wasp

This came up a little while ago, and I've seen it on RC before too, it seems it is quite common for them to vary, although yours give a BIG difference, not acceptable one of them is obviously faulty. Probably the only thing you can do is ask another reefer or two, or your lfs, to test your water so you know which kit is correct.

Thanks for all the nice comments Was a bit scared to post the pics as things are still in the early stages but you've all made me feel good about it . Well you'll have to come over for something! We haven't even met yet. Got that orp thing yet? Just a few days in the main, I've waited until it's good enough at eating to keep up with the other fish. It was several months in a tank by itself until it got artificial foods sorted. Yes, this time I've tried black starboard, and it looks good I like it . It's a thin flat type bit to hide the overflow. I've stuck a few frags on it once they grow out I'm hoping it will make a nice effect. Yes, when Ross and Kyle were here I showed them how the copperband will eat pellets. It's a beautiful fish so I'm real pleased about that . I was planning on adding sand but the current is too strong in some areas it blows away, so, another BB. Luckily I already put the black starboard in which kind of suits, it doesn’t have that barren type look some BB’s have Yes, I'll do some pics Tuesday.

Well here is the new tank, it's a 4 footer. Just very new now & a little stark looking, but I've tried to place corals so that as they grow it's all going to fill in nicely, in another year or two it will look good ( I hope ). The sps's did not like the move & have mostly gone brown but still are healthy enough & I'm sure will come back. Due to the crappy weather we've been having I was forced to use not so clean seawater & intial Po4 reading was 0.7. nearly a week later it has dropped to 0.1, I'm targeting 0.02. The zeovit is not up & running yet because the calcium reactor is not set up yet. I'm dosing manually which means some fluctuations, I'll fire up the zeovit once the calcium reactor is back up and levels are stable. The tank has no sump, but a central overflow, with water being removed from it and returned to the tank via the HOB skimmer. There is also a zeovit reactor in the overflow, with flow being provided by the water flowing into the overflow. I'll be making a nicer looking light hood but that will be after everything else is finished. After some house renovations are completed in the next year or two I'll be able to set up a nice bigger tank, but this one will keep me happy for now . Here are the right & left hand sides. The left side has more flow & light, and is for corals that like that, and the right side has little flow, less light, and has all those nice softies & lps that I missed so much in my last tank.

Yes, by the looks of it, I'm wondering if that's from years ago. Did he still run a DSB now?

Not a light expert, but if it were my tank I'd stay with 250's ( 2 of them ), and have softies & LPS at the bottom levels, and higher light corals higher up. In a way you are lucky you can keep a variety of corals in the different lighting environments. My last tank was pretty much sps only as there was just nowhere in it low enough in light to keep other stuff. It has been a real pleasure to set up my new tank with areas suitable for all types of corals. You should try to figure some way to run actinics though, to get the most punch you'd be best to use 10,000k MH bulbs, and run actinics also.

I don't know Fay but he is so ugly he is in fact cute! :lol: I don't know anything why he has gone like that but I'll bet it's something like signaling other fish, mating time, or whatever. I'll bet he'll be fine. Keep updated though, very interesting!

How old is that pic?

It would be pretty hard losing that! All those years growing & caring for them! Anyone got a link to a full tank photo?

A pleasure to see you both again!

I see! Didn't think it would be a viable price if you had raised them yourself. BTW I saw that auction, you got a good score. But actually, I'm still interested, can you put a decent pic of the corals? Just to see if there is anything I don't have. One thing though, remember that normal shop price for such 4" + sps would be $80.00 upwards. But if you'll take $40.00, well hey!

Very interesting. I guess though he is stressed out & trying to protect his reputation. To claim he did nothing wrong, but instead somebody broke into his house, did a waterchange on his tank, then refills it with fresh water, would seem to be pushing the boundaries of probability. If someone wanted to destroy his tank, tipping a bit of bleach in would be a whole lot less work.

Sure! Of course you did aquaculture these from scratch yourself, right? Just in the back of my mind there is a little suspicion you may be trying to sell me imported corals. A whole different ball game and much cheaper to do. The point I have been making is relating to the cost of aquaculturing corals, not importing them, as per your origional question. I suspect that the seller will not be making enough money from this to pay off his system, pay wages, and make a profit as well, as a commercial business would have to. Anyhow, the origional question was what do people think it is worth. The consensus seems to be $20.00 or a little more. So the answer to the question is $20.00 or a little more, by majority rule :lol: . Of course, at this level we need not wonder why nobody is actually doing it commercially in NZ, even though I know several who would love to do it full time, just the small problem of how to not go bankrupt trying is stopping them.

