blusafe

My tang doesn't like the dried seaweed. It does gobble up the Hikari seaweed extreme pellets.

I haven't tried those, but my marine fish refuse to eat anything freeze dried. I've tried tubifex and some other stuff.

Get someone on SRC to help!

I have a separate refugium with 3 inch sand bed. From what I read, the minimum for DEEP sand bed is really 7 inches. Also, it will take one year before it fully matures and gets all the right organisms at each depth. Sand sifters to aerate the top layers are a must, unless you want detritus settling and contributing to long-term nitrates. A DSB long term goal is for natural nitrate reduction, but you need proper particle size, depth, sifting, and patience. If I were you, I'd go refugium with DSB unless there's a compelling reason not to.

Looks like Majano anemone. Beautiful but bad juju

Ammonia/NO3/NO4 test? Could be a nasty bloom hurting your fish.

Anemone placement doesn't matter because they move!

Looks like spawning. How is it now?

It's clean but not much better than tap. Good for human consumption but not for marine tanks. If you're going bottled, might as well buy an RODI it will be cheaper in the long run.

Halimeda is fantastic. If you like the look of it, move it to the display tank. My algae blenny likes to nip.

Looks more like sponges.

Everything in your set-up should be corrosion resistant. The evaporation is not a concern (only pure water and volatiles evaporate), but salt water splashing around will corrode things. If your cabinet is good enough for a display tank on top, it's good enough to have a tank inside. As for the fuge light, as I said before, everything should already be corrosion-resistant. Don't use those cheap dinky $10 lights. There's that electricity mixing with splashing water thing to consider.

Bristleworms - reef safe unless you get the large fish-eating type (which these are NOT). These worms grow everywhere to include macroalgae. They are detritivores eating the gunk and stuff, and also eating the stuff that eats the gunk and stuff. This is your real "clean-up crew." Impossible to completely remove unless you have a sterile tank with no live rock or flora.

There is nothing nowhere that will fully cycle a sterile set-up in two weeks (now four weeks?). There are organisms dying off inside your live rock that will cause spikes of nutrients for the next several months. There is no amount of bacterial additive that can control this die-off. It just happens. Live rock will take months to fully "cure." With the turnover that an LFS has, it's doubtful the die-off is complete in any retail live rock. BTA is not suitable for a new tank because of the rapidly fluctuating water parameters in the first few months. How is it doing now? Most definitely not happy, and probably has a fungal infection (highly prone). Has your GSP opened up yet? If the purple mat is peeling away and looks dry and hard (not fat and fleshy), then it is dead. The best you can do is frequent, small water changes and hope for the best. First picture looks like Aiptasia. Does it retreat quickly or rather slowly? Quick is worm, slow is Aiptasia but it depends. The blurred pictures look like it has a mouth so I am thinking Aiptasia. Second picture is definitely Xenia. They will start reproducing under good water conditions.

Looks like a harmless snail, not a zoa predator. It might have been irritating the zoas by crawling all over them. My large turbo snails and cucumber do this all the time but it's only temporary. The zoas are fine.

Agree with BamBoo, it's not a rock or algae problem - it's a water problem.

You need to quarantine all new fish. If you are worried about too much fish in an established tank, it takes no effort to just let the new fish get eaten/die in your display tank.

Unless they're large and green, no need to worry. Those may eat fish but the rest will not harm anything in the tank. If you really want to get rid of them, need to look for underlying cause. Scavengers don't just magically spawn all over your tank unless there is mass die-off from cycling or you're just feeding too much. If you get rid of good scavengers, something else will take its place. Maybe some nice, brown diatoms covering every square inch.

Good info...I knew about this but it didn't click. I installed a fuge about three months ago and algae are growing like mad all over my rocks. Now I know why.

What kind of ATS are you looking at? There are infinite ways to build an ATS and fuge. ATS is used ONLY to grow and harvest algae for nutrient export. A fuge serves multiple purposes depending on how you build it. Both ways do not always require separate equipment. If you have a large, fixed sump that you do not want to move, then ATS is probably the way to go. The best fuge IMO provides algae harvest, water volume, and extra food and plankton. You generally can't get extra food if you have high flow, which means you have to install baffles in your sump - and can't do that if it's filled. If you are not looking to add to the PUB bill, why not install a small fuge inside of your display (how big is your tank) that shares the same lighting? You can also try deep sand bed (6+ inches of sand), more live rock, or try adding DSB to your sump.

I hear the carmabi 's colors are so intense that cameras have to down-expose to capture. Is this true? Most colorful fish in the ocean?

Mantis shrimp (smasher or spearer) eat any meat if they are hungry enough. They are intelligent, opportunistic feeders.

+1 subxero! No, it's not a "folk" remedy. Vodka/sugar method works if done properly.

Yes, inverts are more sensitive to copper than fish. But that doesn't mean they die faster. Maybe your accidental dose was super high and it killed off the fastest respiring organisms first (fish), then the inverts. Or maybe you just didn't notice the inverts already dying.

I have five small ones in my tank. They get along but the big ones still nip at the small ones. No signs of gross injury. It's how the social structure is formed. The picking is normal and healthy so long as the junior fish are not being seriously injured. The bigger clowns will slowly develop male gonads, then the biggest one will turn the male gonads into female. If your clowns have been together this long, and the small one is still alive and eating well, I recommend just watch for secondary diseases from stress.