Recent content by jda123

Red Planaria. I have written extensively on treating them, but here is the short. Levamisole is a dry powder that treats worms in livestock - this is the same stuff that is in Salifert Flatworm Exit - 1 tsp in a 500ml water bottle and then start at 1ml per gallon of tank water. The...

You want Wurdmanni (sp?). There are many different types. The Wurdemanni just destroy the aiptasia, most the others are hit or miss and some just don't touch them at all since they come from parts of the gulf where aiptasia do not live. At the store, you have no idea what you are getting...

Peppermint shrimp from the Florida Keys crush them. You need to order direct since you have no idea where most shrimp come from, but you can identify them after you buy them. They live like three years, so you have to replace them over time. You sometimes have to kalk paste the big ones, but...

I don't want to sound defeatist, but when most people change tank parameters, a different kind of dinos moves in right after they think that they conquered the issue. There are all kinds of dinos that will still take over if you don't get diverse. I am all for fuges. I doubt that removing...

If you are anywhere near longmont, you can come by for a few scoops of live sand and I probably have some rubble with tons of pods, coralline, sponge and all kids of other good stuff. I am shutting down a larger tank.

For the co2, the only thing that you need to do is to air out your house. pH always falls in line unless you are adding a strong acid to your tank. Windows open when it is warm outside. If you need to, buy a co2 meter from Amazon with a NDIR sensor and keep the ambient co2 below 600... under...

Those look like diatoms or dinos to me... but photos are not super clear. Compare with some photos. I would guess dinos. The normal dino treatments work, like sucking them out, water quality, etc. They key is to get diverse and hearty things growing on those rocks so that things cannot grow...

Ross knows what he is doing. As said above, he does not reef like many other people, so pay attention to how he does it - mostly he get available energy and building blocks to his corals, not waste products. This is a labor of love, not profit, for the normal hobbyist. Anybody around when...

Shutting down a big tank. Have tons of live sand if anybody wants some to seed. This stuff comes from ocean live rock days, is more than twenty years old. My tanks if full of pods, worms, mini brittle stars and all different colors of coralline algae... all of the good stuff. In Longmont...

I did not read it, but if they don't have you pair any cycles up with nature then it probably won't work too well. You don't even really need the light cycles if you study the natural cycles. I have some light that gets into our walkout basement, but the corals knew when it was time. I never...

I have had acropora spawn in my tank. I have talked to Ross about it a lot too. It just happened. I did not do anything. The key to me seems to be to get the coral a lot of usable resources. Like actually usable. Ammonia or organic nitrogen forms instead of no3, organic phosphate instead...

What do you have for a power outage backup plan? I might have a large computer UPS laying around, which can run a low wattage tunze flow pump (or the like) pointed at the surface for like 2-3 days. It might need new batteries, but these are not expensive on Amazon and cheaper than a new fish...

You need some fish? Shutting a tank down soon.

If they work and are cheap, order a few more immediately. Doubtful that a surge protector will help much, but worth a try - they are just made to be disposable in most cases. Unfortunately, good tech is expensive and cheap tech is not good, so spares for reasonable prices are a good idea.

If you need halide parts and pieces, I have lots that you can have. Let me know.