FarmerTy

Free birthday bump! Hope you had a great day! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Not the greatest pictures but I picked up a rainbow stylo, ice fire echinata, pink lemonade, and some type of blue tip bottlebrush. Thank you RCA and Niko's reef for so willingly taking my money in exchange for these awesome pieces! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Sometimes a soak in garlic extract might stimulate the appetite. Either that, or use some live brine shrimp and enrich them prior to feeding. I know its not the most nutritious food but use it as a starting point and slowly start adding other foods with the enriched live brine shrimp to hopefully train it to eat other prepared items such as mysis, flakes, and pellets.

You mean your ool? No "P" in it? Sorry, old joke. I'll stop now. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Interesting observation I wanted to share. I always think of livestock additions (mainly in the form of fish) as being the greatest contributors to my bioload and often forget about the significance of coral additions affecting the bioload much but, when I took back all my large SPS colonies that were rehomed during my super high salinity debacle, I had another mini-cycle in my tank and currently have a repeat of my cyano bloom... which cleared itself out in about 1 month time the first time through. Interesting... I'll post some pictures later today of my new additions that I horded "Golem" style at C4. My precious!!!

Man, that video makes me want to go swimming! Either that or to the bathroom! Awesome setup Triple V! -Ty

Tankfucious says... when putting loose frags in the sand that you acquired from C4, give them more than an 1" of space apart or your frags will touch and you will cry.

I just won one of those Cermedia ceramic blocks at C4. Any suggestions on putting it into my tank? I'm going to sit my skimmer on it like you did Jestep. Instructions says just rinse with tap water and then with tank water before putting it into the system. Any advice or feedback of its functionality is much appreciated.

I ran a 10 gallon for 5 years just fine. The only thing with those are as you mentioned... sensitivity to abrupt changes as the water volume allows for less room for error. You have to be religious with your water changes, 20% volume every 2 weeks worked perfectly for me. You can usually find 65-gallon, 75-gallon, and 90-gallon tanks for your in-between sizes. Though more often you'll see a 55-gallon for sale as they tend to be more common. Size would typically be rectangular or square but there are some that have the bowfront to it. I'm not a personal fan of those tanks as they skew the viewing angle to me and are a pain to clean with a glass scraper if coralline algae grows on it. Sorry about the feather duster but hopefully your mini feather duster and snails survive the cycle. Just monitor and test the water and when the nitrite and ammonia levels are zero, you're good to go! From that point on, add fish and corals slowly so that your bacteria levels can adjust to each addition to the bioload. Happy reefing! -Ty

Looks like a SWCD wavemaker to me but I've never had one. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Where's my video Manny? Just kidding man. Tank is looking awesome! You'll get some great coloration once you switch those bulbs out. The sps look healthy though and that's all that matters. Great job!

Great conference today! Thank you to all that were involved in making this happen! I scored some top shelf SPS frags and even won a Cermedia media block. Guess what my skimmer is going to sit on now?! I only got to sit in and listen to Dana Riddle but what an amazing presentation on LEDs in the marine hobby. Great conference everyone!

I'm such a control freak... your rock makes me uneasy just thinking about it! Haha! Looks really cool though in person... so much diversity. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Had some issues posting but I made it work... so you're not crazy Planeden. Well, not regarding this post at least! I feed those guy's frozen almost everyday. For some reason, pulling out a long feeding pipette and trying to aim for the dendro's tentacles seems like way too much work for me.

Tank is looking great Kim!

I'd love to have dendros but I'm too lazy to feed!

1) Reef Octopus skimmers are great, any old Euroreef or ASM can sometimes be found on a budget, SCA-302 can be had cheap and I heard it works well. I have owned the Euroreef, ASM, and Skimz. All great brands and performance is great on all of them. Build quality-wise, the Euroreef and Skimz used thick acrylic and the ASM used extruded PVC, felt cheaper but functioned all the same. 2) Apex... enough said 3) BRS dry pukani rock. Great looking pieces, priced well, just cycle separately and then add to system. Little known fact but you can request certain types of pieces in the notes section (i.e. I asked for the largest pieces possible and got monster pieces delivered). 4) Caribsea Special Grade Aragonite Reef Sand (perfect size that it won't blow around in strong current and size is very consistent, just wash it like crazy, known to have a lot of dust to it) 5) Powerheads? (Jaebo WP40?), larger heater? (buy 300-watt finnex tube from BRS, use Apex to control it), larger magnet cleaner?, 2-part dosers or CaRX?, biopellet reactor? The sky's the limit! Congratulations on the new tank. I will expect a visit in a few months to feed your burgeoning SPS addiction! Haha!

Yeah, I am running a dual stage regulator with solenoid controlled by my Apex. I run about 30 bubbles/min. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

The sea pig is my favorite one. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Are those penducters? Plumbing looks great! Happy birthday by the way! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

As far as brand, I haven't had a bad experience with any so I can't tell you what to avoid but I like my Korallin CaRX and it comes with great user experiences to back it up. Geo is also a well reviewed brand and I believe ol' aggie is selling one. Don't know much about one stage versus two stage regulators but in the sage words of Taylor Swift... two is better than one. I would imagine like you mentioned, keeps it more in control and eliminates the large dumping of CO2 but my Apex minimizes any of those shenanigans so I don't worry about it too much. You've seen my old 125 gallon tank so you have a sort of reference for stocking level and I used to get about 6 months of use from the 5 lb cylinder. Granted, I was maxing out my CaRX and setting my effluent down to 6.30 pH (recommended 6.75) so your tank may last longer. Hope the information helps bud.

I believe some of Tim's family will be in attendance during the scholarship presentation. I'm sure they would love to hear some of the memories of Tim that we all have if anybody wanted to share with them.

I got some update pics from his cousin in Louisiana. Looks like Tim's tank will live on and the legacy can continue! River City Aquatics is graciously holding his livestock and corals until the cycle is completed and will be shipping them to him to put back in the tank. He has some help from a LFS there in his area for setup Chocolate soup after the transfer to Louisiana With rocks in place and LEDs mounted Closer shot Aquascaping Rock with lots of sea fans that survived the journey

I would say predominately nitrogen cycling as they are pretty sensitive to ammonia. Once your denitrifying bacteria population starts to build up over the month, that should remedy it but by then, I'd be surprised if you still had a live feather duster. The other issue is a food source. While not impossible to keep in a small tank, feather dusters rely on suspended particles of food in the water for their nutritional needs. Since you don't have any fish and your reef tank is not established yet, the amount of planktonic material in your water columnn is very low and it will starve to death. I would look into rehoming the feather duster personally. They are poor candidates for a nano sized tank and efforts to try to feed them by broadcast feeding in the water column will normally end up polluting your tank in the long term with excess nutrients. If you try direct feeding, they usually just retract when the blast of food comes their way. Typically, their first sign of declining health is crown bailout... where they basically ditch their crown. The 2nd step you might see are efforts to try to relocate. There have been some who have also witnessed a last ditch release of gametes in the water coloumn in response to an imminent death as a survival tool for future generations.

Sorry man, that thing is so sleek and sexy that I put up my natural defenses and played hard to get. But your idea of the cup size frag holder would be great for transportation of frags you end up buying. Keep them coming!