MarcoVan

hmmm nminds lah. GOOD BUYS nonetheless and PICTURES tmr k! no pics i shall hunt you down at Irwana and feed you to the dalmatian! lol! KIDDING

ohhh on liverocks ah? hmmm yeah cannot. only with small pieces of rock is okay. wahhh you mean 1 pair for $60?! OMG! that's damn cheap! hahahaha and yeah hongkong is really siao for fish. I tell my hk friends to keep a lookout for your marginalis. If got I tell them to get for you (: and you should have been adventurous. From what I hear from my HK friend, sometimes not easy to get the fish you want. You need to be damn heng. hahah (; Anyway next time you go HK, let me know beforehand. I help you arrange meetings with my HK reefing dudes. hehe (:

didnt CF come in some that time? :X hahahaha won't get brain damage one lah! don't be silly!

WAH! what anthias is this!? and names please! lol

then did you pack any back?! LOL you can check in 5 soft corals home! hahaha (:

before and after pictures please! anyway welcome back bro!

next time on your roaming! I tried calling you for 30 whole minutes! so sian man! If only I had remembered there was Fuel! :S

Not necessary. If you do not have direct sunlight, you may lose the sps. And direct sunlight means higher temperature and perhaps exposure to the weather elements like rain and wind which will add unnecessary trouble to your tank (: I do not know how Irwana maintains that outdoor sps pond but from what i feel, it's not easy. Pretty xiong :S

hahaha I am currently trying on one. No pics, but the polyps are extended and now looking slight green. Wonder if it's a valida tho. cause of the green polyps and skinny skeleton Also, I did revive a green pocci frag which was a gift from bro. LYK when he decommed. We left that frag in a plastic bag without water; only with another liverock for 3 hrs and I almost dumped it away that time thinking it was a liverock chip. Without any polyp extension I threw it back into my tank and well, it still survived. Similarly, I coloured back some bleached out sps which was almost lost due to vodka. In fact, they came back stronger and pretty much commmando-like thereafter. Honestly, nothing is impossible in reefing. Anyway to inspire reefers on, if you ever get a sps that browned out on you due to various factors, you can always still get back the sps once the parameters are stable and the sps becomes healthier. That's why sometimes I say sps are easier to maintain than zoas. Of course, money wise, the initial investment for sps is high whereas for zoas is low. But, if you have got most of everything right, your sps will naturally colour up and stay that way till you screw things up again (: It's just unlike zoas which will temperamentally melt on you without any reason! Imagine your sps are like tok-kong and growing but your zoas are melting! weird right! (: Hope this helps.

WAH! bro, then I think you got a serious issue of nutrients! Overly rich! I got alot of such issue when I was dosing vodka! :S SPS colors damn nice but the tank overly crowded with HA! :S Best actually is not to get algaefix. Just get a seahare, a sea urchin and an abalone. Your problem will be solved (: plus of course, manual removal and ALOT ALOT of water changes (:

I agree! Do show us more pics of zoas man! I know there can get very rare zoas!

and for removal of phosphate, I think gentle methods are more acceptable. I personally like heavy skimming and fortnightly water changes. Aggressive removal of nutrients are surely not a good idea for SPS. hence that's why I recommend old methods of using Rowa and carbon to remove organic and inorganic stuff (:

I agree! Either kalk or NaHCO3. that's all (:

why did you pour so much? Personally for removal of GFO, I will recommend Rowa or Sorb4; small amount in a FR (:

you want the honest opinion or the layman one? Honest one is slow and steady. Layman one is "JUST HOOT AH!" Personally I dump my salts and have not observed any ill-effects to my tank. But I do make it a point to measure my Ca/kH/Mg levels before my dumping. I won't anyhow dump for no reason and I got a 500ml Seachem old Reef Buffer bottle as my measuring cup for the amount of salt. I don't weigh the right amount, just agar agar If you want something really precise, go computer dosing or draw up a chart on your sps consumption over 2 weeks. Measure the levels depleted and adjust your dosing accordingly. For my tank, I notice the levels drop within 2 weeks ie from 500ppm Ca to 410ppm Ca and 1500ppm Mg to 1260ppm Mg. After which I will mix the relevant salts and dump into my overflow. Personally I cannot be bothered to measure kH because it's forever hovering around 6-7; I will be happy if I can get 8! hurhur. :X but that does not stop me from dosing NaHCO3 to the tank everyday. 2 teaspoons and into the sump! (: I think there's a certain set of rules and do-nots for a sps reef. The thing however is to find somethings that suit you and your lifestyle best (: Hope this helps. P.S: The above methodology is solely based on myself and my HongKong buddies. Please be careful when you exercise my method. Like I say, there are certain do-nots in a reef tank. You gotta find something that suit you. Mine is like a guideline. In case you overdose your tank by a bit and you panick, you will at least feel assured that there's a goondu outside in Singapore doing the same thing as you (:

HAHA! I dont know. Hope it does Similarly, you can stir ABIT of your sandbed to give food to your sps and corals

Just to add on, sps gets food from fish poo! You can skip a weekly/monthly AA dosing etc if you feed heavily. Fish poo helps!

dosing kalk at night helps too (:

anything that's cheap! So long as it says distilled and it's the cheapest on the shelf, BUY!

WOW, this is really some god-like discussion here! Keep it going yea! Anyway just to chip in why sps turns brown are: 1) Lights 2) Nutrient Level ie. PO4 especially Imo, those 2 above are critical to maintaining a thriving SPS tank. Low lights can cause SPS to lose color while high nutrients can also cause the SPS to brown out.

for Point 9: besides preparing backup system, you can also adopt a rule which is called in my context: Spreading The Love. For myself, if I find a nice SPS or collect one, I do not mind trading frags of them with my fellow friends so that in future, I know if mine is gone, I can rely on my friends to return the favour (: Good gets better! Anyway, thanks wilson. A very comprehensive write up!

I hope so bro! It's so sad to see such a lovely fish hiding or even dying somewhere and you not know about it! :X

yup, but not advisable on the long run bro (:

yup! but it will hide! mine's still hiding somewhere i cannot find!!