cookie extreme

i can tell you have opened many boxes that came from overseas! :roll:

another thing i have learned today! Do not leave the generator, fuel and extension cables in a garage that has an electric automatic door :oops:

thats how the JBL test works. it messures total magnesium with calcium. you then messure only calcium with a separate test and deduct this figure from the first. so if you don't do that your mag will look really high and taht what i thought happened.

did you subtract the calcium total from the total (magnesium)?

it is. just hard to see in the picture. was quite a bit bigger when i got it, got lost in the move to the new house. couldn't find it so gave up in the end. :-? and then found by pure chance in my overflow. :roll: its doing great at the moment, then again must have been doing great without me for the last couple of years or it wouldn't be here anymore. :-?

my devils hand. found it in my overflow when i changed my durso to a cracker. thought it had died long ago. must be well over 2 years now. polyps are always out from 5 pm onwards til early morning

well the tank looks good. but all the corals look loike they have been purchased large and placed in the system. it does not have a grown reef look with inter winding corals, looks more like a fruit stand! so it doesn't really show if the calcium/kh system is working well. we think that if you see very large nice acro colonies that they must be grown over time. this is not the case as you can buy virtually everything (thats not banned that is) in germany for the right price and this includes coral colonies as well. let wait and see how this tank wll look in say 12 months and how many original colonies are still visible (because if you have the dosh its easy to constantly replace your licestock with new healthy one and your tank always looks good.

good point suphew. don't know how much time is needed for the CO2 to desolve the coral rubble to get good result, worth playing around and doing some tests. on thing i noticed that when my drip stops due to whatever problem :roll: my reactor turns milky in colour very quickly. i assume that this means that my water is "supersaturated" or is there another reason why it changes from perfect clear to cloudy?

makes a lot of sense for the companies that make them. they sell people bigger once when they upgrade because the poor suckers believe that a bigger CR will be so much better. its called making more profit. $$$$$ i run the smallest CR i know off "dupla" on a 1300 liter system. works almost well but have to refill the bloody thing every 3 weeks, and thats the only short coming it has. i use calcium chips, magnesium chips and coral rubble. you could always increase CO2 bubbles and out flow as long as the effluent gets airiated? (spe.) enough to remove excess CO2 before it enters the tank.

i bought flat worm exit, it scared me just reading the instructions. i gave it away for free and waited. the population increased and then collapsed for no apparent reason. i still have minute amounts of them in the tank but so what. they don't seem to harm anything really unless you kill them and will decrease in numbers in time. just wait.

its not possible really to increase your calcium by using lime water only you are most likely only able to replace used calcium that way you are able to disolve more calcium in your top up water (god knows why) same here and its not to much work at all what are you trying to achive? algae? soft coral growth? i was thinking about that. if you need to add reasonably quantities of BS it might be worth while adding it at night as washing soda to keep PH up during the night in the same way as many other reefers use kalkwasser and incease your KH at the same time.

don't worry about a water change, you will mostl likely have lots of little xenia pop up everywhere.

interresting that so many have moisture problems, shows the way most houses are build is crap. since having my heat pump installed i bring the laundry in to dry overnight and it chills the tank in the summer (no chiller) :bounce:

great. they moved in with my large euphyllia frogspawn coral ignoring the small bubble tip completely.

use zeovit. Bac, start2, rocks, zeofood7, ammino acids, potassium iodide flouride, b-balance, zeospur2 and zeovit speedglue (the best thing since sliced bread in reefkeeping and the stuff i use most off )

i have bought 2 foxface within 2 weeks. both died due to (in my believe) cyanide poisoning as both had great colour and were eating well until death. no blame on LFS or importer as it is impossible to tell when they arrive. By being a poisoness fish to start with i guess the catchers in indonesia? just made it easier and safer for them to catch the fish.

does it move? if its sessile it most likely some sort of calcerous worm.

mate i just managed to resize and post pictures wouldn't have a clue how to do that! its all real.

told you and it isn't winter yet.

well got some new additions to the tank. stylcheilus longicauda are a great choice as an algae grazer in reef aquariums (Fossa & Nielsen). well will see.

that what is was thinking too. all the profit will go to the power company. surprised they're not using natural sunlight? what bulbs are in the halides? 6500K?

heat pump with heater for the winter, air con for the summer and a continous dehumidefyer works awsome (and i loose between 6 and 13 liter per day depending on time of year). DVS works great too, but even with the filter it has still pumps quite a bit of dust from your roof into the house. but very cheap to run.

carbon:nitrogen:phosperous ratio 100:5:1 if i remember

i wonder how we managed all those years before the refractometer poped up. even if it is not spot on it doesn't really matter as long as it is stable and within the right range (1.020-1.027). looking at the pic's of the corals shows that they are not struggling only parts are dying off which suggest some sort of warfare. its hard to tell why the others died over the years, but i guess he wouldn't be the only one that had losses. 8) if you have good success with leathers and mushroom and your stony corals are not doing well then carbon may help you absorbing all the chemicals leathers emit into the water. before adding kalkwasser please read up on it otherwise you can do more harm if added incorrectly. i agree with chim on the levels regarding Ca,Mag and Alk if you want to keep lots of stonies as a water change will do bugger all in replacing them (some people still belive that a simple small WC will bring everthing back to perfect square one and thats not the case. if you stonies recede more than one option would be to give it to somebody else who keeps lots of stonies and see how they go.

cyno. bummer but not the end of the world.