Thanks, it took a bit to get the rocks the way i like them. The other thing is the overflow is bigger than I thought so that takes up alot of room. The rest of my stuff should be in by the end of the week so I will have alot better flow and a more accurate way of monitoring my stuff. That stupid hydrometer sucks when the bubble will not come off the arm.

I have at least 5lbs of LR and some rubble left so I threw them in another tank with some LS and my HOB that came off this tank. I will let it cycle for a while then take it to my office and have a nice tank beside me when working. I figure I can buy some frags at the LFS and when they get big enough just frag them and bring them up here.

8 PM update!

I was pulling dead grass out of my fuge and there was all this crap on alot of the leaves of my other marcoalgae so I brushed it off. When I was done gardening I looked up and there was all this white stuff floating all over the DT. Upon closer examination of the ones on the front glass I noticed they are pods. Now my hermits can eat even more stuff lol. I do need something else that will eat them to put in there though because I got tons of them. I know some coral eat the free floating ones but is there a small fish I can throw in that will eat them also?

just about any fish will eat copods, as it is most reef fishes natural diet.

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I'm so sorry I haven't been on the forum in so long! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten this lovely website! I moved to a different county back in May 2011 and started high school in a totally different school district. So I'm still adjusting and studying hard, and don't presently have any aquariums. But once I do, I'll be right back on this forum!

ok I read some wont eat them but others will eat the heck out of them. Most of the ones that eat them like crazy are too big for my tank though. Still thinking about a small clown, but that will be a while.

thats what i suggest-a small clown. a pair of tank-raised O's would be perfect for that tank.

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I'm so sorry I haven't been on the forum in so long! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten this lovely website! I moved to a different county back in May 2011 and started high school in a totally different school district. So I'm still adjusting and studying hard, and don't presently have any aquariums. But once I do, I'll be right back on this forum!

Awesome! Thanks! I cant wait to start putting some softies in there too. I am working on a DIY LED light aray for it now so hopefully in a couple of weeks I will have a much better light and my setup will be ready... at least hardware wise lol.

where did you get your LED parts? what wattage and nm are you going with?

I am trying to get a pair of Mean Well ELN-60-48D LED drivers from Power Supplies and DC-DC Converters from PowerGate for $38.50 each but they have to come from the manufacturer and I am still waiting on the order confirmation from them. Here is the specs http://www.powergatellc.com/pdfs/ELN-60.pdf. They are A/C driven so no need for a power supply.

The LEDs I am getting from a guy on Ebay for $5.70 each for 26 3W, 13 cool white and 13 royal blue (I will get you contact info as soon as I purchase them to be sure). I will need to find 60 degree optics somewhere but I may have to wait till the group buy on another forum.

The heatsink I am getting from Aluminum Extruded Heatsink, it's 20"x8.5" for $55 with UPS shipping. I will be making a custom mount for it to stand a couple of inches above the tank.

I will be running this configuration with the blues on one controller and the whites on another (kind of) with the hopes that my Reef Keeper Lite with be upgraded by the time I get it built. That way I can control the level of the blue and white individually.

W B W B W B W B W
-B W B W B W B W-
W B W B W B W B W

ok so I went and picked up some zoas yesterday. They are nice but I think I got a hitchhiker on one of the rocks they came on. Right above the hermit bolow the pink zoa is an odd tentacle that seems to grab stuff and made that zao close at least once. Can someone tell me what this may be and if its bad and if so then how to get rid of it?

Could be a worm... it could also be a dead one judging by its colour, I dont think you should worry.
Try to get a look at it at night to see if its more or less active etc, and not just flapping around in the water flow.
Use tweezers to remove it if you want it out.

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Remember people the solution to pollution is dilution... weekly water changes!

It was actually very active during the day. It may be a worm. It looked like it was grabbing stuff off the rock. It could be a worm but I dont think I can grab it with tweezers as fast as it is but I will try. Thanks.

i can say that if you decide you want to kill it. my weapon of choice is kalkwasser injected, you can kill anything like this

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It has become more than a hobby! My 29gal Dream Reef DIY Build

ok so this past week I finally got my calcium up but I have been fighting a ton of maroon algae. The stupid stuff wont go away so I bought a couple of snails to see if they would help. One was a sand sifter and it went right into the sand. I mean it went literally into the sand and I havent seen it since. The other was a turbo snail who's turbo I think is broken. I think it may have cleaned one spot off since Friday and the algae is getting worse. I have tried shortening the light cycly, vacuming it out, scrubbing it off, blowing it off and it just gets worse. I dont want to use chemicals in my tank so does anyone have any sugestions? Do I need more snails? The one I have is pretty big.

