Just thought I'd ask - it sounds like the 1073.020 works just fine. I had selected 1073.020 based on price, but when my LFS called Tunze to order, Tunze rep recommended 1073.040 for a CAD 39g.

He said flow for a .020 at 4 ft would be only 200 gph, while .040 would be more than double that. I think the big difference, besides gph, is the pumping head of the .020 is only 2m, while .040 is 3m.

Besides, Tunze only sent the .040 and I really want to get my tank set up, so will bite the bullet. Thanks for the info.

i had figured i was getting more flow than this -- this was surprising, so i just did my rough calculations based on the head loss graph provided with the return pump and an approximated height for the head loss, and that came out to about 265gph after head loss. total system water volume = ~30gal. (after subtracting for water/rocks/sand/equipment). for 8x turnover, that would require 240gph. so, i'm getting about 8.9x turnover through the sump.

using the same estimated numbers, but using the 1073.040 graph, it comes out to 475gph after head loss. 30gal. system water volume would come out to about 15.8x.

i have a lot of rock and sand in both the display and sump, so my system water volume may be lower than yours. you are definitely highlighting an important point, though: you've got to do your head loss calculations, because you're not getting as much flow as you think! this definitely makes a more compelling case for the 1073.040, but i'll be sticking with the 1073.020 for now.

Yes, the head loss is also a confusing calculation for me - you not only have to included distance, but elbows, connections, values, etc.

After looking at the very fuzzy graphs in the 1073 on-line documentation, I came to the same rough estimates as you for .020 and .040. Still not sure how much sand and rock will be in tank.

I think I'd be very happy with the .020 too, but I'll have a .040 in hand later today, so will bite the bullet and pay the difference. I'm not 100% convinced that the extra $60 is worth it, but it's a great pump and I'll have the ability to have more flow, if needed.

Thanks again for all the feedback.

Well, I had originally planned on making this a strictly SPS endeavor, but when my wife and I saw this piece at my LFS (Atlantis Aquariums) the other day, she convinced me to change my mind. This is by far the best-colored euphyllia I've ever seen. The polyps/tentacles are BRIGHT neon green with neon purple tips.

They fragged 2 BIG heads that are about to split off a larger colony. We brought it home, drip-acclimated for about 25 minutes (i don't usually drip acclimate corals, but I wanted to at least do a little bit of acclimation for this one). I set it down and away from the mp10 flow the best I could, but it still was getting hammered pretty well. so, i turned the mp10 down to about 60% to let the frogspawn get used to the location and gradually turned it up over the next few hours. It opened up very well after about two hours and has been doing very well ever since, even with the mp10 turned back up to 100% reef crest.

Jaws has been hanging out right next to it. I'm a bit worried about him getting stung (I doubt whether that's a legitimate concern, but still).

anyway, without further ado, my new frogspawn (actinics only, since I can't get the colors under halides to reproduce properly -- i'm going to have to fool around with it a little bit more):






and, some other new pictures:

Jaws, ready to strike! (... but not really).


Midas Blenny, surveying (and you can see how the frogspawn looks washed out and transparent -- can't figure it out, because the rest of the colors are very accurate, and i'm not using a flash or anything):

how has no one said anything about this frogspawn?!

not the rarest of rarities, but let's be honest -- how often do you see a coral that can top the color of this guy?

Very very nice... and I am happy to see that it is that color under our lights! I am putting new corals in next weekend and im stoked. I am with you, mine was going to be sps only, but seeing this has changed my mind. I have been looking at different torch and frogspwans for about an hour now cause of yours. Nice find!

thanks

very cool frogspawn, I don't usually like them but yours is very nice.

i noticed in a pic a page or two back that your green slimer browned out a bit. Has it or was it just the pic? I recently got a blue stag and another acro and they both browned out. I'm wondering if it is because of the light... are you still using the stock MH bulb?

