I have not seen a mantis in over a year. I have no idea why they didn't make it...or it could be that they've settled into places where they stay pretty secretive. There are plenty of loud "cracks" coming from the tank, but that could be any number of pistol shrimp that I know were there.

At one point, I know I had at least 6 mantis.

I am not sure if this has been asked, but what do you use to clean your tank. I have a big acrylic tank and access is not as easy as a regular rectangular tank, so its hard to clean it.

1" thick acrylic required me to use the Great White Mag cleaner. In order to avoid scratching the outside of the 'glas, I wrap the outer magnet in a baby diaper and lubricate it with "brillianize" acrylic cleaner. I have to clean the 'glas about every 2nd or 3rd day..which involves cleaning almost all the way around the tank since it is almost 4 completely 4 sided viewing.

deep sand bed????
 

INcredible set up....

May I ask what depth you went for your sand bed and what type of substrate you used?


Thanks,

Tim

The sand bed is intended to be decorative and is only 1" to 2" deep. It is crushed coral that came from Florida and is the substrate that naturally surrounds the live rock in that area.

Love the bar beside the tank. Nice tought.

Anemone spawning
 

When I returned from two weeks holiday, the tank had moved in a few ways.

1) Things got too hot (hitting 85 degrees F a few times). It turns out this was primarily because someone accidently shut off my ventilation fan. That won't happen again.

2) Salinity got a bit lower than I would prefer...measuring 1.020 when I got back.

Overall, I lost another 3 or 4 coral colonies...and browned out a few others. One of the gobies hasn't yet been seen, but that isn't entirely unusual. We'll see.

So...some rapid salinity adjustment, a water change, and getting the fan turned back on seems to have returned the tank to as normal as normal has been for the past while.

Here's the interesting part...the events seem to have triggered a massive spawning. My urchins spawned last night and.... for the first time in 12 years, my carpet anemone spawned at the same time. This turned the tank so milky you could barely see into it and I was very concerned that the tank couldn't take it. By next morning, all was fine aside from a slight unusual smell and a LOT of skimate.

While spawning, the anemone changes shape distinctly....stretching itself as high as possible and forming a "cup" shape. It seems my anemone is a male...or..it was this time.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0598.jpg

That is pretty cool!:biggrin:

Wow, neato! So is your anemone male because it made that funny shape? :razz:

About temperature and heat...
 

I can't believe that it took me 3 years to figure this out.... doh!

2 years ago, before we air conditioned the house, the tank was getting too hot. So...I naturally installed central air conditioning to the entire house.

That prevented the tank from getting too hot, but there was still a significant high/low day/night swing in the temperature. For some dumb reason, I figured that by keeping the tank warmer at night, it would minimize the daily swing. Stability is better than instability, right? I adjusted my heaters to keep the tank at 79 overnight.

It only just became clear to me that this didn't really work at all. Each day, the lights added a certain amount of heat energy to the tank, while the air conditioning was able to remove a certain amount of heat energy. That all happens mostly independently of the temperature that the tank happens to be every morning when the lights start up.

In other words...the tank goes up about 3-4 degrees every daylight cycle, and it is going to do that regardless of how cool I allow the tank to get at night.

So...I've decided that a range of 78-82 is probably much better than 79-83. In fact, I'll probably end up dropping it right down to 77-81 or even 76-80.