Frag'd It

Herpin’ the derp

admin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:46:28 +0000

There’s a thread going on over here about us. I’ve been sent the link about a dozen times by friends today, so I’d like to say:

We haven’t been selling frags for over a year now. We had some problems with our grow out tanks (which we’ve been pretty transparent on) so we shut our doors so we could fix the problem. We wanted to make sure our coral was healthy before we reopened the store. If you look at the storefront, you can see we haven’t been taking orders for a while.

As time passes, it looking more and more like the store is going to be closed permanently.

That’s really it. The person trashing us has never purchased a frag from us and clearly has some other axe to grind….which…well, life’s too short, y’know?

This isn’t the way we wanted to announce things, but I think it’s for the best. We’re all older and hopefully wiser for the experience. To those who bought our coral, I hope you enjoy them and thanks for your support.

We’re going to leave the website up. I think there’s some good stuff on here (Bad Advice Guppy not withstanding).

SPS Gotta Go!

vlad — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:24:11 +0000

Hey everyone,

My life has gotten so busy right now, that I have neglected my tank. I let AEFW and PO4 (phosphates) invade what use to be a beautiful tank. I battled AEFW for about 4 months, and am happy to say that I have gotten rid of them thanks to the use of Levamisole (follow it here). But, I recently noticed that my PO4 levels are through the roof. I am experiencing STN (recession) on corals because they cannot take the high levels of PO4. I do not have the patience to keep at it like I used to. These corals need a better home.

So I have decided to get rid of almost all of my sps corals. Some are in excellent shape, and some have started to recede. All they need is a good home with great parameters, and they will be back to their glory days. Most of them have been in my system for years, so they have been through a lot of ups and downs. Quite frankly, they used to be robust.

If you are interested in stopping by my place, please contact me at vlad@fragd.it or at atomikkpulse@yahoo.com. Its going to be first come first served, and prices are negotiable. Hope to see you soon.

Vlad.

AEFW: Levimasole To The Rescue

vlad — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 01:11:56 +0000

You thought we were dead. Well, you WERE right. But some things you just can’t kill. We are the cockroaches of the reefing blogosphere. Something keeps up drawn to write and share our experiences with the rest of the reefing world.

Case in point this new thing called Levimasole. Its a known dewormer commonly used in freshwater applications, such as killing worms in Discuses and Loaches. It provides the same function as other on the market dewormers. Currently the most used dewormer for reefing applications, is the Interceptor. A dewormer for dogs, or a depester for your Acropra.

This is how we (as in the reefing community) managed to stumble upon Levimasole. Through trial aad error, and a lot of guts and luck, we may have reached a breakthrough in our battle with Acropora Eating Flat Worms (Amakusaplana acroporae). As it stands, there are reports of people using this type of swine dewormer to systemically remove all flatworm pests (including the red bugs) from their reef tanks. I will point you to a very important thread on Reef Central to give you all a glimpse into a possible CURE in battling the dreaded AEFW.

Look in here and please engage in conversations with the thread starter (and Bax who had originally tried Levi method on his 300 gallon tank) as we can all benefit from a communal voice.

I will be posting my adventures with Levi and its in-tank threatment for AEFW. So come back for a session in crying (of joy or sorrow).

See you around reefnecks!

Oopsie! I grafted a coral!

vlad — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:01:42 +0000

I know it has been a while since my last real entry, but that is what happens when you have a new kid. (No no no, I didn’t get more fish or a dog and a cat, I actually had a baby).

So what prompted this blog entry was a sudden discovery of a grafted coral. Well, not by shape, rather than by color. You see there is enough documentation to suggest that corals can allow their zooxanthellae to ‘jump ship’ and board another coral. It is rarely seen, but plausible.

This is what happened to a A. tenuis and a A. suharsonoi. The yellow suharsono was touching the tips of the tenuis. I assume over time, the pignments were trasfered from the tenuis into the suharsonoi. The suharsonoi developed random blue spots which are clearly visible.

The problem when trying this out with your own corals is that often than not it does not work. Corals will sting each other and will leave a dead parts behind. I know this, as I have tried it with A. milleporas and without any success.

Yes, pics are forthcoming, so patience will be your new virtue!

With Mild Power Comes Mild Responsibility

garrick — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:03:20 +0000

Between my iPhone and my Amazon Prime membership, there is an awful lot of stuff I can make materialize on my front steps within 48 hours.
Books are easy. I’m ashamed to say I’ve not found what I was looking for in a Barnes and Noble and ordered it from Amazon while I stood there in the store. Holiday shopping was painless. DVDs I’m vaguely interested in have been pre-ordered months in advance to show up as delightful surprises when they eventually ship. Most importantly, most things ship for free unless I want it the following day. I can get things the following day for $4.
This super power has changed the way I live my life.
And it has made me absolutely hate paying to have anything shipped.
Coupled with my small town availability of fish and corals, this creates quite an internal conflict for me.
I’ve got two stores within two hours drive of me.
The easier to get to one is a fair-sized store, but most of the space is taken up by birds, lizards and rodents. Ferrets, while adorable, have no place in a reef tank. Unless you have a really awesome protein skimmer.
The staff is friendly, but made up of mostly chemically-altered college students and high school kids. They are helpful enough as long as the cute dog food rep isn’t there distracting them with her midriff-baring top and a poster about shedding and healthy teeth in older dogs. I really wish I’d made up that last part.
Wedged in the back of the store, the saltwater area features a couple of large tanks and a row of fish cubicles. The corals and fish generally seem healthy enough, but the whole area comes off as dark-looking – almost dirty. Small frags range from $15-45 and larger “show” pieces of common coral tend to hover around the $70 mark.
If I want to drive further (quite a few exits further, actually) I can go to the “nicer” store. This one is just fish, though they have a lot of freshwater stuff and a koi pond by the front door.
The tanks are immaculate, packed with awesomeness, but the staff is, if anything, more distracted than the stoned kids at the first store. These guys are discussing the latest shade of chalice and the appearance it takes on under various configurations of T5 lamps. They are engaging each other about the finer points of pump and skimmer design. They are, quite often, genuinely busy with a bunch of tank cleaning and scooping goldfish. I could wait. Heck, I could join in. But after I’ve dragged my reef-tolerant family across town, they want me to get something bagged up and get out.
Here’s the other thing: Only a select few of the tanks are clearly marked with prices. The most detailed is hanging on a clipboard next to their (admittedly beautiful) frag tank. And those prices are almost physically painful to me.
But online.
Online the same corals are less expensive. I know what I’m paying without asking. And I have a reasonable expectation of quality based on reviews of other hobbyists.
In fact, if I want higher-end corals I really have no option but purchasing online.
But then there is shipping. I’ve got to buy a lot of stuff to justify paying for shipping.
If a local store has a fish I want for $30 (and this is a real world example) and I can get the same fish, labeled as tank-bred even, for $14 online but I have to pay $65 for shipping, then I have to do math to figure out how many fish I need to buy online at once to justify the added expense.
Math is not my super power. My Amazon Prime membership is my super power.
Ugh. Let’s see:
Buying two local fish (providing I can find two, since I’ve only ever seen one) is $60 plus tax or $90 if I want three. Online $14 plus $65 is $79 for one, or $28 for two plus $65 is $93, or less than the local option for three due to sales tax. Buying three fish online, I handily beat the local price.
An added problem is that I tend to really try to get as much junk crammed into that shipping box as possible so the per-item shipping costs are reduced. In a smaller or already densely stocked tank, this problem can be quite severe. I’ve got to save $10 per item on seven items to make $65 in shipping costs not eat away at my (admittedly spoiled) soul.
So then I waffle back towards the local option and look into a tank filled with aiptasia and $6 hermit crabs . . .
High-end, specific quality, aquacultured corals will pretty much always arrive at my house by an overnight service. I can admit that. There are awesome corals I just can’t find within driving distance.
Shipping gets less painful the more stuff I order, both from a math standpoint and, I suspect, through the deadening of some financial nerve.
Once my tank fills in a little more, I’ll be left with smaller orders. For that kind of situation, I recommend a group buy with a local reef club. There is no reason to suffer alone.
Unless, of course, there is no local reef club. Like, for example, here.
In that case, I find that drinking helps. Or as I like to call it, “vodka dosing”.

