Recent content by muggiwhplar

The corals in my SPS tank were thriving up until a couple months ago. At that point, some started to fade, and polyp extension began to decrease. Then I started seeing STN onone coral after another--mostly acropora and to a lesser extent montiporas. Birdsnest, stylos, pocilloporas and...

Put the Phosban reactor first. If you do it the other way around, some of the carbon's removal capability is wasted removing phosphates that should be handled by the Phosban.

I'm fighting a serious hair algae outbreak in my 40 breeder SPS tank at the moment myself. Like you, I'm not able to detect any nitrates or phosphates. Since I don't feed that often and haven't had any fish die or anything, I figure the source of the nutrients must be decaying detritus trapped...

Originally Posted by Hurt Are you actually serious? I'm lost on this one. Please show me where I wrote with an attitude? Please show me where I attacked you personally? I thought this was quite the civil thread with reasoning to back up an argument. I thought you seemed to be taking on a...

There's no need for the attitude there. I haven't attacked you personally; I'm just discussing data I've read regarding aquarium lighting systems, so let's calm down and not take ourselves too seriously. After reading your post, it seemed that we had each found at least somewhat reputable data...

Originally Posted by Hurt Have you googled what I said ^...there is over 15 pages of info on the subject. Yes, and although I didn't read every single page in its entirety, I skimmed a bunch and didn't see any reference to solid data showing that the metal halides we use have a higher luminous...

Originally Posted by Hurt What Mr. X said^. There is no difference in heat output between the MH and T-5. Watts are Watts. MH's though are more efficient than T-5's(lumens/watts) and of course they penetrate the water deeper. Google: The Myth of MH being hotter than T5s You're right that...

Does anybody know if/how much overdriving T5's with an Icecap ballast affects the efficacy (lumens/watt)?

Originally Posted by Mr_X i believe the heat coming off of t-5's is just dispersed over a long bulb. if you take the equivelant (150 watts of t-5, versus 150 watts of halide, it will give off the same heat. t-5's seem cooler because you can put a less wattage fixture over your tank and achieve...

From what I've read, my understanding is that a UV sterilizer is better for preventing parasites from spreading from one tank to another than anything else. So if you had a number of tanks hooked up to the same system, it might not be a bad idea to use UV to help reduce the chance of disease...

Just get some halides or at least T5's. I know it's pricey, but if you end up staying in the hobby for a while, you're going to end up spending that money anyway.

Does anybody know what kind of input the new controllable Koralias run on? I assumed that they ran on 12V DC and the flow was altered by changing the input voltage. However, I bought one and it won't run on any 6-12V DC input I've tried.

If it's a bacterial bloom, what exactly will a water clarifier do? Will it cling to bacteria just like it's supposed to cling to dirt and organic molecules? Or does it pull stuff out of the water and remove the bacteria's food source?

UV sterilizers can be effective for keeping ich in check or preventing it from spreading from one system to another (by putting a UV sterilizer between the two), but won't completely clean the system. If you're talking about subjecting the whole tank to UV somehow, this would damage corals and...

By "ghost feeding" I meant dumping in food with no livestock in the tank. (I guess it's not as common a term as I thought--sorry for the confusion.) Anyway, yes I am cycling under hypo. Does that cause problems? There are fish in the QT. As I said, they seem to be fine. They're active and...