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For power-compacts, the purple-ish bulbs are actually not a true actinic. They are 7100K, which has a broader spectrum and hence more "usuable" light for coral. Actinic-03 is strictly 420-460nm (blue) and will make the coral colors "pop" more, especially after the halides shut off. Since...

hmm..do u have first hand experience with the MATRIX product? I've heard/read from various sources that the product is good for nitrifying bacteria, but useless for denitrifying. This is because of the size of the media, being so small it could not truly provide anaerobic pockets where...

Carlo, I did consider the 5gallon buckets idea originally when I was setting up my system, but it's not very aesthetic since I have no place to hide the stuff. Now if only my girlfriend would let me break thru the wall behind the display tank into my garage... to clear things up, I have 1 tank...

not to replace a skimmer, just to remove the dependancy on getting a huge expensive one, plus I'm not a fan of the "over-skimming" concept. I want my main filtration to be biological, which is why I went with the deep-sand-bed. But since DSBs are rumored to cause system crashed over time (due to...

Check your plumbing. If it's threaded connections, make sure it's tight. I use teflon tape on them. If the air is coming in from one of your glued connections, you can use some vasaline around the joints as a temporary fix...once you've isolate the leak..you've gotta cut and reglue...

Carlo, I read 0ppms for Nitrate....which is all the work of my Liverock and DSB because my skimmer doesn't pull out anything (Amiracle brand, rated for 125g. can't complain, it was free). I'm not that really stocked anyway (4in blue hippo, 4in yellow tang, ocellaris, randall's shrimp goby, and...

thx for everyone's feedback. My main reason for looking into Prodibio was to be able to increase my biological filtration so as to not have to depend on over-skimming (ie having a skimmer rated at 2-3x your tank volume). To me that's unnatural, and you're basically skimming out alot of your...

Curious if anyone has tried using Prodibio yet,specifically BIO-DIGEST and REEF-BOOSTER. If so, what were your results?

Thx. I'm going to add some filter floss to my return section of the sump to see if it clears things up. I did adjust my return flow, so it seems that change in flow pattern is kicking up stuff. I guess it'll only get worse, since I'm hooking up a SCWD and seaswirl soon, so my pattern should...

I noticed in my 75G mix-reefed that I seem to have alot of particles blowing around in my water column. At first I thought they were micro-bubbles, so I turned off all the pumps/powerheads and let the water stand for about 30 min. When I do this I see alot of particles ... some are pods which is...

Mott, both PAR and PPFD measure irradiance levels, and the higher the better. There are a few differences, but the one I want to point out is that PAR is measured at the source (bulb), and PPFD is measured at the target. Seeing the PPFD is more useful to me, since i want to know how much light...

The efficiency of the bulb is also directly related to the ballast you are running. Sanjay has a web site where he publishes different PPFD values for different bulbs/ballast combinations. I like that he publishes the PPFD value, instead of PAR, since this is a more accurate measure of what your...

thanks all, for your input. This is one of those times where I was able to resist an impulse buy and actually research a fish before I got it..glad I did. I'll probably setup a species tank for butterflys later on, with some leathers and shrooms.

Hi all, I've been reading a lot of conflicting articles about the Copperband butterfly fish and whether they are "reef-safe". Some say they're reef safe and the only difficulty is to get them to eat frozen foods. Others say they nip at stony corals... was wondering if anyone here had any...

Where on Rt-9 is it? I've been up and down that route and don't recall seeing that store.