Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)

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mark.hill said:
Mr. Wilson - I couldn't agree more. For those of us newbees (just started in 2008 so I still consider myself a newbee) without a scientific bone in our body, that type of practical information would be extremely helpful and would eliminate some of the frustration. There are many of us willing to try this hobby and have the desire to do so responsibly but need the wisdom and guidance to the extent you talk about.

Nineball - I have been following your thread from the beginning (and as a result reviewed ChingChai's as well) and without a doubt the information learned here has been more helpful just in the last couple of months than what I learned over the last two years. Thank you and keep up the good work! p.s. I'm only about an 1 3/4 hours away from Orlando so I may decide to go as well. If so, I hope to see you there!
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Thank you very much Mark. If the experience and enthusiasm is sustained due to practical useful information being made available through a book on the basics combined with the intellect and power available in this forum, then this will be a milestone project. If not, at least we will have learned something about volleyball!!!!! Don't forget we will have the web cams for the display as well as the fish room.

See you in Orlando!!

Peter
 
Briney Dave said:
Mr. Wilson, regarding your comments on current writting either being way too tech or take your fish bowl and fill it with water then add fish" LOL; I could not agree more

Despite being a bit more up on the tech side of the scale than the average keeper, I hate having wade through that to get to the meat of what I want to know.

For example: If I am researching adding ozone to my reef; its ok to know how it forms in nature but I would really rather get to the part where a fellow reef keeper says "... here is my set up, how I dose the ozone, and what it has done for me..." Here is what can happen if you mess it up and why

not a five page listing of all of the intermediate chemical reactions as ozone enters the tank. a simple footnote directing me to a research source if I need to know more is plenty enough. Suggestions like many ozone users dump the ozone into their skimmer then directly into a large carbon reactor: That is helpful to know. Lightening being a natural producer of ozone less helpful LOL

sign me up for a first edition of this book as well

David
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I know my way around a reef tank but I too go crazy sifting through pages of filler that I will promptly forget and likely never need to know. I can never find out, to stick with your ozone example, if nitric acid generated from corona discharge ozonizers (with exhausted desiccant) really causes problems in a reef tank. We really don't need to know this stuff, just as I don't really need to know how a combustion engine works. I just need to know which hole is for the oil and which is for the gas and which peddle makes it go faster and which one slows it down and hopefully stops it. As a group we need someone we trust to tell us what to use and how to use it. Then we can go on the forum and argue about it :)

What I would like to have is a quick and reliable reference that tells me to set my ozonizer to come on at 390 mv and shut off at 400 mv ORP, end of story. I would also like a simple resource that tells me which is better (cost effective & convenient) A) corona discharge ozonizer or B) UV lamp ozone generator. Certainly one of them is the right choice, and I know I'm not going to decide based on which one my local store carries or something a manufacturer posts on the internet.

On top of this we get seemingly reliable info from conflicting sources. I've read reports that you should never run ozone through a post skimmer (dry) carbon filter as it's a fire hazard. I've also read manufacturer's instructions stating that it is dangerous to run ozone without carbon to remove residual ozone. Conversely, articles from well respected experts stating that the residual ozone is negligible and sitting in an office with a photocopier or having a kids electric train set creates far more ozone. I'm hoping that I can compile some answers and link some info to back them up for those that need to know more.

Some of the technical info is interesting within the context of the hobby, but certainly not a diagram of the chemical chain of o3. I think it's useful to know that ozone increases the overall efficiency of a protein skimmer, but decreases the stability of the bubbles that collect proteins, thus skimming less but oxidizing (reducing/removing) more. I think people would also like to hear first hand reports of how ozone has degraded plastics in pumps and protein skimmers so they can fine tune accordingly. Even simple tips like the use of (ozone resistant) silicone airline rather than (standard) PVC airline slips through the cracks.

People ask on the forums all the time "do I need an air pump for my ozone generator, or can I use the venturi in my protein skimmer?". They rarely get the practical answer that "yes, air can be drawn into the ozonizer via the skimmer pump venturi or needle wheel intake, but here are the actual air meter numbers to show how the added resistance decreases air intake for the skimmer (1000 LPH without ozonizer, 700 LPH with ozonizer, 1300 LPH with ozonizer and air pump)". Sorry these numbers are only estimates - wait for the book :)

