Gouldian

I like the shot of the flats with slanting roofs. And this last one, what's that? Superman?!

Hi Happy Reefer, sorry to hear your plight. Lighting are often the source of leakage and shortage in our hobby. Especially when it is difficult for us to differiate the quality of the product through our ###### eyes. Luckily for us, we have sponsors that provides quality product at a fraction of the cost of a imported light set. Contact DE or HV, I'm sure they will be more than glad to assist you.

We have corrupted Queen's English!

Being a typical Singaporean, I started talking and enquiring what are the things that I need to do in preparation to the new arrival. Besides the usual "buy this" & "buy that" one word keeps appearing - Confinement. Confinement is a common practice here in Singapore regardless of race. It entails the mother and child being "confine" at home for one full month so that they can recuperate and will not catch any chill or evil spirits. During this time the mother will be serve "nutritious" meals to aid breast feeding, to remove wind and to prevent rhumatism. During the confinement the new mother is not suppose to drink plain water or bathe, they are suppose to drink special herbal drink and wipe themself clean with special herbal bath. Traditionally the confinement will be done with the full supervision ofthe paternal grand mother of the child. Occasionally the new mother will return to her maiden home to do confinement if she feels more comfortable to have her own mother assisting and cooking for her. I tried asking both my mother and my mother-in-law, both surrendered without putting up a fight. They claimed it is too tedious, they dunno how to cook the "special" dishes and they are too old. No choice, for the sake of my wife, we have to persevere and start by asking women in our lives that were pregnant before. My search ended with one of my client, an Indonesian working in Singapore. She is expecting too but 2 months earlier than mine. As this is her 2nd pregnancy in Singapore, she already have a confinement lady in mind and have booked her in advance already. She advises me to book in advance too stating the reasons that good confinement lady are hard to come by and those good ones are usually booked back to back. The confinement lady turns out to be from Malaysia and charges $1800/mth heard from some agency if you wanted Singaporean confinement lady, be prepared to fork out $2500! Even then, there are only a handful in Singapore. I thought our unemployment rate are pretty high? Are we choosing job or is there really no job for us? Anyway, we decides on the Malaysian lady after meeting her for the 1st time. Partly because I firmly believes if she can serve an Indonesian, who have even more confinement rituals, she will be able to serve us.

Cleaner Shrimp Hyposalinity

The tips of introducing CS is to do it slowly. Start by placing the bag un-open into your tank so that the temperature will adjust accordingly to your tank temp. After 10mins, scoop some water out from the bag to be thrown away and replace with you tank water. Once all water is replace and the CS does not show any stress, you may introduce the CS into your tank. Actually since you are on FOWLR, you may even try Hyposalinity, but do so with proper guidance froma senior.

They are stress not due to the external environment thus reduce lighting athough is good does not help too much. What is important is the water parameter especially the flow.

You can try adding the CS, as they are definitely easier for you to handle as compared to CW. Although some of us have had successes with CW, most reefers even books warn against their poor survivability of these obligate cleaners and that they are best left in the ocean for mother nature to care for. Thus I dun think I will reccomend them to you. I am sorry to agree with you that the crux is on the two tangs your family friend have given you. Often, we have people that will purchase with good intention some "nice" fishes as gift but sometimes the fishes just simply cannot accomodated due to various reasons. We just have to gently tell them that our tank is not capable of keeping them. If boh bain and bring it back to the shop to exchange for something you can managed. In fact, not only beginners need to reject such kind offers even seniors in this hobby. For example, if you get a certain file fish as gift for your favourite SPS reefer, will mean him slamming the door at you.

Hi Jaslyn, what will be your answer if you are a sales-person and someone ask you about whether or not he or she should buy your product? - The answer is simple, all of us will say. "My product is suitable for you! You should get it". Anyway, let's not dwell over spilled milk. The key to recovering from ICK will happens only when the fishes are feeling at home plus the fact that there are some health boosting supplement such as vitamin C or garlic. However, please keep in mind that whatever supplements, medications and even vitamins if overdosed and not consumed will in turn pollute your tank and thus further stressed your fishes. I have never on my battle with ICK with Achilles Tang, but I have won my battle with Bristle Tooth and even Powder Blue Tang. One senior (Mr R) hinted to me to check on the natural habitat of tangs and try to simulate it. What I did were, feeding enriched food and improve my circulation dramatically. Some reefers may know, I used 1 x Seio 620, 1 x Seio 820 and 1 x Tunze 6000 for my closed loop. My return is Aquabee 3000 (the max I can use due to my overflow pipe). Battling ICH and enjoying the hobby is easy when you have the right guy to guide you step by step.

