|
#601
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
Ben |
#602
|
|||
|
|||
You can feed them lettuce too. Our yellow and purple tangs love green lettuce rubber banded to a rock. That was a colorful sentence!
|
#603
|
|||
|
|||
I need to know the color of the rubber band.
__________________
Once you accept the Universe as matter expanding in to nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy. A.E. |
#604
|
|||
|
|||
Wow! I just spent the entire afternoon reading this thread...Nice tank.
Im kinda curious though, did you jump right into this monster? How long had you had the 225g tank? As you said it wasnt setup prior to that. Any prior Saltwater experience? Ive always heard that Purple tangs are very agressive when adding new tank mates to the tank. How are you going to stop or curve their agressiveness? If you also would soak your nori in some liquid garlic that would help them be attracted to it. Or at least in my experience with a Naso and Copas Tang...
__________________
Tony |
#605
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
I pretty much jumped right in. I had a 225G that I got set up in my living room and left up with LR and a couple fish for about eight months. During the second half of those eight, I was trying to figure out where I could house all the noisy equipment I needed to make that tank work really well. In the end, I concluded that I would just make a dedicated fish room, oh, and while I'm at it, increase the tank by 4x. I did have a 75G freshwater planted tank in a previous life that did well for several years. One of the things that we got addicted to with it was silence. I live in a very quiet house and work from home, so I try to go to great length to only introduce things that don't raise the noise floor so much. Think of it as a bit of a long-term health and sanity investment. (I guess I have a little more SW experience: I've been diving quite a bit all over the place.) I suppose it remains to be seen how aggressive the purples will be with newcomers. We'll know in about... oh, 36 hours. I've got more fish on the way this week! Ben |
#606
|
|||
|
|||
I haven't had any problems with my purple tang. I release into the display at night which seems to help ease new fish into the herd.
__________________
Jonathan--DIBS Breeder and Card carrying member of the Square Skimmer Brigade (Click on the Red House to see my pics garage) |
#607
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
What do you do for a living? And are they hiring? I need a job like you got
__________________
Tony |
#608
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
__________________
"In among the branches of the corals, like birds among trees, floated many beautiful fish, radiant with metallic greens or crimsons...." J. Beete Jukes 1842-46 |
#609
|
|||
|
|||
Good points Marcye. I realize my comments were perhaps a bit combative, and although not pointed at you in particular, I can see how a responsible LFS owner would take issue with what I wrote about Mexican Turbos.
It is few and far between that we as hobbiests encounter an LFS that has the best interests of the reef keeper as well as the animals under their charge. As a recent example, take a look at this thread: new member A bit of a knee-jerk reaction by myself, but this is what we see on a daily basis. Just like any business, there are responsible merchants and those willing to tell the customer anything to separate them from their money. I wouldn't choose to put Mexican Turbos in my system again. While I did keep them alive for a long time, I consider them to be a ticking time-bomb, particularly in a system like mine that is evap. cooled and has significant temp. swings on a daily basis. And BTW, they were NOT sold to me as Mexican Turbos, but as "Vietnam Turbos" and as babies, I couldn't tell the difference. Thanks for posting your policies on dealing with cleanup crews. I find it very refreshing to be in contact with someone who really cares about their customers and their captive reefs!
__________________
Jonathan--DIBS Breeder and Card carrying member of the Square Skimmer Brigade (Click on the Red House to see my pics garage) |
#610
|
|||
|
|||
Kudos to you and your group for promoting quality aquacultured inverts to the hobby. I have to admit that I do get frustrated when all LFS are grouped as "the bad guys." There are stores that really do care and I appreciate the kind words. I've sent you a pm with some info...let me know if it's something you'd be interested in. Marcye
__________________
"In among the branches of the corals, like birds among trees, floated many beautiful fish, radiant with metallic greens or crimsons...." J. Beete Jukes 1842-46 |
#611
|
|||
|
|||
Thanks Marcye. I am sure we can do something with that!
__________________
Jonathan--DIBS Breeder and Card carrying member of the Square Skimmer Brigade (Click on the Red House to see my pics garage) |
#612
|
|||
|
|||
Ben we need some pics.
__________________
Eric (Red House for my 425 system) |
#613
|
|||
|
|||
I second the motion!
