FuEl

turning Brown is just a process an acro goes through to adapt to new lighting or other water conditions. STN occurs over weeks, even months. RTN will kill the sps within a day or two.

Think it's because of new tank syndrome..you might have stocked up a little too fast. For FOWLR tanks you can maintain it at a lower specific gravity as it will be less stressful on fishes (but not for inverts). You can keep it just below 1.020.

Most gobies are reefsafe. However, different species will grow to different sizes and they will have different habits. Many people avoid sandshifting gobies as their behavior might lead to the burrying of corals that are located on the sand bed. Shrimp gobies are kept by many people but these tend to be rather timid if kept alone. If kept with a pistol shrimp you'll have to take into account the burrowing activity of the shrimp. There are also gobies that will live in coralheads. Examples are neon eviotas which prefer to hide in birdnest sps. Also included are clown gobies but avoid these if you are going into sps as these will peck at sps polyps. Open water gobies include the firegobies, etc. These tend to have the bad habit of jumping so ensure your water level is not too high or cover your tank somehow. Do a search in the member's tank section and you should find quite a few people with gobies. My tank pics also include lots of gobies that I have kept in my tank (now demolished)...and all of them are reefsafe (Excluding the yellow clown goby..the sps nibbler.. ).. Also have some logs on their behavior. Hope it helps.

Alot of people blame nitrates for most of their problems. But most of the time nitrates is not the cause. 25ppm of nitrates won't even kill sps...let alone fish..Check your other basic water parameters. My guess would be pH swings or sudden ammonia/nitrite spikes.

There is a magazine in borders now with an article on gobies. The name of the mag. is Aquarium (with letters SA below the letter u). Do consider flipping through it as I find it very informative even for seasoned goby keppers.

After keeping zebra hermits for some time, I shall share my own observations with regards to this species. Zebra hermits when small will tend to be more excited when they encounter the scent of meaty foods. They will eagerly rush out to look for pellets, mysis, etc. As they mature into adults, they tend to stay on your rocks more and pick at algae more. At this stage to me they seem not to be that excited over meaty foods anymore. Probably because they do not need so much protein since their growth rates have practically slowed to a crawl. You MUST provide them adequate shells as they grow if not they will fight over shells resulting in deaths. I do not recommend mixing different species of hermits together. Adult zebra hermits IMO are totally harmless to fish as they had not ambushed any of my small fishes before in my old 4 footer. If your fish is dying it's a different story altogether..

My babies wish you happy b'day too!

Was at borders today during my lunch break. Still bought my favourite magazine...Tropical Fish Hobbyist. There was a new magazine that was quite informative...its called Aquarium USA and it had a featured article on gobies! But the downside was that it was....around $20.. The other magazines did'nt really interest me as most of them are filled with adverts with little useful information at all. I was disappointed by a magazine that is catered towards the asian market..& if I'm not wrong it is published in singapore. I forgot the title of the magazine but if you go borders you will know which magazine I'm talking about. The standards are not there at all. For example...I remember reading "advice" about using 5 damselfish to introduce ammonia to help the tank mature. This advice came from someone from aquamart (I can't be bothered to censor as I'm stating a fact). But pricing wise it's rather cheap. Oh well....you get cheap advice from buying a cheap mag.

lck did bring in fire corals once if my memory did'nt fail me..

I'm more cruel. I just took out the rock and smeared dry kalk powder all over the aiptasia.

Wow One of the biggest sumps I have seen! Hope you not intending to keep that mantis in your I-ref? When it grows it will have the strength to crack acrylic...

Hmmm...thc is a very nice guy once you get to know him. For people who have certain misgivings against him (I don't really see how that is possible), do get to know him in person to clear any misunderstandings. There are alot of other nice reefers around that just don't post very often. For instance when I offered to give away my 6mm 4ft tank, the person who collected it gave me a bottle of marineplankton as a token of appreciation! I greatly appreciate his generosity! Not to mention some other more experienced reefers (Eg. Dan, scarab, Joe_P, etc)who have been kind enough to let an intermediate hobbyist like me into their homes to oggle at their tanks. People like scarab who has recently posted a useful website that helps hobbyists to identify corals should come forward and share information. It's people like these that make SRC an enjoyable home to me. However, I'm just as affected as other reefers by the morphing of SRC into a chatsite. I have personally cut down alot on my posts as I do not wish to contribute to anything irrevelant. What irks me most is the fact that people who are involved commercially are going around passing rumours that put fellow competitors down. Also people who make claims that their products are superior to others without even trying the others. What's the point of doing that? What goes around comes around. What's wrong with fair competition and letting the consumers decide for themselves? I'm rather irked by most things happening here at the moment that I have already found another local forum to hang out. It's not marine related...but at least it's devoid of political backstabbing & kunniangness. Just being frank.

