I haven't been to a radio shack in a couple years but it seemed like they had fewer and fewer parts every time I used to go... They might be able to hook you up but I don't know. Fry's is MUCH better if you have one near you and I know they would have everything.

Do you know anybody that knows how to read a schematic to help you do it? It isn't that hard once you have done it but it is one of those things that someone has to show you in person the first couple times; pictures and explanations aren't quite enough.

The power wires would go to the resistor, but you would have to have a thermostat controlling a relay to interrupt the power so that it only heats when it drops below a certain temperature.

I think you can get everything at the shack with the exception of two things: the thermistor and the 10k pot.

For the 10k pot(entiometer) I would use what is known as a trim pot or trimmer potentiometer. They are usually small, blue and square with a white dial that you'd turn with a tiny screwdriver.

For the relay they have several choices that will work. I'd tell you what to get, but I think a little reading would do you a lot of good until you understand what the needs are for each side of the relay and what a relay is. I think with a couple hours of learning you'd have a basic understanding of how the circuit works.

Before you attempt something like this I would read about basic electronics. Start with how to read a schematic but you should also read about how to solder. Just a warning, though, as cptbjorn has alluded to, as your first project you might just chalk this up to a learning experience eventually. At least with 12VDC you won't hurt yourself .

solution to shrimp eating corals is to FEED said shrimp....







...to corals.

So my big question I guess, could I just use that zoo med thermostat instead of trying to build one. Or are they totally differt

I don't know what thermostat you're talking about but it's most likely for something that's 120VAC and not 12VDC. I'd avoid working with line voltage right now if i were you.

pismo I've been waiting for one of the smaller sexies to pick at the big green palys or one of the hungrier acans for that very reason... I watched a small bristleworm try to steal mysis out of one of the acans and the acan got a couple feeding tentacles on it, then the bristleworm freaked out and squirmed its tail into a different head and ended up getting stung to death and ripped in half and eaten They don't take theft lightly apparently.

Which thermostat reef2.5? It might be workable but we need more info to determine. I guess even a home heating thermostat would work, just they are big/bulky and you would have to cover the temp sensor somehow because they tend to be bare copper.

Its called "Zoo Med ReptiTemp 500R with a remote temp sensor I just need to find out the probes size. You think tha this would be doable?

If you plugged a 12v power supply into that thermostat and ran the resistor+test tube off of the power supply I think you would be in business. Just make sure it is a good supply, it is going to be power cycled dozens of times per day most likely and cheap ones might not handle it for long.


I cut the growth off of the blue xenia today, instead of pinching off it appeared to be starting to thicken up and planning to merge into one massive stalk so I grabbed a new razor with my 12" tweezers and made two quick slices to separate it into three pieces right down in the tank without moving anything. They never even closed up at all and it has been like 6 hours and I can barely tell where the cuts were now.

In all it more than doubled in the last month including what looks like 5-6 new stalks between the two new frags. I don't know if it had "saved up" to do that or if it is just going to keep going but I'm impressed either way

Also the browned out acro that I got (initially covered in red bugs that seem to be gone for good) turned emerald green and started putting out polyps over the last few weeks and today I started noticing some blue sheen to it in places, it might be a blue tort after all. In fact all of the sps is starting to look much better and showing some good growth after adding the chemi pure and if I can get a good bright blue acro I'll be very happy I'll get some pics tomorrow.

Took some pics today, here are the 3 xenia frags from the side. You can barely make them out through the salt drips and smudges but they are on the right if you look close lol:



Here's the right side. The two diploastrea favias, one at the top and one beneath it a bit, are both halves of the same colony. One stayed in this tank and turned fluorescent green and the other went in my picotope and browned out for some reason at similar light levels and water parameters. I finally mostly broke down the picotope because of stuff like that, nothing ever looked nearly as good in that tank as it does in this one for seemingly no reason at all.