thanks



frankly, it's always been browned out a bit, which has been very disappointing. the polyp extension has not been great since being in my tank, either, and it isn't growing/encrusting almost at all (just the slightest bit of encrusting). as a comparison, my orange digitata that i bought at the same time has grown significantly and done a fair amount of encrusting since being introduced.

i am still using the stock 14k bulb that came with the cad light fixture. i like the color, but i am underwhelmed with the intensity. that may have more to do with the ballast, too, i guess. it's hard to justify replacing it after 6 months, though.

my frags were a bit more colourful but now they're just brown. in comparision I have a birdsnest that I got at the same time which is not brown and showing growth. I too like the bulb, it has a very nice colour and I cant bring myself to swap it out for another after about 7 months now. do you dose calc or mag or anything like that?

I am currently dosing Brightwell Reef Code A&B for 2-part about 2 times per week (though i've recently added some new corals, so i haven't quite figured out my depletion rates yet). However, my experience is that it lacks adequate magnesium supplementation to be considered a full Ca/Alk maintenance solution, so i've recently placed an order with Bulk Reef Supply for 1gal each of their Ca, Alk and Mg 2-part stuff (plus I bought 3 of their 1gal jugs -- i figured $2.38/jug was about the best price i'd be able to get for a new/clean jug without impurities that you'd get in a milk jug, etc.). UPS is telling me it was delivered today. anyway, i'm going to start immediately supplementing more Mg (i'm testing at ~1000ppm right now) and continue dosing the brightwell 2-part until i run out of it, then switch over to the BRS 2-part formula.

other than that, i don't dose any chemical supplements.

as far as feeding corals, i bought some Reef Nutrition Roti-Feast last week, and I've fed that a couple times. i've tried to spot feed some mysis/cyclopeez to my frogspawn, but my attempts have been unsuccessful thus far. fish love the mysis too much!

Yeah thats the same skimmer, thanks for the link, glad to see it does work well.

...so how good is that Bubble Magus Mini? I've got some birthday money coming up and I'm trying to figure out the best place to invest it. Does is make a huge difference over the original CAD SKimmer our tanks came with?

i like it quite a bit better because of the adjustable wedge pipe. i wish it had a bubble-plate rather than just the diffuser, but it does a good job as-is -- certainly enough to make it a worthwhile upgrade. and, i've definitely had better production with the bubble-magus than with the stock skimmer. that could have something to do with my stocking levels (which have gone up since i had the stock skimmer).

the only reason i wouldn't buy it again would be if i changed out my whole sump to make room for a bigger skimmer like the NAC-6.

just a general announcement, i'm going to ask a mod to move my thread over to the "Members Aquariums" forum tomorrow. so, if you're following along, be sure to update your topic tracking!

and, this is my tank thread's official new home!

Thanks Lani!

Well, my Midas Blenny appears to be picking on my Jawfish. jawfish's tail is a little ragged, but more upsettingly, he appears to have been attacked from directly above, with a piece of his dorsal fin missing and a white abrasion on his body right below that. we found him in a corner of the tank outside of his normal burrow system, so i kind of escorted him back toward his burrows last night. he swam right into them and has been hanging out in that system of tunnels ever since. i think the blenny might have "cornered" him, so i'm glad that i was able to get him back to his burrow.

he is eating fine and isn't breathing fast or anything. just looks a little beat up. i do not believe i'm dealing with BSJ disease at this point and that it really is the midas blenny picking on him (they seem to be a little territorial with each other, and i've seen the blenny getting aggressive with the royal gramma as well).

so, my plan is to remove the blenny this afternoon. does anyone have any good advice on doing this while not killing/stressing my SPS? i've never had to remove a fish with SPS corals before, and the rock that the blenny lives in (that i'll almost certainly have to move) has my orange digitata puttied to it.

edit: i have read around, and it appears that the "bottle trap" is worth a shot. i'll give this a shot either this afternoon or tonight. hopefully i won't catch the wrong fish!

in the meantime, does anyone have any input on what to do about the wound on the jawfish?

i dosed some prime into the tank for slime coat/nutrient reduction, but other than that, i'm just kind of leaving him alone. this seems to me like just a normal type of wound, but i want to be very careful with him (my wife has already advised that she will be absolutely devastated if anything happens to him -- and was already crying last night for him, even though he looked ok).

is there anything i should be doing to treat it? again, there's no red sore or anything -- it currently just appears to be a single white scrape on his back next to the damaged dorsal fin.

thanks for any help you can give.