Pacific Elitists

garrick — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:14:52 +0000

I drink European coffee. Fancy-pants stuff I can only really acquire in pods to use with my Tassimo One-Cup coffee maker. I can slum it with Starbucks from the Barnes and Noble Cafe, but at it’s heart European coffee is just a smoother drink. I don’t need to add half-and-half and a bunch of non-sugar sweetener to appreciate the delicate flavor notes and heady, earthy aromas..
This time of year, my sweaters are more cashmere than common wool. I cannot abide an itchy sleeve any more than the next guy and I have a feeling were scientific case studies to be done (perhaps with retired crash test dummies with thermometers embedded in their fractured arms) cashmere wool is just a little warmer in spite of being molecularly identical to that of wool from peasant sheep.
Likewise, I drink craft beers. No mass-produced, watery lager is taking up refrigerator real estate in this household. I appreciate a thick imported-style stout, or something brewed with ginseng and honey from an organic farm in Vermont or even barrel-aged with careful consideration to the type and age of the wood. The resulting hangover is just a touch sweeter, friends, have no doubt
But in my reef tank, I have a preference for local, home-grown stuff.
I grew up spending my summers on the gulf coast of Louisiana, Grand Isle, to be specific. My grandfather owned a fishing camp there. I’d spend the week enjoying fresh seafood cooked by my grandmother (“Granny”, to this day, a fiery red-headed cajun woman who drinks scotch from about 10am until whenever and could convince the Iron Chef to re-examine his life choices) and scrambling around the docks with a cast net and a bucket and an insatiable love of crawling, icky things.
On the weekends, my grandfather would abandon his law practice and drive a few hours south to be with us, then load up his boat at 5am the following morning to drag us 40 miles south, where we would tie onto an oil rig (much like the Deepwater Horizon, just with better cement work) and we’d fish for red snapper and whatever else would bite.
I remember leaning over the side of the boat as a child, over water a mile deep, to watch crabs chase smaller crabs across clumps of sargassum which would float past.
I remember my uncle Larry pulling up a fair-sized fish and seeing it get taken by a shark as bait itself off the back of the boat.
I remember watching a water spout get so close I could see it pick up a discarded hunk of frozen squid from another boat before my grandfather would untie our own. To be fair, the fishing was exceedingly good that day.
I love the gulf coast. It is (in all it’s filth and dirt) the reason I love the ocean itself.
In the image above you can see a couple of things I love. The background shows a “corky sea finger”, briareum abestinum. Native to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico and also known as “Dead Man’s Fingers”, this particular coral gains bonus points for having a pirate-sounding nickname. It’s an especially fleshy gorgonian (or ExFleGorg, as the kids are calling it these days) and that color is not photoshopped, friends. It’s tan. Ish.
The happy polyps, though! The polyps! They flow in the current like they are freaking addicted to the Vortech!
My other Atlantic favorite is the Yellow/Blue Atlantic tang. You’ve got to call it the Yellow/Blue tang, because the little guy morphs from yellow to blue as it matures.
This particular tang is mostly yellow with electric blue trim at the moment, though it will gradually change to a solid slate blue over time as the fish matures.
I’ve got him in a smaller tank than tangs generally appreciate, but I’ve got plans to transplant him to larger digs when he goes full-on blue.
As it is, you can see the veritable salad bar I have provided for him. He appreciates it greatly and spends a good deal of time hiding in the rock work anyway.
The point is, both these creatures are native to my timezone. Atlantic and Caribbean species spend less time in shipping overall and seem to adapt almost frighteningly quickly to life in a reef tank.
I love the currently trendy Australian LPS and SPS as much as the next guy and Pacific corals in general have the market cornered on fantastic color, but I wouldn’t trade my Corky Sea Finger and Yellow/Blue Atlantic tang.

Family Time (or What I Learned on my Winter Vacation)

garrick — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:11:44 +0000

Last year we bought an annual pass to the Disney parks in Orlando. It’s a reasonable drive from South Carolina and we’ve been able to make several trips. Between Christmas and New Years, we made our final visit.
With the tank move and various disasters and general bad timing over the past year, I’ve been unable to really add any livestock from the multiple aquarium stores in Florida on any other trips.
This time, the condo we rented contained a curious book made of yellow paper. It listed six aquarium stores with addresses and phone numbers. It was like an analog version of Google, I guess.
The digital Google on my phone listed dozens of aquarium stores in the greater Orlando area, so I guess it had better resolution.
Any visits to these stores would need to wait until the last day so that I could drop my purchases in the ice chest (I’d assured my family it was for colas on the way down) and shuttle them home.
A week at Disney is not to be missed, though I missed about 70% of it working through crisis after crisis at work from my laptop in the condo. In all, I spent part of a day at Animal Kingdom, a day at The Magic Kingdom and several hours staring open-mouthed at the tanks in what used to be “The Living Seas” at Epcot but is currently “The Seas with Nemo and Friends”.
5.7 million gallons of saltwater moves through that place. It provides a great educational opportunity for kids, but I learned a couple of things myself.
First, not even 5.7 million gallons of water volume and all the monetary resources backing the Disney corporation can necessarily completely remove the need to send in a team of divers to scrub cyanobacteria off the fiberglass coral sculptures from time to time.
More importantly to me, SPS corals can be a little boring to people not involved in this hobby.
I spent a lot of time staring into the tanks but I also spent some time watching the people staring alongside me, both strangers and my own family. Certain tanks were a bigger draw than others.
The circular tank which was a forest of montipora and porities with outcroppings of blue-tipped acropora was circled by polite people pointing before moving on the the tank with fiberglass coral and three large lionfish.
The tank filled with seahorses and pipefish and shrimpfish weaving among some seagrass was a curiosity on the way to the bare sand-bottomed cuttlefish tank.
The big draw in this particular room was the reef tank from the image above, crowned with a leather coral and multiple soft corals swaying in the current, it steadily held a crowd. I counted a meat coral and a larger frogspawn as the only stony corals in the tank which was otherwise loaded with plain-looking mushroom and, believe it or not, aiptasia.
My own family asked me endless questions about this tank.
Guys, the tank was oxygenated and partially circulated by large bubbles if regular old air from within the rockwork!
But stepping back from it, I was able to see the tank as a whole. It isn’t just the lighting (probably daylight metal halides in a pendant in the ceiling) or the filtration (my guess is wet/dry with no filter sock and possibly a spraybar over the bio-balls) and the tank itself (acrylic column, impossible to scrape without scratching around a giant mound of purple rocks).
One of the components is the people looking at it.
You and I may be delighted and amused to no end by delicate spires of stony corals gently fluorescing in an actinic glow (I know I am) but most of the people who look at our tanks are every bit as happy watching a tan finger leather coral sway when the powerhead kicks on.
Seeing how happy the frogspawn coral made my daughter made me revise my planned shopping list for my visit to the reef stores.
This list was later revised by rolling the rental car into a lady who is probably going to sue me, blowing out a tire on the turnpike and having to buy a new one on our last day in town while driving that thing all over on that ridiculous doughnut spare tire looking for someone who had that tire in stock on a Sunday and by my daughter getting a stomach virus which resulted in our fleeing the state at high-speed while she illustrated into a plastic bag how much digestive juice an 11-year-old girl generally holds, but the lesson stayed intact.
The total picture of a reef tank extends beyond equipment and stocking lists and chemical mixtures into the people who enjoy looking at it, and that may be the most important consideration of all.

$3 Investment (Part 2)