And a FTS:




...also I ordered about 40 feet of aluminum angles and square tubing and will be placing an order from a local glass shop today or tomorrow. The picotope was never very good and I realize now that my 13g's dimensions are all wrong for what I want to do; both are coming down and will be replaced by "_________"

Looks awesome, and I'm glad nothing died as a result of the temp drop!
How has that clam been doing? Are you gonna keep it in the 3 gal, and what exactly do you feed that thing and with what utensil?
Thanks for answering, I know I'm annoying you with the questions

The clam seems to be doing great, I just need to figure out how to get it to attach permanently. It wants to point towards my windows in the morning, the tank lights in the afternoon, and my computer monitor at night. I think it has mostly attached now but it has only been a couple days since it last moved itself so maybe not.

It will stay in this tank until it gets too big, eventually maximas get football-sized so it can't stay in there forever. I've read so much conflicting info on feeding these things that I don't really know what to do, currently I feed by dripping DT's phytoplankton and RN oyster feast directly into the tank and turn off the HOB filter for an hour or two and it seems to like it. Removing it from the tank to feed in a separate container just seemed to stress it out from what I could tell.

I've only had the clam for a little over two weeks though which is not long enough to know if I'm doing things right or if it will be a success. So far so good though ::

ah ,I see. Yes I was guessing that these clams grow huge and wouldn't be good for a pico in the long run haha. thats one thing off my stocking list then. Best of luck with yours, it really seems to be loving your lights - it's so brightly colored!

It's a good thing you're making a new tank, I have no idea where this hammer and "single acan polyp" are going to go, dude.

Have you considered speeding up your sunrise/sunset so the clam isnt so confused? mine doesnt move around too much but my cycle is 8:30a-9p and I know yours starts later.

I think if you made your pico an official acan garden you could get TOTM. Too bad you hate acans so much (BIG SARCASM)

Yeah I'm thinking about moving the photoperiod earlier in the day for a little while (starts at noon right now), it is a south window the light is coming through and if I'm remembering correctly the morning direct sunlight should go away in a month or two when the sun starts going a little higher off the horizon. I might get a sheet of polarizing filter to put on the side of the tank that faces my monitor too, I think it should block almost all of the LCD light if i line it up correctly.

The maze brain is probably going in the new tank (3-4" sweepers every time it senses a new neighbor) which will liberate enough sandbed for the acan though I've heard mixed reports of how well echinatas get along with lords. Hammer is definitely going in the bigger tank, I might try getting a frag of a different hammer from my sister and get a two color colony going

I picked up the pinkest ricordia I've ever seen today, it'll probably hate my LEDs for at least a month or two (or permanently) but I'm going to try to acclimate it and see what happens. It is shriveled up in a shaded crevice for now but I'll get pics in the next couple days.

My first bottle of phyto is almost done culturing, it is THICK forest green and only has about 5 ppm each of ammonium and phosphate left, down from ~200 ppm ammonium and ~70 ppm phosphate. Looks like there will be a tiny bit of phosphate left, if I assume the fertilizer's NPK rating and my test kits are accurate then the phyto is consuming a N/P molar ratio of 16.6, while the fertilizer is 16.0. A couple ppm of phosphate in the phyto is probably fine though since I only need a couple ml every few days. Overall though my cheap hydroponic nutrients grow phyto great, now I just have to see how well the culture will handle being split

It has a lot more expanding to do and you can only see half of it but here's the new pink ricordea in the middle:



You can kinda see the huge superman mushroom to the left of it too that is quite visible in person but doesn't even show up in most of the pictures I take.

Nice color on that ricordea
The clam steals the spotlight though lol

I just got home from the Bob Moore PSAS frag swap. Grabbed an idaho grape monti, a sunset monti frag, a chunk of hydrophora, a blue/green/yellow chalice and got a BIG chunk of acro for free as a door prize Total bill: $40

The chalice (5$!) on the left, it replaced the maze brain stung everything in the vicinity at least once:



Idaho grape monti, it was grown under 400w halides and will be brown in a week but here it is while it is purple:



Sunset monti:



And a fts, note the huge acro frag rock in the middle. It appears to grow low and encrust a lot which is perfect for this tank, once I get my bigger tank set up I'll move the main rock in there and glue a frag of it in this pico somewhere. Also the hydrophora in the upper right is RIDICULOUS in person under the LEDs, it is moving to the bigger tank too unless it loses some color. It makes all the other corals in the tank look washed out.