Cleaner shrimps (CS), Cleaner Wrasses (CW) and Neon Gobies (BG) will eat external parasites (not just ICK) clinging onto the fishes bodies or mouth. However, ICK is not their stable diet. Even the obligate feeders such as the CW have been seen ignoring ICK sometimes - I am sure some reefers here have experienced fishes with ICK in a tank full of CS, CW and NG. Thus the conclusion that some reefers have is that, cleaners like us humans, will pick and choose food. And when things taste awful we will tends to ignore it and goes for another source.

IMHO, Tangs are not be be added into a young tank not to mentioned one that is not confirmed cycled. Tangs needs very high water quality with good currents. Anything below that you will be stressing them and with that ICK will appears. Looking at the nature and we will know, most Tangs can be found only in surge zones where the water are prestine. Your tank current tank condition right now resembles coastal waters where Damsels, Gobies and some other hardier species will survive. I am not saying you cannot and will never be able to keep Tangs, but you need to slowly improve your tank condition so that you may in the future. As for ICK, there is not proven methods that eradicate ick. I have tried countless off the shelf medication and supplements but none of them works as well as "Prevention & Knowledge" Prevention: By preventing any cause of ICK from happening by improving water parameters and quarantining new aquisitions. Knowledge: By knowing what is your tank condition and thereby not introducing fishes that your tank may not be able to manage. By knowing the needs of different fishes. Marine Aquaria is a hobby, we should enjoy it rather then being stressed how to run it. Thus, please feel free to get as many proper advises as possible and stick to them - you will notice after a while you will be able to sit back and enjoy.

On the 2nd visit to Gynae, I decides to tag along to render my physical pressence and mental support. During my school days, most of us have been taught to treat old people, pregnant women and even kids with care and concern. Like offer seats to them, giving way or even being more patience with them. But what I saw especially at the Gyane clinic makes me puke. The Gynae that we have engage is quite popular thus the clinic is usually packed to the brim. Sometimes, we even have to stand and wait for our turn. But throughout our time there, I have only witness a few times whereby an accompanying husband gives up seat for another pregnant lady who is witjout a seat. There are several occassion when I even see some of the husband snatching seat from a pregnant women who has just stand up to enquire something with the counter. For me, I dun understand. Is sitting right next to your Pregnant wife more important than giving up your seat to someone else's Pregnant wife? Do they know that this is a Gynae clinic and 90% of the women here are pregnant and if they expect someone to be tender and considerate to their wife, why can't they be considerate to others? They was once I went shopping for maternity dress at a boutique inside Takashimaya, I saw a seat right outside the changing room with a big sign saying, "These Seats Are For Mothers Only". But guess what? I saw two fat-###### men sitting on the seats! For me, whenever I visit, I will usually stand until I am very sure that there are additional seats somewhere or all women are seated liao.

From my limited knowledge of Fengshui, the bedroom is used for resting thus not adviseable to place moving water feature. By doing so would means conflicting the initial need of the bedroom for a restful night to recuperate.

Hehehehe, Bro Ervine, I think you read my post wrongly liao. I never mentioned that in Venturi water and air are mixed before the pump. In fact, I purposely did not mention to keep it simple as there are also some HOT venturi using slightly different configuration. I have also wrote that Needlewhel methods introduce water & air before the impellor. I think the only mistake I made is the below sentence, "However, by mixing air & water just by a normal impellor does not produce the intense bubbles that some reefers require. " The word impellor should be venturi. I stand corrected.

Hi Sis, Leaving it empty would suffice. Rav65 is right, ceramic rings may be good hosting ground for some nitriying bacteria but they needs constant cleaning to ensure that deritus do not clog and in time becomes a Nitrate factory. Your LRs and sandbed will provide enough space of nitrifying bacteria to house thus coral chips and ceramics are frown upon now a days by reefers. Happy reefing.

