wasp

It might be, all else being equal. What exactly have you read that Doctor Shimek is not aware of? How many years experience do you have compared to him? What of relevence did you study at Uni? How much marine lab time do you spend compared to him?

I think I may have realised where you are confused. You have failed to realise that zooxanthellae have to get their food from somewhere. They cannot live on nitrogen alone. Sure they use nitrogen, AND they derive other essential nutrition from food ingested by the coral.

Don't really buy that in this case. What weird conclusions? How weird? Doctor Shimek is quite knowledgeable in his particular feild, I also don't buy the insinuation that he is only saying it for financial reasons. You've made similar financial allegations against other people who don't hold the same views as you, better to just focus on the topic rather than these type of assumptions.

I knew it!! You are going to question / argue everything. Don't tell me, among all your other talents, you also know more than Doctor Shimek the invert zoologist, right? :lol:

That was a great article Cookie, very helpful. I suspect Layton may be right it does sound like Doctor Shimek, the marine biologist. Layton you said you were able to find "occasional glimpses of reality and truth in it". Ha Ha! A good understatement! :lol: Now why do I get the feeling you are going to try to question / argue the contents of the article? I am actually giving thought to find some way to incorporate sand into my system. Might do a refugium with sand, aimed at meeting the needs of pods, and hopefully some other stuff also.

HA!! I'm leaning more & more to the belief I do not have enough natural food in the tank. Anyhow Puttputt I enjoy your posts, when you're over this way next drop me a pm, or call 479-5446 & book in, we'll do Craigs as well. Cheers Alastair

Ever get over the Shore Puttputt? If so we could arrange a meet, check Crackers too! I don't get over to Waimauku though.

This site is full of arrogant shytes! :lol: :lol: That's why we're here. :lol: :lol: Anyhow, I don't see anything wrong with having pride in the achievement of a great tank, as most people here do.

Logic is as useful as the particular person who put it together. End of the day, proof of a method is in the pudding.

Peace out Dudes! Love the hobby, love you all! What kinda clinched it for me was I gave Cracker a frag of a nice sps coral I got. Went back 2 or 3 months later, and WHOA!! The frag has awesome colours, huge polyp extension, and ( worst of all ), is nearly as big as the mother coral back in my tank! Main difference I can see is caused by the sand in his tank.

It has until today been in a reef tank with sand, it tunneled the sand under the rocks, did a heckuva lot of digging. But that tank has now been pulled down so he is in my BB, hope he is OK he'll just have to find a little pozzy in a rock. I'm wondering if he is adaptable to both temperate and tropical, certainly seems to have done well since we had him. Brightly coloured too which is unusual for our native rockpool crustaceans Size wise, in the position he's been photographed in he's 6 cm end to end. As Cracker says they are rarely seen, but just another interesting little critter to perhaps catch an occasional glimpse of.

You were recently asking about a phosphate problem, going by the pics there doesn't seem to be much of a phosphate problem, you solved it?

BTW, bacteria, in planktonic form, can be an excellent source of nutrition for SPS corals.

Hmmm.... Thirty - Nil. Interesting statistic! Could it be a blip? Or could the mathematical remoteness of a thirty - nil blip be statistically highly unlikely? ( For those who have special knowledge of statistics and mathematics )

Agree in part, dissagree in part. I'm not really talking about colours, I'm talking about health / growth, in general. One theory is that the sand generates a lot of microscopic life, that can feed the corals. But I'm not subscribing to any particular theory, I just don't know enough to do that. I know sand can help turn a dirty tank into an even worse one, but I'm talking about well run tanks, I'm seeing great results in tanks with sand. Why? Don't know. But I'd like to.

Well, I'm like Layton, used to use sand, then fell under Bombers influence and became a BB fan. And there's good reasons for that. BUT, after all the theorising is done, the bottom line to me is that the proof of a method is in the pudding. I used to think I had pretty good corals but starting to think again I'm seeing better over and over, in other peoples tanks with sand. Also many of the real stunning tanks we see pics of have sand, even DSB's, yet fantastic acros. There is still much to learn, IMO, about how this all ties together.

Seems fine, he's actually been in a different tank for several months & has grown in that time. Just be nice if we had a mate for it.

Might be more to it than that.

Here he is, a native snapping shrimp! Colours don't show he's actually red .

Sand?

Love it when a plan comes together!

Weird. People either swear by it, or at it! :lol:

I think you guys are ALL weird. Colour? There isn't any. How can Jxxxxx say the colour is good but he doesn't like the aquascaping? Plus it's been photoshopped anyway you can tell by looking at the coraline on the starboard. Also, the tank looks like a laboratory experiment. However, on the plus side, it is very clean, which is why he designed it that way, and the corals appear very healthy so there is a certain pleasure in looking at it just to enjoy the healthy livestock. I understand the lack of colour is because he mainly keeps species which are brown naturally. Also interesting that there is a zillion post thread about this tank on RC, in fact the thread is so big that it has been split into several smaller threads to avoid the drain on bandwidth when people open it. Also, Layton has learned everything he knows from this tank.

Reefs Durso is absolutely silent.

Wow! Some of those pics are COOL! Seems everybody else has all the good tanks! :evil: I've found a few design flaws in my new tank & need a new one already! :lol: