Recent content by JT101

Well, I never really had much of a presence on MR but I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all your help over the short time I was a member. I've decided that due to excessive demands on my time from work and family I simply don't have time for good animal husbandry for a reef tank...

OK, so maybe not zero and maybe not all the time but... I have a recurring hair algae problem but the weird thing is it's only in half my tank! On the left side I have a nice coralline-encrusted Fiji rock that has a Vortech MP10 blowing right through it. It is clean as a whistle. On the...

Thanks KathyC. What I actually wound up doing was very different from what I initially proposed. I shut off all pumps and the skimmer and waited for the tank to settle. I then SLOWLY and CAREFULLY used a VERY fine mesh net to scoop the sand off the bottom and dumped each netful into a 5g...

can I reuse sand siphon water? Unfortunately I never heard anything on my other thread about sandbeds (maybe too wordy?) so I'll keep this one short and sweet ;) If I siphon out all my "dusty" sugar sand into a bucket and clean whatever water comes out with it by using a really good filter...

...and I guess I'm paying the price :( Hello all. Merry Belated Christmas. I've been off the board for a while, hope everyone is doing well. I established my 46g soft coral reef tank about 2-3 years ago with really fine "sugar sand". I was told by a local LFS to NOT rinse it. I filled the...

Thanks Boomer, I'll check things in steps, but I bolded one thing you wrote above because it might be connected to the problem... I just poked my head around in the sump. Guess where the tip of the ORP probe is? Right under the output of the skimmer! The water coming out of there is bubbly...

As you can see from my sig I use the super-fine sugar sand in my reef. For a while earlier this year I was getting a build-up of what I thought was diatoms, but with a 6-stage RO/DI system being used for topoff and for making my change-water I doubt I'm introducing much in the way of silicates...

What is considered "normal" ORP? My tank (prior to replacing my Coralife 65G skimmer with a Reef Octopus Diablo XP160) would hover around 450-490. Ever since the change, it's over 500, usually around 525-545. How could a skimmer increase ORP, and can it ever be TOO high? I know it can be too...

I've been running BRS ROX 0.8 carbon and BRS High-Capacity GFO in two separate TLF reactors for about a year now. I try to change both every 3 weeks, sometimes 4 if I get lazy. I don't think I would ever want to stop using either! At least for me, I think a tank needs all the help it can get...

WOW!!! :Yikes: Congrats Paul B!!!

Thank you, that's good to hear.

My second clownfish died last night. It was the mated pair to the female which died earlier this year. This one was 7 years old. Is that a long time for a clown kept in a reef tank?

The b & w is dead too (my wife found it dead). Now that I have just the tiny o & w clown what combination of clowns can I add? I was thinking about a larger o & w, and a small & a large b & w. Does this sound OK?

It?s confirmed: My wife just texted me to tell me she found the ?missing? black & white clown laying on the sand in the back, behind the rockwork, partially eaten. She took it out of the tank & flushed it (PS ? she was not a happy camper doing this as you can imagine). This leaves just the...

Holy crap - my wife JUST came over to me and said "have you seen the black and white?" I just checked all over the tank - GONE!!! It was ALWAYS right out in the front. I have NEVER seen it go in the back behind the rock work. I'll bet a million dollars that damned crabs got a hold of it...