FarmerTy

Oh for sure. If you had a choice of beef jerky or a ribeye,.. I don't know about you but I'm eating me some ribeye!

Congrats on the pods! Just a heads up, in a 24g, the mandarin would destroy your pod collection in about a week or two. They constantly eat and there is no way you could possibly keep up with their appetite in a 24g. Unless you intend to buy pods on a monthly basis from one of the online retailers. If you want one, get either an ORA mandarin that feeds on non-live food or get a spotted mandarin (the green one with target-looking markings on them). They usually take to non-live food more readily.

My pH increases from the point the main lights come on until they turn off, an average of 0.25 per day.

Hippo tangs are the biggest chickens of the sea. Leave him alone and he'll start associating you with food. He'll still be the first to run at the first sign of danger but after awhile he'll be much more used to you.

I despise six line wrasses.

Depends where the cracks are. My understanding is cracks on the paneling at the bottom of the tank (framing) is not an issue because the panels are not structural. If you have cracks at the plastic framing at the top of the tank, that may need to be repaired as they usually are designed to keep the tank from bowing. Again, depends on how your tank was manufactured.

+1 hydroid jellyfish

I'm in the no GFCI and no grounding probe corner. Maybe standing in the corner by myself but I would rather be mad at a pump or whatever frying my corals instead of mad at myself for trying to do too much and having the GFCI trip and me not around to notice it and all my livestock and coral die for no reason other than because it tripped. I would feel like I outsmarted myself in that scenario and wouldn't forgive myself for that. If a pump fried everything... I'd be hella mad at the pump but then would just rebuild. If the GFCI tripped, i would feel defeated. Nothing is worst than feeling self-defeated.

Appreciate the write-up Jestep. Really clarifies the issue.

I was gonna say... hold up the bandwagon real quick and look into the issue first. There are many discussions out there pro or con for a grounding probe. Let's take a look at the topic a bit. It's not just as simple as grounding probe = path for current to exit my tank. I'm no electrician and hopefully someone with more knowledge of this will chime in. Richard linked a couple of good articles there. Let the discussion begin! -Ty

+1 Yeah, Roland has some great, easy-to-keep SPS in his tank.

If it's diatoms... I say do nothing. It'll pass. If it's dino's, then that's something else entirely.

Sorry to hear. You had a great looking setup. There are frags up for sale all the time you can capitalize on for sure when the new tank is ready!

An apex controller, auto top-off unit, or a RO/DI unit... IMO 3 of the must-have's in the saltwater world if you don't want to be a slave to your tank! -Ty

Sweet! Love those little guys. I have literally a million in my tank... maybe not... but gotta be close. Congrats my friend, you are going to be a brittle star grandpa of 100+ new babies. -Ty

Incomplete circuit I believe. Last time that happened to me, it was a bulb that was burnt out. Confused me at first because all the bulbs were new... kept thinking for sure it was the ballast. If you have old bulbs that you know work, I would test it out on them. -Ty

Hi George, Are you asking us what we are feeding to our tanks now or thoughts on your feeding regiment? Or both? I'm feeding Reef Nutrition flakes (sometimes pellets for my nassarius snails) and nori every day, and once a week I'll give the tank a cube of the Angle/Butterfly fish frozen food mix. 2x a week I will broadcast feed coral frenzy and add 20ml of amino acids. I run a skimmer, biopellets, GFO, and carbon. I do not do water changes (almost 2 years now... I think?) other than maybe 2x a year I will suck the detritus out of my sump for a whole 3-5 gallon water removal each time. So, basically 6-10 gallons a year water change for a 150 gallon system. No mechanical filtration either. Personally, I would just stick with the pellets if you have mainly small crustaceans and feed the anemones mysis once/week. I wouldn't even bother with the phyto. Just my 2 cents.

I don't know if that's a common practice in the hobby, or if there even is a fixture out there that even does that. Probably have to be custom unless you know of a company that does this, specifically for saltwater reef tanks. I know that do it for boats to "pimp" your ride out but that's all I have ever heard of it. And those lights will probably not do for a saltwater reef tank, wrong spectrum I would imagine. I say enclose the hood and add fans... viola. Way cheaper option as well. -Ty

My neighbor just got laid off from AMD. That's sad that they let so many people go! I'm thankful for a job!

Just a question, what is minimum time before judging? Seems it would be an important part of the contest to have a functioning and sustainable pico. Anybody can throw a bunch of beautiful things in a small box of water, snap a pic or record a video and viola.. best pico ever. Or does the monthly submissions account for the proof of sustainability? Just curious is all... I gladly bow down to anybody who can keep 3 gallons of water stable. I am still working on 150 gal. :-)

My guess on the digi polyps receeding when moved higher had more to do with too much light (you'd be surprised what LEDs can put out) than too much flow. I got digi's being blasted by current almost directly and they are fine.

Sounds about right to me for the fuge. I initially started off with rubble back there as well but it became a nutrient trap because I couldn't get enough flow back there. Something to think about... just make sure there is good flow through the rubble. If you want to see any color other than brown and muted greens... phosphates... phosphates... phosphates... keep it low and get a test kit to confirm. I didn't see any color until I got into the 0.05 ppm range. My tank started at 0.300 ppm... it is currently at 0.009 ppm... actually a little lower than what I want. Natural seawater (NSW) is around 0.032 ppm if I remember correctly.

Sweet... let me know if you have any questions about how I did it before. Good luck! Esacjack, I PM'ed you. Didn't want to fill up their build thread with off-topic discussion.

Glad you knocked out the dinos. If you can, I'd definitely setup that refugium in the back chamber with chaeto we were talking about. Made my old nanocube bulletproof for 5 years... that and never missing a water change. The good ole days of the nanocube... miss that thing.