__________________
Proud Card Carrying Member of the Deltec Club. |
#614
|
|||
|
|||
Hi folks,
Well, I apologize for not bringing you pictures this evening. However, my excuses are good: I've been doing a lot of Bertha cleaning, and each cleaning leaves her in a very not-so-picturesque state for the rest of the day. While I was gone for nearly three weeks, the tank didn't get its daily magnet treatment, so now I am paying the price as I go diving for 15 or 20 minutes a day and scrape off a portion of the very bottom parts of the tank. It's hard work and, while I have many scrapers of different lengths, none of them really give me incredible leverage. I also am blessed with bad wrists, so I can only scrape a foot or two of bottom-edge-of-tank in one pass. Fortunately, that leaves plenty of time to do other things. I've been sucking up and blowing away hair algae like it's going out of style! I'm about to replace all the MH bulbs (they're almost eight months old now) and I'll have a reactor for GFO to cut down on the phosphate real soon, too. I suspect these two will knock down the algae pretty good. We'll see. I ordered several new fish from LiveAquaria this week. Alas, it was somewhat of a shipping/stocking disaster. I ordered: 1. 40 more chromis 2. 3 stars 3. 1 fire fish 4. 1 majestic foxface 5. 1 zoa colony 6. 3 lawnmower blennies Alas, the foxface was out of stock, I was shipped 36 chromis instead of 40, there were 16 dead chromis on arrival, and Fedex banged around one of the containers so I received a sloppy, wet box with a dry zoa colony inside it. Whew! The rest of the bad news is that most of the rest of the chromis died over the course of the next day. I think maybe the temperature is the culprit, even though the other fish and inverts seemed to come through okay. Very weird. The good news is that DFS/LA were really good like usual. They've credited me back for all the dead fish as well as the shipping. I don't have the luxury of letting them ship me a backordered fish (the foxface) whenever they get it in; I have to schedule my pick-ups since they don't deliver priority to my house out in the boonies. But now I can wait until they have it in stock and order it separately at no additional charge. So I guess that's okay. In other news, the water parameters that I can measure are looking great. Undetectable nitrates, pH 8.2, dKH 7, Ca 385ppm, etc. I have yet to do a water change on this tank (I kind of can't yet) and things still seem good. In OTHER news, I've ordered almost all of the rest of the "primary equipment" Bertha will need for the long haul: Deltec calcium reactor and kalk stirrer, media, tubing, regulator, CO2 tank, GFO and carbon "reactors," phosphate colorimeter, GFO, magnesium supplement, two 160-gallon plastic storage cylinders, and all kinds of assorted plumbing bits. Fedex and UPS will be busy delivering boxes of all shapes and sizes to my house in the next few weeks! Now if I can just find time to plug it all in. Tomorrow I will try to take some pictures before I do another cleaning pass. No promises anymore; I'm too flaky for those. Ben |
#615
|
|||
|
|||
Can we get a FTS please
|
#616
|
|||
|
|||
Good to see alls well, with the exception of the fish of course. Sounds like you have a reputable source for the fish though which is a nice change
Looking forward to the fts when your ready Cheers Chris |
#617
|
|||
|
|||
Going away for even a week freaks me out with my little system. Leaving a beast like Bertha for a few weeks, yikes!
I am sure you have your hands very full, so ... we'll patiently await your FTS
__________________
Click my Red House to check out my 120 in office reef (upgraded in Aug 06) Seeking therapy for my fish tank ADD |
#618
|
|||
|
|||
Some times I think hermit crabs do harm to corals.
|
#619
|
|||
|
|||
Hey,
Well, an update is long overdue. It seems like I start every post with that these days, though. The good news is that I have actually been doing stuff... I just haven't felt like I've had time to go back and document it all as it happens. Here are some miscellaneous updates. First, Bertha was completely on her own for the first time a couple weekends ago. I know, it must be kind of like leaving your little baby with a sitter the first time... such concern and guilt washed over me, let me tell you. Not! The interesting thing was that we had our first real snow of the season over the weekend we were gone; we came home to about five inches and... the generator on outside when we pulled in! Of course, my immediate focus was to walk straight inside, tracking snow and all, and see how Bertha was doing. Great news: everything seemed fine. Best I can tell, the power went out about 6am Sunday morning; we arrived home around 1pm to a tank in fine shape. (I do wish the Aquatronica would record not only the length of the outage but also the time of it ... with my generator, the length is always about 45 or 50 seconds, which is meaningless. I was able to guesstimate the outage time by the time on one of my clocks in the kitchen this time.) The second interesting thing was that we had our first real windstorm earlier this week. We live on the top of a mountain ridge, so we get some serious breezy days from time to time. This particular day we were getting a steady 30mph with gusts to about 75... plenty to knock you over. I made the mistake of leaving my new 165 gallon storage tanks outside... they were blown halfway down the mountain by the time I realized what was going on! Anyway, that's not the interesting thing. Here it is: This is a plot of tank and Bertha room ambient