garrick — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 12:40:55 +0000

Rather than live through another cycle, I opted to stack the well-established live rock from the old tank on top of dry base rock. In order to hit the recommended pounds per gallon (a formula which has been called into question in recent trends in reefkeeping but one that I like because I like stuff growing on and crawling off live rock) I needed about twenty five pounds of the stuff.
The shop I went to for this base rock had several bins of the stuff in a variety of shapes. Some of it seemed like it was just porous limestone rinsed and dumped in a box, but there were more than a few coral skeletons on pieces of obviously dried live rock. It was like an eerie little coral cemetery. Anyway, I scooped up a cardboard box full of the less depressing pieces and took them home to begin stacking the rocks.
I also picked up a sack of live sand.
You should always rinse dry rocks before putting them in a tank. I didn’t, but it is something that unquestionably should be done. The cloudiness went away as I slowly filled the tank with freshly mixed saltwater. And then kicked back up when I poured the next gallon. And so on until the water was about halfway up the tank.
Water movement in the old 18-inch cube was accomplished by a Tunze NanoStream, a Hydor Koralia, the return pump replaced with a Maxi-Jet 1200 and two Ecotech MP10s. It may seem like a lot of water movement for a small tank, but I always like to err on the side of pinning the fish to the glass. All of these pumps (minus the return, since the new tank is sump-free) would move pretty easily to the new tank. Magnet mounts are possibly the best thing to ever happen to aquarium equipment. I’d also take this opportunity to mount the driver modules to the side of the stand instead of leaving them in a tangled pile on the cabinet where my wife stores our flatware and boardgames. Velcro strips can bring quite a bit of happiness, as it turns out. Who knew?
I was able to move the chiller while leaving the hoses and pump (another Maxi-Jet, for anyone keeping score) attached while only managing to siphon a couple of gallons of saltwater onto the floor. Good thing that floor was getting refinished anyway, right?
I did not move my tank-mounted fan, since part of the New Tank Agreement of 2010 involved the stipulation that the end result look “less like a freaking science experiment”. Fair enough.
So few geniuses are respected in their own lifetimes.

I also ditched the Tunze NanoDoc protein skimmer. While the magnet mount was undeniably awesome (Have I mentioned how much I love those things?) the in-tank nature of the device would keep me from using the glass top on the new tank. I briefly considered cutting the top itself to make room for the skimmer, but imagined shattered glass followed by stitches and decided against it. Knowing my limitations is second only to magnet mounts and Velcro strips in my reefkeeping toolkit. The skimmer was replaced with a hang-on model. The collection cup sticks up over the back of the tank along with an adorable little red mangrove in the return chamber for the skimmer, but overall the effect is less science project than before.
The old tank was lit with a 150watt DE metal halide pendant. Rigging the same unit on this much taller tank would have required bolting an extension plank onto the back of the new stand to raise the hanging arm high enough to clear the rim of the tank. Not impossible, really, but impossible to do with Velcro strips. Also, as I was digging though a sack of wood screws I was reminded politely of the “No Science Experiment” clause. I knew I agreed to that too quickly!
Tank moves are an ideal time to correct any issues which developed in the old tank. My biggest was probably the open top. While I loved being able to just reach in and fix stuff that bothered me, so did my wife’s cat. I lost quite a few fish before catching her in the act of preying on the unwary. She sits on the glass top of the new tank and howls disconsolately. It’s pretty awesome.
On a relatively closed tank, heat is a concern. I greatly feared slapping 250 or 400 watts of metal halide fury on top of a box of water with no science project-looking fan apparatus strapped to the back. Sure, there is a chiller, but working as I do in technology I’ve learned to put as little faith in it as possible.
The chiller does keep up with a bank of LEDs quite nicely. In justifying the purchase of the LED fixture (which beautifully perches atop the glass lid of the tank and gently warms my wife’s cat’s butt for a substantial portion of the day), I was able to invoke that “less like a freaking science experiment” clause myself, which was kind of satisfying.
I don’t know if the LEDs are powerful enough to grow SPS and clams on the sandbed, but I also don’t know if I need them to be. I may replace the default fluorescent strip light (which currently runs an actinic for color purposes) with some high-output T5s down the line. I may also add some more flow because the fish are looking a little smug, to be honest.

Fragd.it’s Annual 12 Days of Christmas

vlad — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 12:46:08 +0000

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas fragditphiles! Or as the business world puts it nowadays, Happy Holidays. It is our yearly tradition here at Fragd.it to do a Christmas carol, ala reefy style.

So here we present, our version of the famous carol 12 Days of Christmas (sing it as you read it).

On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

A ETSS 500 skimmer, for the best water clar-ity.

On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 3rd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 4th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Four vortech mp60 pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 5th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech mp60 pumps,

Three Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 6th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech mp60 pumps,

Three Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 7th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech mp60 whirling pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 9th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Nine months of bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixturess,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Ten polyp PPE frags (Oh Yeah),

Nine months of bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Eleven buckets of IO salt,

Ten polyp PPE frags (Oh Yeah),

Nine months of bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Twelve too many sleepless nights,

Eleven buckets of IO salt,

Ten polyp PPE frags (Oh Yeah),

Nine months of pulling bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding Vertex LED fixtures,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

Merry Christmas to all who read our blog. May your families, that’s including your beloved tank inhabitants, be well and healthy.

