Gouldian

Check whether these white spots moves...

Ya... H.barbouri - http://www.seahorsesource.com/barbouri.html

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Fully agree! Aquafauna Supplies SH are captive-bred and they intends to breed them for this region to keep costs down for us. For reefers who try to buy CB SH from US, they will know the hassles - not only are they expensive, most also do not have the necessary docs to export to this region. Kudos to Aquafauna Supplies for this new venture.

I was at Iwarna yesterday too and visited I must admit their SH are

Good work, will be looking out for your tank thread.

Bro, Pods are part of micro-fauna and will be consumed by the carnivorous SH. Thus I mentioned earlier that too many SH will depletes the micro-fauna. However, if you managed to create a balance by having a large enough matured refugium with small SH population, these pods will still be able to flourish. Only solace is that SH are weaker hunters compared to fishes thus your chance of striking a balance is higher compared to having fishes in fuge. For fuge that do not have SH or fishes the micro-fauna populations will also be controlled naturally through limitation of food and natural attrition.

Seahorses are slow feeders thus they will be out-competed in the main tank with fishes. That's why most will recommend that they are to be kept in species tank. If your fuge only contains a pair of seahorses, I don't see any reasons why they will not survive. Cheato tends to float clump together thus no issues with them together in your fuge.

The purple algae are coraline algae. From your descriptions, they are dying off, due to: Water parameters - low in mg, kH and Ca or high NO3 and PO4 Drastic change in lighting, sudden drastic change in lighting will cause temporary die-off Predators - some urchin and snails feeds on them but will never cause the problems you mentioned above Ensure your water and lighting parameters are stable and they will re-established on your LRs again.

If you are having coarse live-sand and macro-algae in your refugium and intend to have 1 or 2 seahorses, it should be fine. Too many seahorses will deplete micro-fauna which will defeat your initial intention of setting up a refugium You should need to mature your refugium before adding seahorses to minimize risk of the above Feed seahorses sparingly so as they do not have to fully depends on the micro-fauna Excess food and waste will increase bio-load Hope that helps.

Nitrate is the by-product of nitrification, thus when you have high nitrate it only means that you cycle is yet to complete. This is because you still have the prawn decaying in your tank. With decomposition, ammonia will be produced and nitrification. You will need more time for the nitrification bacteria to build and handle the decompostion now happening in your tank. Side note: Nitrifying bacteria reproduce by binary division. Under optimal conditions, Nitrosomonas may double every 7 hours and Nitrobacter every 13 hours. More realistically, they will double every 15-20 hours. This is an extremely long time considering that heterotrophic bacteria can double in as short a time as 20 minutes. In the time that it takes a single Nitrosomonas cell to double in population, a single E. Coli bacterium would have produced a population exceeding 35 trillion cells.

On a hobby scale, we are not able to determine the claims by the brand thus you just to take it with "a pinch of salt". But what we can observe is that the branded live sand are definitely cleaner as they have been pre-washed. For me, if I am setting up a nano tank, I will use branded live sand; if I am setting up a large tank, I will use the no brand sand and top up with a packet of branded live sand.

Reading from your signature, I believe you are using the IOS tank from CR Aquarium, did you modify it with a overflow with sump? You can speak with Vincent (Aquarium Artist) to add a durso for you or DIY one yourself.

Thanks for sharing, I am sure by joining this forum, you will gain more insights to what is needed for a successful system. As in all things in life, there are always more than 1 ways to kill the cat thus you need to get to the facts rather than doing what is convenient. Tank cycling is a must and the only way to know whether your tank is ready is to test the parameters rather than using time as a gauge. For example, some tank may cycle within 2 weeks while some tanks may take longer. However, most will agree that a tank is considered cycled once ANN (Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate) spike is completed. I am sure you are a better informed reefer after this episode.

As mentioned, most prefer to keep overflow box clean as placing LRs and stuffs in there will create a low oxygenated water at the bottom half of the overflow box. Noisy overflow can be tuned if you have a this will greatly reduce the noisy and splashes. Hope that helps.

Hi bro, If I were you: I will use coral sand that is slightly larger - e.g. if you are currently using Grade 0 or 1 coral sand, change to grade 2 or 3 I would not use coral chips as they are porous and will trap detritus I don't think coral chips will be able to assist in the buffering in the main tank because - 1) they will be coated will organic materials and slime 2) coral chips will only start melting if the pH drop below 7 and by the time your pH is 7, your tank will be in big trouble. For coral sands, you can either get: Without Brand - Cheap but must rinse through several times to ensure that they are clean, some careful reefers will even go through the sands with a strong magnet to remove any metal Branded commercial sands - Usually market as Live-Sand. These are cleaner compare to the former but is slightly more pricey. They are several brands available with the LFS. Hope that helps.

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$250 for a complete set is a steal! Upz for your sales.

Copperband aren't exactly reef-safe.

If I were you, I will: remove whatever nasties and die-off clear of 1 inch of the sandbed run the pura for another few days to absorb any trace elements that is causing the crash change to new pura media after the that wash the LR with old tank water if they are slime or whatever nasties all this time, I will keep the circulation and skimmer running

If it is currently stuck to the rock, leave it as they will drop from the LR to sandbed when they are ready. In nature, plate pelagic larvae will settle on a LR and grow bigger before they will dislodge and fall onto they sandbed. Hope that helps.