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So, as I was saying in the other thread, there's a Charlotte Reef Society starting up and they had a meeting today. They held a raffle for things that people donated, and I picked up a few nice little goodies. First was some Xenia that was propogated by way of a very big snail shell :) It's a...

Our local reef club is just getting started, and each of the sponsors has its own forum on the club to post sales or whatever. One of the members went around and took pictures of 3 of the local stores, but skipped the 150g frag tank at my favorite LFS. So, I went back this morning and took...

Personally, I'm fond of peppermint shrimp. They're inquisitive and will come to clean your hand if you reach down in there. Good scavengers, too.... and they sometimes eat Aiptasia which is a HUGE plus. You could also go with a normal cleaner shrimp. They're usually easier to find in stores...

Now now, that's not true. Well, it is, kinda. You get crappy American branded cars that are actually made in Mexico or Canada ;)

Mystery Polyps > aiptasia!!! Today I got home and noticed one of the aiptasia encroaching on these new polyps. I went and had some dinner and went back to the aquarium, and low and behold.... the aiptasia looked withered and was retracting. Apparently it got close to these new things, and...

Most people don't run metal halides for a full 12 hours. You run supplemental Actinic lights for 12-13 hours, and turn on the bright MH lights for maybe 6-8 hours a day.

Another one I've heard is plastic shavings, like what you'd get from cutting plexiglass with a tablesaw or something. Just think about how quickly coraline grows on the plastic bits in your tank... filter intakes, powerheads, etc. The plastic is supposed to help the coraline grab a foothold...

Can't help you too much on the pistol shrimp variety, but I will warn that everyone says a "Bullseye Pistol Shrimp" will NOT pair with a goby. The various other species seem to do okay with it, assuming you find a goby to their liking.

I thought you meant inappropriate in OTHER ways.... such as... Halichoeres bivittatus aka. the Slippery Dick Wrasse :) On topic.... In the SW world, I always see the Mandarin fish called a Mandarin Goby, when it's not really a goby. Same deal for Firefish... they're often labelled as Firefish...

That, being a newer body style, could be one of the legit ones to be released in the US. But, I don't think they're out here yet. Regardless.... legit Lotus sold version is equipped with a Toyota VVT-i engine. Then there are the Elises sold by Sun Motorsports. Based on the paint job and...

More than I wanted to spend..... $40

Picked this up yesterday from the LFS...

Doubt you can sell/trade it to a pet store, as most don't want them either. I still think the best way to get it out would be a saline dip in a bucket of hyper-saline water (1.035 SG or so). Once it's out you can figure out what to do with it. If you don't want to keep it, and your LFS...

Making live rock isn't a whole lot cheaper than buying it, if you want the honest truth. To do a 20g tank, you could get a 40lb bag (probably about $50) of aragonite sand and split it... half for sand, half to make live rock with. Then you still have to buy the concrete and based on some...

Describe the purple thing, or take a picture if you can. If it's moving, it could easily be a zoanthid polyp, or a mushroom. In my 5g tank, I had a gorgeous red mushroom show up, but somehow it broke off and ended up in never never land, probably sucked into my filter :( Screw the fish and...

Some sites are still stuck on "30 gallon" because until the current trend of nano reefs came around, that was the smallest size that most people would ever recommend for saltwater. LiveAquaria.com lists each species now as "10g minimum"...

I had a pair of yellow watchman gobies and a pistol shrimp in a 20g and they did just fine. I'm gonna go the opposite extreme from GL and say that 20g may be too much to see the symbiotic relationship. The tank that the fish store had them in was a mini-bow 5 on the front counter to show them...

I've also heard that instead of raising the temperature, immersing the rock in more saline water.... something around 1.030-1.035 SG perhaps.... can force a mantis out of the rock. If you do this, it would be like a freshwater dip for saltwater things, and has to be done quick. Don't dip any...

I'll add something else for you Steel. Peppermint shrimp "sway", which is a cleaner behaviour for shrimp. While I've never seen one clean a fish anywhere, they are quite brave and willing to come "clean" your hand if you reach down into the aquarium. With mine, I can hold a piece of food...

Could also be carbon dioxide buildup. Don't worry, with a pH that low, it'll start dissolving the aragonite sand and getting calcium in the water, raising the pH, alkalinity, and calcium.

Bio Wheel = nitrate factory. In nano tanks, it is largely accepted that your live rock provides your biological filtration, and you must stock VERY carefully in order to not overload it. If you're dead set on using the 5.5g tank, I'd get something like a Fluval 204/304 to greatly increase your...

