good to hear Catherine, I will make ya a deal once i'm back from Afghanistan if you are looking for a bigger tank you come down to manitoba and I will give you my 120 gal with tank and stand if you want too.

If ya want too. since I will have my cube going I hope by then .....next summer once I get back but your going to have to give me ahand to load the other tank...

What do you think your snapper pumps head loss is with that manifold you built? I am thinging of doing something similar, though maybe half around tank instead of full. But my overflow is 1300-1600 gph...so i might need to go up to a dart...just trying..quite unsuccesfully to do the numbers in my head.

:lol: :mrgreen: I would love another larger tank!

I love it, aside from the leaking problem. The headloss isn't all that bad, but now that the system is up and running and the rocks are in the system, I could have gone to a Dart.

The manifold works well for two reasons; it provides a lot of flow throughout the tank, and not just in a few areas, and its adjustable. The downside so far though is that the lockline is causing some shadowing, but I think that is more of a lighting issue then anything.

If you can, go for the Dart. You can always choke it back with no harm to the pump. Is this for your big system you just bought? Is it in Didsbury? We are coming out through Didsbury on the 26th!

Yep its for the big system. I was going to go with a mag 18 for a return, but then i would need to plug up the bulkheads in the sump. I figure about 4-5 feet vertical and maybe 2 feet horizontal for head loss. I was thinking the snapper, but was afraid it would be cut back to much with a manifold. The sump has a bulkhead very near or the same as the inlet size on the dart/snapper so figured it would be easy, plus i like the energy ratings of the snapper. So many choices....but for 171 vs 234 at jl it mkes it even harder to decide. I've heard good things about both pumps...but i think with the head loss the mag would be underpowered. I have also decided to not really utilize the baffles in my sump and to fill the water over them. I think to much of the sump is wsted withthe heaght of the baffles that are in it now. I have to work boxing day :(
Now i hafta run out and get some epoxy to finish up my stand. Good christmas project :)





EDIT: I cannot spell, I aplogize but i don't feel much like fixing the inumerable errors...

I understood what you were saying, so errors or not, it doesn't matter. Sorry about having to work Boxing Day, that does suck. Maybe with that setup look at the Dart. I know the purchase costs between the two are just $5-10 apart. From what it sounds like I would probably go with a Dart on the system you described.

You should start your own tank journal, with photos! Then we can all watch the progress.

I was just looking at your webpage Catherine. Have you thought about the black sand that you had in your tank, caused the bloom of algae

Yeah I looked into it. I can safely rule it out now though. I still have GHA and I have no sand. That sucks though. I do however have a better idea considering I moved and some parameters changed. I'm now thinking that whatever parameters were constant before and after the move may be to blame, e.g. the rock, the fish, etc. as they were the same before and after the move.

I'm glad nobody is coming over here for the holidays....my tank is a bit drab to look at. Maybe I should print out photos of prettier tanks and tape them up over my glass? :mrgreen:

More bad news...

- My sixline wrasse died. I'm not sure what happened, it was fine on Wednesday morning, and on Thursday I found the corpse. There wasn't enough left of the fish to even guess what happened.
- The neon green algae has returned and its stronger then ever.
- The cactus coral died, and I had high hopes for its recovery.
- My urchin died.

All water parameters test normal, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite all at 0ppm. I'm trying to convince someone to head out to one of the boxing day sales on my behalf to pick up stuff. Nothing like getting sick on the ONE day you have to shop all the holiday sales.

I'm going to pre-face this post with a huge thank you to Snappy. I was over to pick up macro algae yesterday and came home with a few beautiful SPS peices to get me started again. They all look great, polyps out and everything. Thank you very much Greg for your kindness.

I'm finally getting a change to start dosing Aqua Connect's Energy Elements product. I now have a very small collection of SPS and my water parameters have been all in line for some time. Why not start now while I repopulate my system.

So today's parameters (Jan. 6th)
SG 1.025
Nitrate, Nitrite, and Ammonia 0ppm
Mg 1500
dKH 10
Ca 500

I started using Ocean Pro Pure salt in December, and so far without running reactors I'm finding all my levels are a bit high for my liking. I think I will be switching back to Red Sea Pro after I finish with this experiment. However I don't want to skew any results by switching back now.

I'm using all three products 1, 2, and 3. The recomended dosing is 1mL per 100l, which converts to about 1mL per 26g. Per the website this is assuming a heavily populated coral tank. Since my tank currently isn't well populated I'm cutting down my dosage to 1/4 of the recommendation, so 0.5ml per 50g.

The website claims to do the following;
-enhance the intensity of colors
-support a better growth
-enhance vitality
-improve the appearance of the polyps
-not boost algae growth

Photos. I'm going to try and photograph each coral at least once a month, and post FTS one a week. If I can offer more frequent photos, I will.

Today's FTS:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/DSC_0041.jpg

from today:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...DSC_0014-2.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...DSC_0012-1.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...DSC_0018-1.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/DSC_0020.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...DSC_0021-1.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...DSC_0027-1.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/DSC_0032.jpg

Today is the 3rd day of dosing and I think I'm already seeing some minor results. So far I'm just seeing increased polyp extension on all the sps, and my hammer coral is more inflated and elongated then it was before. Granted its very early in this test, but its nice to see results. On the other hand increased polyp extension could also be a sign of the SPS fully settling into my system.