Sorry to hear about the jawfish, can't give any help either, but I wish both you and him the best of luck.

In regards to stressing the SPS, I wouldn't be too concerned. If you move some stuff around or even leave them out of water for a bit you will be fine. They will slime up a bit but you can baste them with tank water periodically and they will settle down a bit. My only concern for the coral would be breaking pieces off while moving rock but even then it will regrow and you can reattach the new frags.

Good luck with the jawfish.

well, i had to rip out every rock in my tank to do it, but i got the midas blenny out without apparently killing anything (though i think i'm going to lose a lot of coralline algae -- it's already going fluorescent on me).

Jaws is now supreme fish once again. he seems like he's doing ok. no abnormal behavior, and he's already staked out his new territory (about the same as the old territory).

epilogue: got the midas blenny back to the LFS, they gave me a pretty great deal on him -- traded him for 2x tonga nassarius, 4x nerites, 1x trochus and a cleaner shrimp (and 5g of fresh, 2.5g D-D salt water). you never get your money back when you trade in livestock, but this was not bad. thanks to my buds at Atlantis for that.

Glad to hear it worked out ok for you.

i took another look at the jawfish at lunch. i fed him a mix of hikari marine A pellets, tertramin flakes and hikari frozen mysis, all soaked in a combination of garlic guard and some roti-feast. he ate just fine, and by feeding him, i was able to get a little better look at him.

directly adjacent to the missing piece of his dorsal fin, he's got about 2-3 of the white-colored abrasions on his right side and 1 abrasion on his left side. the one on his left was the red/fresh-looking last night (noticed this after water cleared post-blenny extraction), but looking at it today, it either looked much less red or it looked healed over a bit. the damage to the fins appears to be "shredding" rather than "rotting"/necrosis.

based on this, i am going to just try and create a low-stress environment for him (balanced with the needs of the corals in the tank) as opposed to removing him to a QT. i acquired/added some API Stress Coat Marine to help with the healing.

unfortunately, despite the fact that the Stress Coat says right on the bottle that it doesn't make your skimmer foam, i had immediate and crazy foaming out of my skimmer, causing it to overflow back into the tank before i realized what was going on and could adjust the skimmer water level to fix that issue. sigh. so, i replaced the carbon in my filter sock and am hoping for the best with the reintroduced skimmate. there wasn't much skimmate in there (i just emptied it a day or two ago), but it's still not a desirable thing. good to know for anyone using this product.

I hate to hear that about these two not getting along... I was thinking about having both of these as well. How ofter does you jawfish visable, at least the head? I ask because I have bought a high priced goby before and i only saw him when it was feeding time and I dont want to spend 100 bucks on a jawfish to only see him five minutes.

mine is in view 99% of the time, front-and-center of the tank. he's constantly observing. that's a sign of a healthy jawfish. you wouldn't want to get one that doesn't watch your every move. it is -extremely- infrequent that i don't see him in the tank, even when he's not up front. he's definitely the best fish i've ever had, fresh or salt.

now, the question of "from where" he's observing may have more to do with the way you construct your aquascape. i have a long rock in the front of my aquascape that gives me a lot of options for burrowing. he seems to enjoy it. i do wish that I had provided more sand for him, but he seems to get along well enough with the sand he has (i have about 1.5" in the display, though he makes it deeper and shallower in some places).

Thanks danger, I bought a barnacle cluster and hollowed the back of a few out so my hopes is that he will decide to use this as an enterance

good luck -- be sure to get some pictures and let me know where to see them!

