JoeBlog

Hi Trinity- I certainly don't want to start a flaming argument. I don't know the answer to this very frequently used statement about size of fish and restriction of growth to tank size, but it just doesn't seem logical to me and the weak evidence that I've seen from touring around also suggests otherwise. Therefore, I posed the question/statement for rebuttal. Given your original post, I thought that it may be useful to you as well given your consideration of purchasing potentially very large fish.

This is my suspicion as well Reef. These very large fish that I’ve recently seen were over the 10 year mark (don’t know the age of the sharks). This is a quote from http://www.wetwebmedia.com/naso.htm that supports the argument of death before adulthood for large fish: "Buy larger (four plus inch) Unicornfishes. Can you get one that's too big? Sure, depending on the spatial assets of your set-up. I have seen more-than-a-foot Naso (lituratus) "streamers" (with long, trailing ends to the upper and lower margins of their caudal fin), placed with success in humungous systems. The same fish would die "mysteriously" of "behavioral problems" put in a six foot system." Has anyone in this country (on this forum) even been keeping marines for this long? And if so, how many fish do they still have from the start? Unfortunately, I only have two fish remaining from my initial setup three years ago. :oops: They are continuing to grow though.

People say this all the time, i.e. "Fish only grow to the size of their tank." Is it really true??? If you put a small yellow tang in a 6 inch square tank would it only grow to a couple inches??? I don't know, but some anecdotal evidence from what I've seen in some fish shops during my trip argues against this rational. I understand that it is inhumane for the fish, but that isn't the argument. A couple of these very large fish that I was previously referring to from the Terra Haute shop were initially raised in small customers' tanks (4x2) and had to be given to this shop since they "out grew the tank". These fish are HUGE; bigger than any I’ve ever seen. Also, there were a couple sharks in a LFS tank in Indianapolis as well as Milwaukee that have completely out grown their tanks to the point of it being quite sad. The last time I saw the one in Indy it had to lay curved since the tank was too short (approximately 5 foot square and 3+ foot tall). By your rational, these observations would never happen.

I visited another LFS in the States last week (post pictures later) and they had sailfin and naso tangs that were WELL over 12"! Given that, you must be planning one hell of a tank upgrade.

Another month!! I'm having serious tank withdrawals.

Man, you just keep getting more and more awesome additions. Can't wait to get back to NZ to check it out in person.

Here is an overview of the main aquarium with the two whale sharks. A feeding sequence in the whale shark tank. The surge in action Brief view of the reef tank

I went to the Georgia Aquarium a little over a week ago, and it was AMAZING!! I bought the usual ticket as well as a behind the scenes tour. The tour was a bit pricy at $50 for an hour, but well worth it. Anyway, to the pictures… (I must apologize in advance. I was borrowing my buddies camera and couldn't for the life of me hold my hand still enough to avoid blurred shots in a few/many of the pictures. :oops: ) Welcome to the aquarium… I got the bright and early to avoid the massive lines that formed later in the day. Many of the hour time slots for entry were sold out even on a Monday!! Here is the 1st welcoming aquarium with a massive school of these fairly large fish. There was a 2nd aquarium with exactly the same stock on the opposing wall of the hallway. Next you walk into this huge entry hall to all the exhibits. Of course, I immediately headed straight for the reef! This is the first aquarium in the reef exhibit. It has an insanely large school of (possibly) squirrel fish. It was amazing and made me decide that a huge school of fish is mandatory for my next big tank. In the sand of this tank were all of these worms(??). Now to the main reef... Just after the surge... (I have a movie of this as well, but don't know how to post those.) The reef is VERY young and the corals are quite small (relative to the massive size of the aquarium). Also, they are starting a propogation center in order to completely stock the tank over time. In the mean time, they have quite a few fake corals to fill in the gaps. I am definitely planning on coming back in a few years to see how things have filled in. Just for propective though, most of those yellow tangs are HUGE compared to anything I've seen in anyone's aquariums. Now for some "behind the scenes" pictures... First, the massive skimmers for the reef tank: Now the surge device: At the back of the reef, they have a refuge with mangroves. They first introduce new fish here and when the fish decides that they want to enter the aquarium, they swim over the top of the reef. A few more behind the scenes shots before we get to the BIG AQUARIUM. Here are a few bags of Instant Ocean: The husbandry center where they prepare all the food. The vet center Now to the Ocean Voyage... You first enter by going through a tunnel at the center of the tank, which is SO big that you can't see any of the walls. It appears like an actual slice of the deep ocean. Many people were just lingering in awe in the tunnel and the staff kept trying to convince people to move on since it only gets better. And unbelievably they were right... Picture just after the automatic feeder went off and the fish went MAD. I also have a movie of this and will post if I can figure it out. Here is a sample of the plastic used for the viewing pane. Some behind the scenes pictures of this tank. The yellow catwalk is where they target feed the two whale sharks, other sharks and large fish. All the other thousands of fish in the tank are feed periodically on automatic feeders spread all around the tank. The viewing pane for this tank is right behind this catwalk. This is a view of the rest of the tank next to and from the catwalk. The viewing tunnel is right in the center where the water is agitated with fans/bubbles. So from the main viewing window, you actually only see about 1/4 of the whole tank, and it is still CRAZY huge. A picture of one of the whale sharks from the catwalk. I know that this will probably piss quite a few of you off, but here are some pictures of the "petting" areas. There are several of these around (various types of crabs, starfish, etc...) with a biologist at each one to educate and assist. I was surprised by having the hammer head sharks as one of the petting exhibits, but they didn't seem to mind. I found it quite interesting. Here's a picture of a huge crab in the cold water exhibit. They had many other exhibits including quite amazing fresh water stuff, seals, penguins, otters, Beluga whales, Georgia coastline specific species, etc… Unfortunately, I was running out of memory on my buddy’s small card and had to make not so tough decisions. The tropical marine stuff won hands down. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and would definitely recommend a trip there to anyone coming to the States. I got there around 9AM and they practically had to kick me out close to 6PM. So if you do go, make sure to plan a WHOLE day and pay the extra bucks for the "behind the scenes" tickets. Steve

