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Here I go talking to myself again, and another hairbrained idea. I got started looking at it again, and I'm not even sure it's a zoanthid polyp now. I know I saw it closed up this morning when I first turned on the light, but now that it's open and I'm looking at it...... I just don't know...

So.... question..... is there anything I can do to help speed up the spread of this zoanthid? It is a single polyp, and it is TINY. I mean, I can't even see the tentacles at the edge of the disc, it's so small. I'm guessing it's maybe 1/8 of an inch across... so what's that, about 3-4 mm or...

Pistol shrimp are awesome little critters if you can get them to pair up with a watchman goby. Considering he feels there is a threat in there, you may be able to add a small watchman goby and get them to pair off like they would in the wild. It's an amazing sight when they do... and you will...

Well, I set up the coral-only nano that I've been wanting to do for a while.... but no coral in it yet. I bought the live rock and some crushed coral substrate last night and set it up. This morning when the dust settled, I had an ungodly huge number of bristleworms and 'pods swimming around...

Looks like an M1 Garand..... the thumbcracker. NICE collection! :)

Water movement is crucial to saltwater tanks. With so many sessile inverts, you need water movement to carry their food and nutrients around. The general line of advice is 10x the volume of your tank per hour... thus with a 20g tank and a 90gph powerhead.... you're not even close. Add another...

Red slime while cycling is a fairly normal sight, so don't get too worked up over it. In the meantime, use a clean new turkey baster to blast it with water and suck it out. How many powerheads do you have in your tank, and what's the water turnover rate on them? Red slime usually forms where...

This morning when I woke up, I glanced in my tank and saw some of the sand under a piece of live rock moved and burrowed out. The lights weren't on yet, so I couldn't really get a good look at it... so I went and got a flashlight. I just wanted to make sure my shrimp or gobies hadn't dug out...

And if you do get attached to your cleanup crew, be prepared to call the hermit crabs many rude names. I came back from vacation a few weeks ago and my mother-in-law had been taking care of my tank. I wanted to spend about 15 minutes checking everything out once I got back, and one of the...

Nice! I like the Mosin Nagant rifles... but they're usually too hard to find, and too hard to find ammo for. Right now a co-worker of mine is wanting a WWII era rifle to add to his collection, alongside the M1 Carbine he has. I've got him convinced on either a Mauser or an Enfield, but he...

Red Clawed Crabs are entirely aquatic, they don't need any land area. They're fine with top dwelling fish, but I wouldn't put cories in with them. I had one in with a betta, and the only time the crab got upset was when the betta would swim down and bump into him. I can only imagine what...

I will add something to what Navarre said. Add HALF the sand, then the live rock. Pour the rest of the sand around the base so it covers up just a bit. You don't want precariously stacked rock to get upset and knocked over by a goby or shrimp or other little critter that decides to start...

German Mauser K98 byf factory.... 1943.

Usually the live rock handles the nitrogen cycle, taking care of the ammonia and nitrites.... and then pockets of anaerobic bacteria in the sand convert the nitrates into nitrogen and outgas it. With a wet/dry filter, you miss that last step... or at least drastically slow it down. If you have...

Most people use a sump that's filled with plain RO water, and a pump in it hooked to a switch like the plunger on a toilet. When the water level drops, the plunger goes down, thus completing the circuit and turning on a small pump in the sump. It pumps the RO water out into the aquarium, and...

How long has the tank been up and running? If it's relatively new, the brown could be diatom algae. Nothing to worry about, it'll basically go away on its own with a bit of help from the crabs. The reddish stuff though... that's a nasty bugger. If it's what I'm thinking, it's cyanobacteria...

I have a 20g saltwater tank, and it really wasn't as hard as some people make it out to be. First off, live rock... lots of it. This is gonna be EXPENSIVE!!! Figure for about 30 lbs of good quality porous live rock... at $5-9 per pound. Now remove your jaw from the floor and continue onward...

Thank you guys for scaring the living crap out of me :P I think I'm gonna pick up some gloves this weekend ;)

That RTC is a small one... but the picture still doesn't do it justice. It's probably around 3' long.... and I've seen one at a local fish store that's gotta be bigger than that one is. The real one people need to see before doing something stupid is the size of the Pacu that they had in the...

WOW! Well I know there are lots of things in the ocean, and for that matter in our hobby, that carry some strong toxins. The other day at Ripley's Aquarium, the diver doing the tour was talking about puffers and boxfish, and the toxins they produce. And most of these toxins don't have an...

