wasp

Seems a very reasonable idea to me. The RDSB may sink phosphate. Excellent! Once it's time, the whole point of an RDSB is it is easily removed & changed. Maybe annually, whatever.

Wicked, that is an awesome coral! Thanks Chris that's great info! Does confirm the effect of light.

Most flake food is between 1 & 2 percent phosphate by weight. Because of this I imported some Nutrafin Max flake from the US, it is a low phosphate flake with phosphate garuanteed between 0.6 & 0.9 percent. I always read the label when buying fish food, if it does not say how much phosphate is in it, there is probably a reason they do not want to tell you. But on the subject of washing frozen food, once a week or so I give my fish an all they can eat feed of mysis, I deliberately don't wash it because the corals obviously love all that fine mushy stuff, all the polyps come out to catch it, even the LPS's put their tentacles out for it, and even the zoos and palythoa can be seen catching it. Yes even zoos catch food they can be seen catching and eating it just like an anemone.

Would it be possible to have 2 containers with a DSB, and just replace one alternately?

Sounds good to me Suphew, if you do this you must report back at some point with your evaluation af the method What might happen if you pulled your existing sand is there would be an intial nutrient "bloom" due to nutrients released while you removed it, plus it will take some time for the rock to increase processing to make up for what the sand was doing. I don't think an RDSB in a bucket would be as effective as one across the whole floor of the tank, but should nonetheless have benefits. Maybe positioning it so good flow moves over it would help to get good water contact.

It is possible to have really pink monti's, yet good rich colours in the other corals also. I know this because it has sometimes happened all at the same time in my own tank. However I am not sure about just why, & all the chemistry involved. I think there is still knowledge needing to be gained by the hobby as a whole, but it is gradually happening, both thanks to the good folks at zeovit.com, plus other keen sps keepers also. As time progresses I am sure more of these things will be quantified and understood, most of the new discoveries are greeted with enthusiasm by some, and skeptisism by others, but time eventually establishes wether they are valid.

http://www.yikers.com/video_fish_playing_soccer.html

Posting this link because there are some people on this forum struggling with corals that are too light, not all of them zeovit users either. The guy who started this thread has made his corals too light and is given some advice which might help some people here also. http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7362

Good article, Eric always has some good insights. Just needs to be said though for the people just starting out in marine, that the idea is based on having very strong skimming. Crappy skimmer, forget the overfeeding.

Good one Chimera, finally I get to see a pic of them. Evil looking little beasts in close up! Should make that article a sticky so if we ever do get an outbreak we have the info.

Looking nice I think it will end up better than his last tank. Wonder if it is new rock, old rock, or intermediately disturbed rock? :lol:

Back 6 months or whatever it was when I changed tanks, following the change I had MAJOR problems with my corals as many know, all went brown & some had tissue necrosis. Things are now nearly back to normal but still some corals not fully recovered. I just couldn't figure it out as some water parameters were not the best, but all within ranges considered "normal". After reading that article though it throws a bit of light on what may have been going on behind the scenes and causing my problems, especially as I put some uncured rock in the new tank when I set it up. Anyhow cheers Fay, in some ways the article may seem like old hat but it's actually very useful, wish I read it before changing tanks!

Hi Karma, sounds like you've got one or more "pods" in the tank, harmless little scavengers that make excellent fish and coral food.

Sounds like the same stuff I got. At the time I contacted the company and asked about the impurities, they did furnish me some figures although not totally comprehensive. I then forwarded this to Randy on the chemistry forum RC, and asked him, he said he did not see any major issues as per the information given, but noted that their controls over impurities may vary. I'm still dosing this as required in fact I added some 1/2 hour ago after doing a water change. I'm happy with the tank don't think there's a problem.

Here's mine, still struggling to get a decent full tank pic but thought I'd post it anyway

Agreed, if you have a DSB put it in the refugium rather than the main tank. DSB's work great for a time, but depending on bioload, can eventually get "full" & contaminate the tank. Should that ever happen, it will be a lot easier to deal with in the fuge than in the tank. Nonetheless some people have had great success with DSB's, they have some good advantages, and some of the best ever tanks I have seen pics of have them.

Yes, but it will raise your ionic balance in favour of sulphate ions. A correctly ionically balanced magnesium supplement can be made by using 1 part epsom salts (magnesium sulphate), to 10 parts magnesium chloride.

Correct. Or at least you will have to keep adding Ca & Alk in big amounts to keep ahead of the precipitation. Not sure if this is recommended, but I bought a 25 kg sack of magnesium chloride for $13.00, from a farm supply store. It is not very pure, dairy farmers add it to the stock food for their milking cows as being milked sucks more magnesium out of them than is replaced in the grass they eat, hence the cheap price for it. I have at times dosed biggish amounts of it to my own tank with no apparent issues. Having said that though, as there is a high % of magnesium in seawater and a potential need to dose a good amount of it, it would probably pay to try to get it as pure as possible.

Nice!

Nice Sharkey! Question, that hairy looking greeny acro at the top, would that by any chance be from a frag you got from me? If so, Awesome growth!!

Well a . in the wrong place can make quite a difference! :lol: Be interesting to see how it goes now, please do keep us updated. Course it's going to take more than a few days, like they say on TV, "good things take time" :lol:

I have a couple of second hand ones for sale, one 3 months use but still in perfect order $50.00, or one brand new, $60.00

A few years ago the hydor heaters stopped being sold here I was told it was because of a high number of problems there had been with them. Don't know if that is still the case.

I've often thought about doing something very similar. My dream nano would have some very colourful zoos, maybe a highly coloured lps of some type, no fish, a cleaner shrimp or two, and a few other inverts maybe native. No skimmer but an HOB filter with carbon & phosphate resin.

A good useful article so have linked it. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-09/rhf/index.php