FarmerTy

Yeah, I'd never have another tank without urchins again. They are awesome!

I've never used Coral RX. I mainly just use Bayer and observe for red bugs and AEFW eggs. If I see the red bugs, then an interceptor dip will generally follow... unless its just a frag... then I'll just toss it. For AEFW eggs, I'll usually scrape and superglue over the spot and dip the heck out of that frag with Bayer until I feel safe enough for it to be placed in my tank.

I've had plenty of the tan varieties of asterinas in my tanks over the years. None I would consider predatory by any means and I've never had them "attack" a coral that wasn't sick and dying already. Not saying there might not be predatory ones out there but my opinion is most that get blamed for eating coral are just doing their job of cleaning up. I've never had the green one's you speak of but I'm sure they are similar in role. I've usually observed my starfish grazing on the rocks and glass walls and the presumptive conclusion in the reefing community is they are munching on biofilms. I would guess the same for my blue and red linkia starfish. I can't even remember how long ago (6+ months) I bought them but the blue one is surprisingly spry and healthy looking still and the red one seems to be suffering a bit. I bought both as an experiment to see if my tank would even support them as I know they have dismal survival rates in captivity.

I'd be surprised if your current vet won't approve a prescription from an online vendor. He knows you are looking for interceptor and you actually have dogs, so nothing weird there.

If you're thinking the bugs walking around the dead acro skeleton is red bugs, I'm pretty sure it's not. Red bugs will almost look like they are sitting on your live acro tissue and they seem to almost hardly move at all. They will relocate here and there but they won't walk as much as say a pod would in my experience. They are tiny too... like copepod size and smaller. The thing crawling on your acro seems more like a anthopod to me. Unless I'm looking at the wrong thing. BTW, I've found Bayer to be pretty ineffective against red bugs in my opinion. They survive the Bayer dip pretty well.

You have a good picture? I can tell you off the bat if you have them or not.

I was thinking of getting one for my lowly Jaebo's as they sell a similar battery backup for them but like Dan, my house has lost power for no more than 30 mins in my area in 6 years of living here. The suspicion is I'm on the same grid as the JJ Pickle Research facility. I've resorted to just a mega-sized inverter for my car and a polite knock on my neighbor's door to plug into their 2 generators if needed.

Nice toys! Just a quick thought on the second battery backup. If it were my system, if the power went out, I'd be more concerned of just maintaining any flow instead of the usual flow. If I had a 2nd battery backup, for me, it would make more sense to keep the charge on that one and when the first backup runs out, plug it into the 2nd one, doubling your reserve time... Instead of just running both pumps at the same time and halving the time you could be generating life saving flow for your tank.

Nice music! It's just a barnacle. They come all the time in mariculture colonies but will usually slowly all die off in our systems. They don't hurt the corals in any way.

This was fun. I saw this on another site. We're almost at the same time present day that they went to the future in the Back to the Future movie. Great Scott! [emoji23]

I'm going to assume there aren't any eel eating flame hawkfishes out there so I think you are correct on your assumption.

Mine has left my cleaner shrimp alone for the past 6 months.

I don't know about more nutritious but naso tangs prefer the red/purple varieties so I've been looking for this stuff all over the place. I can say dried is better than roasted for nutritional value.

It's JustReef, a new store down south. We're posting under his sponsor thread.

I haven't actually tried any of it yet. The only way I like my seaweed is wrapped around a sushi roll and my sushi making skills are non-existent. Next you're gonna tell us that you can't Karate either. No, but my abacus skills are fine-tuned!

Nice looking tang DoMa! I missed seeing it as you already ran off with it by the time I went by to check out the shop.

I haven't actually tried any of it yet. The only way I like my seaweed is wrapped around a sushi roll and my sushi making skills are non-existent.

Dude, seriously. You didn't have to QT 7 anthias for me! Too kind sir! Just let me know when to pick them up! [emoji12]No problem Ty, the post quarantine cost more than makes up for my time. In reality though, these are MINE! I would have asked if you needed some, but figured I would get the usual canned response "I'm too busy, maybe when work slows down" I'm too busy to even respond to this. [emoji12]

Dude, seriously. You didn't have to QT 7 anthias for me! Too kind sir! Just let me know when to pick them up! [emoji12]

I can't wait to get my first white lightning yellow tang!

In the most nerdy way, I an super stoked that I found dried laver. We're not talking about dried ulva that usually is the green substitute for laver, were talking porphyra umbilicalis, the purple algae! My fish went nuts for it! It actually falls apart a bit easier than the dried green ulva that I only put in just a little at a time instead of 1/3 of a sheet like I usually do. Han Yang Market Near Airport Blvd/Lamar

What he probably isn't telling us is that that was all done in some ridiculously short period of time, like a day or something. Nah, it was all this morning! Okay, not really but fun to say. JGon - I removed the optics because they were 90 degree optics on the Ocean Revive units. It's great for penetration into deeper tanks but with green and red LEDs, my preference is to have them at their native 120 degrees (without any optics) so that the greens and reds are more diffused instead of a spotlight. Green and red can sometimes enhance macro algae growth and the spotlight was noticeable on some of my corals as well, but that's purely a coloration preference.

Hmmm, always something going on with my tank. Idle hands they say... DI started registering 1 TDS and I swapped it immediately... Still enough time to start off some good cyano on the left side of the tank. It usually goes away quickly though. Added more biopellets to see if I could depress my phosphate level with just biopellets again and run without GFO but that was a bust. Added GFO back to the system and got a little STN on some corals but nothing a little superglue couldn't stop. Got a free purple tang from on old ARC member that decided to go with seahorses. Got to do some good trimming of colonies and made some space in the frag rack with the Fall Frag Swap. Opened up my LEDs and started removing the 90 degree optics from the red and green LEDs so that they are natively 120 degrees and the light would be more dispersed on those colors. Nobody needs a spotlight of green or red in their tank. Removed as much chaeto as I could from my sump. It was getting all over the frags and what not. Contemplating borrowing a copperband butterfly to eradicate the fan worms in my sump. They would be highly beneficial in a refugium but since my frags are in there, I'd rather not have them as they start covering my frags. Added a new giant CaRX and trying to get it to play nice. It's not going well so far but once I get my peristaltic pump online to pull a steady effluent rate,I think I'll be golden. Here's an updated FTS I took a couple weeks back.

Mine's the biggest chicken ever... Always hiding in the shadows and running away from everyone. They got so much personality...def a must have in any tank.