FarmerTy

I test for iodine and potassium... both red sea kits. IMO, I really see no reason to test either for most reefers as long as standard water changes are being conducted.

Oh no! Another engineer! [emoji12] I know I might be jumping the gun a bit but when you're ready for SPS and if you have any desire for it, I am part of the mentor program on the club and would be happy to take you on as an SPS mentee if you have any desire for it. It's a very rewarding tank focus for me and I've screwed up enough times keeping them that just not doing what I did might set you up just right! [emoji30] Anyways, just thought I'd throw that out there since my ears perked when you mentioned SPS. Just send me a PM if you have any desire to be a part of the mentor program and if you don't mind taking advice from a former scientist. I know... tough pill to swallow for you engineers! [emoji33]

After being called out by Reburn for being lazyreeferTy, I figured I'd go ahead last night and put my left side of the tank aquascape back together after slightly destroying it while removing all the fish. I was also going to remove the one little aiptasia that came in on a sponge I had bought to try out. As I was putting the sponge in the water a few months back, I saw this awesome pearly-looking anemone on it and since it was so pretty, I decided to leave it in there. Big mistake, it was an aiptasia. Anyways, I was going to just chip off a piece of rock and presto, aiptasia removed. Murphy thought otherwise... I chipped him off alright but the piece somehow tumbled into the bottom of my rock pile never to be seen again. Not looking to have an aiptasia infestation, I started moving rocks around to find it, basically destroying any semblance of my left side aquascape in the process and breaking a million pieces of screaming green birdsnest and splitting my kryptonite candy cane colony in half. For those that have an aiptasia on a baserock somewhere in their tank, please keep in mind that someone destroyed their aquascaping in a 215-gal tank to remove one aiptasia so moving a couple of pieces of liverock in your tank is really not much to ask in comparison. [emoji12] Kidding aside, the rocks I was moving around easily weighed 20-30 lbs a piece. Where was I? Oh yeah, sorry for the tangent. So anyways, I destroyed my aquascape removing this one litte aiptasia and finally found him and promptly evicted him. I tried to recreate the same aquascape to no avail. I put together a new one on the left side of the tank but it's an aquascape only a mother could love. [emoji31] I'll work on it again once my fingertips grow back from being rubbed raw from moving those heavy rocks around over and over again. Eat that for lazyreeferTy Reburn! [emoji13]

Though I considered the option, a good one rated for my size tank is a substantial cost, for something again, is not 100% proven. I'm not talking Coralife or any other consumer brand... I'm talking the heavy duty stuff. The bottle of peroxide costs $2 and I've read papers on its effectiveness at killing dinospores from marine ich. I'll go with the proven over the non-proven any day. I will say however that I believe UV has merit, I'm just not so sure I'm interested in something that kills everything that passes through it. How will my little baby urchins, clownfish, and mandarin larvae ever have a hope of surviving? [emoji6]

Nice!

+1

I lost a lot of sps to high salinity and some zoas. Since I don't have acans, I couldn't attest to them not doing well in high salinity either but I would imagine they would at least be affected in some way or another.

Still not planning to QT the angel. I'll have to think about it a bit tonight but it might be best to just delay the order, run the tank truly fallow for at least 4 weeks, then introduce the angelfish and mandarins, then a few weeks after, the rest of the fish. I just don't know how much longer I can keep avoiding disaster with the fish in the tub for this long. I feel like it's a ticking time bomb and going with my original assumption of a marine velvet free tank despite the dartfish being in there may be the best option.

Naturally when plan B gets set in motion, I catch the dartfish. Nothing like cornering it in a different place, turning out all the lights, donning my red LED headlamp, and inserting a giant net where his hole of a home is. He slowly tested the floor and made his way back slowly to his home... aka... my giant net. I've finally outsmarted a dartfish! Huzzah!

I got Jake (RCA) getting me a red sea regal angelfish and a male and female mandarin. I can't wait to start seeing fish in the tank again!

No room? What about that awesome back room behind the kitchen? I plan to do a freshwater dip and also prazipro for a half a day and then introduce it to the tank. I might even go a full day but we'll see.

Well there goes my next stocking choice! Haha. I appreciate the feedback on the angels. I'll just play it by ear with the zoas. Luckily I don't keep euphyllias so that's one less thing to worry about.

I've found the sweet spot to be when the gaskets are nicely pressed up against the glass but not so over tightened that they bulge out at the seams.

