Achilles Tang

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Subject: FW: Best ###### Joke! ha >Three girls all worked in the same office with the same female boss. Each >day, they noticed the boss left work early. > >One day, the girls decided that, when the boss left, they would leave right >behind her. After all, she never called or came back to work, so how would >she know they went home early? > >The brunette was thrilled to be home early. She did a little gardening, >spent playtime with her son, and went to bed early. > >The redhead was elated to be able to get in a quick workout at the spa >before meeting a dinner date. > >The ###### was happy to get home early and surprise her husband, but when >she got to her bedroom, she heard a muffled noise from inside. Slowly and >quietly, she cracked open the door and was mortified to see her husband in >bed with her boss! > >Gently, she closed the door and crept out of her house. > >The next day, at their coffee break, the brunette and redhead planned to >leave early again, and they asked the ###### if she was going to go with >them. > >"No way," the ###### exclaimed. "I almost got caught yesterday!"

Update: New skimmer is hooked up to my tank/sump circuit and running for two days. Going skimmerless for almost a month as an experiment shows poor results as I had to drastically reduce feeding to maintain water quality from deteriorating further and fueling further cyano and hair algae growth. I lost two fairy wrasses and one dispar anthia. However, my gorgonians and gonioporas appear to be doing well as probably they have more food to eat. My cyano took two weeks to clear and at least half a tank's worth of water changes to reduce as much dissolved organics as possible. I scrapped out as much hair algae as I could with a toothbrush. I finally killed the cyanobacteria with three days of blackout, followed by the water change. No casualties except for an acro colony which RTN. Hair algae is now the only nuisance algae left. Hope to report total eradication in two weeks time. I also stopped feeding live phyto and rotifers for a few weeks and I see an immediate deterioration in the growth of sponges and even coco worms (whose crowns appear smaller and less colourful). Will resume production again soon once I see an improvement in water quality. My refugium which was also overrun with hair algae growing on the macroalgae has been long disconnected with the main circulation circuit and allowed to crash. It is now home to dozens of baby harlequin shrimps. Hope to catch as much as I can to culture seperately. I have ID the cause of the sudden drop in water quality/overgrowth of nuisance algae: 1. I should not have bought macroalgae with attached strands of hair algae, hoping it will die on its own. I should have removed by hand as much as possible. 2. I dosed iron supplements to boost the growth of macroalgae in the hope of them outcompeting hair algae. Unfortunately, the hair algae bloomed after the dosing. 3. Once I stopped dosing iron, some of the macros crashed. I made the mistake of not clearing the dying macros and that must have released a lot of toxins into the water as well as rotting mass. These happened within a few days. 4. The main tank showed signs of hair algae growth and I was too slow to disconnect the refugium from the main circulation circuit. 5. My skimmer which was functional and successfully sustaining my tank to that stage, was overwhelmed by the sudden influx of nutrients from the crashed macroalgae. Unable to cope quickly enough, cyano and hair algae exploded into my main tank. Lessons learnt: 1. Upgrade to an adequate sized skimmer when you upgrade your tank. Doh! It's such an important safety net. 2. Crashing macros contribute significant bioload and should be removed immediately. It is not a source of fertilizer (DOH!). AT

Hmm.... you should use a hose to connect if your pump outlet/inlets are not threaded for hard plumping using PVC pipes. You can connect to a hose (secured with hose clamps) --> pvc hose adapter --> pvc piping.

Try adjusting airflow... you may be having too much 'wet foam' created, so the skimmate will be tea-coloured. The drier the foam, the blacker the skimmate.

You mean the beckkett compartment? It's normal. This design means the beckett is not glued in place but can be easily removed for cleaning. The compartment will allow water to seep into it but as the beckett runs, excess water gets sucked back in. I guess I can always use plumbers tape but I kinda prefer the compartment filled with water as it helps muffle the hissing sound from the beckett.

?! You want to keep shrimps in your skimmer??? When I switch on a powerhead, they get blown off the glass and swim for the safety of the sandbed.

Actually, there are about only two species of starfishes which are truly reefsafe... linkias and fromias. These eat only detritus, microalgae and bacteria clumps from the sandbed. Your third pix is that of a fromia. The first two I am not certain.... watch them carefully, if you see them wrapping themselves around your clams... take them out immediately. Some are known to attack sleeping fishes and some eat coral polyps. Anyway, FYI, my recommendation is to keep only 1 starfish per 4-5 ft tank. There isn't enough food in a captive reef environment for them to survive long term.

Precisely why I wear gloves when it comes to major work touching the sandbed, or rockscaping. Once stung, twice shy.

No no no.... I didn't say a DSB should not be more than 6"! What I said was that the extra inches beyond 6 or 7" will have diminishing returns.

Here's the update (15 days past) Surprisingly, even with my neglect... The harlequin fries have grown up fast... and they are darting around in my disconnected (from my main tank/sump circuit) refugium, surviving on the occasional phytoplankton that I throw in as well as the micro and macroalgae. I spotted about 20 to 30 shrimps clinging on the walls/swimming near the surface. And there are some at the bottom of the tank amongst the algae. Here are some pix! Apologies for the blurred shot, hard for the camera to focus at such poor lighting condition and shooting thru dirty glass. The long whitish objects with orange blobs are the shrimps. A good close-up of a shrimp.

