FarmerTy

You got it Sherita. Emilio, you have a PM.

Pm'ed!

I use new life spectrum pellets. You can get them in many different sizes and with or without garlic. They are dense with protein and are pretty good about not fouling water quality. For the autofeeder, I bought the Eheim one... seems to be the most highly rated one on most forums. I haven't tried it yet so can't add personal testimony.

All pending, if one falls through, its yours Emilio.

The long term problem is that brine shrimp are not very nutritious. Its like feeding a bird bread, it'll fill its stomach but eventually the lack of nutrition will catch up to it. You can try enriched brine shrimp and mix it in with the live brine to try to get some more nutrition in it. Otherwise, day by day, that pretty fish is just slowing wasting away.

This is an amazing system that I have been trying to mimic with my new build during the entire process. If I had known, I would have just waited it out and bought offroaddodge's system. Someone is going to be very lucky to get this. I mean c'mon, powered canopy lift!?!? Jealous!

I totally agree. Entertaining and efficient cleaners.

I got two I transferred from the old tank going to town in the new tank now but you can totally grab one if you want. Hit me up with your schedule via PM.

You got it. 1 small one left.

Oh, and you can totally tell by the picture where the fighting conch has made his rounds of the diatoms.

I guess this is how the powder blue keeps its beautiful color... By devouring Tubbs blue zoas! Helps keep its color nice and blue I guess. Notice it didnt touch any of the cyan colored zoas or any others in my frag tank. It has expensive tastes for sure! Maybe I can put some fruit loop zoas in there and have some fun with the fish!

If you didn't have 2" sandbed, I would say no. But the fact that you do, I think it would be just fine. They reproduce by fragmentation too so if you have plenty of good stuff in your sand, you might end up with two eventually.

Large one pending

Looking to offload some tiger tail sea cucumbers. They are great detrivores and keep your sand sparkling clean. I have 3 small ones about 4" (7" stretched) and a giant one about 10" (12-14" stretched). Selling small ones for $15 and large one for $20.

I'm just as stumped on what the cause may be but my suspicions are my alk level since it was the one parameter I haven't tested yet and I recently decreased the bubbling rate to my CaRX since I felt the effluent pH was drifting way too low. Odd thing is I didn't tweak it too much so I'd be surprised that it caused enough of a swing to cause STN but perhaps all the tank changes from the upgrade may have compounded the problem. Good thing is the STN looks like it has mostly stopped after I blindly increased my alk (scary, I know, but I trust my instincts more these days). I would not recommend doing that if someone else finds themselves in the same bind.

I would honestly rehome the mandarin. A small hang on refugium will not ever produce enough pods to sustain him, not to mention the start up time to get the refugium going in the first place. 1) hate for the senseless death of a fish that could possibly be saved by someone else 2) don't want you to have to waste all that money setting up a refugium thinking it might sustain the fish in the long run just to find out it won't. As always, there are exceptions to the rule but the likelihood of it being sustained with that refugium is unlikely. I would honestly spend my time/money on trying to train it to eat other foods than chasing the refugium route.

Thanks for the offer Etannert! I got back into town today so I'm wiped out and gonna just call it a night. If I am not able to get the reagent tomorrow, I may ping you! Thanks!

I'm starting to think there is something in the water. My tank is usually bulletproof as far as SPS are concerned and the last 3 days, 5 of my colonies have started to STN at the base. I wish I could say that I haven't made any changes but with the tank upgrade, I've made some minor changes here and there so it makes it more difficult to pinpoint the issue. All parameters are good as always... except I ran out of alk reagent so I cant test that until tomorrow.

Happy new year!

Had spare 400-watt ballast and reflector sitting in the shed so I slapped it in there for now.

The mandarins eat roughly a pod every 10 seconds. If you are really interested in guaranteeing its survival, I would get it into someone else's large and established tank until it got to a healthy weight again. Otherwise, you'll be spending a ton of money trying to feed it bottles of pods from the store.

Glad you got to the bottom of it Jestep. Maybe I missed something but you said you tested at lunch today and it read 11 dKh? How come the next two tests read 4 dKh? Was there a problem with the 11 dKh reagent? Was it old?

Jestep, perhaps get readings using another fellow reefer test kits to confirm all of your levels? I've ran across 3 reefers in the last 3 months that had a level out of whack but their tests always said it was a different level then what they had been testing. Just an idea to rule out your tank parameters for sure.

Rambo!!! He lives on!!!

Jeez! That's awful! Sorry bud! That achilles was a beauty!