water = fail

did not work at all. I even injected it with a syringe!

it's hammer time now. I'll see what I can do about a video.

was it hot? and how long did you attempt?


eh...nevermind...just get us the video of you destroying a light

Actually, I think I'll saw it off. And I'm not posting a video of myself on the internet. Creeper...

j/k but still, I'm not posting a video, unless I'm wearing a paper bag on my head my parents would not approve.

anywaaays....

I finally got some good surge tank pics! they've been messed with a little, because I fail at getting the right shutter speed, but, too bad - I like artsy-er photos than super realistic ones - they make my tank look better.

New nem in the surge (btw, what kind of nem is this? I thought I knew, but I don't . I'm a newb to any cw nem that I can't find in a tidepool in oregon)


the usual suspects

hammered the leg off - nothing smashed, just legless light. Pics later. (of the tanks, not of me smashing the light)

lol...i never said you needed to be in the video you coulda pointed it at the light and just had your arm swingin a hammer

i'll have to find the name that we came up with (though, I still consider it to be somewhat suspect in its accuracy). if you wanna go dumpster diving yourself, it's somewhere in my biotope thread




well at least it'll look better now

oo...more pichers!!!

Get the name yet? I looked through your thread for, like, an hour and couldn't find it.
And when are you gonna take your biotope out of the bucket? Or did you and I'm just oblivious?

Last night I was trying to fall asleep, and I had an epic idea for the coldwater tank I'm gonna have when I grow up and have lots of money to build tanks with. Okay, so here's the idea. First, I'm going to have to live right on the beach, where I can pump water directly out of the ocean, probably Bamfield, British Columbia, Canada. Okay, So I'll have my awesome house right on the beach there (Not a sandy beach, a rocky one, that just sort of drops off into the water). I'd pump the water up to my house, into my incredibly long tank. The tank would probably be 15 to 20 feet long, and 1 or 2 feet wide. Depth would very, I'll get to that. The tank would be long enough that I could have multiple biotopes in it, but without barriers between them. The very first biotope is eelgrass bed. The tank here would be three feet deep. Some of the flow would enter the tank here, but not all of it, maybe half. It would enter through the bottom, so the general flow would be upwards, keeping the eelgrass looking good. There would be gunnels and zebra leafslugs (a type of small sea hare) and sitka shrimp and anything else I could find. So, imagine this biotope lasting for about three feet, then the bottom drops by a foot, and the next biotope comes in, mudflat. There would be sea pens, tube anemones, maybe a sea whip. For fish a few of the sculpins that like mud, maybe a midshipman, and a pair of bay gobies; maybe some prawns, too. This would last for another three feet, then the bottom of the tank would come up about two feet, for the next biotope, strawberries and metridiums. More flow would enter here, plus the original flow would be accelerated by the tank getting shallower. This would have catalina gobies, and maybe some type of shrimp or small crab. Then the bottom would come up another foot, for that last biotope - tidepool. The last of the flow from the pump in the ocean would enter here, for very high, turbulent flow (but no surge). Anthopleura anemones, tidepool sculpins, rock shrimp, etc. then the water would drain back into the ocean. No need for chilling, no need for feeding. Just watch and enjoy (and scrape algae). :sigh: beautiful.

okay, if anyone actually read that, doesn't it sound amazing?

I think I'm going to go draw it now.

Once my fingers stop hurting from all this typing, I'll give you my actual (more reasonable) plans for this tank. Or, my next tank, whatever you want to call it.

For those too lazy/didn't understand the above, here it is in picture form (sorry you can't see the writing at all, just latin names of things):





EDIT: wow that came out way smaller than I wanted it, oh well. You get the basic idea.

Oh




Cool

You have quite an imagination.

I found the name for ya Jamie its Actinia equina according to Jeremai post 190 in Daniels mini carpet biotope thread.

Nice tank idea it reminds me of this one, except with more layers

A true statement, but in my defense, I have been snowed in for a week and a half.



hmm... well, coloration does look a lot like A. equina, but from google images, it looks like A. equina has a smooth column, and this anemone is very bumpy. But perhaps just a variation. Thanks for finding that!

Yeah, it does look a lot like that. I've seen that tank before, so perhaps it was stowed away somewhere deep in my brain, only to emerge disguised as my "new, original, never been done" idea.


I cleaned that tank with a razor yesterday. I don't know if it was a bad or a good idea. The algae is gone, which is good, but so is some of the acrylic. It's a lot clearer than when the algae was on it, but I don't think it's as clear as it used to be. I haven't tried to take any pics, so when I do, we'll find out. If it does seem to be a problem, I might consider taking this tank down. I've been drawing up plans for smaller tanks - two 2-gallon glass tank plumbed together, one for the berries and one for the elegants. Or maybe setting up the zeroedge again, if I can come up with a good way to add more flow. If anyone has any good ideas for a new set up, let me hear em, I'm open to anything at the moment.

ok, I've decided on a new tank. Remember this?