Your wish is my command. here's the Alvyfoamer 648 hooked up to the sump for the breaking-in period. About 8 hours ago, I got the sump reconnected back to the maintank, did a water change and the skimmer hooked up... and here's the result.

I can vouch for that! Alvy's right! Using my oceanrunner 6500, although it produces foam, it was nothing compared to an Iwaki MX70! It was so powerful, that starting up the pump could rock my whole 4ft high Alvyfoamer!! It may work on smaller beckett skimmers though. Someone has to try it!

Lead by example Phang, and the rest will follow! To all, I highly recommend getting all the right equipment in place (skimmer, calcium reactor, water circulation, lights, chiller) and testing all the necessary water parameters before buying SPS. Priorities should be in this order. There will always be stock coming in, so please do not rush to stock up. Why buy expensive and sensitive SPS to put in a less than ideal tank environment, to have them RTN due to lack of ample light, poor water circulation, low calcium, alk, ph levels, in high phosphate and dissolved organics-laden water? I myself am putting my sps purchasing on hold till I get my new lights in. So far, my long awaited new skimmer is in and running... and should improve my water quality immediately. Now to wait for the nuisance hair algae to die!

I think you are referring to acro sliming, they do that often to: 1. clean themselves of irritants 2. remove wastes 3. a stress response. AT

This post doesn't belong in the product reviews forum. Read the guidelines.... I am moving this out.

Hi guys, We had an interesting debate going on abt skimmers hereand it side-tracked to DSBs. So I created this new topic and would like to have us discuss and share our knowledge. theories and practical experiences on sandbeds. I have cut and paste the DSB posts out into this thread so lets not get confused! ------------- ok, this may look strange.... but this post is supposed to be the first post -----

Ok, cool it down guys... No sense fighting over opinions, there's enough war in this world already! Rrrobt, pls back off from Wei... thank you. Wei, I think why Rrrobt is just kinda jabbing at you coz you seem to contradict yourself over advocating going skimmerless for newbies and you upgrading your skimmers. I think you have good intentions for newbies to not worry abt getting a skimmer during the cycling period and to save money to get a better skimmer in the mean time. But knowing how a lot of newbies can't wait to stock up the tank, they will compromise and get the cheapest skimmer they can get and upgrade later. Then you went on abt advocating going skimmerless coz a successful tank can go without one. That is of course possible but with a lot of stocking and feeding constraints (esp. for newbies). This topic on skimming led to how a DSB would help reduce nitrates (a little off-topic coz we want to talk abt the effects of skimming in reducing bioload). Which you then offered an alternative view on sandbed depth. But still not really relevant. I think we are going around in circles here.... so I would like to draw the topic back to skimmers and how it helps the marine tank. I am opening up a new thread on DSB here... so we can talk sandbed stuff there. Are we clear about this now, people?

Dodo, Anthias are so mild compared to damsels and clownfishes! Have you ever seen a fierce chromis before... I had one that could bully a damsel!

Actually, gornios are lagoonal corals and do better in tanks which has 'dirtier water' ie. skimmerless tanks which will have higher planktonic life levels. Unfortunately, the amount of plankton in marine tanks cannot compare to the sea. 'Good water conditions' is subjective to each species and is a general term. Some corals prefer pristine water and some corals do better with 'greenwater'.

Wei, I find it strange that you advocate DSBs but give conflicting advise abt the depth and the function of how DSBs work. Pls clarify. Especially chemical-wise. Yeah.. that's common sense. It's also common sense that a skimmer is a good nutrient exporter and newbies should not go without one as even the 'oldies' here know the importance of having one. True for the livestock that eats organisms in DSB like wrasses and sand burrowing wrasses who may create more oxygen diffusion in the sand. As for stocking too fast, it will not have an impact on the bacteria in the sand unless you cause a total crash by inducing too much ammonia... but that would only mean another round of cycling. IMO, bacteria deep in the sandbed doesn't care two hoots on what's happening above the upper levels and in the water column. All they care about is: give me conditions suited for me to survive, don't disturb me and please feed me. So your view is totally opposite to this theory. According to Dr Ron Shimek, THE DSB EXPERT, the recommended depth of a DSB should be at least 6", anything more than that is exponentially dropping efficiency results. Anything less than that and you will poor nitrifying results. The objective of a DSB is to create an oxygen-starved layer at the bottom so that anaerobic bacteria can grow and do their work ie. process nitrates to harmless nitrogen gas. If you have a shallow sandbed, you allow better oxygen diffusion and thereby create conditions better suited to aerobic bacteria. This would, in theory, be no better than using a canister filter (which has excellent oxygen diffusion) that has little nitrifying bacteria to process nitrates.

The dominant one will become male, the rest will stay female. In large schools, there will be a supermale and several males. If an anthia changes to male, they cannot change back to female, and if there are more than two in reef tanks, the dominant one will harass the other male even to the point of death.