chimera

no, however my tank sits pretty much directly over a bearer. the posts the bearer sit on are not too far away from being directly under the tank either (a metre away or so) so all up, pretty strong as it is. i will be adding another bearer to sit under the joists and a couple of posts when i upgrade to 6x3x2 (or 7x3x2 if room permits ) just for safety's sake. you can get load bearing info from a builders manual on the different types of bearers/joists you are using so could work out approximately what you need anyways.

so we're having a competition to see who has the biggest aipstasia?

it's the leaching of water from the frozen food into the water you defrost it in as opposed to the food itself. try running the food through a seive and chuck the water... or get a mutha skimmer

about time you paid me a visit and did a spring clean on my tank nice job on hiding that stream too, looks great. next tank i do you will spend most of your time trying to work out where the mega flow is coming from, all plumbing will be insanely hidden by some ingenious ideas (at the cost of a small amount of tank space)

Actually, I haven't fed frozen brine or mysis for a couple of months, kind of forgot about it. When dumping it in tonight the corals reacted quite well, polyps fully extended. Twice a week I'll also get a stream and blast the crap off the rocks - the corals also react exceptionally well to this and I don't know if it's just my imagination but they appear to "suddenly" colour up more. I assume that is just because of the light bouncing off the particles in the water onto the corals that does this? Or can corals bring out colouration that quickly?

Daily i usually feed a combo of Tetra marine flakes or Tetra spirulina flakes, JBL MariPerls and Redsea MarineGro granules. Twice weekly I feed the tank some phytoplankton and/or cyclopeeze by putting it in a syringe, half filling with water and shaking it up then injecting it in. Once a week I'll peg in half a sheet of Nori or stir up some frozen brine shrimp and frozen mysis shrimp in some water and chuck it all in

unless you got a large amount of cash to automate most tasks

it looks different colour between the pic's taken mid july vs now. white = not healthy. will try and dig up an article about it i was reading a couple of months back

your anemone looks a little bleached. not a normal colour for an anemone! otherwise all others pic's look great! :bounce:

oops, my bad, yeah the UK it's 4.5 litres, US is 3.785 litres.

very true - decent lighting makes a big difference - at least it made the largest improvement in the shortest time for me (couple of months) for me personally, i have similar issues as this guy if i specifically look at his acro colours - good for some (pinks) bad for others (blue, purples) my acro's look exceptionally similar to his - we both changed lights at the same time, both use zeovit (used). perhaps it's more the actual change rather than the actual difference in lights themselves - corals needing time to adjust. thats the problem with this hobby, make a change then wait a few months to see if what you did was right! very frustrating if you get it wrong.

some weird american measurement if i believe :lol: about 4.5 litres give or take 500 litre tank

as the article says, it doesn't really matter - so long as your nutrient export (skimming, LR etc) is in balance with what you add

my regal angel devours ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. he's a little pig! when not eating the food i give him, he's usually munching on algae on rocks, or mushrooms or the clams mantle. he is FAT!

frozen? i feed mainly flake, pellets, nori, etc. do frozen once a week

I really don't think anyone in their right mind would! This is the issue I am having currently but to a lesser extent. I'm most interested in the page where he shows the purple acro after I think 5 weeks (?) of dosing k-balance (effectively potassium)

exactly the issue im having. pink poc is hard core pink, same with pink monti (well, it's like a peach colour but nice) but just can't get the purples to come out as in the thread above. zeovit k-balance will fix you reckon?

While we're on the subject of theories by Eric Bourneman, here's another. This one was on feeding and how Eric feeds his tank reasonably heavily. The question was basically asked "doesnt increased feeding mean more nutrients, especially nitrates?" here's the answer. It is just a theory, as later he states "In terms of feeding more vs more often, I think more often is a more natural emulation, but have no evidence to say that it is actually more beneficial to the tank" still, it does make sense So, I don't want to generalize to every tank, but, in general, I think reef tanks are capable of processing much much more food than the average aquarist feeds. A long time ago, when there were not efficient skimmers and people didn't keep reef tanks and tanks were fish only consisting of dead substrate (bacteria and algae coated) and fish and glass and non-export filtration (no skimming), was when the "rule" of don't overfeed was instilled. Having kept a freshwater tank, and experimental tanks without the standard "reef tank" design, it's true. If you overfeed, you end up with nutrient problems. But, this is also the "rule" we are told and accept when we first start a reef tank. So, we feed x amount, and our systems equilibrate to deal with that volume of food. There will be no more and no less life than can be supported by the food that is either produced within or added to the aquarium. If you add more, there will be an increase in nutrients (unless the skimmer is just really effective, in which case it may not really register). But, if you feed more, eventually, you will see nutrients start to climb, and the first things that respond through fast growth are bacteria, cyanobacteria, and fast growing algae (single celled diatoms, turfs, etc.). Eventually, the system reaches a new higher steady state level, and everything is again limited. The nutrient levels in the tank disappear again. You can see this over and over again, and it is my experience that most reef tanks can handle a ridiculously large amount of food. Between the skimming, the corals, filter feeders, sponges, bacteria, coralline, worms, microfauna, meiofauna, etc., there are a lot of mouths. With this extra nutrition comes more reproduction, too....i.e. more mouths...which need more food. Eventually, of course, you reach a point where you have max'ed out what you can add, but you will be surprised just how much this is. Now, when you start feeding more, most people see an algal increase or cyano, and back off immediately. Don't. This is the same phenomenon as happened when the tank was first set up. Its a community response to more nutrients. It's like cycling the tank. First come the diatoms, then the red slime, then the hair algae, then it dies, then corallines take over. Every year in the ocean, there is a cycle in the spring of a phytoplankton bloom, followed by a zooplankton bloom. Same sort of thing here. Now, the one caveat is that many nuisance algae are strong space competitors that you do not want to become heavily established during these periods. Eventually, they will take up the new nutrient additions and self-limit, but as plants are autotrophic light alone can keep them going. So, you have a tank with no measurable nutrients in the water column, but can still have a lot of algae. Now what? Well, the primary control to avoid this on reefs - and in tanks - is herbivory. So, you get to go purchase a new tang that you wanted, or you get some more snails, or an urchin. If done slowly, and you already have enough herbivores, just the increase in microherbivory by larger numbers of amphipods may be enough to control it. Or, maybe your super skimmer and ozone are in place, and whatever you pour in and is not eaten quickly is just pulled straight out. I have seen some tanks that I think could have a constant drip of food all day and all night, simply due to the export power. Anyway, start slowly, be patient, and within a year you'll probably find you can dump ridiculously large amounts of food in the tank without any measurable nutrients in the tank.

ya learn something new every day. Tegastes acroporanus http://www.ericborneman.com/Tegastes-co ... story.html also click the "photos" link from the above page

i like this bit. Bouillabaisse hahaa! Thats random

:lol:

CR usually and CaCl2 for topups

on a 200 litre tank? 500 litre tank? 1,000 litre tank? 200,000,000 litre tank? that doesn't say much

where's the yawn emoticon when you need it