FarmerTy

This is me without coffee sadly. [emoji53]

Just for fun: https://youtu.be/H5MjjaTU3K4 I apologize for the overly blue video but I haven't figured out how to take good pictures/video of the tank under the new lighting yet.

I'd be embarrassed if my name was associated with that study. How does sexually barren = zombies? Zombies = reanimated dead (has nothing to do with their sexual viability to reproduce or not) The corals never died, they are just sexually barren. They will still asexually bud off and reproduce that way. They called the corals the walking dead... corals don't even walk! Absurd! Plus, I haven't seen one movie that has demonstrated that zombies are sexually barren. For all we know, the little zombie kids you see in walking dead could have been born. Those people have been on the run from zombies for a lot of seasons now. Maybe those zombie kids are natural born zombie kids? In I am Legend, the zombies had a family structure to them. Possible zombie kids down the road? In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there is a cognitive response with some zombies. I won't say more because I don't want to spoil the movie. Anybody watched Z nation? Murphy? Need I say more? Thank you all for listening to my absurd rant this morning. Its occasional fun to argue the merits of absolutely ridiculous arguments just for fun.

Agreed. Highly doubt it's condensation as that would require a differential of temperature and if that's the case, you would find it uniformly along the tub.

Don't sit a brute trash can on top of a pump plug and start filling it up. It'll crack and then put water on your floor and you'll feel dumb. [emoji53]

Yes, correct assumption on CP. It will kill your corals in no time as it'll kill all their photosynthetic symbionts and then the coral will starve to death and die. Also, to run CP, you'd have to leave the lights off as the UV will degrade it. If they don't starve to death via no zooxanthallae, they'll definitely die from no light. You'll at least have an algae free tank though! Eat that GHA! I should be done with Ol' aggies tub in the next 3 weeks, oddly, he has my tub. I'll be dropping off his tub and once he's done with my tub, whoever needs it next is more than welcome to use it, I just ask that they are actually using it immediately and not just holding it as there may be someone else that needs it in the interim. My wife just makes faces whenever she walks by the office. It isn't really approval but it isn't not approved either... I like to live right there in the middle.

I've been running non-lab grade probes for 6 years now. I don't know what I'm missing but happy with what the regular ones have been giving me up to this point.

Well, that would include about 90% of the tanks on ARC. And thanks. Ready to get my hands all over it. Nah, I would consider my 215-gallon more like a sump to mega tank than a frag tank. [emoji12] Pretty exciting bud. I'm glad you're finally going to be able to do some work on that tank soon.

Prazipro is relatively reef safe and I've used it in my system 2x before without any issues. I believe fan worms are sensitive to it and may die but that's the only side effect I've heard. Like with most medications, remove carbon, and more than likely your skimmer will overflow for awhile before returning to normal. I just let it overflow into the sump.Again, I see no need to QT as its reef safe for the most part.

You did it right. Without the crazy amounts of silicone, it just kept leaking on the one I have.

That's like a frag tank compared to ole megatank! Looks real clean!

My guess is a dosing pump issue, either with programming or the unit itself. We'll see in a few days. What is your water change interval?

If it was a fish I would say fine but I know nothing of seahorses. Maybe KimP knows and can chime in.

Luckily in a healthy environment, Dory tends to get over the ich. It's the achilles and powder blue tang in my opinion that rarely get over ich and then take the tank down with it.

That is a possibility but that's also assuming they don't form encysted tomonts on the rocks (which is their more preferable substrate if I understand correctly). Even just one tomont "hatches" and hundreds of new ich theronts will be looking to infect your fish for the next generation. Ideally, you may make some impact stirring the stand but I don't see it as a viable alternative to quell ich populations in a tank.

