berlin method, dsbs have all been known to crash. Ron Shimek is coming up with a theory for his tank crashing by pinpointing heavy metal accumulation but have yet to prove it extensively. Remember, it was just one tank. Some people have been keeping DSBs for more than 7 years without crashing. Did you know that Ron suspected that it's heavy metals accumulated in sand AND live rock? He is telling us that we have to throw away our liverock and sand now after 3 years too! So what then? Keep bare tanks, corals lying on the glass bottom? AT

Mission control... all systems ready for launch. Activating booster rocket sequence #1, on my mark, FIRE!!!!!!!