Recent content by ezrec

ChrisRD: I'll agree with the towel idea for short drives. I think the newspaper wrapped rock from Fiji is total crap. 14 hours on a plane, in wet newspaper with petroleium derived inks leaching who-knows-what heavy metals into the rocks? Ye gods, who came up with that?!

/me wishes for the ACME Portable Hole Moving Company.

These crazy "wet paper" people just kill me. And their rocks.

Buckets, lots of buckets! A station wagon and several 5-gallon buckets of saltwater (from *their* tank) is what you need. Get tight-fitting lids to prevent slosh, and keep your trip under an hour. Make sure to have a thermometer handy, and keep the car's interior at about 75F.

phytoplankton - easy as pie. I see little to no mortality at under 4mm in my setup. zooplankton - A little harder. My Beckett pond pump seems to have a low mortality rate on the copepods that get sucked into it (sub 4mm), but it could be better!

Artemia have no chance against any impeller pump, AFAICT. However, I now have lots of plankton in my tank - the water is pea-soup green with phytoplankton, and lots of macro-scopic copepods. Anyone in Pittsburgh need phytoplankton? I can evidently make buckets of the stuff with my setup.

Do you have a refugium growing macro algea?

Uh, it has no 'trunk' - how do you call that Aiptasia?

Looks like sponge to me.

Don't kill it yet! It might be an anemone that actually likes living in your tank - which would be a cool thing to have! Mrktplayer says "That's Aiptasia! Kill it!" to everybody.

I know some people have issues with using ABS in their tanks (I certainly don't, but some people do), so I came up with an ABS-free Eductor plan. Note the use of a CPVC to PVC adapter to act as an exit funnel. (I messed up the slots on this protoype, but it allows you to see it's internal...

Didn't know this! You learn something new every day!

rayjay: Yep. I've come to pretty much the same conclusion. The only thing the adults seem to be able to survive is an Archemedies screw, but that's just too unweildy for my tank. What I have found is that a 'vortex impeller' based centrifugal pump is the least damaging of the centrifugal style...

Please see this Advanced Aquarist article about what mere metal halide bulbs do to the surface temperature of corals: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/2/aafeature2/view

extremepb319: I don't think it's the temperature, per se, but the fact that it swings up and down by 5 degrees over a few hour period. As you said, your temp went up to 90 over several days. His 15g is swinging by at least 5 degrees every afternoon!