Alright Shawn, the week long birthday celebration has gone on long enough! [emoji6] Where's the big update with all your new tank toys on it?

I'd agree, no Teflon tape needed. A hand tightening with a small crank of the channel locks should be good. Too much tightening can cause the rubber gasket to warp and cause more leaks than desired.

Thanks Jim. A gut check always helps before moving forward with a plan that has inherent risks in it.

Well, the goal was to have my tank fallow for all this time to guarantee the removal of the marine velvet. That dartfish has decided otherwise. I've been dosing hydrogen peroxide every day in hopes of minimizing the population of the dinoflaggelates that cause marine velvet... as it is deemed effective against the dinoflaggelates that cause "dinos" as well. I know this won't be the "cure", but hopefully it helps reduce their population during the dinospore stage and in the end, helps out in some way. The ideal would be to have the tank fallow but I don't think that's going to happen and I'm probably going to move on to Plan B soon. Plan B... assume that removal of all the fish minus the dartfish has lowered the ability of the marine velvet dinoflaggelates to survive by removing almost all of their food source to break the reproductive cycle. Oddly, the dartfish has not shown any symptoms the entire time of the outbreak from the first signs of the disease until now. My hope is that it is somehow immune because the marine velvet should have killed it by now. If it is indeed somehow immune, than the dinospores have nothing to attach to and can never continue on to the tromont and tomont stages to produce more dinospores. The daily treatment of hydrogen peroxide has hopefully been wiping the numbers of any dinospores that are released anyways. Anyway, long story short, if I still see no indication of marine velvet in the dartfish or I still can't catch him, I will end up going with Plan B, which has a lot of inherent risks, but the calculated risk is minimal enough for me to proceed forward with the plan. Upon more research on the regal angelfish, I can mostly say goodbye to my zoas... perhaps some of my palys may not become a snack. I'll probably setup my sump as a frag tank and keep them down there for now until I can confirm that I truly don't have marine velvet down the line and then sell them off. It's time to be fully SPS. The other thing I stumbled upon is most have much greater success not QT'ing the fish as it doesn't handle the QT process well. Well after the whole flame fish/marine ich debacle... that makes no sense to me at all for not QT'ing but in this case, I feel it's worth the risk. At the worst, it dies and hopefully takes out the dartfish too (okay, not really as I don't like unneeded fish death of any kind) and I continue to leave the tank fallow and then reintroduce my fish down the line. If it lives and shows no signs of disease, then it gets a good head start to acclimation in the tank before the tang hoarde and friends gets reintroduced to the tank. I figure I should go ahead and add a mandarin goby pair as well to the tank with the regal angelfish at the same time as well. They don't QT well at all either so I figure why not go ahead and take all the risk in one shot. If all adapt well and don't bring in the marine plague again, then I'll reintroduce my fish population back to the tank a few weeks after they've been in the tank for a bit and then monitor everyone's reactions with the new regal angelfish. You sorry you asked yet Sascha? [emoji16]

As Eddie Vedder would say, "even flow".

For larger reactors actually, a peristaltic pump is preferred as it is a steady flow and doesn't have the fluctuations a impeller driven model would have. It would usually depend on the type of CARX you have as well as to which end you want to control flow, inlet or outlet flow. Korallin CARX are designed to operate with some pressure inside the reactor and are more efficient in that scenario, thereby, they recommend controlling flow on the output. Most other reactors are designed with minimal pressure ratings and would leak profusely if controlled from the outlet side. Those they recommend controlling from the inlet. That wouldn't matter as much if the reactor was run in the sump but run externally, it would be a big problem. When you think of the peristaltic pumps Victoly is mentioning, he's probably referring to the giant sized ones that we both used for water sampling versus the tiny little ones used for 2-part dosing vietpride.

Oh I love that place!

Those tile nibblers work great too if you have any pair laying around.

Good call Reburn, I meant boil hot water and then apply to the aiptasia.

They like to dig their feet deep into a crevice if possible so I just take a flathead screwdriver and a hammer and just give one little tap to chip a whole piece off. IMO, losing a small piece of my live rock is worth the trouble of aiptasia infesting my tank. I honestly can't see the aiptasia so I can't help with a best method to remove it. You could always just use a mini torch and cook the one area it's in or even try boiling hot water on it if you can't chip.

Go little guy go!

I'd remove the rock and chip that piece of rock off if at all possible. I've seen them sneak right around the epoxy through a small opening in the live rock and continue to spread.