wasp

BTW Steve, how much did you pay for the sheet of "stuff"? And what actual "stuff" did you ask for?

OK, well all I want to see is how those DE's are mounted, and if possible some talk about the efficiency, evenness, etc. of the light spread. Be great if you could TM. Might just go this track myself but I'd rather learn the way from someone else .

Thanks Steve I'll be watching for it.

Layton I'm looking at controllers & wanting to buy. Have you got this one done yet?

Thanks for the info Puttputt, it's obviously a high light coral which may be where I went wrong. I was told by someone not on this forum, that it was a very low light sps, so when I changed tanks I moved it to lower light low flow area, it looked bad from the start & after a couple of months started to STN. Real glad you shared the info, I'm hopeful to make a comeback with the frags that have been saved.

Be interested to see what you come up with Chimera. I'm just on scraps of paper, works well, doesn't crash, but messy, adds even more to the general chaos in my office. If you could put out something even simple folks like me could master I'd probably use it.

Well the whitespot seems to be nearly licked! Are you running hypo in there? That tang is a beauty but that long nosed butterfly is something special as well. You certainly have some lovely fish.

Puttputt that is great, a lovely clean tank. I have a question about the coral in the third & fourth pic down in the first post. I think it is the same as one I have just lost to TN, I'm still trying to figure out why, it was my favorite & most beautiful coral. I grew it from a small frag it has been with me for some time, even before I started zeovit. In the pic it looks like it may be close to the bottom? Exactly what conditions do you think this coral does best in, and how do you find growth. Fortunately I was able to save a few frags of it which are in different tanks and are starting to recover. However I want to know conditions are right before they go back in the main tank, I would HATE to lose this coral completely.

It's a deal. Do me a couple to go with those other lights!

Many opinions on this, most tanks run a dkh anywhere between 7 - 11, so 9 is a happy medium. The natural sea water at the reefs has a dkh around 7, so you should not go lower than that.

Joe Blogg, would you be able to post a pic how your bulb is mounted in your reflector?

This may be of interest http://www.reefs.org/library/article/re ... ature.html

Higher wattage will not always give more par. For example you can have 2 bulbs of the same wattage, but different brands. One of the bulbs may put out 50% more par than the other, even though wattage is the same. Another example, all else being equal, a 14,000 bulb will often only give 1/2 the par of a 10,000 one. But it is not an exact science, each bulb has to be evaluated individually.

Well first I should say that my previous post may have looked unnessecarily grim, as Mark has pointed out they can live perfectly well in a tank with enough natural food, plus learn to eat, several people have achieved this. Adult brine shrimp can sometimes be bought at an lfs, or if not they can be cultured from eggs. They will grow fastest in warm water but cold will do. Use a highly aerated container, they are best to be fed on what is called " Seamonkey Food", which can be ordered through the lfs, alternatively they can eat many things such as yeast, powdered spirolina, even powdered fish food. The main problem being keeping the water clean, rather than getting them to eat. Test the water for ammonia periodically & change if need be. However, if he was eating in the shop, it may be that without competetion from other fish he would again start picking at some frozen brine or mysis. Mysis will be a lot more nutritious for him than brine. A 2 foot tank will be fine as long as he is not huge. Sometimes they will not take the mysis from the water column, but will pick it off the rocks once they get stuck there. But live bite sized ones are your best shot. I'm actually feeling uneasy about giving advice because it may be if you just left him he will survive, and if you take him out you could still lose him. But if you feel all his natural food is now gone, for me anyway, I would remove him from the competition of other fish & see what can be done.

Wow that's a beauty! And they can be hard to keep also, sometimes they will just close up for months I don't know why.

No worries. Always happy to help

That has been often said on sites such as Reef Central. Even among same brand bulbs, the light increase does not increase in direct proportion with wattage increase, rather, the extra watts give a gradually diminishing increase in light as you move up. It is also generally accepted that double ended give more light than the same watt single ended, although as you correctly state this will obviously vary if comparing one brand to another. The thing with Steves reflectors, they are designed for a single ended bulb. I eyeballed it up trying to figure out how to set it up with a double ended one, or two, but it would be pretty hard the bulb cannot just be stuck in there, it is also a case that the evenness of the reflection would be different due to the different size of the bulb.

Good one Nic I like it. You may be surprised to hear this but I think your hammer coral is actually getting too much light! To test this, move it to the bottom for a couple of weeks (in a low flow area), and see if it looks better for it.

JDM, if you leave him where he is and he runs out of natural food, it is almost 100% certain you will lose him. However it may be possible he is not eating what you are feeding him, because he is getting enough natural food. This may seem hard but the best way to save him will be to remove him and put him in a tank with no other fish, and only gentle current. Put plenty of live adult brine shrimp in there, and feed the brine shrimp on fish food. he will almost certainly be tempted to eat some of the brine shrimp, and thereby also consume the fish food in their gut. Once he is eating them readily, let a few frozen mysid float around, may take a while but eventually he will start to pick at them. If you can get to this stage, discontinue the live brineshrimp, and work on training him to eat other things, and also train him to eat from your fingers so you can target feed him if need be when he goes back with the other fish. Be ready for all this to take maybe 6 months, but it can be done.

I was serious too. Long as what he tells me is not "just regurgitating what someone else has said", when we don't know who that someone is. That's what led to that whole silly pH swing debacle when it took me several pages to run him through the facts. It's heat treated Layton. Anyhow thanks all, turns out I won't be using that stuff anyway, I've found some plastic container lids that slice up to exactly what I want & I know they will be inert.

Are you sure about that?

You're a stirrer Chimera! :lol: However I am happy to take Laytons advice along with anyone elses, in fields he understands.

I'm wanting to put a little patch on my overflow, using some of that clear plastic stuff that is used for laminating paper. Is it reefsafe? I'm hoping to use this material, because I need something paper thin, and stiff. I have some of this laminating stuff, which will be perfect, provided it is safe. Anyone know?

I went & checked out those reflector thingys at Steves place last night, and must say they are truely awesome. The increase in light over his tank is very noticeable. As I'm trying to keep the power bill down they are the way to go, more light into the tank per $ worth of electricity. Unfortunately my budget is all blown out at the moment following paying for my sons wedding, and a series of unexpected big expenses. Nonetheless, long term, it's the plan. Just as an aside, while I was at Steves I borrowed his fish trap to get a tang I've spent a couple of weeks trying to catch. Awesome! No kidding, I had him literally within a minute of putting the trap in & baiting it. So easy!

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