Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Yep, the plans are pretty flexible. Just remember to hook the + to the zapping end. I tried to pull some out and it does make them release. My tip is already getting eroded. It was 308 stainless welding rod. I will have to look up that alloy and see if there is a better one.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Tungsten oughta work, yo?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I have tungsten. ;)

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I have no idea how it'd break down chemically, but it's gotta be a lot more stable, oxidation-wise.
Will you please let me know what you find out, Lance?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

A quick search of "tungsten salts" comes up with tungsten chlorides of all sorts. Maybe not a good choice. I have some platinum wire that may work. Not something everyone may try.

Edit: Tungsten may work as it needs elevated temps to react with Cl. Common welding tips (TIG).

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Lance, maybe try the tungsten in some salt water apart from your tank?
I'd just like to see if the surface oxidizes. I have no idea what the temp would be where the water meets the electrode. It could be high, it's just the low voltage that doesn't press the catalysm?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Tungsten doesn't bend either, so I will come up with a new way to make the angled tip. And yeah, I will try it apart from the tank first. Tungsten chlorides are blue.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Odd and cool. It isn't making magnesium chloride, is it?

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Magnesium ends up on the graphite with the hyrodgen and probably ends up as a metal, oxide or hydroxide. The calcium for sure doesn't end up as a metal in the water.

A cool site for elements.

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That really is a nice site. Thanks, Lance. :tu

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I think the polarity in the DIY thread is backward. The negative electrode bubbles much more actively because of the extra gasses from secondary reactions (sodium mostly). Also, chlorine eats stainless steel. I was messing around with platinum wire from a thermocouple and I didn't use graphite for the other electrode but instead just some of the SS I had. The minus electrode of SS bubbles a lot more than the platinum one did and wasn't eroding. If I put SS on the plus side it erodes and gives off a yellow plume. This makes sense to me. I will reverse the polarity on the zapper I made and try it out.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

2Na + 2H2O --> 2NaOH + H2 = f#(ked up anemones. It works MUCH better with the SS zapper hooked up to the (-) and the graphite on the (+). Tears them up into little bits and fries them into white matter. The tip may be even building metal up on it now instead of eroding. It's almost not even fair to the little bastards except I know I can never get the last one.

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is it possible to get a picture/video in action?

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It looks just like that youtube video in the links.
I think when the polarity was wrong I was poisoning the anemones and when I switch it around it fries them with caustics and vigorous bubbles.

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Unlike the chemicals its unlikely they will build up an immunity ;)

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Lance, the probe stuff you're using now is more conductive. What I'm wondering is if you'll get a further amp push around the death probe?
If there's no fish around, it's hard to tell if they'll get stung, ya know?
Maybe they worked backwards to the graphite so there's minimal effective zappage at the killing probe point?
I don't know if there are any fish in your tank, but if not, maybe a couple feeder tube trained damsels would make good test subjects?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

The fish are ever so curious about what's going on and are hard to keep away. They seem unaffected by the chemicals or the charge.
I built my zapper exactly as in the DIY post, except with silicone instead of hot glue. I figured the polarity in the artical was backward and just reversed mine. I never really built a tungsten or platinum probe, just tested them with a power supply and a bowl of salt water.
I measured the graphite at about 25 ohms. That would allow a maximum of about 1/2 amp to flow at 12v. The adapter I am using is rated at 600 mA (.6 A). It all works out.
The good thing about zapping them is if they recover it's easy to go back and get them again. They can recover if they are not damaged enough.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Hopefully I won't have use for one, but there were some aptasia on the frags I got recently. I clean them off by hand, very thoroughly, but who knows?
Thanks for all the input, brother. It's a BIG help. :tu

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Jeez what a couple of pages. Sorry but I can't stick an arcing rod into a fish tank. On the pest/plague front,
I have had to go ahead and re-start my skimmer. I have gotten too lazy with water changes and have begun
to notice a plague of valonia algae and just an all-around funk going on. So I fired it up last night and will continue
to change 2-3 gallons a day til I get this under control.

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It doesn't arc, of course. I figure it's a way of injecting concentrated lye into the pests, or at least onto them. I love it, the first sign of hope I've had.
I guess I should do my annual major water change too. I do small ones every month or so.

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Pu$$y. :D

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Guys, I need more pictures. There had been two pages of chatter with no pictures... I don't have a reef tank myself and probably never will, but I love seeing shots of your amazing tanks. Thanks for having this thread here, another reason why this place kicks ass!

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Here's one, Mychal. I just took it. It's a long-spined urchin.

http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...a/8fb3a65f.jpg

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

On a good note, I noticed our first baby hammer coral today. We can grow paly's like nobody's business, and everything else is splitting and dividing and so forth, but for some reason Lisa and I got really excited when we saw a baby mushroom awhile ago. We watched it every day.
Now this baby hammer just kinda came from nowhere. It's cute as a bug. :D

The stupid atomic boring eagle eye paly has spread to rocks in all directions, it's a monster. It deserved an honorable mention for insane growth rate. It has gone from the size of a pinky fingernail to the size of a softball in just a few months.
At this point, I probably won't add anything else at all unless I really, really like it. Otherwise corals will be spilling over and out of my tank in no time.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I zapped a rhodactis as an experiment. It worked. I may prune enough room back in my tank to put some new variety in it.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Make sure to run carbon after zapping Rhoactids. They tes to throw slime and ther bad stuff into the water column.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

:tu Got the carbon thing covered.
Just another observation (sorry). When I had the polarity backwards and was putting nickle, chrome, and maybe cobalt, possibly iron into the anemones, they would wither up and die. Hitting them the other way tears them up but if I don't get them bad enough they grow back. At least it's easy to hit them again.
Pics of a mostly anemone free tank to come, as soon as I clean it enough to get a picture.:D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Dont kill them all. If you kill them all you wont get to play with your new toy :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

:tu That guy looks really cool. When I was on Kauai last year I saw a fish eat one of those guys.

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When I was in the Keys last year it was freezing cold and I saw thousands upon thousands of urchins dead on the bottom in the shallows. They were short-spined ones, not that it matters.
I'd like to go back next year and see how stuff has recovered. Without the urchins to clean, I bet it became quite a mess for awhile, considering the tons (literally) of dead fish everywhere.
What's odd is that I never saw them before when I was snorkeling in the shallows, or at least not in any kind of numbers that they left an impression on me. The particular variety must be nocturnal, or they simply washed in from the flats is the best I can figure.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I had an interesting theory pop into me head last night. I have one of the OOOOld style Berlin skimmers,
in which you hook up a 'jet engine' to it and it makes some bubbles and maybe skims. However, all these years
I was getting bigger and bigger water pumps cause I thought with the type of venturi it had, it would only
make sufficient bubbles if it was flowing mad water. But when I re-purposed it this week, I used a comparably
tiny pump on it, and I opened up the air hose flow wide open and I was barely gettin foam. I think in
the years past, I had max flow, but I had to stop down the air injection to near zero to keep it from
overfoaming. I think once this one tunes up a bit I am gonna get good foam from max air and less than
max water flow. Sad part is although I have three different pump sizes, on a 20 gallon tank, there is not
much room for pumps. So I am sticking with lil junior.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Good luck, my man. :tu
Let us know how the experiment goes.

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Today my hammer sent out a sweeper tentacle or something and got snagged up by the Gonapora. The Gonapora hung on for the best part of the day until it finally cut the hammer loose just a little while ago.
It managed to unmoor the hammer, now I have to get some more glue and stick it down good. I might just move it if I can find someplace to put it. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I ordered an aiptaser from the same place Steve did. It seems like that one is the real deal, and it looks to be made well. I saw a couple knockoffs for a few bucks less, but I didn't think that was a good idea. It'd be months before I have time to make my own, and want to kill these few freeloaders I have in my tank before they catch hold and give me a real problem.

Lance, I even thought to bug you into building one for me, but with everything you have going on I figured it'd be rude, even though I know yours would work better.
If you get bored this winter and get all your refinements finalized, keep me in mind, will ya? I imagine I'm going to want something customized so I can reach all the places where this one can't reach if this critter invasion gets hold.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I should also mention that I moved stuff around a bit and buried a really good rock for the maxima to moor himself on.
By moving things just a little bit, I gave myself lots more places to put the frags I had that fell off, etc. I also was able to turn the gonapora around a bit so it was more viewable. I got a good look at my hammer coral, and it has ten or twelve new starts going on. That thing is going to be HUGE in no time.
Everything is growing real well. If there was one thing that I think made a difference, it's the phyto. I finally switched to DT's and I'm much happier. I'm not sure if the Cyclopeeze made a difference, but all the different foods certainly are helping.
My pods are exploding, and everything that died back from the move is coming back way better than before.
Can you tell I'm excited? :D