As I believe it was Navarre said in another thread.... the aragocrete rocks are nice and all, but you lack the biodiversity that wild rocks bring in. You're not gonna get the feather dusters, polyps, odd species of coraline algae, snails, etc. The thing that most of us get excited over is...

Okay I promised more pictures after the water cleared. This morning I put some Cyclopeeze in the tank, and these things ate it up. Also managed to see other little tiny polyps that are barely visible in those pics. They're little "fuzz" on the rock just below that biggest polyp/anemone...

Go to http://www.garf.org/ and look at the how-to pages and movies about Aragocrete.

You can change 16oz of water every day, if you really want to. On my 20g, I did about 3-4g once a month, and never had nitrates. The only instance that I EVER saw nitrates in my tank was when I went on vacation and my mother-in-law was feeding, and overfed the fish. A few days after I got...

Well... your links are broke... but I know what you're talking about. Never used Prime, or any other water conditioner for that matter. We're on well water so I don't have chlorine in my freshwater tanks, and I use RO for my saltwater.. so... no worries about that. I'm sure it's great at what...

Favorite fish... yellow watchman goby. Every time I see that grumpy little face, it makes me smile :) Favorite invert... peppermint shrimp. Friendly, and they eat aiptasia... PLUS!! ;)

Screw grocery stores, man. Most fish stores around here sell RO water. The one I go to most frequently sells RO water for $.29 a gal and pre-mixed 1.023SG saltater for $.89 a gal. That comes out to about $1.45 after tax for a 5 gallon container of RO water. For water changes, I get a thing...

These first pictures are crap, I know. I'll try to get some better pictures soon. These were on live rock I bought today. Apparently a customer was moving, and in the process decided to take down his large saltwater tank and have a smaller one. He ended up bringing a few big pieces to the...

I wouldn't be TOO scared of overflow boxes. As long as they're made properly, they shouldn't lose syphon. I was looking at them last week, and also looking at what it would take to build my own.... and it's really a simple concept. Look at it this way... this is what a basic overflow box...

Do you have lots of little "twigs" on your rock/powerheads/filter/etc? I just learned about these recently... learned what they are and how they eat. I too had seen the "netting" all over the tank and wondered what it was. They're called vermetid snails. They live in those little calcerous...

Bigger is better because parameters will stay more stable, but don't let all the hype over how "difficult" saltwater tanks are get you down. If you've kept discus... you CERTAINLY have the dedication required for a marine tank. The 55g sounds like it would be great for that. Just read all you...

Right now you have it full..... go ahead and drain it down to aboue 1/2 before you get the live rock and live sand. Trust me on this one, okay :) When you get your live rock and live sand home, you're gonna be eager to get it in the water so that there's no die-off. Times like that are when...

My boss's daughter has met Willie Nelson and hung out with him a few times. She lives on Maui, and he has a house there in a town called Sprecklesville. I don't know if it's his permanent home or not... but apparently he spends a lot of time there :) As for my celebs, never met any in a fish...

One thing frightens me about blennies... the fact that most of them are venomous :( I like to be able to reach into my aquarium to move things around if need be, or to hand feed my peppermint shrimp, etc. I've been bitten by some of my fish before (who among us hasn't?)... and personally I...

I've heard people deny this, but it was always my understanding that if you bury the rhiozome (thick horizontal root) of a java fern, it will rot away and die. Find a rock or some aquarium ornament to tie it to, and eventually the thin roots will anchor it. If you REALLY want to "plant" it on...

The wrasse is gorgeous, but one thing about that worries me... I want featherdusters.... and I'm concerned about what type of "wild shrimp" it will eat. I love my peppermint shrimp in my other tank... and I want to get one or two for the 55g, possibly a normal cleaner shrimp too. I don't...

What do you mean exactly? Like Percula/Ocellaris Clownfish, perhaps? They're all male at birth, but when they mate, the larger one (more capable of producing eggs) becomes a female. Later on in life, if the female dies and another male moves in, the older large male (who may have already...

Anybody have any tips or advice on how to break our dog of separation anxiety? He's a decent dog and fairly obedient... but hyper when new people come around.... and absolutely insane when he's left alone. We leave him in the master bathroom during the day so he has a little bit of space...

So it looks like the 55g I'm gonna be setting up as saltwater is moving right along. I have all the powerheads in my posession, some base rock to build a bit of structure with, an Aquaclear 500 to build a small refugium with, and stuff to plumb up a closed loop system with an intake on one end...