I missed my first appointment with the Gynae due to work and plus my wife still looks normal to me and thus need not accompany (Hope she is not reading this). Anyway, when I reached home I have a piece of paper resembling the old thermal fax paper with black and white print. Was told that the little grey ball in the middle of the paper is the image of my son. Try as I may I could not equate the little grey ball would be my son. But fearing I may trigger a Tsunami, I relent. What baffles me more is when I was shown the bill, $$$ for a piece of fax paper of a grey ball! #@$*% I would rather spend in on a 2nd skimmer. Try to act cool and ask wife how many times must we visit Gynae before son is due (trying to estimate the damages to pocket). She replied and suddenly Darkness falls upon me.

Thank you very much for the well wishes again. Bandit:"When thinking about having another baby, don't expect that the amount of work will just double, I personally think the workload increse is exponential!." I agree Jamie, its like a SPS tank vs a betta box. Achilles Tang:"So what's your little frag called?" Chris:"Not Achilles, I hope." Achilles, to be frank, I did considered that but wanted something more original thus I decided on Artemas (Also Greek origin). Muar Chee:"so got open house for us to go eat red egg or not??? heehee...." Got.... Provided you got Ang Pao.

Hehehe, I still this month still alright as we have the confinement lady. Next month????? Oh Next month???? What should we do if he wakes up at middle of the night?????? Lets hope that we can effectively convert him to sleep throughout.......

Once we know for sure that our commitment is for real, we have to learn from some seniors how they managed it and how's the their set-ups? What are the equipments we need to prepare before hand? What are we supposed to do? Is there a cycling period? Should we look out for ANN spikes? The opportunity arises when Flubberina is wanting to clear some corals as she is planning to join her hubby in USA. Upon arriving at Flubby's flat, we were greeted by her wonderful commitment, Isaac! He is such a cute boy and he is not afraid to talk to the reefers that were present to grab some good deals from her 4ft tank. Although we were also there to get Flubby's Gourmet, we were busy asking her how you managed her pregnancy. Like all seniors, she is very accomodating with the silly newbies questions we posted and answered all our enquiries with grace. We even learn her unique of naming her son - IS (first letter of her name) And (first letter of hubby's name) Child = ISAAC.

My First Born Since after my wedding, I have been haunted by my parents, friends, colleagues and even my wife to have a offspring. I have been contemplating to have a child firstly because I am pissed with the Government offering incentive for only the third child rather than the first. To me, I feel that in order to replace the population, we need to start with those parents that does not have any children rather than those that already have. The reason is simple, a car needs more power to get moving rather than one that is already moving. Once you encourage the first born, the second will comes naturally. Thus, when the Government announced incentives for first born, Operation First Child started. A few week later, my wife felt a little discomfort and she was overjoyed. However, she later found out it is a false alarm. She was suffering from indigestion instead. Anyway, back to the drawing board but this time, we are smarter. We no longer depends on how she physically felt but on a test kit. Tried very hard to get Salifert or Tropic Marin but can't find, so just grab one from the pharmacy. This time round bingo! Consistent results even after two test! Maybe they should consider manufacturing test kits for our hobby too. Then comes the decisions of which Gynae to engage. I wanted a Gynae whom my friend is working for as a nurse but my wife wanted to have a Gynae her sister had used before. After considering all aspect, I relent and we decides to get her Gyna instead of mine. The contributing factor is - - - Her Gynae is female. At first I don't see her point until she says, "So you don't another man peering at me at least once a month"? The decision was fast as lightning!

Hi guys, Thank you all very much for your well wishes and encouragements! Both my wife and myself are deeply touched by the warmths that you have shown. Especially to Diabolus and wife and his two wonderful children who took out some of their precious time to visit us at the hospital. We really appreciate the advises given as this is our first born. Also, like to congratulate Royal Gramma for his new addition too. Really treasured those moments I had with him when he share his experiences on being a father while waiting for our babies to be wheel out of the nursery. Thank you all once agin for the emails, PMs, Posts and SMSes! Thank you!

Nice upgrades. And nice rockworks. Please updates us with more pics.

Wah, Vincent you now have 100 pages of post liao! :bow: Keep the pictures coming.

Hi bro, Great to meet you last night at Iwarna! After I reached I was busy FW dipping and clearing some algi and sponge growth on the rocks. Never really got a chance to see them as I left home before the lights are on. Will post once they opens.

SICCE is good enough for 2ft, thus suit your purpose. As for whether it suit 4ft? I will reserves the comments for myself.