wasp

Layton. Get over it.

You better post up what you're doing. IE, water temp, ca levels, NSW or ASW, all that stuff. Can't argue with success, a lot of people will want to know how you do it.

I'll be interested in your comments on the result of this upgrade in a month or two.

That's what I think it is too.

Oh it's from a zeovit tank, well it probably will darken when going into a different tank. Anyhow, vodka, here is an interesting read, you can skip the first 2 pages if you wish they are mostly people cracking jokes about vodka. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthrea ... ight=vodka

Try this. Do a water change, 25 or 30 percent, with clean NSW. While syphoning the old water out, do the most thorough sand vacuum and general clean that you can. Now, for 2 weeks, stop all dosing other than calcium and alkalinity, feed as little as possible that won't make the fish skinny, work that skimmer at max. If you can get vodka, put some in the tank, 1 ml per 100 litres daily. See what happens, Trust me!

Oh dear! Actually I just read this site for the laughs!! So who is this person?

Hi Bychineva, not sure if this has been properly explained, the brown colour is caused by the symbiotic zooxanthellae, tiny little photosynthetic organisms that live within the coral. In nature the coral has these living within its tissue, because they perform photosynthesis and the coral benefits from the sugars released. In the wild, coral reefs occur where the water is very pure, it is very hard in our tanks to keep the water as clean as it is in a wild reef. So often in a tank, there will be more crud in the water than corals are adapted to, and this supplies nutrients to the zooxanthellae within the coral, causing a population explosion of them. This makes the coral brown, as the zooxanthellae are brown. In turn, extremely high levels of zooxanthellae can be harmful to the coral. The coral being brown is not nessecarily a cause for concern as many corals are brown as their natural colour. However, a coral being more brown than it should be is generally a sign the water is less pure than desireable, although there can be other causes also. As we cannot test for all the forms of nutrients that can overload our tank, we test for one in particular, phosphate, which gives us a rough idea how the others are going also. IE, if phosphate is high, it's odds on that other nutrients will be too high also. Because even tiny amounts of phosphate can be too much, it is likely that if your test kit can detect any at all, there will in fact be too much. Another way to tell is by algae growth. If you find you have to clean the front glass quite often, this will indicate nutrients are too high. Hobby test kits are at the limit of their range trying to accurately detect the low levels of phosphate we are interested in, the glass cleaning test can in fact be more useful to us, and we can gauge if things are getting better or worse, by wether we are having to clean the glass more or less often, than we used to. As to your dosing, the iodine and strontium are not ones that are normally associated with nutrient overload causing browning so are probably not the problem. However, there is often little/no need to dose these. Bio trace, I don't know what it is but many of these type of multi trace element type formulas end up putting too much of something in the tank. Very often, when people in exactly the situation you are in, stop dosing these type of products, they notice an improvement in livestock health. But the main source of excess nutrients will be the fish food. Nearly all newbies feed to much, it is so tempting to keep those little fishies fat. Try cutting back the fishfood and as long as the fish don't get skinny, hold it at the lower level. The biggest thing of all, is that export of crud from your tank, has to equal import. You need to look at your skimming, sand vacuuming, & whatever else you do, to ensure you have processes in place that will take out as much as you are putting in.

New fragging technique. Drink up & get merry. Attempt to improve tank interior design. See what happens! :lol:

Where's Layton when we need him? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yes, keep removing them. Some people use a turkey baster to blow them off, then syphon them from the bottom of the bucket. The big thing is though that there will probably be eggs stuck around the base, they need to be scraped off also. A fresh water dip can do just as much harm to the coral as to the nudis. Excellent you isolated it, and excellent you caught it early! But I'm only going by what I've read, where's those people who have actually beaten these things to help out? Come on guys!

Could be some advertising mileage in that :- "Even drunken reef bums can use one. Go ahead, get wasted. Emergency overflow will outlast any hangover!" But hey, don't get confused what your drinking the next day! :lol: :lol:

2 for 1 special! Good Score! What kind is it?

There was a good thread on monti eating nudis a while back, Layton has had them & some others but I can't remember who. Anyway I'm sure these people can chime in with some good advice. One thing I do know, they are hard to eradicate, and that in a tank with none of their natural predators, they simply continue to multiply until all their food (your monties) are gone. If you do have them, best to deal to them hardcore now, while they are still in a relatively small area. But let others with experience give you some advice & just confirm you actually do have them, before doing anything too drastic!

Yup, started out as a mere "Pooman" graduated to "Zooman", kept working, and now look what's happened! :lol:

Yes, that thing on the right with the little hairy things sticking out the top. Sometimes called a toadstool coral. But better heed Laytons advice incase it is nudis, wouldn't want them getting away on you if you have them. Do you have a 6 line wrasse in the tank?

Cool, just call first 479-5446 to check I'm home

Awesome!!

You mean those ones that Fluoresce an awesome orange under blue light? If so i have some loose ones floating around in my frag tank. They are precious to me though :lol:, they don't mutiply very fast. I can give you & Chimera one each, you'll have to take it from there & do your own fragging.

Always admired those guys who make awesome skimmers I could only dream about! Anyhow here is a link with pics of a DIY one, simple construction but looks to be a MEAN skimmer. Running wet but no doubt that's adjustable. http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7431

Nice coral in your avatar Kevin! Yours?

Should also add, for some reason, in my tank, the anemone stretches out it's tentacles like you see in the pic, but the frags from this anemone that are in other tanks often take the typical BTA shape, with bubble shapes on the end of the tentacles.

You mean me? If so, it was one that was cut off the anemone in the pic at the bottom of page 1 of this thread. It is a brown bubbletip anemone, Entamaea Quadricolor, a very hardy anemone.

Looks to me like something else is bothering it. The sarcophyton perhaps?

:lol: Hmmm... Perhaps you have a point.