Blog Comments

It can. A water change may include something the bacteria needs to grow, feeding on the new source water or whatever is in the salt mix. Cyano bacteria is a normal occurrence in fresh, brackish and saltwater, but when it blooms (becomes visible) we immediately want to get rid of it. I would try siphoning out that area in question if your shade doesn't help.

There's more than one way to fight cyano, including Three Days of Darkness. Let's see what happens with your first method.

is it normal that after a water change there is growth? i did a 5gal change lastnight and this morning i swear the patch got bigger and the boarder got thicker :s im going to cover the one end of the tank in black bristol board and see if that helps.

i would absoloutly love to get an Harlequin shrimp but i wouldnt really have a food sorce for it after it went throught the asterina stars, and at 20bucks a pop linkia starfish would be expensive to feed

not to mention the fact that i have a horrible time keeping shrimp, i have never been able to keep them alive, about 3 weeks ago i added 2 pepermint shrimp. they went missing at about week 2

I had asterina stars take out some zoo colonies a while back. Harlequin shrimp took care of that.

Hmmm. It does seem like the astrina starfish could be blamed, based on the second two pictures. Since you've not seen any other livestock to blame, I'd make an effort to remove any starfish you see near it for the time being and check to see if it heals up and remains undamaged.

This could be purely coincidental, of course.

Then you should try putting up a barrier to avoid that for a week or so, and see if that helps. Fortunately, seasonal shifts will change the angle of the sun entering your home so this shouldn't be a permanent issue, right?

It's odd that it is forming under your sandbed instead of on the surface.

I too am seeing a lot of those little benign sponges in my sump area.

Melev- There is just that patch and a boarder along the glass around the 3 viewing panels of the tank just under the sand, im condiering treating the tank but id like to avoid the work...plus i havent had much sucess in the past with chemical treatments for cyano in my tanks

Some other things I forgot to mention are: the abundance of pineapple sponges in my sump, predominantly in my NP reactor and in my skimmer. Also the side of the tank that has the small “patch” of cyano does face a window that gets the early sunrise almost straight on.

It could be a result of the NP pellets. Is there a lot more of it in your tank, or just that little bit? Maybe it might be worth treating your tank to nuke it while you only have a little, volume-wise.

I know I feed much more than that, and I'm using the exact same pellets in a NextReef reactor.

This is looking great. Please keep us posted as i would love to do something like this for my tank down the road.

Looking great Shawn!

all the LEDs are now screwed on to the heatsink and all the soldering is complete i will update a part 3 tomorrow, now im just trying to figure out how to wire everything (powercords, drivers, pots) and have everything look neat and tidy. im thinking im going to use a small rubermaid to keep all the drivers and wiring in. an one know if the drivers get warm?

The reason self tapping screws aren't working well is because the aluminum is so thick. Very thin sheet metal allows those screws to work perfectly, but thicker stock like your heat sink or my electrical rack - well, you know the answer to that now.

i have to come over and see when you get this together. i have wanted to do a light up for my 110g tall and my 90 planted tanks.

TBDuval- i think you need to reread that, iasked for the XP-E VS the XR-E

I managed to get all the holed drilled and tapped, it was such a pain in the ***, those self tapping screws dont go in very easy. i must have stripped well over 30, tomorrow im getting the thermal grease and mounting all the LEDs, then i get to wire everything up!

Skip Class! Look at all that fun stuff! Get to work on the lights! Just kidding, go to class, then stay up all night playing with the lights!

Why would you not want the XP-E's? They have more output. Also, IIIRC the XP-E's and take more current. I think all and all the XP-E's are the way to go right now. Let me ask, they dont make XP-E in white so are you using XP-G's?

Looks like you are off to a good start. I look forward to the rest of the build, and maybe, an idea to copy from....

yea, they dont like us much over there, I had an account for almost 10 years and got banned from that place

Just use something like tiny url or put in a redirect on a domain name you use. I barely use RC and mainly only to check out the COMAS forum that resides there. Hopefully will get them to start using their own site a bit more as some people who have been coming up with a lot of frags have been getting warnings about being commercial sellers. I personally don't like being throttled on a site that has a ton of advertisements in place to make money off of my visits which is my main reason for not visiting along with some of the mod attitude I have seen.

But then again I have my own sites to deal with and lately have hardly been here either.

Many years ago, MACNA took place in Canada. Montreal, I believe. I know that year after year, a lot of Canadian reefers come down to enjoy the event here in the U.S. I'm not sure about corals and customs though; I never thought to ask.

There are canadian message boards and surely at least a few clubs. You might do a search of these for big events.