lduncan

That green stag is nice. Any pics of those baronessa butterflies? Layton

That's crazy. Using draino in your tank

It's not really seasonal. It just looks that way. It all about nutrients.

I was looking at this book for fish over Scott's pocket guide: Dr Burgess's Atlas of Marine Aquarium Fishes Seems to be more comprehensive. With some more obscure species along with the common ones. Only US$50 for a 700+ page hardcover book is pretty good value I think. Layton

I found one of the pelvic and pectorial fin of my sohal tang damaged this morning, along with a bit of damage to the body near the pelvic fin. Looks like the crosshatch trigger took a bite at him. The sohal was probably asking for it, he's been getting more and more agressive recently. I guess the crosshatch decided it was time to put him in his place.

Clearly photoshopped.

All you need to do is take photos of the corals at regular intervals at the same distance and zoom, and camera settings. Then put you can put them into a program like quicktime (pro version) as video frames and you can set the framerate, and you have a movie. You might be able to make out on the full tank shot, some bit of tape i've used to mark the lens position on the glass so I can get the camera in roughly the same place for each photo.

I like the idea. But i'm not really going to spend much time or money doing stuff like that to my existing tank. The setup is a bit of an abortion of cludges from mistakes made years ago. I'd change and fix a lot of things about my setup, but i'll wait until a new tank to do that. Layton

The male died first (after about 6 weeks), then three weeks later I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to get a replacement male. When the replacement was added, the existing female started acting strangely (became more reclusive, hiding in the rocks more) and died soon after. They were both still eating well and looked in good condition, why or what they died of is a mystery to me. But the replacement male, which is the one in the tank at the moment, seemed to have a better behaviour from the start. Much more active, and "agressive" than the first pair. Here's another coral (A. hyacinthus) which i'm planning on doing a time lapse growth sequence on: Layton

Dunno about manufacturing something distasteful, but this looks like a pretty effective defense mechanism: And a more graphic closeup:

It's a sash clamp holding the tank together. The top centre glass brace cracked a few months ago. Layton

I could get some close ups if you really want. The bottom is pretty dirty, you can sort of make it out in the photo's. Not enough streams in there. :lol: A lot of the crap pools at the back, so you can't really see a lot of it. The rock looks so white cause the lights are so bright. 400Watt 10k's make it difficult to grow coralline on the top side of rocks. Plus it's been moved around so some undersides of rocks are now facing up, and don't have any established coralline yet. Layton

Thanks. I'm going to try and put together a time lapse growth sequence of the tort. See how fast it grows.

Well i've taken about 1/3 of the rock out of my tank a couple of weeks ago. (It doesn't really look like it though with the new lose aquascaping). The tank's pretty dirty, but I can't be bothered to clean it at the moment, it's too cold in the garage. And a new addition - Bali Tort (probably an A. austera not a true tort.) either way, it's a nice coral: Layton

Interesting question. At first glance I would have thought it would be fine. While in the kalk solution, the acid would shift from a zwitterion (simultaneously positive and negative) to a fully negative ion. But then that equilibrium would return to "normal" once introduced to the tank and pH stabilises to tank levels. There is no irreversible reaction I can think of between calcium hydroxide and amino acids in general (which would not otherwise happen when added to the tank).

Why do you think you can't rely on the calculators? They calculate alkalinity and calcium independent of each other, which eliminates the problems of "unbalanced" usage. There are no assumptions in the calculations. They don't assume that all calcium and alkalinity are used exclusively for calcification, like a calcium reactor does. When people talk about balanced calcium and alkalinity addition, it just means that they are added in the stoichiometric ratio as they are found in calcium carbonate - which may not necessarily correspond to their usage in some (most) tanks. Making adjustments to one or the other necessary every now and then. Layton

I've used drontal (the puppy version) on a large (12"+) female crosshatch trigger. Don't really know if it did anything one way or the other. It died a couple of weeks later. Still eating well and looked fat and healthy. I think it's good to feed the fish up on nori, and cut down on brine and mysis for a bit, I think it can flush their gut out with all that plant matter. Layton

I think is more a case of the usage of calcium and alkalinity is not balanced. The output of the calcium reactor is balanced.

Yeah, i wouldn't think so. Most butterflies seem to be pretty passive fish.

Wonder what was on TV :lol:

Well, i don't notice any damage to corals, they still grow well, and I never see the racoon picking at them. I don't have any LPS like euphilla or fleshy brains, they might go after those more than sps?

My racoon has eliminated them too, doesn't seem to bother corals too much either. Layton

Probably better and less "messy" ways of getting ammonia into the tank than that

Well I think it's just more bioload. You actually don't need a lot of rock to get all the required biological filtration you need. Anything more is just bioload which needs to support itself. Layton

You don't need it Personally I'd get rid of it. Just a place for crap to accumulate, and difficult to clean.