Easy enough with xenia. But if you'll grow me decent size sps at least 4" with several branches, I'll take whatever number you can do for $40.00

That sums up the problem. What a person thinks they should pay, does not bring down the actual cost of production. We are influenced by what we pay for imported corals. growing them here from scratch, in a system that is expected to pay for itself, cannot compete.

Can't edit so I'll have to add, I forgot to say the frags were sold for $25.00 each, regardless what they were.

$20.00 is too cheap. To look at it from a commercial angle from my own experience, I decided to start a garage aquaculture business, breeding & selling corals. Over a roughly 2 year period I raised and sold around 250 smallish frags. They included sps lps and softies. So that was a total take of $6,250.00, or near enough. Expenses are a bit hard to quantify because some were shared between the frag selling venture, and my hobby. However I think $4,000.00 would be a pretty fair estimate of total expenses over the 2 years. If that sounds hard to believe, just bulbs for the system cost around $1,000.00 per year. So I gave it away, if I turned the profit into hourly rate it would not have been enough to employ someone to do it. So - IMO looking at it strictly commercially $25.00 is not enough. Trade Me prices do not reflect commercial reality. People raise & sell a few, or sell what's spare, for the enjoyment of it. As they would pay the cost of running their tank anyhow, they do not need to recoup all their expenses. If they get $5.00, it's $5.00 they would not have otherwise had, and expenses are unchanged. IMO to raise & sell frags commercially and make what would be considered normal business acceptable profit, a price of 40 ish dollars per frag would be needed to the producer. And by the time it goes retail it's likely to be more than what people would pay. But in the US, captive raised corals are sold at a premium, there are enough people over there who will support captive breeding by paying the extra, to do their bit for conservation. But to most people, the $$$ is the bottom line, regardless of ethics. However I did meet a lot of cool people out of it, and learned a lot also.

Well yes I guess I could do that, then I'd only need a single stage controller. Just thought if they got a bit out of calibration with each other might end up with the chiller coming on first, but even if that happened it would be easily fixed. So perhaps your idea would be the simplest ( and cheapest ) Misnoma. Where from? How much?

I got a Resin too, been running perfect now for 5 years. Figured out how to kill the noise, if you get the feet exactly level, it doesn't knock & is surprisingly quite. But what I'm wanting to do is have a fan come on just before the chiller, so that the chiller won't be working all the time. I want the chiller to just be in a backup type role. At the moment I've got a fan on a timer, but it's not quite a perfect system because if it's a cooler day the fan just comes on anyway. I'd like to go a little higher tech and have it come on when needed.

Yes the tank's done and I transfered everything last tuesday. I'm pretty happy except the sps have all gone brown but I'm sure they'll come back. Also one coral completely vanished I'm stuffed if I can figure out where it went. Nice pink one too. I'll put up some pics next week won't have time on the weekend. Anyhow sorry for the interruption Mark, apart from your nice cabinet I was also going to say you've got very nice aquascaping, I see you've got one or two corals, what's that big round thing on the right?

Need some advice as I know nothing about this stuff. I'm wanting to stick a probe in the tank that can measure temperature, and if it gets to a certain point turn the fan on, then if it climbs a little more turn the chiller on also. What is the best option? Big deal for me it MUST be failsafe. I know you're making one Layton how's that going? And what else is out there? No panic now as things are cooling down but this is a little project I'd like to sort during the winter in time for next summer.

Sheesh I've just knocked up a cabinet for my new tank, then everybody starts posting pics of their own Beautiful looking ones, puts mine to shame! Anyhow Mark, real nice!

The alcohol. But you can't stick any old booze in your tank! The process used to make vodka ensures it is relatively contaminant free, plus it has the right alcohol most others don't.

Smirnoff when I was dosing.

Exactly what I was thinking Ross. Perhaps it's the extra bacterial activity? Long as it's not affecting any corals & they're sliming or something, everything looking healthy?

Looks like that site can do a plastic one for around $130.00 although not sure of all the specs on it such as operating pressure etc. I drive past Ascomation each day so went & asked them about it, they only stock brass & stainless, plastic would be a special order. Might be best to get one from that site once you've figured the specs you need. What's it for, anyway?