FrugalReef Blog

It’s amazing how much reef content there is on youtube!  Seems like everybody must be videotaping their aquariums! I’ve added a new module to the wiki installation that will allow us to embed youtube videos right into the articles.   This is great because sometimes no photo can do justice for a creature, some creatures are just amazing in the ways they move!

Check out Lettuce Nudibranch to see how this embeding is done, and to see frugalreef’s first contribution to the youtube community.  Notice that the movies are all wrapped in a nonprintable markup to prevent them from trying to print out when a user tries to print a char sheet.   This is important, because youtube videos won’t print!

I’ve implemented a far improved captcha anti-spam system.   This new system uses captcha’s from http://recaptcha.net/.  There are a couple great things about this system.   First, the captchas go to a good cause.  Every time you fill one of these captchas out, you’re helping to digitize a book for the internet Archive or old editions of the New York Times.  Second, the captchas are known secure, because the words submitted to the system are those that failed OCR by the high end production systems that are digitizing these books.   Third, the captcha is very user friendly with both the ability to hear the puzzle (for the diabled) and the ability to easily aquire a new puzzle if the one you’re looking at is garbage.

Hello everyone!  Today I moved us over to a new hosting company.  We’ll see a higher quality of service and hopefully no downtime :)  Good luck to us!   If I lost any edits while doing the move I apologize!  If you see any problems please email me at drachs at gmail dot come right away!

Skimmers been off for a few days so I kicked it back on because I noticed the water in the sump getting a bit frothy. The sumplight has been broken for a couple days too, but that’s also repaired. The formula 28 blocks have all disolved so I replaced them with 4 total today. Everybody looks happy. I’m not happy with the progression of the algae growth in my sump. My little “pod” tank still appears to be a total toxic soup, I’m not going to be transfering any water from it into the main tank anymore, I don’t know what’s wrong with it but not even algae is growing in there. Little hydrozoids are everwhere in the tank, by the thousands, I guess that’s a good sign that everyone is healthy. Mandarin is fat and happy. Snails are starting to make a lot of progress cleaning the algae growth off the back wall…. algae growth in the tank must have slowed alot. I’m noticing alot less algae growth on the tank glass as well. I think this may be because I’ve not been aggressively feeding phyto lately.

Well, looks like my pod tank crashed hard. Ammonia is through the roof. I did a 30% water change and didn’t see any change in ammonia levels.

Becky merged her nano with our big tank today. It’s nice to have all the neat stuff together, lets just hope everything stays stable. Parameters are in line but man I’m going through formula 28 blocks like they’re going out of style. Pod tank keeps clearing up, as if the algae can’t keep up with the pod consumption rate.

Put together a pod factory tank today. I used a 10 gallon glass tank and hood, 5 gallons of water from the main tank, a few pieces of completely bleached rock I had laying around and Becky’s bubble wand. I’ve got it on a 6hour on, 6 hour off cycle and I inoculated it with DT’s phyto and a little sample of “Tigger Pods” I bought from Aquatic Environments.

Tank is going great, looks like 3 formula 28 blocks is what it takes to maintain calcium and alkalinity. Today is the first day that all the parameters seem inline. The basketstar came out and fed last night, turns out he doesn’t like the LED nightlights, so I’ve turned them off for now. I’ll try to turn them back on when he’s healthier.

Inhabitents look good today, water doesn’t smell “dying” anymore like it did yesterday after the addition of all that live rock.

The storage tank we had the new rock in rose to 2ppm of ammonia! I needed to get those rocks out of there, so I moved them to the display today. I’m sure the display will provide plenty of water to buffer the situation but I’ll watch it closely. Everything is pretty organized, so I’ll take pictures tomorrow.