So many names!!

After reading through the whole thread I still have no idea what this thread is about. The frags were already sorted neatly just like what ckevin said once the shutters were lifted. I was observing all the specimens and sps crazed reefers looking through the goodies but I did'nt notice anyone fragging anything intentionally at all. The frags were already there once the shutters were lifted! I suppose the so called "hoo-ha" about someone fragging the sps intentionally did not pertain to the first wave of reefers but rather to the wave(s) after that. So fellow reefers in the first wave just relax! (Thank goodness I did'nt stick my hands into any of the tanks if not I would have become a suspect too.. )

It will eventually eat them..that is when it grows..

Meanwhile to help them recover you could decrease your photoperiod by maybe 2-3 hours. Increase it back to the photoperiod you were using over a period of weeks.

You did'nt acclimatize them to the sudden increase in light. Your LPS are literally getting burnt from the sudden increase in photosynthetic activity via oxidative stress. Move your LPS lower and wait for them to recover. You should only start moving them upwards once they have open up like before.

wow...an electric ray....

I would leave it..no point trying to kill the thing when it is not harming your monti... imagine something goes wrong while trying to kill it and your monti gets affected instead..

Some things I thought about... 1) When starting a new reef tank run rowa, etc asap so that newly introduced sps later on will be in a phosphate free environment. 2) When sps have been growing in a tank of considerable amounts of phosphate, do not remove all the phosphate in the water too fast. Instead run in the rowa, etc in small amounts and for short durations over a couple of days. 3) When phosphate levels start to climb, empty the old & replace your phosphate removal media slowly... I used to have a tank with rather significant amount of phosphates (did'nt measure but had some cyano problems)...after running a FR to maximise efficiency of phosphate removal, alot of rather stable sps specimens of mine started to stn. Many people on RC experienced this as well..so guys..just be cautious. For my new display tank the first thing I will do is to start my FR before the corals are in...hopefully that would help minimise any shock...

? Why need to control air intake? I just melted a hole in my dorso..never attached any tubing to it at all...

It's a burrowing crustacean...something like a barnacle if you know what I mean..I doubt they will harm the coral much as they only burrow into the calcium carbonate skeleton. They're something like christmas tree worms that burrow into porites.

People who buy frags have their reasons. Frags might be more stable. Frags take up less space. You can have more varieties by keeping frags. Some people like to see colonies grow from frags (me for instance)..Even if no one frags sps for sale, potential buyers (with little space left in their tanks) who know each other might share a single colony. Frags come from mother colonies. Without mother colonies there will be no frags. So I seriously don't see why LFS should be so bothered about the availability of frags affecting sales. Be realistic...which sps keeper won't know how to frag a sps? LFS can always approach local fraggers to supply them directly if they want to lower risks & money thrown in for the supplies. Just look at the U.S market...fraggers are commonplace...it's only a matter of time that sg follows and LFS have to learn to accept it. There will be overheads even for fraggers. Just think about the money spent on the electricity bills and the $$ spent on calcium media..& not the mention the time taken to provide TLC to every single frag.. nothing is for free in this world. There is nothing wrong with fragging. It's like taking stem cuttings from a tree. What is wrong? You're not killing the tree..you're just helping it to propagate it. If captive propagation by reefers is wrong, alot of other things in this world would be wrong. Reality check!

So smart!! Then I can also say.. "How do you define a hole?"

Think of it this way..let's say the smaller model of X brand protein skimmer has about 30% efficiency due to low chamber height and diameter. If you use 2 maximum efficiency is only at 60%. If you use the largest model of X brand protein skimmer which has a larger chamber diameter and much higher, the efficiency could easily be 80-90% which beats using 2 smaller skimmers. Another factor would be bubble size and contact time of the organics with the bubbles...normal skimmers might use airstone or venturi effect to create the bubbles. Brands like AquaC make use of spray injection. Spray injection would create smaller bubbles, leading to better skimming efficiency. You'll have to use a couple of weipros to match the efficiency of an AquaC. A better option would be sell the prizm, save the $$ meant for the weipro & with a little top up get a better skimmer that will easily outperform both.