I have heard of some CUC's (clean up crew's) containing as much as 1 snail per gallon. The snail that went straight into the sand is probably a nassarius snail. I have a few that seem to me to be carnivorous, if I drop a small piece of shrimp into the tank to feed the hermits etc. they emerge from the sand almost immediately. They feed off of uneaten food and such. As far as the brown algae it's most likely cyano issue. the cyano feed off of silicates in new tanks and the brown stuff will most likely clear up as the silicate's dissapate from the tank. In a nutshell they should starve themselves.

Good luck.

Hopefully they will starve themselves and I am waiting for my macroalgae in my sump to help with this. It's not brown though, it's maroon if that matters, but I do agree with you that it's probably cyano. Do turbo snails eat the cyano?

The turbo I had in my nano didnt really show alot of interest in the maroon blanket. It's one of those thing's I think we have to just wait out in the hobby with new tanks. I would suggest finding yourself some margarita snails instead of turbo's. Dont get me wrong the turbo's do a good job knocking down the stuff on the glass, but they are like tiny bulldozers tipping frags left and right and can even move some smaller rocks. The margarita's do pretty much as well at cleaning the tank, but are quite a bit smaller and seem to be more interested in the glass than knocking stuff over while foraging around on the scape.

Hope this helps. I just dropped 7 margarita's in my nano to address a hair algae issue and the little guy's are cleaning like a champ.

Yes Cyno-Bacteria is a serious pain and flustrating to deal with until you find the root cause and get it corrected and allow your tank to adjust and stabilize. What do you think is causing the high levels of nutrients in the tank? What were the water parameters on the tank when the Cyno first appeared?

First of all, my 3 day old turbo snail is now dead. He was a big sucker (no pun intended) but he just didnt do that good. Maybe there was too much cyano and not enough of what he needed. On a brighter note the nassarius snail was trucking around the sand yesterday, he probably smelled the other snail dead. I didnt notice it was dead until the hermits were all over it trying to clean it up lol. I got it out and luckely my amonia and stuff was not abnormal when I did my test an hour later.

My tank has appeared stable for a couple of weeks. I did have a nitrite spike of .25 one day then the next it was back to 0 but it could have been a false read. My nitrates are about 20 and have been that was for a few days now, before that they would fluctuate between 10-20. The cyano appeared about the time I added the zoas. It has gotten progressively worse since then. I ordered 5 cerith snails that are supposed to eat the cyano. My phosphates show 0 but from what I have read that could be a false 0 due to the cyano using the phosphates. I did about a 1.5G water change on the 13th then a 2G change on the 19th. I will change a couple of more gallons this weekend and see if it helps any.

I also had some die off of some Caulerpa Floridana and some sea grass in my fuge due to a plumbing issue and my SG dropping some. I cleaned out the caulerpa and some dead sea grass that I am now regretting getting. It needs too much something that I obviously dont have because most of it is dead. It probably needs a different substrate. I am hoping my macroalgae does start doing some good soon. I will open up more flow to the fuge this week in hopes that more water going through the fuge will help. Maybe the macro die off caused a spike in something that the cyano liked.

Whats causing the high nutrient levels in the tank that's fueling the Cyno?

Oh and the critter that you posted about ealier that you said was sending out an "arm" and in a hole below the pink Zoanthids is actually a worm of a species I cant remember off the top of my head. Its not anything that will cause harm in your tank. It will from time to time sweep its "arm" out and snag bits of deteris(sp?) from the water coloum or rock work and consume it. As such it is a benefical thing to have and I wouldnt kill it.

lol If I knew that I would do something about it. I am thinking maybe the die-off of the macro caused a spike of some sort but my phosphate test is 0. Of course my nitrates are around 20 even after doing at least 10% water change a week for 2 weeks now. The only things in my tank are a few zoas, of which a few didnt make it in the transition, 1.1 shrooms, 9 hermits and a nassarius snail. I had one hermit die and my turbo snail also but they were removed the day they died.

Saturday I will do a major cleaning and clean the wet/dry really good. I will also remove all of the sea grass. I am going to do some reworking of my ATO system also to try to fix a couple of bugs (one being human error in not seeing how much R/O is left in the ATO unit). Maybe a good cleaning and scrubbing the cyano then vacuming it up will help a little till my fuge can start using up some of the nutrients.

Ok, I went home on my lunch break and scrubbed the red crap off the rocks that I could get to without disturbing the zoas too much (they are already stressed enough), changed 2.5G water, increased the water pressure from the sump so the jets blow out more onto the rocks, removed the bio-balls from the wet/dry to try to reduce nitrate and cut my light cycle down to about 6 hours. This should contain the situation till my snails get here on Friday. Now if I can just keep the tank in a constant steady state so my zoas will be able to open and enjoy the light. I think some of them on my small $10 rock are already gonners :(, but they were already not opening much at all from day one and now cyano is covering them and I cant blow it off with the turkey baister. One of them on that same rock would always open but now it has cyano has grown on it and I dont know how it will be effected.

I now know where my other snail is. When I was cleaning the rock I saw his little antenna sticking up from the sand sniffing around lol.