You'd be surprised at the advances of saltwater fish breeding in just last 5 years alone. We officially had our first captive bred tangs this past year. Why is that significant? Because they are a pelagic spawner and it is quite difficult to breed them because of that. I see the saltwater hobby heading in the same direction as the freshwater hobby where a majority of fish are captive-bred now whereas that wasn't the case when it first started. The realist in me knows that out of a batch of larval fish, probably only 20% of them make it to adulthood. Collecting fish and selling them to me is very similar to a predator just picking off the fish and eating it except instead of getting eaten, it has a chance to live in the nice, comfy confines of an aquarium where it never has to worry about being eaten anymore, given a name, and treated as a part of the family. Even methods of collection have improved and collectors are focusing on just collecting the larval fish, which again, most won't survive in the wild anyways. They collect them, grow them out in grow-out facilities, and when they reach a retail size, sell them to LFS to distribute. This makes less of an impact on natural populations and the large adult fish stay in the ocean to produce many more generations of fish. Here's a company doing exactly that, as well as breeding I believe. http://sustainableaquatics.com/

Hey Christy, A graphic would probably be more helpful in this explanation since I tend to get wordy and babble. No stirring needed as it would not be beneficial. The UV sterilizer will only be effective on the theront and free swimming trophont stages. It is not effective against the encysted tomont stage or attached trophont stage. Technically, the tomont stage can be dormant for up to 72 days in one study, though they believe that was due to the colder temperatures of the study. Otherwise, 35 days was the max of all the other studies. So, yes, a tomont can be attached to a coral, snail, or anything else you bring into the tank and technically "hatch" up to 35 days... or if you want to be safe... 72 days later (If you believe that their study wasn't a fluke from the cold water and that there are truly ich variants that can encyst for that long). [emoji53]

So does that mean your Ca level is still staying the same? Or do you need to wait until tomorrow to conclude that?

Here's some good reading on Triton if you haven't run across it yet. http://packedhead.net/2015/triton-lab-icp-oes-testing-of-a-certified-artificial-saltwater-standard/ I like to use it to monitor annual trends as it seems the data is precise, though I am skeptical on the accuracy. For accuracy, I look at the data as more of "in the ballpark" of the concentration and not the actual concentration, which is fine if I'm just monitoring for trends. I never do any corrective action to the tank using the data though from Triton tests.

Lucky you...I hate looking at a fishless tank...I have 7 weeks. If you aren't keeping an achilles or PBT, I say toss everyone back in. Unless you just want to go full ich-free from now on. Good, healthy fish will get over ich readily. Honestly, if I wasn't trying to keep both and also keep a large fish population, I wouldn't even bother with ich free. Oh dare you temp me!!!! That's all I do sir! You trying to get everybody to assimilate to the FarmerTy methods?I thought about that the other day. I was like... I don't think I know one person that runs their system like mine and doesn't do water changes either. I guess everyone realizes you have to be a little crazy to do it.

Lucky you...I hate looking at a fishless tank...I have 7 weeks. If you aren't keeping an achilles or PBT, I say toss everyone back in. Unless you just want to go full ich-free from now on. Good, healthy fish will get over ich readily. Honestly, if I wasn't trying to keep both and also keep a large fish population, I wouldn't even bother with ich free. Oh dare you temp me!!!! That's all I do sir!

My guess is it'll take a substantial amount of cooling from the fan to lower the temperature. Really, you can just aim for 80 as my reef tank averages 81 with no issues. The bigger problem will turn out to be the amount of evaporation you have to contend with daily. Most QTs are a smaller volume so salinity swings quicker when that much evaporation in one day occurs. Maybe go ahead and put salt in it and track your daily salinity swings as well as the amount of evaporation you get daily. If you're swinging more than 1.002 in a day, I'd consider a chiller over the fan.

Lucky you...I hate looking at a fishless tank...I have 7 weeks. If you aren't keeping an achilles or PBT, I say toss everyone back in. Unless you just want to go full ich-free from now on. Good, healthy fish will get over ich readily. Honestly, if I wasn't trying to keep both and also keep a large fish population, I wouldn't even bother with ich free.

Oh man, I just looked at a calendar and realized that my fish get to go back into the tank in 3 weeks! [emoji3]

No problem. I found it fascinating and it gives me more appreciation of life here in the US where I can just say I want a fish from the other side of the world and it just shows up. Look at all the people and processes that are required to make that happen.