My lone crazy acan suffered from my ski trip, it fell and was resting slightly upside down - a corner of it died and there's some skeleton showing. Do you think it'll come back to health? I'm considering loaning it to your tank until it's fraggable and then getting the mother colony back. Teh acanz just like your tank so much.

Acans are probably one of the hardiest corals I've kept so far, I made a mistake when trying to split up a frag and it pretty much shattered and I ended up with two large chunks with one and a half heads each and three small shards of skeleton each with an attached piece of flesh the size of a BB. Only thing that died was one of the shards, all 4 other pieces healed fine. You can see one of the tiny pieces pretty well underneath the sunset monti frag in the pic I posted yesterday. It'll take forever to grow out but it appears to be currently working on growing a mouth lol.

If you put it in medium-low light and give it mysis every couple days it should come back just fine and once they "catch on" and start growing they really go.


In other news I think the hydnophora is going to be my first confirmed kill in this tank It was sliming a bit when I got it and I thought it was just mad from fragging+transportation so I did a ReVive dip but now the tip of every branch is bare skeleton, a couple branches are lost and there doesn't appear to be a good way to cut away all the dying tissue. I did some reading on the stuff and it seems like a horrible thing to have in a pico anyways so I'm going to pretty much let it decide its fate.

I've been reading up on salt mixes because I've been a little disappointed with the magnesium in my Marine Environment salt, I had it narrowed down to Aquavitro Salinity and DD H2Ocean and they had both at my LFS today and I got a bucket of the Aquavitro. I picked it over the H2Ocean because I am happy with the aquavitro Fuel and also it is about 1/3 cheaper per gallon.

I have about 20-25 gallons worth left of the ME and I'm going to start switching over and see how it goes. It smells a little "plasticy" in the bucket but it goes away when mixed up and it seems to dissolve just as easily as the ME. I have 5 gallons mixing overnight and I'm going to test it tomorrow.

The hydnophora seems to have stopped receding for now, I was sure it was a goner but maybe not.

Also I ordered glass today for my big tank, 24x24x15 out of 3/8" glass with polished edges. It's going to be fun

What's your fixture/sump/stand plan for the big one?

And yes, we will trade acros! I kind of took the plunge there without knowing if my lighting would support it but the price was right.

The stand is going to be an open metal frame kinda thing similar to on my 13g except all black anodized aluminum, the sump will be the 10g one from my 13g setup for now and then when I decide on a skimmer etc I'll make a nice new sump, most likely 20x20x12 or so.

The light is mostly worked out in my head but requires XP-G royal blues (if you didn't get the memo the XP-G's max current got bumped to 1500ma!) so I can't actually build it yet, it will be similar to the one I showed you but more pendant style I have a 150w phoenix 14k bulb though so I might buy/make a cheap pendant and run that for a while. Otherwise just the 20" dual satellite for now.

I bet your lighting is fine for acros with the T5s. My purple bonsai is growing pretty well for me and it branches a lot so it probably won't be more than a couple months before I can clip something off the back side, and the "blue tort" that I bought completely browned out and red bugged from Seattle Aqua Farm now has a blue body with neon green tips and polyps and is growing pretty well too. Blue and purple acros are supposed to be some of the hardest SPS to keep but they seem to be doing even better than most of my montis...

that monti freebie I got ain't doin so hot. I still can't make that chalice happy either. Duncan is making babies. It seems that either stuff in my tank does super extra well or gets a random dead spot, and that's just a couple of things. My green birdsnest only extends polyps at night now which I can't figure out but it's growing a lot.

I guess the stuff that doesn't like my setup is limited to SPS that you can't see polyps on. Any thoughts?