I'm going tomorrow!!!! 8) I haven't booked my tickets yet, but hopefully it won't be too busy on a Monday. They have a behind the scenes tour that I'm going to take as well. Hopefully I will get some good pictures to share soon. Steve

I'm currently in the States for work and have visited a few LFS. There are heaps of different (weird) looking "farm raised" clown fish. I will have to ask the next time I'm there on how these "new" types come about, where they get them, etc...

I had the same problem that Chimera is refering to and had to lower my overflow. There is a calculator of suggested linear inches of overflow given the amount of flow for your return on RC: http://reefcentral.com/calc/drain.php Although, I don't believe it specifies how high the water level is above the overflow with the optimal amount of linear inches.

Have you cleaned your air lines? Mine starts to make some pretty crazy noises when they aren't getting enough air. If I turn them down to the recommended 2 o'clock setting, they start to chatter. So, I run them slightly wider open and clean the airlines at least once a week. Steve

Chim- What were some of the negative comments? I've also seen some posts of people not very happy, but it was usually because they had a hard time mounting them. This can easily be solved by adding a reducer to the end of your overflow piping though. I haven't bought them yet, so it would be good to know any problems before I shell out the $$. Cheers, Steve

This is what I am going to use: https://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=EA1351 I'm going to buy 7 of them and change them out each day. That way I can wash a few at a time and still have plenty of time to let them dry out.

Paul (the owner) has AMAZING service as well. I am definitely buying more products from him in the future.

Acros can certainly look dead when they get stressed. Is smelling them a good way to tell? If they don't have that typical nasty acro smell, then I would assume that the flesh is gone (i.e. dead), no?

I believe the recommended water throughput to be 3000LPH for the AP902. Although, I think that I’m running slightly more than that since it’s coming directly off the overflow (Laguna 7 return) with only a slight amount bypassed to the sump. I also run mine a little “wet†in that the undisturbed bubble height is about a ½†to 1†below the top of the cup lip with my air valves set around 1 o'clock. I’m playing around with the extent of “wet†skimming since I’m running BB and this is part of the recommended methodology. I seem to be getting out more of the larger particles with the water level raised this high, i.e. much less detritus accumulation in the bottom of the skimmer body and less accumulation of detritus on the mechanical filtration on the skimmer outlet. In the long run however, I will be running the AP902 as recommended (i.e. dry) and run a second Becket skimmer wet in order to get the best of both worlds.

Fair enough. I suppose that you would not expect a store credit for the full amount. Others have said that they agree with me. This is all that I was looking for when I started the thread. I never mentioned the name of the store or the store owner. Bob (via his daughter) took it upon himself to reopened a dead thread with (what I consider) a personal attack and didn't have his facts straight, and thus I have responded. This is never going to happen. I've found out what I was looking for and fortunately there are two other excellent marine stores in town (Organisms and Critter Kingdom) so I don't have to worry about this.

So, do you run an undergravel in your system?