air temp over the course of our morning windstorm. For the first time since I started Bertha up, the controller starting beeping and whining about tank temp around 10:30am. You can see there that the temperature fell to about 76F -- the 750w of heaters were on all morning, but they could not keep up with the room, which was getting colder and colder. And the reason that was happening was because I have been leaving a tiny crack in my window so I could stick my RO/DI waste tube out into the side yard. (I figured I'd just run it there instead of through the septic system.) The wind was strong enough that it was pushing cold in through that crack and making the room too cold! I guess it's not all that exciting when you read it, but the good news is that the controller did its job: it alerted me to the first out-of-whack situation Bertha has endured so far. Of course, I closed the tiny crack in the window, and you can see how the room warmed up nicely at that point. On a normal day, Bertha oscillates between 78 and 80 with occasional heating or cooling (evaporative with one small fan) and the room temp oscillates between about 70 and 80 depending on sun load. I don't expect that to change much in the middle of winter, because the room still has radiant floor heat. And, as long as the room is within 5 to 7 degrees of Bertha, my little chintzy heaters and fan do a fine job regulating the water. More updates in the next post; RC will block me if I keep typing. Last edited by bbrantley; 10/21/2007 at 12:41 AM. |
#620
|
|||
|
|||
The third item of business is that I've decided to renege on my plastic auxiliary tank stands. They're pretty cool because they were so easy to install and because they are impervious to the harsh saltwater environment... but I am concerned about the bowing I observe when I load the tanks full with water. I don't think they would catastrophically fail, but they might... and I'd rather not take that chance. Also, with my new pair of 165-gallon storage cylinders, I really should rearrange the room a little bit while I can take advantage of my laziness in not having everything plumbed yet. I really want to put the cylinders on the exterior wall of the room right where the floor joists rest on the foundation of the house... that way the extra 300 gallons won't add much load to the floor.
So, I found these fantastic steel stands at Costco for, interestingly, the same price as my plastic ones. I bought one pair to test out, and it looks like they will work perfectly. They are exactly 18 inches in depth, which is the size of both auxiliary acrylic tanks. They are only 4 feet long, though, so I'll need to make a trip back and pick up one more pair of stands. I have a tentative room arrangement planned (in my head, of course -- this paper stuff is overrated), but clearly I have another good three or four days of solid effort before everything can be arranged the "new way." The fourth item of business is that all the gadgets have arrived except the phosphate colorimeter. I really want that test device to get here, because I want to measure the phosphate before I start wiring up the GFO reactor. I have a secret desire to confirm that phosphate is the source of much of the green algae in the tank, and it would be un-fun to do that just by watching it disappear over a few months... much cooler and more satisfying to measure it, right? So, anyway, I've got a big giant calcium reactor and a pretty big kalk stirrer, plus all the assorted appetizers that go with them, ready to wire up. I'm going to have to wait to install them until I get the major room rearrangement finished, however. No biggie -- there aren't any corals of note in the tank yet anyhow. The item of interest is that the fish (the ones that didn't die in that last DFS shipment!) and zoos are all doing fine. I even got the tangs to start eating the nori off a rock today... just a little bit. There is hope, I suppose. I have to go out of town for the entirety of this coming week, but, if I get lucky, I really will try to take a few snapshots of the tank for the curious before I leave. I'm batting about 2-for-5 on actually doing that when I say I will, so you takes your chances... but I did scrape the whole tank down yesterday, so the acrylic is at least sparkly clean! Ben |
#621
|
|||
|
|||
Great update Ben, and it's always nice to see the controller doing its job.
__________________
Jonathan--DIBS Breeder and Card carrying member of the Square Skimmer Brigade (Click on the Red House to see my pics garage) |
#622
|
|||
|
|||
Wow - first snow and the generator has already come in handy. I'm glad to hear it kicked in and ran as planned.
I agree with jnarowe - great update. It makes up for the pics. I guess I'll just have to keep looking at my puny tank until they come.
__________________
Cheers! |
#623
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
A side benefit of the generator is that it keeps the internet, computers, and TV online... so as not to miss out on any electronic gadget-using fun. |
#624
|
|||
|
|||
very nice build, looks like your having fun, as it should be! good move on the genset, a key piece of equipment where you are, good luck and keep the pics coming
__________________
"Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value" Albert Einstein |
#625
|
|||
|
|||
I guess a backup generator is mandatory in your neck of the woods, with or without a reef. Great that it worked perfectly for you!
__________________
Click my Red House to check out my 120 in office reef (upgraded in Aug 06) Seeking therapy for my fish tank ADD |
|
|