Will do on the pics... I just got done talking to a dude locally that might hook me up with a golden dwarf moray so that whole scenerio might be out the door. BTW, where do you have your mp10, on a side or the back wall?

i love those eels! the user "rehype" had a bluespot jawfish with the golden dwarf moray -- he has some great videos in his thread. so, it's doable. however, he advised that he had to keep the eel "well fed." just something to think about.

re: mp10 placement, mine is on the back wall on the right side.

7 weeks after adding my first two SPS frags, I've been getting crazy great growth from the orange digitata (pics to follow), but almost nothing out of the green slimer.

as such, and based on the conversation going on in AJ_Tsin's 47g thread, I'm thinking about "wafering" or at least partially wafering the slimer to build more of a colony/help spur some growth. any thoughts/suggestions?

I say go ahead and cut the slimer into 3 pcs. Leave one standing up and lay the other two down and see what develops.

just to update on Jaws the jawfish, he is almost completely healed up. his wounds are effectively invisible at this point, and the only evidence of any injury/stress is that his fins are still working on repairing themselves. but, he definitely looks like he's doing fine.

that's one tough fish!



i'm going to acquire some new corals in the next couple days. when i do, i'm going to cut up the slimer.

just ordered this 4" colony from AtlantisAquarium.net:





they called it "Intense Lime in the Sky Acropora Pultra" (not the original "Lime in the Sky," but i'm pretty pumped about it nonetheless!).

thats one awesome acro, and good to hear that the jawfish is doing good.

thanks

you can tell that Atlantis really saturates the photos on their site (i mean, look at the red/blue/green skin tones on the people holding frags in some of those pics!), but i've read nothing but positive reviews about them, and they obviously have a lot of nice stuff.

i'm just hoping that my tank can keep it colored up anything like it is in that picture.

also picked this guy up today from AtlantisAquariums.net...

ATL Ocean Blue Acropora Papillare

well, my corals arrived this morning. the ATL Ocean Blue Papillare looks very nice - good blue coloring on it, and it's already got got polyp extension sitting in my tank. it's a pretty deep blue color.

the Intense Lime in the Sky is a different story. it arrived in a bag of dirty, cloudy looking brown water, and it looked completely bleached on arrival. i tried to put it in the tank to see if it would color up at all, but i haven't had any success at this point. i called Atlantis to report it and sent a picture in, and they said they would extend the guarantee for a while to see if it could recover (it doesn't look like the tissue is sloughing off yet, though i've never had a bleached coral before, so it's hard to tell what's just a coral skeleton and what's just bleached.

i'm pretty bummed, because i was looking forward to adding this guy. but, it also bums me out because now i have to sit here with a bleached coral and try to bring it back to life, and if i can't, then it's going to slough off tissue and pollute the tank, etc. -- so, i basically am sitting here having paid a huge amount of money for a bleached coral.

would i be out of line to call Atlantis up and be like "i am not happy about having paid $$$ for a bleached coral -- i'd like a discount on my next order because of this."..?

What is the gaurantee? In my experience, corals that arrived in cloudy water were just a skeleton already. I would demand a full refund for that peice in your place.

Bummer about the Arco. Hopefully, they'll make good and send you a replacement or refund. Both pieces look great in photo.

Had a question on your Tunze 1073.020 pump - are you running at highest setting, lowest setting or somewhere in between? Is pump quiet? I'm curious, since I'm still working on the micro bubbles in my CAD 39 Pro.

i run my 1073.020 "wide open" (so, the highest flow setting). the pump itself is absolutely silent (not "pretty much silent" or "just about silent" as is often claimed by people running other pumps -- i mean you cannot hear it). it gives me nice, easy flow through the sump (for greater contact time with media/DSB/skimmer), which is good for me since i am getting my flow from my mp10 and tunze 6025 (i'd guess i'm looking at ~2500gph total through the tank after head loss). highly, highly recommended.