I think we can take a step back and rethink some of our methods as well. Part of this process includes looking into how we got here historically as a hobby. We all collectively decided to use protein skimmers as our means of adding ozone 40 years ago. Protein skimmers have changed drastically over time and perhaps we need to go back to dosing ozone with gas reactors and let skimmers function without interference of physical oxidization of the materials they are made of and the degradation of the bubble stability and air/gas intake. I also see a lot of chillers being used. I have never used a chiller on a tropical aquarium, nor do I see a demand for one. With evaporative coolers and proper venting, your chiller will never need to turn on. This is an area where a small mod can make a huge difference. On a similar note, I have come across a number of threads about excess humidity and windows sweating in the Canadian winter. When I ask the thread starter to use a humidity meter (hygrometer) they usually report back that it is well within the normal/safe range, so the problem is in the window insulation and construction and not the fault of the aquarium.

This is the kind of invaluable info that you just can't find with our current printed resources, not easily anyway.

I think the main reason why ozone falls in and out of popularity is because of the lack of knowledge on its use and the potential dangers of its misuse. It's arguably the most important/effective filtration method employed by public aquariums yet it isn't even stocked by your LFS.
 
we certainly are of the same mind set on reef keeping instructional reading. I gave up trying to get a straight answer on use or don't use much less on how. Ching has a seperate reacator body, I may try that on my build as well. (just goes to show how big the need is for this book)
 
Briney Dave said:
we certainly are of the same mind set on reef keeping instructional reading. I gave up trying to get a straight answer on use or don't use much less on how. Ching has a seperate reacator body, I may try that on my build as well. (just goes to show how big the need is for this book)
Click to expand...

One option is to use an old or damaged protein skimmer as a separate ozone reactor. The other is to use a proper gas reactor full of bio balls that fills and drains on a siphon like a Carlson surge device (CSD), or a pressurized trickle filter reactor that has a constant water level of about 2". For commercial applications a venturi on a long return line is enough.
 
Sorry to chime in here negatively, Mr. Wilson et al, but the last thing you need to do is publish a book. What you need is your own web site, a place where you can post something, edit it, change it, update as required. You need to own this yourself and NOT allow anyone else to post to it or drown it in dopey and unnecessary comments, but keep it to just the facts. You can post all the pictures and videos you like, hosting those on a separate server if required and linking them back to your own page.

You are not clear as to whether you need this to be a money-making venture or if it is somewhat more altruistic. If you need money you can sell userids and passwords to access your information. Otherwise just post it and invite others to visit from time to time. You can set up a newsletter if you expect to be publishing new material on a fairly constant basis, or just fire out a notice to those who subscribe to say what and when has been updated on your site.

This is far less work than publishing a book. You can start it right away with what you know now, and add more material when and as you see fit in your own time.

Dave.M
 
dave.m said:
Sorry to chime in here negatively, Mr. Wilson et al, but the last thing you need to do is publish a book. What you need is your own web site, a place where you can post something, edit it, change it, update as required. You need to own this yourself and NOT allow anyone else to post to it or drown it in dopey and unnecessary comments, but keep it to just the facts. You can post all the pictures and videos you like, hosting those on a separate server if required and linking them back to your own page.

You are not clear as to whether you need this to be a money-making venture or if it is somewhat more altruistic. If you need money you can sell userids and passwords to access your information. Otherwise just post it and invite others to visit from time to time. You can set up a newsletter if you expect to be publishing new material on a fairly constant basis, or just fire out a notice to those who subscribe to say what and when has been updated on your site.

This is far less work than publishing a book. You can start it right away with what you know now, and add more material when and as you see fit in your own time.

Dave.M
Click to expand...

Don't worry, I don't take it as negative, but constructive. I have heard that there is no money to be made in publishing books, but lots to be made in publishing websites. This is why I haven't followed through with my idea of writing a book, and perhaps why few such books exists on the shelves. The problem with websites is there are already too many of them. Aquarium forums are slowly being culled out and streamlined into Reef Central and some regional ones that serve local advertisers.

Bob Fenner is very reliable and knowledgeable, but his website wetwebmedia.com has so many brief answers to the same question, it's hard to sit down and research a subject thoroughly. It's more of a Dear Abbey column where hobbyists write in looking for the answer they want to questions like "can I keep a nurse shark and a green moray in a 180 gallon tank?" (BTW, no Dave you can't).

