wasp

Good thought Brian, can you pm me your phone number? Just depends how I go for time, if it's a fast job I'll catch you on the way back, I'll call you either way early afternoon let you know how it's going.

Yes call me 479 5446. Won't be hear Sunday though have to go kick some scuzzball non rent paying tenants out of my renter in Taumaranui. Saturday, or any day this week is fine.

Hi Duke thanks for the water sample it tested at 0.31 mg/l, which is not too bad (there's worse) Quite a common scenario when there is a lot of hair algae in a tank it will use phosphate as it is available and keep water levels looking OK'ish even though the tank overall has too much. So for now how about send me another sample in 2 weeks? Hows it all looking? probably too early for any changes but lets know if anything happens. Also if the food is running low let me know I'll send some more.

Good one Feelers!

. It'll be hard to beat this guy, me and Chim just bought him yesterday!

Well cool dude at least i won't forget your name. Yes I used to have to tell everyone how to spell it now I just let them spell it whatever way who really cares? But having said that ours is the correct way :lol:

Very nice! A heap of coraline algae too!

Oh sorry about that i didn't even see it was you who bid I just saw I had a few seconds left so ripped in and did it.

Wow that's pretty cool I've placed a bid.

Yes many if not all will do fine in a tropical aquarium. I used to have some beautiful beadlet anemone collected at muriwai some of then could expand to dinner plate size. They would pop their side open and poke out hundreds of little baby ones sometimes too. Not a whole lot is known about anemone sex, but it seems they spawn by the males & females releasing eggs & sperm. From this article, slightly outdated now, here is a quote http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen8.html Quote "Among the species described, there is almost an even split between species that spawn pelagic larvae and those that brood internally. Becuase I had only ever heard of the release of sperm by spawning Entacmaea and Stichodactyla previously, I was starting to suspect that these species may be brooders, which makes it a lot easier to breed in aquaria. Of course, our sample size for spawnings is so low that I don't have much confidence in that guess, and if Ron's is releasing eggs rather than sperm, that guess is shot down ;-). Of those species that spawn pelagic or demersal larvae, there is again about an even spilt among those larvae that do and do not feed in the plankton. If we're lucky, the larvae will be non-feeding and have a very short time in the plankton, but if they release feeding pelagic larvae, or even if the larvae spend a reasonably long time in the plankton (some non-feeding species spend more than a year as a larvae before settling!) it may be difficult to impossible for us to raise the young in aquaria, even if we were to be successful in obtaining a spawning pair"

Entacmea Quadricolor, or bubble tip anemone, the basic brown variety. These are the hardiest of the clown hosting anemones, only thing wrong with them they are prone to moving around rather than stay where you want them. BTA's lend themselves to being propagated by chopping in half, because splitting in half is their natural way of reproducing. It is suspected they may reproduce sexually also, but this has not been definately confirmed. Here it is in the tank

Amemones may be reproduced by chopping them, here is a pic when I did mine. The first pic immediately after chopping And this one the next day, one 1/2 still completely deflated, the other 1/2 coming back to life As I used to feed this anemone quite a lot, but only have a small tank, I had to chop this one in 1/2 quite a bit to keep it down to size. The one photographed is already a 1/2 anemone cut off the one in the tank. Now I never feed it at all, so not growing much. On another occasion in my frag tank an anemone got caught in a pump. A piece got cut off him by the pump, it had the base of some tentacles although the tentacles themselves were cut off, and a small piece of the side of the anemone. This went on to grow into a complete new anemone, but the strange thing was, the main anemone the bit came off, slowly worsened and in a week or so it died.

Yes, T5 is OK. Depending what kind of anemone how much light you need. 1 1/2 watts per liter will do many species, keep the tubes within 2 inches of the water surface.

Bingo!

But no more dirty than rock, right? When I had a DSB I followed Dr. Rons idea that you never touch it. Eventually realised that was unworkable in the long term and began vacuuming it. Best I could tell, after a vacuum, the oxygen gradient was heading back towards normal within hours, and denitrification fully restored in around 3 days. By vacuuming in alternate sections, I was able to achieve stable water quality throughout. Bottom line, I do not believe a sand bed has to be more dirty than the rock, to work.

Well I'm starting to swing more towards sand beds in that case. But silica based ones. They can after all, be vacuumed. Your origional statement seemed to hint that to get rid of nitrate, DSB's have to be dirtier than rock. But now it seems, to work, they don't. So as a sandbed can be vacuumed, provided phosphate bonding is not an issue, There does not appear to be a problem.

Edit

But you said DSB's only work if they are dirty. The issue is not wether or not they can get dirty, they can. So can rock. I dissagree with the statement they can only work if dirty.

So the argument against DSB's is they can only work if they are dirty, and now you tell us rock has to be equally dirty? Kind of takes the sting out of the anti DSB thing doesn't it? We should also get rid of our rock, it only works if it's dirty? Only alternative is if DSB's can also work when they are relatively not dirty

Well I'm starting to swing more towards sand beds in that case. But silica based ones. They can after all, be vacuumed. Your origional statement seemed to hint that to get rid of nitrate, DSB's have to be dirtier than rock. But now it seems, to work, they don't. So as a sandbed can be vacuumed, provided phosphate bonding is not an issue, There does not appear to be a problem.

ROTFL !!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

For some reason nearly all of us use some type of carbonate sand in our tanks. This is partly due to the old idea that it will slowly dissolve and "buffer" the water. Yes, you'll read that in a lot of old books. However modern calcium dosing methods make this reason for having carbonate sand redundant. Just wondered if anyone knows wether silica sand would bind phosphate? If not, then that would remove a large part of the reason to not have a DSB. If it did not bind phosphate a simple vacuum would keep it clean. I know the main reason for not having silica based sand is the idea it will release silicate. In practise this has been found with most silica sands to be a non issue.

Well hey, I get woken up this morning by the phone and it's Craig telling me he wants to GIVE me his urchin :bounce: :bounce: So here it is now, in my frag tank Cool huh!

Was just going to! Just to say IMO silicates are not a problem, they are skimmed more easily than they are added. Once they enter the tank they are assimilated into mainly diatoms, which are very prone to skimming. Silicates were sometimes a problem back in the days of crappy skimmers, but not now. Phosphate, well that's awhole different ball game

I'll go with that. Some of what's said in some of the older books (still offered for sale BTW) is laughable. And I saw a pic of an authors tank, a man regarded as a leading aquarist in his day, that would now be considered an average or less tank. And I still think a person who has to speak in riddles is likely unsure of his facts.