Well I knew it couldn't be my fault. :mrgreen:

Another 56 posts and you'll have me beat

*edit* Damn wrong thread :redface:

HaHa Wrong thread Marie. :mrgreen:

Yes, whereas you only post when you have something important to say, I on the other hand, tend to go on and on and on..............

Good to hear you figured it out and that it was something "common sense" instead of being one of those stupid reef mysteries that will haunt you forever (I HATE those!!).

Yeah, I figured it had to be something with the dosing and not some voodoo curse or something. I still can't figure out why the tank sitter switched the pails though. I'll have to ask him when I see him. I only discovered it because I was looking for some clue and realized the older pail says: "Anhydrous Pellets" and the newer pail says "Crystalline Dihydrate".

For those of you who are using BRS Calcium Chloride, be aware that the newer product is 2.5 cups per gal of water vs. 2.0 cups in the older product.

Now come and fix my "reef mystery" and then everyone will know how smart you really are :)

Lance are you saying the label instructions on the new containers is wrong?

No, he is saying that his containers got switched. (new/old) So he was over dosing.

Yup, like Greenmaster said.
BRS changed their product awhile ago and the new product requires 2.5 cups per gal whereas the old formula was 2 cups per gal. My tanksitter switched a new pail with an old pail.

It amazes me how quickly the tank buffered itself and reached equilibrium. After I discovered the Ca/Alk problem, I quit dosing calcium and continued to dose the usual 230ml of Alk. Within 48 hours the parameters were at: Ca 420, Alk 8 and pH 8.1 (Right back to where they were before the trouble.) I wish everything in this hobby was this easy. :lol:

Something GOOD happening fast.
You don't hear about too often!:cool:

Mitch

A few questions for the Nem experts......... Tony?

My BTA has been growing like crazy lately. Probably doubled in size in the last 4 to 5 months. It's now about 14" across with tentacles 6" long. I feed it twice a week: one day a 1/2" long shrimp and four days later half a silverside.
I'm certainly no expert on nems and was wondering if it's pretty much full grown now. Is this growth spurt leading up to splitting?


http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/o...0/IMG_1972.jpg

Nope...its just telling you that your going to be doing a upgrade sooner than you thought lol.

I think that Tony's certainly the anemone expert here, but I'll share my experience with BTA's - a number of years ago I had around thirty-some splits from my BTA's, 12" - 14" was the biggest that they got. I think I was able induce them to split by doing larger water changes (~20%) with room temperature water.
The anemones were in a DSB with live rock sump for the most part. I had slow water rate turnover from the main tank so the main tank wasn't affected as much.
But there still were splits happening in the main tank.

Mitch

Thanks for the info MitchM. Sounds like it's about done growing in size then.
On a different note: Where is Water Valley? I've never heard of it before.

About 1 1/2 hours northwest of Calgary, in the foothills.
We have a 4-way stop, a saloon (with a place to tie up horses) and a grocery store.:smile:
Oh..and a separate liquor store across the street ...lol

Mitch

Oh yeah I found it. Highway #579. Kinda out in the middle of nowhere isn't it?
Foothills, saloon with a hitching rail, liquor store. Must be cowboy country? :mrgreen:

Yes, it's all that and more!:mrgreen:

Mitch

I found that there didn't seem to be a huge correlation between size and when they'd split. Well, sort of, and sort of not. If some wanted to split at say 4" then usually they'd split some time after reaching 4", but there'd still be the occasional bigger one or occasional smaller one.

When I started off in the hobby I just used a copious amount of regular normal output fluorescents over my tank. I found that when I switched that tank over to halides the anemones all changed their max sizes to about double.

But it just seems to me they will pick a size to be at and that's sort of that (there is probably a host of variables). The largest BTA I ever saw was an enormous beast, some public aquarium I was at ... think it was London of all place. Anyhow it was easily 18" across. They had mislabelled it as H. magnifica but I'm pretty sure it was BTA (bubble tips and everything. Also it was your typical brown colour of BTA). I have two roses right now that are clones and one is 4"-5" and the other maybe 2" at best. I feed them both the same. I have another one in the same tank and he's barely 1" and I feed him as much as I can. One thing I do notice though is that both small ones are on rock that I'm having a very difficult time removing caulerpa from so there could be some allelopathy going on. (If I could just put the rock in the big cube the tangs and rabbit would eradicate the caulerpa but the butterflies would probably mistake little BTA's as big majano's so that's sort of a no-go!)

