Recent content by richwill

Hi all, I've updated my website to include a livestock section. It's a partial list of the tank's population, but might be worth taking a look. Click on the "Livestock Photos" link. fiskgeeks rule

Oh, by the way, the mandarin lives in my 180G tank which has a 30G refugium, and a 20G sump.

I've had a mandarin for about six months. Here's a snapshot taken yesterday. He seems to feed on the many teeming 'pods that are circulated back into display tank from my refugium. He also pecks at live rock and spits fine sand out his gills. In this photo he appears to be eating diatoms off...

Thanks! BARE? Bay Area R? E? No. Yes, that's a hammerhead on the left side of the tank.

I'd like to share these pictures of the progress of my tank. It's been up and running for about seven months. Let me know what you think. This is my first attempt at keeping a reef, or an aqaurium of any sort, for that matter. It's been a much bigger undertaking than I originally...

Late last night, after several glasses of champagne, I was inspecting my tank with a flashlight. I was amazed, and a little dismayed, to see this unidentified hermit carrying my Heteractis malu on it's back. The poor anemone was dragged all over the tank. You can just make out the anemone on...

Hi slug, Yeh, I was concerned about hackers getting to my tank. You're right nothing is 100% secure. (For those that care or understand, the machine that controls my tanks is behind two firewalls and is NATed. The machine is actually accessed using port forwarding, so is not directly...

I've recently stablized my pH in the 8.15 - 8.30 range. pH naturally seems to rise during the day and drop at night. My pH swings used to be much more erratic, but since adding a refugium lit on an opposite cycle to the main tank, and running my calcium reactor on a controller, the pH has been...

I'm interested in WHY people are still dosing with kalkwasser when using a calcium reactor. Is it because their reactors are not providing enough calcium? or not raising alkalinity enough? My recirculating reactor plus pH controller seem to be doing a good job, but I still have lightly loaded...

How many people dose with kalkwasser and also run a calcium reactor? It seems redundant, but apparently some people find it necessary.

I use noise filters between my fluorescent ballasts and the X10 modules. Works great. Just to be safe I also added noise filters between my halide ballasts and the X10 modules. You can buy both hard wired and plug-in noise filters from www.smarthome.com.

Kris's site at store reviews has reviews of San Francisco Bay Area stores. I pretty much agree with his ratings. I've had mixed experience at Aquarium Concepts. When Ken (the owner) is around and in a good mood you get great service. I've often found that some of the other employees don't...

Thanks everyone for the notes about my site. I'm still trying to wrangle some information out of Neptune about a few proprietary commands to complete the feature set of the site. In particular although I can turn devices on and off, retrieve data, and retreive the controller program, I can't...

>Could you make a sight like that to control >x-10 stuff Yes, definitely. The AquaController just uses X10 devices. There are a few utilities out there that let you control X10 devices. I know the ActiveHome package lets you control modules from the command line. >if you could template the...

>Beautiful! Are you using the AQC I OR II? The site controls an AQC II. Yes it is live. All the controls that actually do anything are password protected though. It should (!) be secure from potential hacking. >What type of programming/software are you >using to allow buttons to interact...