It's coming back, with improvements.

cool i just noticed this I need to read through it more Im from vancouver and was thinking of doing something of whats in the back yard so to speak... when i get more space for tanks... your little drawling is very similar to a FW setup I wanted to do prior to getting into reef now thinking the same thing For Reef!! but ill have to size it down. when i was thinking FW it was going to be close to 1000G but if I did that as reef I would barely be able to fit the bill for salt for a 10% bi-weekly WC

Like i said Ill keep an eye on this looks fun im sure you will see me around more here!

Very cool and fun tank. Before Hurricane Ike I had a 20 gallon intertidal biotope and we collected the animals for it ourselves...stupid hurricanes. >< (Oh, btw, never donate money to those "help the hurricane victims" funds, except for red cross and the salvation army. The rest of it is complete bunk).

<3

1000 gallons!

yeah, the key part of my design is that it's hooked up to the ocean. Free food and water! otherwise it would be quite difficult to maintain. It'd be awesome if you set up another coldwater biotope, I can let you in on the secret best tidepooling locations.



Too bad, you should set one back up!

and yeah, I I remember seeing on the news that a lot of people got ripped off when katrina hit.






Pics of new setup soon.

NOM NOM NOM







Improvements:

- new stand
- more flow (2 maxijet 1200's, one running through the chiller, the other full force )
- flow comes out higher up in the tank - better for nems, and now the sump won't overflow in a power outage
- new light, or lack of one. I'm going to experiment with natural light (in small amounts). I'm hoping the diminished light will keep the algae down.

that's it. Tomorrow I'm going to fill 'er up.

Nice work, Jamie!

thanks guys.

well, the tank is set up now, but it was quite an ordeal. It overflowed several times in the process (waaay too much flow) so I got quite a bit of saltwater on the carpet. It is now running, but it seems that if anything upsets it's very precious equilibrium, it will dump gallons of saltwater on the floor in about a minute. First, to fix the too much flow problem, I ditched one of the mj's, so now I have one going to both the chiller and the tank. I also drilled two more drain holes.That fixed the problem, and led me to the next, which my dad eloquently stated as: "your tank is making a giant sucking noise." The drain pipes get whirpooly things in them that are amazingly loud, louder the the siphon breaking in the surge tank. So, to fix that problem, I put little pieces of airline tubing down into each pipe. It doesn't make the giant sucking noise anymore, but the tubing cut down the flow enough that it seems the overflow part of the tank is much more full than it should be. At one point, I put my hand in the tank, and noticed the water level rise in the overflow channel. I took my hand out, but the water continued to rise. I had to take the airline tubing out to keep it from overflowing, and back came the giant sucking noise. So, for now, the airline tubing is in place, and I'm crossing my fingers that nothing will happen during the night. If anyone has suggestions for a way to get rid of the noise that won't involve in saltwater on the floor, please tell me! This is making me nervous.


As far as the tank inhabitants go, everyone seems happy. The flow is not quite what I'd hoped, but it will work. It's certainly more than last time. I absolutely love the aquascape, but the tank is a little murky, and it's dark out (remember, no lights) so I won't really know what it looks like till tomorrow. On the topic of lights, I think I'll get some sort of actinic or blue LED fixture to supplement the natural light, because plain light does not exactly bring out the colors in everything.

:sigh: that's it for now, I'll get pics tomorrow, assuming a disaster has not occurred by then. The tank is not balanced yet, and I'm afraid to touch it, so the pictures might have water flowing over part of the front of the tank, but I dunno, we'll see what tomorrow brings.

New thread, imo.

Phew, tank didn't overflow last night.

Once I level it and get pics I'll start a new thread and post link here.

yay for crappy fts's in the dark!

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=180518

late but...

it's all over the place in various tanks of various sizes. i'm not sure if it'll get set up as a biotope again or not - trying to consolidate tanks and do a couple new things as well.




i agree, and i'm still not convinced of the name, but it was the closest thing we could come up with given the stuff we knew about it. The guy who owns the place I got it from was extremely adamant about the location, and that was the best fit we could find given that he said it was from Africa.

it looks a lot like Cladactella manni to me, but thats Hawaiian

sad! I liked that tank. you could always set up a smaller version. or just send everything to me



hmm, indeed it does. Oh well, doesn't really matter to me, as long as it's eating I'm happy.