Wow, what a long winded way of saying "I don't really know." In any case, your BTA sure does look awesome. :)

Thanks for the info Tony. Hopefully it stays this size; any bigger and I'll have to start moving corals away from it. Am I feeding a BTA of this size enough? (see my last post) I'm sure it gets some mysis, etc. from the fish feedings and it is certainly getting enough light.

Seems fine to me. They need to eat but they don't need to eat a lot. If you're happy with it (and it seems to be doing well) you could just continue on. Alternatively you could probably easily get away get away without the silverside and just feed weekly. Silversides are a little bit messy, kinda oily and I've heard stories on RC of people losing, or almost losing their anemones after they suspected was "a bad silverside". Usually those were in reference to carpets though, I've never heard the same thing said about a BTA, but then BTA's are more resilient overall so it's probably not even a concern.

I tried feeding various things to anemones including mussels, clam, fish meat, mysis, shrimp/prawn .. I found with BTA's they tended to eat shrimp with the most gusto. Fish with less gusto and shellfish the least (in fact would usually get spat out the next day). It seemed to me anyhow that BTA's were preferring shrimpy food. Nowadays I pretty much just give mine mysis and/or krill.

hey lance, nice tank

Thanks! :biggrin:


And Tony, that's good to know about the silversides. I should probably chuck out the last of them anyway. They're going on a year old.

WANTED: Hair algae. (You don't hear that very often).
TORO, my LM Blenny is looking a little on the skinny side. If any Powell River reefers have some let me know and I'll come pick it up. The only thing I can get him to eat is Romaine lettuce and though he eats lots of it he is losing weight.

All my hair algae has been replaced by that red cotton candy algae :sad:

Could you not try to trick him by clipping Nori and lettuce together?

Sorry Lance I'm fresh out, check with Bob I think he has a cube tank dedicated to growing algae. Mine was getting skinny when the corner tank cleaned up and he took to mysis no problems, try shooting some his way.

Sorry been sniffing paint all day, mom's tank has lots of H.A. give me a ring tomorrow and I'll hook you up.

I'll take you up on that Dave. I'll give you a call when I get a chance to pick it up.

this makes me rethink something I had given thought to doing a while ago. I wonder how hard (if at all) it would be to set up a small tank..even a 2.5 gallon lets say...for growing problem algae. We grow "good stuff" in our fuges...what about growing some HA specifically for this reason.

Mind you, I am tired, short on coffee and cigarettes and have a headache, so I could be talking nonsense.

This is what I'm thinking. I can grow out some hair algae in the sump of the frag tank and have readily available food for the LM Blenny. The things we do for our fish eh?

I'd consider a separate tank all together....strickly to avoid ANY chance of some HA getting anywhere it shouldn't...mind you...if you're going to feed it to the DT anyways,.....self, shut it..you are rambling

Lance. Won't he eat nori? Mine practically lives perched on-top of my feeder. Kind of funny watching the fat old bastard laying there asleep on top of his dinner.

Nope. Won't touch it. I've placed small amounts of nori near all his favourite haunts. Turns his nose up at it. He will only eat hair and film algae of which the Kole gets most of.

Sitting on the couch tonight watching TV and I hear a loud crack from the big tank: exactly like glass cracking. Oh ****! I check out the tank but cannot find anything. No leaks, no cracks that I can see. Kept a close eye on it for the better part of an hour. I'm thinking, and hoping, it was the light fixture. The noise came about 15 minutes after the halides went out so maybe the metal cooling down caused the noise. Hasn't happened before though. Going to bed with my fingers crossed tonight. Will set my alarm for 3am and check things out.

Oh dear God. Good luck. Hope it was nothing!

+1!

My reflector sometimes does that after cooling a bit hopefully that's all it was!

Having just recovered from that, I really hope your tank isn't making the noise & it's only the reflector. Good luck my friend.

Anthony

Hopefully all is well, any recent additions? could have picked up a pistol shrimp hitch hiker, I remember having one and it souded exactly like cracking glass (unfortunately I have lived thru that also) The sound happend on a regular basis for about three years and suddenly stopped, guess the little bugger finally shot himself, good luck.

Damn, sounds scary. Sometimes I wish mine would crack, then I wouldn't be so frustrated with it! :lol: