wasp

Haven't seen it since. Going by that pic of Chimeras, it must have been in the tank and taken quite a while to get to that size, as the bit I saw was just a small part of it, so it must be a fairly secretive animal. Maybe I'll see it again in another few years.

Checked out that site Conch & looked at a few of the other RSM's, yours is definately the best looking of all the ones I looked at.

Your 22 cm is a good safe hight for now. You could go lower but you have a lot of softies & lps, I would gauge it by the effect on them. If they get too much light they will contract in size, so you will be able to tell what is right for each one. Contracting in size is not nessecarily bad for them mine are a bit over lit but continue to grow well. But they look nicer a bit spread out. The clam will actually like a lot of light. Can't answer the question about the braces but does sound like you should seek further advice on this, as the consequences of a failure could be nasty.

Quote from the article - "We've got to have (CO2) levels falling by 2015." Can't see that happening. One thing that bugs me about this whole thing is we have carbon trading and all sorts of political hocus pocus, like they think they are achieving something. But fossil fuel consumption world wide continues to increase, and in fact Saudi Arabia increased oil output just a few weeks back as a favour to the US to knock back rising oil prices. But when you think about it only one thing is going to slow carbon emmissions, and that is taking less fossil fuel out of the ground. Long as it keeps increasing, Co2 emmissions will keep increasing, no amount of carbon trading or Kyoto agreements or whatever will change anything.

Agreed, I've bought dying corals and lost them, especially sps that are already rtn'ing are VERY high risk. But it is also very satisfying to get something doing poorly and bring it back!

Good plan Wilson.

What skimmer did you get instead?

It's only a suggestion because I don't know what your budget is, but a mce600 will also fit on your tank, and provide powerful skimming. If you got this skimmer it would mean you could in future flick over to a bigger tank without having to get a new skimmer. Cost more though, Christmas pressie perhaps?

Well I thought you made a mistake selling that rock, but i like the new layout!

Jacques? Ya gotta love this hobby! :lol:

Probably not a fish hunter then, the one I had, even if I gave it some mussel, would aggressively coil all over it, obviously how it would deal with live prey. Started to freak me out there was no way I would have hand fed it. Had sharp teeth too, I used to put the mussel on a bit of wire to feed it, and it would bite the wire you could feel it's teeth grinding on the wire.

So True! Only you forgot the part where, after all this and dropping way more money than expected into the cheap tank, the person decides to upgrade and all the cheap equipment ends up sitting in the cupboard. Well that's what happened to me anyway. :-?

When I got rid of my green brittlestar after I saw it nearly eat a fish, the other reason was cos I was feeding it so much it was causing pollution to the tank. In fact it was eating more than everything else in the tank combined. I was feeding it so much to try to keep it away from the fish but it never really got full & always kept trying to catch them regardless.

My one, which was a known fish eating species, didn't look like it could catch a fish either in fact I just couldn't see how. That's until I saw it in action. Very sneaky, works it's tentacle around a perched fish without the fish noticing, till suddenly, fast as, coils all over it, in the case i watched the fish only JUST escaped, it was kinda gruesome / scary to watch. So I asked on RC about this and several people replied they had actually seen their green brittlestar eat fish. But your one isn't one of those, but even if it didn't kill your fish, it might have eaten it if it died.

Sounds like that Djsurfs guy would be the man to ask.

Yes when I saw the pic of those ones I did think they might have potential to eat fish, can't really tell though. If you feed it something like a shrimp or bit of mussel, how aggressive is it?

Well, that could work, basic small setup, $540.00. That's assuming a person actually can find things at the prices you said :-? , but it might be possible. Then they need to stock it, get a water purifier, and calcium, alkalinity and magnesium supplements, unless they are just going to trust this to the water changes, in which case they would have to buy some salt, NZ NSW will not be high enough in these elements to purely use that for other than softies. But I guess you could say this $540.00 would be a bare minimum starting point, although personally I would not recommend it I think the person would eventually regret it & upgrade everything, however some broke student or whatever could get started this way. For a very small, bare tank? Doubt it.

Here is a reasonably minimum requirement for a successful reef tank to last more than a few months- tank & stand lighting pumps for flow protein skimmer (not a crappy one that won't perform) test kits RODI unit (Chch people excluded MAYBE) liverock calcium, alkalinity and magnesium supplements livestock Then there is much more that might be needed, but the above is, in my opinion, the barest minimum. With lots of people on a tight budget wanting to start, I have been thinking hard trying to come up with a cheap plan to get them started without spending heaps, but i just can't think of one that will honestly work, other than go second hand and possibly purchase a bargain.

If memory serves correctly, in the end it cost him over $2000.00. However, lets be honest, if we want to go ultra cheap, we could set up a tank for 60 bucks. But do we want it to work? There is someone who has just set up a seahorse tank for $700.00 and has now run into problems with it. Reading the post, there is still a lot of money to be spent on it before it will have good quality water in it.

David is right on the mark. The algae and cyanobacteria you have can grow because there is enough nutrient in the water to feed them. Therefore they will grow. To stop them growing you could lower the lighting till they cannot grow, but this may be unattractive. The only other way is to remove these nutrients from the tank that are acting as fertilizer for the algae and cyanobacteria. When you feed your seahorse nutrients are added to the tank, and these have to be removed on an ongoing basis. Some suggested ways are - 1. protein skimmer 2. Macro Algae. Macro algae is really just tropical seaweed that can grow in out tank, just like plants do in a fresh water tank. It consumes the same stuff that the bad algae does and can out compete it if you get a fast growing species. As the macro algae grows you remove chunks of it from the tank as required. 3. Phosphate reactor. This is sort of like a cannister, but it holds phosphate removing media. The algae and cyanobacteria have to have a certain amount of phosphate to grow, and if we can keep levels lower than that with the phosphate reactor, the algae will die. Of these methods the cheapest will be macro algae, you can buy a bunch at Hollywood Fish Farm for 5 bucks and that will get it started. While this will help it may not be 100% effective, but it doesn't cost much, plus your seahorse will like it it will be a bit like his natural environement. The protein skimmer and phosphate reactor will be more effective but also more expensive. Also most marine tank keepers do not use water straight from the tap, too much stuff in it that fertilizes algae. It should at a minimum be run through a deionising unit.

Hi Scott, a good cheap option can be to buy an existing set up from Trade Me, they tend to go for far less than the person has spent on them. If you find something you like, ask here first though, some of them are not very well set up, which might be the reason the person eventually decides to sell. There are also some really nice ones though, i really feel for the vendor having to sell them for so much less than they have cost.

Thanks for that i think you may be right, what i saw could have been one of those little appendage things as per your pic. There would have been room how the rock is placed for a bigger thing to be hidden inside it. Do you ever see these sea cucumbers or do they hide all the time?

Well, she's checking up on him! So should he be flattered, or worried! :lol:

They can jump sometimes did you check behind the tank? That's if he's not, hopefully, in the overflow or sump.

I thought cucumbers moved slowly. This thing dissapeared in the blink of an eye.