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I just noticed some new pulsing Xenia babies today.
I made a nighttime soup of frozen coral food, frozen Cyclopeeze, and a couple tablespoons of DT's phyto. The stink was glorious.
I seriously considering a second more bigger water making machine, something with a larger bladder or series of bladders so I can crank out 20 or 30 gallons at a clip. This 3 gallons at a time thing is ridiculous.
Maybe I'll just hook up a regular well bladder tank and let some air out from behind the bladder tank and just use what I have?
Thoughts?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I use a plastic barrel with a float valve to collect my RO/DI water. You can get those at any hardware store. You can double up the barrel if you can't find a sturdy enough one.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I gave that some thought before, Lance. Even thought about a giant tub sump in the basement. I just don't want barrels, and I sure don't want to take a chance on a float valve malfunctioning and flooding the basement once it's finished. I wanted a closed system that's point of use.
I could even do that with a 10" or 12" pvc tube up in the joists, using the airgap for backpressure.
At any rate, it's a winter project. I'm way too busy to even be thinking about this right now. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Oh yeah, got my aiptasia nuker today. I played with it for five minutes and put it away. I nuked a couple and they sucked in their holes. I'll go after them later tonight and get what I didn't already kill. :tu

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Yeah, Scott, I have found that the ones that hide back in holes are very hard to kill. You just singe them and they grow back. I like to jab the electrode in them and just let it sit there for about 30 seconds. Bwahahahaha! Nhya-ah-ah!

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I drill right in the hole after them. As a result, I knocked a couple frags off and I'll have to find them and reglue them. It was worth it, though. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Any new pics ?

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I'll get some for ya if iever get done working outside. My babies are growing like crazy. In the morning I gotta get in there are get a couple that fell down.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

The Aiptasia Zapper kills bristle worms. That is all. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

After watching these corals for a good while now, I see that it's pretty obvious both when they're happy and when they're hungry. They're pretty damned amazing. I need to go swimming in there soon to move and separate a few things. The yellow coral isn't doing well up close to the lights, I want to move it down a bit. It seems everything but the xenia and cup coral wants to be down away from the lights a bit.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I wonder if by 'yellow coral" you mean those yellow polyps? I warned you when you first mentioned them that they
tend to die off with no explanation. Most would say they are not hard to keep, and they have a rock COVERED
in them to prove it. But just as many report they just died off slowly, one by one. Sad really. I liked mine til they
were a bare rock.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Yup, that's what I meant, yellow polyps. I'm going to start a big water change today, and I'll move them, see what happens. I like them, too. It's worth trying to save them. I lost my starfish and I think I lost my sea hare, both to the urchin.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Here's a new thing...
I have these little critters on my glass all over the place. They amount to tens of them, not hundreds or something like that. I've been watching them grow steadily, and they grow fast. I haven't been cleaning the glass so they have lots to eat as they grow.
My guess is that they're offspring of my red starfish that recntly died, or they're urchin babies. The kicker is that they have six legs, my red star had five. They could be brittle stars that came in on new stuff.
Will you guys let me know what you think?
Here's a pic from my phone, hope it turns out...

http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...a/bb3bf123.jpg

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NO, they are not urchins...they are a kind of a pest starfish that eates certain types of coral. Maybe if you have none
it would be OK to let em grow, but they will never be like full size starfish and they are considered relatively bad...
Lemme do some poking around and I will link you some threads. Their pest-worthiness is apparently in the eye of the
reefer. You'll have to decide what you want to do. You can search from here, there is the basic nomenclature in the
thread below.

---------------

http://www.livingreefs.com/pest-starfish-t16171.html

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I poked around a bit, Brad. There's plenty of bad stories to go with the good, but I'm 100% ready to start picking them. No need to wait for a problem. I have to kill some other crap, so I need to go swimming soon anyways.
Right now these guys are hardcore grazers, they're just eating algae film off the walls. They'd probably be okay because I only ever clean the front wall. It seems they're opportunists though. As soon as they've run out of algae, they'll become a problem. Dammit.