The value in a book is you can old it in your hand and flip through it for the answers you need. I have a stack of old beat up fish books beside me right now. They don't offer any info that I can't find through a search engine, but I know who the authors are and I can treat their contributions accordingly. Books are written thoroughly with fact checking, and editing while posts in threads and blogs are off the top of your head "warts and all", as Peter would say. There is something to the linear flow of a book that you can't get with a website. It goes back to the point I made earlier that people need to be guided by someone they know and hopefully trust. At the very least it's like eating fast food. It may not be the very best you can get, but you know what you are getting :) It's easy to make mistakes when you follow the filtration advice from one school of thought and apply the display tank flow dynamics from another.

The problem with sites that have good articles, and there are a few, is that the articles tackle one subject in three parts often spanning a two year period. Nobody sits down and writes an all inclusive reference guide, or reef gospel for websites like they must for a book. Of course some of the info becomes obsolete before the print is dry, but that's what the online reference is for. The book can't be written in a way that makes it easily dated or I might as well start volume 2 now :)

A book is a good jumping off point for topics. Biology doesn't change with time and even our understanding of it is changed little. I have some fish books from the 60's, 70's, and 80's that are still accurate for the most part. It's only the tricks of the trade that develop as we learn to harness our captive reefs.

I think there can be a happy marriage between a tangible book that doesn't make any money and an online resource that keeps that book stay current, adding discussions, feedback, and videos. It's like taking a course in school. You still have a workbook or text book that outlines the subject, even though much of the lesson is oral or online. I'm sure there are lots of online bibles, but they don't sell nearly as well as the paperback :)

I'm still up in the air on the whole subject. It will take a year or two to produce something so at this point in time it doesn't matter if my cover page says "book" or "ebook" at this point in time :) It's opinions like yours that help me narrow down my options. Thanks

Wait, what was that part about a money making venture???
 
Well, I don't want to sidetrack Peter's thread too far (sorry, Peter) so maybe we should continue to discuss this off-line, but I would like to address a few of your concerns. My point about keeping others comments out was exactly what you are referring to about details getting lost in the noise. You can write the web site to be just like a book in chapters, except that, being electronic, it becomes a living document instead of a dinosaur printed on dead trees. In fact Albert Thiel did this very thing about fifteen years ago (No, I will not get into a debate on the merits of his writing. I mention this just as an example.). And yes, you can make money by selling access, though you will have to pay a programmer to set this up for you.

Something to hold in the hand is nice, and those who wish may print off your pearls of wisdom from the web at their leisure, but something that stays current is more valuable to us all in the long run. I have whole bookcases full of reef aquarium books right back to the early 70s (Peter Wilkens). What good are most of them? They are so sadly out of date that they aren't worth much outside of the nostalgia factor. I still like to look at the pictures. (Remember the Dutch reef aquarium model?)

Anyway, please PM me if you wish to discuss further. Let's make lots of room in this thread for all those pictures Peter is about to publish at any moment! ;)

Dave.M
 
Mr Wilson and Peter,

I think I see a series of books here:

Beginners guide
Medium guide
Advanced guide
Fish
Corals etc.
Diseases
Equipment
Feeding
etc...

Haven't seen anything along these lines anywhere and with your knowledge and experience and input from everyone on this forum - guaranteed best sellers.....

I have been enjoying the humor and substance of this thread immensely.

Attached pic of hermit crab eating my Picasso Trigger the other morning - not sure if the crab caught the guy during the night or found him dead - no way of knowing.,

Rodd

31173_1444180377517_1023358186_1292732_6522777_s.jpg
 
Kipps said:
Better picture:

31173_1444180377517_1023358186_1292732_6522777_n.jpg
Click to expand...

As you said, there is no way of knowing the cause of death, but here are a few forensic pieces to the CSI puzzle...

1) Those giant red hermits are strong enough to catch and kill a fish.
2) Triggers do sleep at night, often on their sides up against a rock where they can be easily immobilized.
3) The pectoral (side) and caudal (top) fins are clear, free of the cloudy/milky white slime coating that would indicate stress or bacterial infection. This rules out many diseases.
4) Triggerfish are pretty tough due to their strong scales so they are less likely to get ich or other external parasites.
5) If the fish had an internal parasite or bacteria it would likely be sick for a few weeks and show outward signs of infection that you would have noticed.
6) Clearly the eye is a delicacy :)
 
Mr Wilson,

to further the investigation - the trigger was fine at 10pm the evening before - eating well and showing no signs of distress - I have had the trigger for more than 3 years without any previous problems.

I noticed the crime early (6:00 am) the following morning - at that time the kill seemed pretty fresh - both eyes were pretty intact but he was dead... There was no way the hermit was going to give up his meal.

