wasp

Thought that'd flush you out! :lol: suspecious? Si Amigo

I'm sure he would too but he is conspicious by his absense today.

Ha Ha! Taking the Mickey Steve? The first paragraph of the article is a pretty good summary. It's a very interesting piece, I'm glad you posted it.

If that's what your kit says, the real level will be higher. It's probably up around levels that will stop coraline algae from growing. But even if that's the case, by the looks of your skimmer that will soon be solved.

Yes agree, the tank is just too small to allow much skope for proper aquascaping, that's one reason I'm moving up. Also I must say your own tank is maturing nicely Chimera, I used to think it looked a bit stark, but now it's getting that natural reef type look, very nice. And Tom Gunner, way to go, I love it! And everybody else, they are all cool tanks. Knowing how hard it can be to photograph i can only imagine how nice they must look in person. Not a dud in the thread. Umm, well Feelers - what to say? :lol: :lol:

Way to go slappers all that skimmate means it's kicking in. Two kinds of skimmate can happen with vodka, you can get clear and slimey, which is just masses of bacteria (good cos they're full of nasties you want to remove), and the kind of skimmate you have, which is a mix of all sorts, this will increase for a time as nutrient levels drop below what is needed to maintain nuisance algae & it dies and gets skimmed. :lol: Dude you just won the tank cowboy of the week award! ROTFL Basically what you should be testing for is nutrients. In the tank if there is too much, you get nuisance algae, but if there is too little, everything can suffer. We cannot test for every existing nutrient so what we test for is phosphate, if that's about right, we assume the rest are too. A little rough but works reasonably well. However, in the absense of a phosphate testing kit, there is another way, it's this. - If you have to clean your front glass every day, there is too much nutrients. In fact you should not have to clean it more than once every 4-5 days. So stay with the vodka until you've got glass cleaning to about that. My own tank is very low in nutrients because I actually feed the corals with additives, I would only clean my front glass probably once a month, and that would just be to remove spots of coraline algae. The other thing to do is monitor your corals, if anything looks like it's shrivelling up, reduce the vodka. However IMO the glass cleaning test for many people is just as good a way to monitor phosphate as actually testing for it with a kit, because testing it with hobby kits is an imprecise science anyway.

Here's mine. Pic is a reasonably fair likeness although a little over exposed. There is around 80 x flow, via the stream, HOB skimmer & sump return. Part of the sump return can't be seen but it blasts straight down the back to blow detritus to the front for syphoning, and the piece of alkathene pipe on the left is the rest of the return (I said it was budget) One interesting thing, notice the coraline growth on the wall opposite the stream. That's how to get coraline, if a pump is blasting on something, that's where it will grow. I'm finding the tank a little small, (but don't we all? :lol: ), and due to my sloppy design skills it's klutzed up with equipment both inside and out, so will be upgrading but I'm still mulling over just how to do it. At this stage I'm planning on going sumpless, as energy efficient as possible, and to get away from the crowded type look. The existing corals are growing well so hoping to have some nice big feature type ones, and pretty minimal on the rock. Would also like to somehow design a lower flow and light area for softies, I miss my mushies and similar I used to have.

Not directly but once your nutrients are very low the caulerpa will die. If you want to save the caulerpa just lay off the vodka if you notice the caulerpa starting to suffer.

Hi Slappers that 1 ml per 100 liters is meant to be a daily dose you monitor things and then increase or decrease by how your nutrient reduction is going.

Yes Ghostface I'm impressed! Never been able to photo mine since I added lighting for the sps it comes out overexposed and does not show the colors, colours only show in close ups. Nonetheless I'll have a play this evening and do the best I can & post it. Be warned though it will be the scummiest tank in the thread. :oops: Next tank will be designed a bit more easthetically.