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas fragditphiles! Or as the business world puts it nowadays, Happy Holidays. It is our yearly tradition here at Fragd.it to do a Christmas carol, ala reefy style.

So here we present, our version of the famous carol 12 Days of Christmas (sing it as you read it).

On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

A ETSS 500 skimmer, for the best water clar-ity.

On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 3rd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 4th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Four vortech mp40ws pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 5th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech mp40ws pumps,

Three LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 6th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech mp40ws pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 7th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 9th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Nine months of bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Ten polyp PPE frags (Oh Yeah),

Nine months of bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Eleven buckets of IO salt,

Ten polyp PPE frags (Oh Yeah),

Nine months of bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Twelve too many sleepless nights,

Eleven buckets of IO salt,

Ten polyp PPE frags (Oh Yeah),

Nine months of pulling bryopsis,

Eight stinging urchin pricks,

Seven crazed yellow tangs,

Six million flat worms,

Five territorial domino damsels,

Four vortech whirling pumps,

Three blinding LumenBright reflectors,

Two squirting cephalopods,

And a ski-mmer for water clar-ity.

Merry Christmas to all who read our blog. May your families, that’s including your beloved tank inhabitants, be well and healthy.

The Best $3 Investment in Reef Keeping

garrick — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:14:32 +0000

I’ve kept a lot of tanks over the past couple of decades. I’ve run all-in-one technological wonders and plain glass boxes under fluorescent shop lights. Aside from the wonder which accompanies the creatures living in live rock and the daily joy brought to us all by the unique behaviors and stunning beauty of the animals we love, I’m fascinated by one thing above everything else: These boxes, designed above all things to hold water, annoyingly often, do not.
Reef tank flooding has caused marital strife of Facebookian levels on more than one occasion. And I hope I’m not alone in this experience. That’s right, I just wished shared misery on you, dear reader.
This shared misery, whether caused by a failed pump, a snail in the return line, a busted silicon seal or any of a million possible acts of nature in a box, will allow you to appreciate a unique joy.
The ice maker in my refrigerator leaked. Not only did it leak, it leaked in a fine spray from the valve in the wall into the wall itself. It did this for a couple of weeks, as near as we can guess.
It soaked the wall and from there, the hardwood floor. A lot.
I replaced the troublesome valve for $3 at Home Depot. Then we called the insurance company.
A guy in a Hazmat suit told me there was some mold, but nothing to be alarmed about. It would have been more comforting if he’d removed the gas mask before saying that.
The total cost of drying, sanding, re-staining, and re-sealing the floor, and replacing the soaked kitchen sub-floor, and moving everything in the kitchen, dining room and living room into storage pods in the driveway was over ten thousand dollars.
Where is the joy in this, you ask?
None of this flood damage could be blamed on the reef tank!
Saltwater will accept 71% of the Earth’s surface as its preferred location with second place going to the hardwood floors of reef tank hobbyists and my little 25 gallons of the stuff chose to stay in the box. Joy!
Unfortunately, the tank had to move to refinish the floor beneath it.
This is where it gets good.
“Rather than empty the tank, move the livestock to a plastic crate, and then move and refill the tank,” I suggested to my long-suffering spouse,”why don’t we buy a new tank, set it up with matching water and move the animals immediately, reducing their stress and resulting in a better-looking end result?”
I further suggested that the old tank could be cleaned out and sold, resulting in no long-term out-of-pocket expenses for us.
There was no reason to delve into the possibilities of the old tank becoming a quarantine tank or frag tank eventually because that would just complicate things. Knowing the time to strike when asking for a tank upgrade is 71% of the battle. See? It all ties together. Such is the beauty of nature in a box.
For a couple of extra square inches of floor space, I found a 47-gallon column tank. Most of my equipment would make the move just fine, but making the change from an 18-inch shallow cube to a 31-inch deep monster determined to bruise my armpits with its holy-crap-why-are-you-so-tall rim was more of a challenge than I’d expected.