Recent content by montoya

Hello all. I haven't been on the forum for ages. I hope all is well with everyone. I'm starting a small 29 gallon "fish only" tank with a few small fish. I'm thinking of a basic LED fixture just to provide some viewing lighting. When I search for general info. on LED aquarium lighting I get...

A quick question. Are the Mag Drive, Supreme and Danner brand pumps all the same? I need to replace the impeller and cover on my pump in my sump. The only markings I find on my unit are "Model 7 Utility Pump" and "8C99". I can find nothing to indicate a brand name. When I do a search the...

The jumping thing is good advice. I had a Niger Trigger years ago. I had it for a couple years. It was tame, ate out of my fingers, let me pet it and the whole bit. One morning I came downstairs and it was laying dead on the carpet. I have no idea why it would jump out of my tank after two years...

Slayer, Everything you describe sounds normal for a Royal Gramma. They can be odd little fish. Mine rarely swims "upright" like most fish. It is always tipped to one side when it swims. It too hides most of the day in the rock. I usually only see it at feeding time. It is rare that it swims...

I've got improvement - about 1/2 my star polyp colony is partially open this afternoon. Not sure if the high salinity was the culprit or if it was just coincidence in timing.

Biff - I explored doing this but I'm not sure exactly how to set it up. What do you use for a valve to go with the float? The toilet float/valve combos I'm familiar with all have a large threaded water inlet at the bottom to connect to a household water input pipe. Do you run standard PVC pipe...

Thanks everyone. Biff - I might try a dip if things don't improve over the weekend. It does seem odd that only polyps seem to have issues in my tank. To parrotchute's point about water chemistry - during my routine maintenance this morning I did find that my salinity had shot up to 1.028. Not...

Is anyone using the Eshopps gravity fed top off valve system? I'm attracted by the cost - Foster and Smith has them for just over 20 bucks. I have a gravity fed water top-off line going to my sump now. I have a ball valve in-line and hoped to be able to control the water level by simply...

I'll keep an eye on them and ignore the worm for now. I'm a a skeptic because my first ever colony of polyps (common brown "button" polyps) did well for a month or so then closed up for a year and a half - no exageration. They didn't die off - they just stayed closed. Just in the past two months...

Buried in a previous thread I mentioned my Star Polyp colony suddenly closed. Unfortunately it has been about 4 days now with no signs of them coming back out. Anyway I was staring at my tank a short time ago lamenting the fact that I have nothing but crappy luck with polyps of any kind. It...

garydm - you still might be ok. It's hard to compare. A big part of the puzzle is how "wet" or "dry" your skimate is. If you set your collection cup low into the water you'll get more water/less actual gunk each time. If you set it high you will get more gunk/less water. Your 1 gallon over...

I've got the same problem. To make a long story longer I bought a beautiful colony of star polyps about a month ago. They have been open without fail during that time. I broke a piece of the mat off and moved it to the far side of my tank. Both doing fine until yesterday. Not a single polyp on...

garydm - sorry if I missed something but are you saying you have pulled only a gallon or so total over a period of several months? That seems very light although like others point out it varies greatly depending on water quality. I have a CPR BakPak on my lightly stocked 55 gallon. The skimmer...

I'm not sure what brand I have - I bought it used. I'll have to look to see if it has any markings on it. It's a factory made acrylic wet/dry. the complete system "ready to use" with filter, overflow box and and almost new MAG return pump was only $ 50.00. I had been looking for a used setup...

Thanks - I will try the knife/credit card suggestion to see if I can coax the snail off. Tristan - what the heck is a Snuby snack? Is it something I can feed my kids if the snail doesn't like them?