At about 9:00am both eyes had been consumed and the hermit had gained access into the trigger through his one eye and proceeded to devour him from the inside out.

By 5:00pm that evening all that was left was an empty shell, which I managed to remove.


Rodd
 
mr.wilson said:
As you said, there is no way of knowing the cause of death, but here are a few forensic pieces to the CSI puzzle...

1) Those giant red hermits are strong enough to catch and kill a fish.
2) Triggers do sleep at night, often on their sides up against a rock where they can be easily immobilized.
3) The pectoral (side) and caudal (top) fins are clear, free of the cloudy/milky white slime coating that would indicate stress or bacterial infection. This rules out many diseases.
4) Triggerfish are pretty tough due to their strong scales so they are less likely to get ich or other external parasites.
5) If the fish had an internal parasite or bacteria it would likely be sick for a few weeks and show outward signs of infection that you would have noticed.
6) Clearly the eye is a delicacy :)
Click to expand...

further points to add

the red hermit is an opportunistic carnivore
It takes its job seriously as part of the clean up crew
the trigger probably passed on the offer to be blindfolded before eaten
that's and expensive lunch:fun2:

Seriously sorry for your loss Kipps
 
Those are the kind of hermits that belong in a small species tank on their own or in a sump where they can clean up.
 
Mr Wilson, I find the idea of a book or website with your information interesting. I have great respect for your knowledge. I am on Bob Fenner's site every morning before work and I know what you mean about the short answers, but there are most days a nugget or two to be had while I'm eating my cheerios! I love to read books, I'm in the middle of Advanced Marine Aquarium Techniques by Jay Hemdal and it has been a good read so far. I agree that most information can be found with google, but I just like to have the book to thumb through. The website idea also has a lot of merit because it can be constantly updated. Which ever way you go, count me in. I can't imagine not getting my money's worth!
 
Bob Fenner is a great guy, one of my favourite authors. He has been in the business since he was very young and still hasn't stopped learning. He's good at explaining difficult topics without getting too technical (read boring). It's too bad his book with Anthony Calfo didn't work out. The website is much easier to follow with the fairly recent facelift. I was lucky enough to meet Bob when he was in town. He's just as sharp and funny in person.
 
mr.wilson said:
There's always work to be done on a millionairium.

One thing I would like to tackle with a reef book is bridging the gap between theory and practice, scientist and hobbyist. I lay somewhere in the middle and hopefully we all get along.

I was thinking of adding footnotes that could be linked to video and further discussions. Maybe Peter can help me with the technical aspect of that. I would also like to directly include the reef keeping community, especially people who like to tinker and experiment and have the resources to do so. I set out a few brief examples of hair brained ideas that I feel are worthy of further exploration in this post http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=17217015&postcount=300

If you are up to it, you can try out some of the ideas on your own or we can figure out how we can all pool our resources as a group and somehow get empirical data with some semblance of a control on the experiment. Peter is probably in the best position to host some tests with his elaborate fish room. Having access to accurate testing equipment is also an asset.

There are a few formulas around for pump flow rates and plumbing drain rates if you are gifted at math, but real world numbers like the ones for automobile fuel consumption carry a lot more weight with me. If we could pool our numbers we can put compare them for some user friendly rule of thumb charts.

Too often we try three things (chemicals, products, methods etc.) at once, not knowing what the impact is of each, or if we did it right - for long enough - or for too long for that matter. Much of the information we have in this hobby is trial and error and loosely based theories. It would be nice to tie up some of the loose ends so we know once and for all if carbon works better in a fluidized bed reactor or if deep sand beds really need to be deep. We can leave the technical stuff like "what is detritus and skimmer sludge comprised of?" to the scientists with access to labs and R&D grants.

I'm not talking about bona fide experiments that live up to scientific scrutiny. Just simple tests that fulfill our requirements as hobbyists that something does what the manufacturers claim. If we do a good job on it, we can hit up some sponsors for freebies for bata testing. We have an immense data base here at RC. We just need a way to disseminate the information, but on a forum it can be hard to qualify the source of the information. We need to organize and compile info to discern the good from the bad. We need a way to separate the wheat from the... not so wheat :)

The ATS (algae turf scrubber) threads got out of control once a manufacturer started blindly feeding his "information" into them. It made it impossible to distinguish "good" information from "bad". I think we can fine tune our technology and methodology and advance our hobby with a little help from our other ology friend, biology.
Click to expand...

Let me know how i can help. i am an engineer employed at a laser welding division for the largest steel company in the world. I am always interested in experimenting
 
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