I fragged a pink/purple chalice into 3 equal sized pieces and put one in my pico, one in my 13g and one in my sister's 120g and the one in my pico is the only one that didn't turn completely brown and start to recede. No idea why since they are all in similar conditions; low-medium light and pretty good flow. I'm still experimenting to get color back to the browned ones but it seems putting them in a shaded spot is helping. The point is that chalices can be finicky, whiney little corals... Have you tried feeding it? Mine take smaller mysis pieces with the pumps off.

We didn't see that red monti get pulled out of a tank so it might have been sitting out for a while and might need some recovery time. You can try a revive dip if it is losing tissue but I bet it will be fine.

If not I got a 2x2 chunk of "Idaho Grape" monti cap that I'll probably be cutting down at some point. They sell the stuff at BRA for 40 bucks per little frag but at the frag swap after I bought the sunset monti the guy pulled out a sandwich bag full of pieces of it and gave me a big one for 5$ It felt illegal lol.

I just saw the eunice worm for the third time

I saw it starting to poke out its head between two ricordea when I was distributing pellets to the sexy shrimp so I put a pellet down there and waited for it to come out, it grabbed the pellet and slipped right through my tweezers when I tried to grab it though... It has grown quite a bit but it is still lightning fast and I've seen it in 3 different spots throughout the tank now so it pretty much has the whole place tunneled. This latest spot is right at the sandbed though so it is a decent place to bait it out again, I'm going to try again tomorrow.

if eunice = bobbit worm then that's pretty bad. those things me. I have something that looks like it in my pico but I *think* mine has bristles...your's is small correct?

Yeah they are also called bobbit worms. I've heard that most are reef safe scavengers but the first two sightings I was able to watch it for about an hour and I saw it catch an amphipod and a bristle worm... I think it could take down a smaller sexy shrimp and I worry about the clam too so I want to get it out, hopefully in one piece so I can give it to someone.

My eunice worm is mostly smooth and brown and has the antennae around its mouth. I would guess you have a bristle worm just based on how much more common they are and also you say it has bristles.

I sure damn hope mine's a bristle worm! I can't stand these:

Actually that one looks pretty cool, I think it wants a hug

I almost caught mine today, I've successfully lured it out 3 times in the last few days. One of these times I'm going to successfully grab it with my tweezers and either rip its head+front half off or pull it out. I'm really hoping the tail end can't regenerate because I would guess it is going to be left behind (lol)


I picked up a couple acros today, my LFS just announced last night that they were going to start having a 10$ frag section so naturally I was there this morning waiting for them to open I got a very bright green slimer and a stocky blue/lavender one and cut off small pieces of them for this tank and the rest will go in my big tank when it is ready.

I moved most of the corals from my 13g into my sister's 120 in preparation for the tank switch and while I was in there I nipped off a piece of their legit ATL appleberry monti, here it is bottom center. Also the green hydnophora is recovering surprisingly fast, the sunset monti is glued in place up top (and isn't bleaching) and the new little green slimer:



And a FTS, the monti undata is finally showing some PE after I moved it all around the tank trying to make it happy. Turns out it wanted to be in the sand surrounded by chalices, can't say I blame it lol.

My sexy shrimp were hanging out on the acans today and I gave them a few pellets and started taking some pictures. Look real close under them clam though:

oh no....

That's a little guy. Local reefer pulled a 6ft one out of his tank a few months back.

What the heck is that thing? Some sort of cucumber or worm? And 6 foot??!!

bobbit/eunice worm. 6ft is crazy, I would be afraid that a worm that size would bite me good
Do not want

Yikes! Those things look like something from outerspace!
http://www.scuba-equipment-usa.com/marine/...s/Eunice_sp.jpg
I hope I never see one of them pop out of my toilet.

oh my....I hate those things I once had one if my old tank that ate part of my star each night, I did finally catch it, dont ask me how i killed it though

Yup. You can tell just by watching it for a couple minutes that it is a pure evil opportunistic hell raiser. It is still a baby but I've seen it stretch out over halfway across the tank so it is at least 5"-6" long and a bit over 1/8" wide. Normally it will only come out an inch or two though and if it gets spooked at all it just disappears, my eyes can't even track it so either it is super fast or it has teleportation technology. I'm hoping for the former