now, i'm not sure whether the tunze would solve your problem or not. are you sure your microbubbles are coming from the return pump? if so, you might want to think about a set of 2 or 3 interchangeable filter socks to catch water out of your drain line. that will help to quiet the drain-end of the sump as well as completely eliminate microbubbles.

the policy is to give store credit. the guy I talked to (Ming) said that they've never lost an aquacultured piece before, but that they've always attached the pieces to styrofoam blocks in the past (they didn't here because it was only a two coral order). but, you're right that this coral looks completely dead now, and the other piece (the ATL Ocean Blue Acropora Papillare) has some tissue recession on 2-3 of the bottom corallites. that tissue recession doesn't seem to be spreading, but i'm keeping my eye on it. any futher recession, and I may have to cut it and remount it, which would suck for a brand new coral.

in the meantime, all my other SPS are fine, and in light of the condition of the other coral, i'm not panicking that i have a water quality issue. i did add to the rowaphos i already have in the tank yesterday just to make sure i have phosphates under control (never had any measurable phosphates show up on tests done by myself or the LFS, but there's always a little bit of hair algae in the tank).

we'll see how it goes -- i called on Saturday and sent an email on Sunday morning to update them over the weekend. still waiting on a response there.

Hey tim, is atlantis net the local Atlantis online retail.......if thats so your bad luck is suprising i have heard good things bout the local shop from you and many others

nah, they're different. atlantisaquariums.net is in california. i think the local shop's internet page is like atlantisva.com or something (but they don't sell anything online).

since you mentioned it, local Atlantis is a great place to have available locally, and it has some -great- livestock in right now -- marvin (the owner) apparently brought some stuff back from LA with him. definitely worth taking a look if you've got some cash to spare. i'll tell you, based on a combination of this experience and the improvement of the selection locally, i will probably just buy from Atlantis from now on, or Fish World for larger colonies.

Thanks for the info. My Tunze is not silent, so need to do some adjusting. I'm hoping to get about 2500 gph between return and PHs.


My bubbles are coming from drain. I've added a sock (has helped a lot) and LRR, but am still getting the bubbles from returns. Almost seems my flow is too strong - can watch bubbles travel from drain chmbr, thru fuge and into return chmber. More fiddling!

What other sumps have you looked at that would work in this cabinet?

none in particular. the cadlights pro build thread over on reefcentral has a couple guys who have switched their sump for something that looks to be custom (reeftivo, etc.). i don't know what i'd do, but i don't have any pressing reason to do that right now (nor money that i'd want to allocate to that).

that's interesting -- what's not silent about yours? i've literally never had any trouble, other than when it came off the suction cups and started rattling on the sump.

still hadn't heard anything from them as of yesterday afternoon, so i sent another email. still no response as of this morning. i wouldn't be quite so annoyed if they hadn't said they'd get back to me on sunday or monday. i'm going to call them if i haven't heard anything by the end of the day today.

The pump just seems to vibrate. I've checked that it's on the cups, not touching sump walls and even moved it so tubing is not touching the cabinet or sump wall. I called Tunze to verify it's okay to run it thru the 1/2" returns, and they said it would be fine.

I've ordered a 1073.020 (in the hopes it helps with bubble issue) and will see (hear) if it's quieter than the one I have.

very unusual. i wonder if there's a problem with your impeller or something? i think the reviews of the pump on marine depot talked about someone getting the wrong-sized impeller on one of their pumps.




got a one-line email response from Atlantis yesterday evening saying that they would give me store credit for the piece i lost. which is ok, except for the fact that shipping is $48. so, unless they're willing to ship something for free or let me qualify for free shipping with the replacement pieces i choose, i'm out that money. so, i hope they let me qualify for free shipping on the replacement. anyone see something good on atlantisaquarium.net that might be worth grabbing with my credit?

i removed the piece from my tank yesterday, as it had begun to grow some algae, and i didn't want it to further pollute the tank. easier than i thought to detach it, despite the fact that it was epoxied in place.