• melev

    20 Questions: Christine Williams 

    by
    melev
    Published on 12-23-2011 01:11 PM
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    Every year, MACNA brings in a big groups of speakers and these people provide a small image and a biography detailing who they are. Boring!! We want to get downright personal so we can know who they really are.

    Sitting down with Christine Williams, the interview went like this:

    1) Let's start off easy... What was your first job?
    CW: Working for a company that made artificial limbs. It involved straps, velcro and other assorted items. (Favorite limb?) A guy that wanted a beer bottler opener embedded in his leg! It's important to have the right tool for the job.
    ...
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    How to Host a Speaker for Club Events 

    Published on 11-16-2011 08:13 PM
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    When a Club Hosts a Speaker
    by Steven Pro

    As an aquarium society grows, they inevitably want to bring in out of town experts to educate their membership. The first thing that the club leadership needs to determine is, what would the members like to hear about? Do they want to hear the latest on reef aquarium lighting or would they prefer to discover the most recent breakthroughs in marine fish breeding? Some clubs prefer hands-on workshops on things like coral fragmentation, aquarium photography, aquascaping, fish necropsy, or acrylic and PVC fabrication. While other clubs might prefer more formal, educational lectures or picture heavy travelogues. Once it has been decided what the club is looking for, finding a speaker to fill that niche is much easier.

    The Marine Aquarium Society of North America (www.masna.org) provides a database of speakers, their contact information, and their specific requests to provide lectures and/or workshops to their member clubs. I urge you to take advantage of this resource, but if there are speakers not listed, do not hesitate to ask the board so that they can assist in locating and contacting the speaker. MASNA is also pleased to make suggestions ...
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    Product Review: EPO Putty 

    by
    melev
    Published on 10-21-2011 01:36 AM
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    Jim's Reef sent me a sample of a two part putty to try out in my reef. Putty is used to secure certain types of corals to the rockwork in a tank, and can be used to bond rocks in place to prevent movement later.

    The product is packaged with two equal-sized parts of dough which once kneaded together produces a chemical reaction that results in a putty that hardens over time. Whenever I work with any kind of putty, I wear (surgical) rubber gloves to avoid toxicity issues. Tearing open the first part of the putty, I found that it was difficult to extract. Similar to peeling out chewing gum out of its wrapper during the hot summer ...
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    Reefapalooza - October 22 & 23, 2011 

    by
    melev
    Published on 10-19-2011 02:07 PM
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    This weekend in Costa Mesa, California, thousands of people are going to attend the annual event known as Reefapalooza. Will you? At this two day event, vendors are selling their wares or answering questions hobbyists have about their particular products. Here's a link to last year's writeup: http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...10-what-a-show

    Saturday 10AM-6PM
    Sunday 10AM- 4PM

    At $10 per day, this is a huge bargain. (You pay at the door, not online in advance. Parking is $5 cash.)

    This year, there are more speakers ...
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    Dart pump wailing - replacing seals and bearings 

    by
    melev
    Published on 10-14-2011 05:24 PM
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    My reef uses two Dart pumps. One is used as a return pump, the other as a means to feed all equipment with a manifold of valves. The return pump started making noise about a week before I had to fly to MACNA 2011. Swapping the noisy pump out with my back up Dart pump wasn't an option; that one leaked at the seal so the noisy one was re-installed.



    In the past six weeks, the noise level had only gotten worse and worse. Buying a new pump was the obvious solution, but this one was only used for 8 months, and my funds were spent elsewhere. My friend Bobby told me we could replace the bearings and correct the problem. He had me order bearings found on Ebay. I found a package of 10 for $11.50 with free shipping, sold for skateboarders.



    Within a week, the bearings arrived. I also had a new seal at the ready.



    The pump was easily removed from the plumbing by unscrewing the union valves.



    The first thing to remove is the impeller housing. There are six nuts that need to be removed to pull off the cover.




    With the cover out of the way, the impeller is visible.



    Not pictured is how the cooling fan cover at the end of the pump was removed. Next, a flat-head ...
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    Invert of the Week - the Harlequin Shrimp 

    Published on 09-24-2011 07:58 PM
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    The Harlequin Shrimp –Hymenocera picta




    With its oversized paddle claws and mottled coloration, the Harlequin Shrimp is one of the most out-of-this-world looking animals reef enthusiasts can put into their aquariums. As is the case with so many of the coolest looking reef animals, the special dietary requirements of the Harlequin Shrimp keep many people from owning them. The one and only thing an adult Harlequin Shrimp will eat are echinoderms, or for the non-nerd reefkeepers, seastars (starfish).

    Common Name: Harlequin shrimp
    Latin: Hymenocera picta, H. elegans
    Origin: Hawaii, Red Sea, Indo-Pacific ...
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    Welcome (back) to Reef Addicts 2.0 

    by
    melev
    Published on 09-23-2011 12:23 PM
    Article Preview

    The website was taken down due to a serious infestation of SPAM. If you were following along on Facebook, I was posting updates daily. We updated our software to the latest version, which was key to locking down potential security leaks. To make this happen, the entire site had to be rebuilt from the ground up, and I want to thank Ed for doing his webmaster magic to reassemble everything so our site would work correctly. He removed over 25,000 spam-based blog entries!



    Some things you'll notice ...
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