Used to be a vodka fan but found the performance from it will drop off over time, maybe six months or so. Think this is likely because it reduces bacterial diversity as it favours certain bacteria. Perhaps dosing a bacteria culture such as supplied by zeovit or prodibio would get around this problem. Nonetheless, a tank suffering from excess nutrients can benefit greatly, at least in the short term, from vodka dosing, combined with strong skimming, which is needed to export the extra bacteria created by the vodka. And Warwick I know what you're saying about cyano. First time I dosed vodka was to a tank with a nasty cyano problem, all over everything. Due to lack of experience I dosed way too much vodka. However the results were GREAT! Within a day or so the cyano started disintegrating, and then my skimmer started filling up with thick red skimmate. All cyano gone and tank beautiful & clean in perhaps a week or so. But before everyone rush off and try this I've heard of some cases where it did not work. Just one of those unexplained little tank mysteries!

Ha Ha! :lol: Always enjoy the unsubtle humour on this site, and the banter.

Can't live in any stage without a fish for more than 6 weeks. Can't survive in a tank even with fish, for more than 10 - 11 months, unless new "bloodlines" are introduced.

Aint it a cool hobby!

Yes, rock is all you need. The recommended amount is 1 kg rock to 8 litres of water, but the trend is to less rock than that now, we have better skimmers etc. If pulling a DSB, there is sometimes an ammonia / nitrite spike as the rock suddenly has to deal with more waste & takes time to adapt. Best plan monitor ammonia & nitrate & reduce feeding to minimum for a few days if there is a problem.

Don't know what a stats game is myself Did it say something about that in the article? You might have missed the last part of the article where it discusses work by Burgess and Matthews (1994), may be the most enlightening part of all. Will clarify how strict QT procedures will get the tank clean in under a year, with no other treatment needed. I'm not Cracker but doubt this is his plan. However, for most of us fish immunity will be an important part of the picture.

what I've found is Lagunas are quite good however they will need cleaning a lot more often than an eheim.

This may enlighten - Quote - "There is a widely held belief in the marine aquarium hobby that "Ich" is always present in our aquaria and this belief is often repeated on marine bulletin boards. There is much information in the scientific literature that contradicts this belief. C. irritans is an obligate parasite (Burgess and Matthews, 1994; Dickerson and Dawe, 1995; Yoshinaga and Dickerson, 1994). Obligate means the parasite can not survive without infecting its host, in this case, fish. Theronts have been shown to die if a suitable host is not found within the required time. Yoshinaga and Dickerson (1994) found that few theronts (0.34%) were viable 12.5 hours after excystment and Burgess and Matthews (1994) found that no theronts were viable 18 hours after excystment. Colorni (1985) found that some excysted tomites (=theronts) were observed to be moving weekly after 48 hours. While the life span of the theronts appears variable, it is limited and all will die without finding a suitable host. If an aquarium has no fish in it, and there are no additions of fish, or anything else that could be carrying trophonts, tomonts, tomites or theronts for a period of 6 weeks or longer, all parasites will have died. An aquarium such as this is an obvious exception to "Ich" always being present. Many fish collected for marine aquariums will not be carrying "Ich". Incidence of C. irritans in wild fish varies widely and may be geographically related. Some authors have found few infected fish, if any, in the areas they have examined (Puerto Rico: Bunkley-Williams and Williams, 1994; southern California: Wilkie and Gordin, 1969) . Others have found that low levels of infection are not uncommon (e.g. southern Queensland; Diggles and Lester, 1996). Keeping multiple fish in holding tanks and at aquarium stores increases the chances of a fish carrying "Ich" parasites, but it is still possible to acquire a fish that is not infected with "Ich". If new fish are quarantined for at least 6 weeks, any parasites on the fish will have gone through a number of life cycles increasing the number of parasites present. In the majority of cases, the increase in parasite numbers will result in full blown infection and fish can be treated to remove the parasites. Hyposalinity has been demonstrated to break the life cycle of "Ich" (Cheung et al. 1979; Colorni, 1985) and fish correctly treated with hyposalinity will be free from "Ich". Any fish that do not show signs of infection after 6 weeks are very unlikely to be carrying any parasites. If fish that are free from "Ich" (either because they were not originally infected or because they have been treated with hyposalinity) are added to an aquarium that is free from "Ich", the aquarium will stay free from "Ich" and be another exception to "Ich" always being present. Burgess and Matthews (1994) were attempting to maintain a viable population of C. irritans which could be used in later studies. To maintain the parasite populations, they needed host fish in order for the trophonts to feed and continue the life cycle. Each host fish was only used once in a process of serial transition such that none of the hosts would die or develop an immunity. While the procedure worked very well and enabled them to maintain populations for some time, the viability of the populations decreased with time and none of the 7 isolates they used survived more than 34 cycles, around 10 to 11 months. They suggest this is due to senescence and aging in cell lines is well recognised in Ciliophora. The presence of aging cell lines in C. irritans suggests that an aquarium that has been running for longer than 12 months without any additions is unlikely to have any surviving "Ich" parasites, yet another exception to "Ich" always being present. Whilst "Ich" may be present in some aquaria, it is certainly not present in all aquaria. Through careful quarantining and treatment, it is very much possible to establish and maintain an "Ich" free aquarium."