Well, I was just going to let it go and just never shop there again, but since they want to bring it up again, I must respond. Sorry for the long post, but there’s a lot to be said… I don’t know about any sign, it may or may not be there. One thing I do know is that I have been told on many occasions that if the fish does not work out, then you can bring it back. On the day in question, I was standing right there when another customer was told the same time about purchasing another fish. If the supposed sign is their “policyâ€, why do they make these statements prior to sale, and not only to their long term loyal customers???? :roll: This is the whole point. I have been a long term customer that has not only spend thousands of dollars with them on their over priced merchandise, but also gone out of my way to bring them more business. I also went out of my way to order Bob bulbs from the States from Marine Depot (since he couldn’t source them cheaper himself) in which I had my Dad specifically send them to me to save Bob money, for which I certainly didn’t charge him a service fee for my time or effort. As for the over priced merchandise, I was willing to pay a bit more for certain items for what I thought was a good relationship between buyer and seller. In fact, I thought we were friends. This is all true. There are two reasons why I didn’t get into the specifics. The first is that my only intention was to find out what the norm is for customer service. I had never even mentioned Bob or Redwood by name. I was just extremely pissed off by how I was treated and wanted to find out if I am actually expecting too much out of a retailer. The second is that this isn’t the only time that he has done this to me. (guess I'm a slow learner :oops: ) The example that I initially presented is exactly what happened to me on the first instance in which Bob charged me to put a fish back into his tank to only turn around and charge me full price on a fish that I was swapping it for. I was upset the first time as well, but thought Bob was just having one of his frequent bad days. (Regular customers certainly know what I am talking about ) At any rate, this first time I purchased a tang that for some crazy reason turned out to be a coral muncher, which is definitely not in the norm of tang behavior. I felt as though this initial example was much a cleaner case for which I would expect the retailer to accept the return for full store credit. It’s not like I wanted to take my money and spend it elsewhere. In the first instance, I actually ended up buying something more expensive. So, not only did he make money on a fish that he sold to another person for full retail, but he also made more money on me for a purchase on a higher priced item. This last time, I was going to buy a fish that was $30 more than the cleaner wrasse, but he will never get another cent from me. As for whether it was my ignorance for putting a cleaner wrasse in with a 6-line, this probably wasn’t the brightest move. However, I didn’t feel as though it was that big of a risk since the person who bought a 6-line wrasse moments prior to my purchase (who I joking mentioned to him that he should have just bought mine and didn’t actually try to sell it to him) was told “not to worry about it since you can bring it back if it turns out to be a trouble fish.†Also, the shop keeper said that they have kept cleaners with 6-lines with no trouble before. All of this made me feel comfortable making the purchase to see if I may be as lucky as the shop keeper in mixing the two. This is an absolute joke. EVERYONE knows that Bob is totally old school and doesn't have a clue about current methods / advances in technology. Hell, he thinks that a Berlin Classic is one of the best skimmers available and pushes them on everyone for an insane price. (no offense intended to those few that use Berlin skimmers) The "help" that he is refering to in those "early days" is when he came out to my house to help me install an undergravel filter!!! :-? He charged me something like $300 to do the job, which only took a little over an hour and it should also be mentioned that I bought them dinner. To top it off, I had to tear it out again a few months later when I got some "good" advice, realized that we weren't in the dark ages any longer and put in proper filtration. Again, this is a joke. Of course I bought off shore in some instances. Hell, I bought off shore for Bob as I mentioned earlier. If I remember correctly, he has a 250W DE bulb on his shelf for over $300!! Who the hell is going to buy that??? He has Red Sea ozone for well over $1000. I can bring one in from the States with the most expensive shipping and buy the stepdown transformer for a few hundred $$ less than what he is trying to sell them for. This is the second time that he has stocked Red Sea Ozonizers and complained the first time that he couldn’t sell them. Geez, I wonder why?!!?! As for purchasing from Auckland suppliers, it is actually cheaper to buy stuff from Auckland and pay shipping than to buy certain goods from them. Besides, the Auckland suppliers have tended to have a better variety of stock and on occasion, much better quality. Like I said, old school knowledge. It would be interesting to see how many people on this forum use undergravel filters in their reef systems!! I can’t even tell you how many SPS corals he has killed. It is a bit of a joke around town on how he has all these SPS bleached skeletons (he has killed) that he has on his shelf and actually trying to sell them. Bob has asked me on numerous occasions on how to keep SPS. I certainly am no expert, but at least my knowledge is from this decade, and I certainly haven’t killed as many corals as he has. In the past when we talked about husbandry, he would pull these old dusty books off the shelf for references. It's not like all the old information is useless, but the hobby has certainly made some vast strides over the years of which for the most part he is totally clueless. A very well respected reefer in town who is building a large new tank was looking around for a tank builder. I asked him why he doesn’t ask Bob and he just laughed. We laugh a lot when Bob's name comes up.

From my experience, they pretty much all cost the same, i.e. from chocolate brown, faded out almost bleached white to quite awesome whatever color coral. The only price differential that I can distinguish (at least locally) is the opportunity cost of waiting around the shop to be first when MAF leaves.

Or skim wetter, but that's a whole different debate.

the bottom of the skimmer looks brown. Is that poo buildup already?

For a nano, I think it would be very cool.

It took forever, but I've finally finished the download and the tank looks amazing! Pcitures are great for detail, but they can't match the movies for overall prospective. I really like the aquascape. Excellent job!