Ira

I'd be happy to take some of your corals off you, Pies...Don't wanna keep all your eggs in one basket and all that.

I think the dispensation you'd get from MAF would be something like, "Sure, no problem, what's your name, address and phone number? We'll send it out as soon as possible." And the next day you'll find two big ugly dOOds bashing in your door looking for undersize fish.

I think the best method would be to lift the peice of wood up, move it to the other side of the tank and put it back down.

Getting a bit worrying, we're up to ...What? 10 quakes within the last 48 hours? The last was around 8 something.

If I was going to make a second setup I'd probably give cold water a try. I'd definitely go for it if I was a diver, get all my livestock for free. That difference alone would pay for the chiller.

I haven't heard they're aggressive, all I've heard about them is you'll never see them once they're in the tank.

It cracked? Wow...I didn't think it was big enough to cause any cracks or anything. I thought it was fairly gentle even though we're practically right on top of the quake.

I really wish I'd bought like 10 of them when they were available at $150 each. I think the going price, if you can get them, is something like $450 each?

The 150watt MH probably actually uses more in the range of 175-200 watts. Most 250s burn around 300. But, that's only going to throw the numbers off a couple dollars a month, so not really a big deal.

My tanks are all fine. Bridget thinks the fish knew the quake was coming because she said the cichlids were in a frenzy thrashing around about an hour before.

At least with my ghetto autotopoff the worst case is it dumps about 20 liters of FW into the tank. I thought you had some expensive tunze topoff or something, Reef?

I've never seen my clowns nip at other fish. Sometimes they'll go and clean along their sides and heads though.

Your tank is too small for a pleco. But a bristlenose or two would be good.

Especially when they're nice and soft and chewy from molting, apparently.

Riot and loot hollywood fish farm! wooo! How's this saturday work for everyone? I'll fly up for the day.

All it means is that they're not all the same fish.

100 watts is 100watts, 300 watts is 300 watts. The efficiencies of the heaters is going to be almost identical, only difference is jager's marketing department decided to fiddle with the tank volume ratings and instantly made their heaters look "Twice as powerful"

There's no reason you can't use wood on a huge stand. Just takes more wood to make it. I'd personally go with a steel frame with wooden cladding. It may be cheaper like suphew said and the framing won't take up as much space. Mostly, just personal preference really.

Yeah! Eels are much cooler than goldfish.

They should get to about double that size. 15cm or so.

Uhhh...Why do you have your filter on a timer? It should be running 24 hours a day.

Stopped by an "unnamed" pet store yesterday and their marine tank was at 32° Poor fishies must have been baking.

I wouldn't worry too much if it's only going up to 27-28. Most of my tanks are set around mid 27s and none of them seem to care a bit when the temp creeps up to mid 28s. It's only 1 degree.

Update: one of the lamp holders is flakey, so forget everything I've said, who knows when it was working and not working. Warren, the ballasts are 58 watts so "should" have enough power to run three 15 watts assuming they'll light up. S2 starters...I think the ones I have are S1s? I'll have a look at them when I get home. If I have to run 6 ballasts in the end, that's fine, I can scrounge up what I need, I think. But, if I can manage to get three 15s running on a 58 then I can get away with just 2 ballasts. If it works, I'll use it, if it doesn't, I'll try something else.