I stopped by Barrier Reef Aquariums today and picked up a sweet pink+green millepora and ALMOST talked them into clipping me a frag of their cali tort from their Elos display tank. There's pics of it here but you kinda have to see it in person, it just glows blue and you can see it from across the store. I think I'll be able to convince them to sell me some soon

edit: oh yeah and I met a PE sales rep at my LFS today and he gave me a pack of PE mysis and it is awesome stuff. Much bigger chunks than hikari so spot feeding LPS goes twice as fast

http://www.michiganreefers.com/forums/adva...ighlight=bobbit

Here is a fascinating tale of a reefer trying to rid himself of a bobbit worm. I read the whole story its fairly long but interesting.

I just read that whole thing.
WOW.

I read it too, thanks for the link that was awesome. It is cool that he got it out alive and was able to find it a home.

It sounds like my plan to grab it with tweezers will only rip it in half and probably not kill it, I might try some sort of fishing line like slapshot used almost successfully in that thread.

I had forgotten about my Idaho grape monti since I got it at the swap two weeks ago because it is up top on the side. The guy I bought it from grew it under 400w halides so I thought it would brown out or get mad or whatever. But when I looked at it today I thought the rim looked a little different so I pulled up a pic from when I got it and realized that not only has it kept most of its color it has attached, encrusted and grown 1/8-1/4" around all the edges in 2 weeks Here's a pic:



So I started looking through more older pictures and found some other things that have really grown, here's my first acan frag that I got as a single head with a few babies a little over 4 months ago and is now about 6 large heads and over a dozen more small ones:



6 weeks of growth on 3 of my chalices:



And 2.5 months of growth on some zoas, started as about 20 and they have grown all around the frag plug and off in several different directions and there is well over 100 now




I've been dosing seachem fuel, feeding mysis, oyster feast and phyto every day or two, and once a week before my water change I do full cubes of BBS, cyclopeeze and ON prime reef soaked in selcon overnight which turns the water into a milkshake and I can't even see the back glass. It seems like a ton of food for 3 gallons but I feed the mysis carefully with tweezers, replace the micron fabric every 3-4 days and my pump doesn't let anything settle anywhere. I've tried weighing my chaeto and it grows 20-25% per day and I remove about 2.0g dry weight with my water change each week yet my nitrates and phosphates read as 0 with my API kit and no other algaes grow in any significant amount

nice update. that acan reminds me of the one I got...so that might be what mine will look like when it starts growing
Sounds like feeding is paying off! I'm going to start feeding my tank just a little this week...

Yep, you gotta hit the acan with some mysis every couple days if you want them to really grow. At first mine would just take one big mysis every 2-3 days but now among the 15 or so heads that are big enough to eat it will take half a cube if I let it. Just make sure you rinse them really well and keep an eye on your algae/nitrates/phosphates.

wasn't even planning on feeding them twice a week lol. would zooplankton be good enough including cyclop eeze? cuz I don't have mysis yet...

You can try it, when I feed cyclopeeze I turn the pumps off and wait a bit for the water to be completely still and then carefully feed with one of those plastic eyedropper/pipette things to give it a better chance to grab some of it. IMO mysis is the best thing to feed acans and most other LPS because the chunks are just so much bigger but they like cyclopeeze and other smaller foods too.

awesome growth.

Boo your inbox is full. How am I supposed to bug you about your awesome skills? I picked up the drivers I talked to you about... so far it seems like a very inconsistent current at setting 1-6, once it hits 7-250 it is smooth.

But I wanted to ask a few questions about your power supply as my tank is slowly coming together. Did you put a new DC adapter on your arduino or did you split the power off differently? I don't want to blow my board up, being this close... My Cree's are scheduled to be in this week. Glass is about to be cut. My evil plan is coming to fruition! ... of course, with your help

updates cpt. what's been goin on????!!!!