I'm still waiting for the gas prices to drop for all this oil we're supposedly getting from invading Iraq :P ;) My LFS charges $.29 per gallon for basic RO water, or $.89 per gallon for pre-mixed salt-water with a specific gravity of 1.023

This evening when I got home from work, I checked my SW tank like I always do. One of my snails had gotten flipped upside-down, so I was gonna reach in and flip him back over so he could get on the glass and continue doing his thing. As I was picking him up, I noticed my hand bump into...

Most shops over here sell RO water.... especially the ones that specialize in saltwater stuff.... but most don't advertise it. Just ask someone at the LFS.

The local shop owner used to swear by that Marc Weiss stuff... but I know a lot of people are leary of it because they don't fully know what's in it. Recently though, he's really taken to the B-Ionic stuff... and that's what he sold me. It really does make coraline grow like crazy!

Woah! I see you're in North Carolina, too. Please tell me where this place is so I can be sure to never ever go there! :blink:

Another nice touch would be to offer a used filter sponge/cartridge to anyone that buys a full tank setup with a filter and such from you. Just keep a few of each type you sell on various tanks around the shop, and whatever the customer buys, just grab one out of your tank, put it in a zip-loc...

Don't use an Emporer filter with it. I know people complain about wet/dry filtration being a "nitrate factory".... and the Emporer is a bio-wheel, a wet/dry system. The easiest way is to get an AquaClear 500 for your chemical filtration, and load up on live rock and let it handle biological...

Yeah. There are some bonnethead sharks in that tank too. They're awesome as well, but not as sociable. If you hold your hand out, the rays will come toward you and let you touch them.... the sharks, not so much. If they swim by and you pet them, they don't mind.... but they're not gonna come...

Well, these ARE fish pictures, but they're not my aquarium (I WISH! ;)) so I don't think they belong in the "Members Aquariums" photo forum. Anyway, these are just a teaser.... I have a LOT of pics that I need to process once I get back in town on Monday. I'll run them through NeatImage and...

Glad to have helped :) Enjoy it man.... .gobies are awesome little fish. I just love that big frowny face of theirs ;)

One fin that travels the whole length of its body, or two seperate dorsal fins? First one is a blenny, second is a goby. If it has the two seperate fins, it's probably a red striped goby. There's some type of watchman goby that looks like a candycane too, but I can't remember what it's...

Aye... absolutely AMAZING series. It's great to see things that we would never get to see otherwise, especially in an aquarium. "Seasonal Seas" and "The Deep" have been my favorites..... and hagfish have been mentioned in at least two episodes I think. :)

I was watching Blue Planet the other day and the "Deep Ocean" episode had something about hagfish. They're deepwater/coldwater scavengers with a cartilage skeleton. They don't have a jaw.... just a sucker mouth with little "tooth" disks. They suck onto the flesh of a dead fish and twist to...

Hahahaha.... yeah, a breeze ;) Just keep telling yourself that ;) No, in all seriousness, it's not as hard as some people will make it out to be. These starter kits sound like a good deal, but check everything that's in the package and make sure you're actually getting a good deal on all...

The wife is dying for a clown fish, but I already know what you're talking about with the damsels. I've told her that she can't have a clown unless the damsels go. They're too aggressive and would harass the hell out of a clown fish. Other than the one goby invading on the blue damsel's...

General wisdom is to only use seawater if you collect it a few miles from the shore, to make sure it's not polluted or anything. I haven't been to England or seen the Thames, but I know around here.... the mouth of any river is NOT a good place to be taking water from. Too much nasty stuff...

Well, I believe it now.... saltwater fish are worlds apart from freshwater, especially in terms of personality. My gobies are now getting situated in my tank with the two damsels... and the damsels are getting even weirder. Surprisingly, the Three Stripe damsel hasn't messed with the gobies at...

Last Thursday I picked up a mating pair (we presume) of Yellow Watchman gobies and a Pistol shrimp. The Shrimp is a bit camera shy and doesn't come out much, but the gobies are always out and about. They're such cute little buggers with their big frowny faces... I just love them! :D :)

The shrimp is very very very very very shy, but he does occasionally poke out to pick up some food. The gobies are always sticking their heads out being nosy though :)

Well today I went to the LFS with the intention of buying a pistol shrimp and a watchman goby that I've seen there. I go in and he asks me if I want both of them.... both meaning both Yellow watchman gobies in the tank. He says he thinks they're a mating pair, because he's never seen two...