What stuns me is that after all this time people still actually buy them. Not getting into the stream debate I've checked and the Seio ones don't contain the toxic oil contained in other Seios so no worries there. But put an ordinary Seio other than the "stream" type in my tank? No way.

Ha Ha, lots of differing information as usual Ghostface you idea of a fluidised sand bed has merit, and also drawbacks. On the plus side it will not become a phosphate or heavy metal sink, and it will also provide excellent ammonia and nitrite reduction. On the negative side it will provide no nitrate reduction, because this is accomplished in a low oxygen environment (why the bottom part of DSB's are good at it ), a fluidised bed will obviously not be low enough in oxygen. As to buffering, there will be a slight effect. Depends on a lot of other factors in your tank, but as a general rule other buffering should be used also, the ph has to drop too low before the carbonate sand will supply buffering of any significance. Extremely unlikely carbonate sand will maintain PH at 8.0 or better in a tank. Not saying impossible, but it would be rare to find an example. Easiest way to maintain PH, calcium, and alkalinity, without klutzing up with lots of equipment, would be kalkawasser. Cheap too, if you don't buy the genuine article.

The maths chemistry and assumptions may be interesting mental gymnastics. But what actually happens in a real tank is what matters. In my experience a tank with carbonate sand can easily drop to PH 7.8 at night ( lower than ideal ), if not buffered by means other than carbonate sand. I've heard of cases where PH has dropped even lower than that.

I've used beach sand with no negatives had it in a tank for around 2 years. Heckuva lot cheaper than coral sand, it can be surprisingly expensive to buy sand for a tank. Actually I've used 2 kinds of beach "sand". One being just basic sand, had to wash thoroughly and if you use this go with a fairly thin layer as someone already said it is dense, and hard to clean. The other was actually crushed shell, this can sometimes be found on certain spots at the beach, I just sifted to the size I wanted, it looked pretty good in the tank too. In fact if I went back to sand that's probably what I'd do. It's not white, more a golden brown, but does look nice.

That could be a very useful post Rossco! Looks like the poor little guy gradually got a gutful & couldn't pass them. Maybe something we should all be mindful of. Perhaps it would be worth others who lose fish to open them & see what's in their stomach so we can find if this is a common problem.

Cheaper, more powerful, and use less watts! You can have a combination of any two, but not all three.

I see. Didn't know you were American I thought it was some stupid kiwi trying to make something out of my refernce to 9/11 that was not intended. So I see why it's more personal to you & therefore offer my apology for any offence given. No I didn't, no interest in it. And having said all that, back to the ich thing, I'm not a pathologist but have seen Craigs fish, what I saw was definately ich irritans there were some large cysts hanging off. Does not mean to say there may not also be velvet as well. As already said by several, one of the pointers to velvet is rapid death of a high number of fish.