Blog Comments

Any luck...its been a few days?

well thats a good explanation im not to fond of meds anyways so i guess i will let it play its cours the fish is eating and seams to be healthy so i guess i will let it be for now thanks sedor

I have spent countless hours on other forums talking about the controversial subject of ich. Maybe I should write up a blog. Anyways, i'll share some of my thoughts. Keep in mind this is my opinion and based on my experiences. I'm not trying to start any fights.

Ich is a parasite that is prevalent in likely most of the animals in our aquariums and even in the ocean. Its true there are ways of "curing" and animal from this disease by using copper or hyposalinity, but overall I feel it should be treated more like a common virus in the human body. When I say virus of course i'm not assuming that ich is a virus, becaues its not...it's a parasite, an actual living organism that hosts, breeds and dies in our aquariums. My point is however, that like many of us that house virus' in our bodies for our entire lives, its similar to a fish with ich. Most of the time they have it, but you never actually see it. Then something happens in your tank like a fish dies from acclimation stress, maybe cyanide capture, shipping stress, or one of the many other factors that kills these animals in our aquariums and days before the animal dies all you see is it riddled with white spots and we instantly come to the conclusion that we lost another fish to ich. Actually, ich in and of itself is not fatal. It shows itself when a fish's immune system is not running at full steam. My point is that in most cases a fish will die in our tanks due to something completely different and we blame it on ich because its the visual symptom associated with the death.

I have seen ich come and go in my tank. I have a tang that seems to always have a spot or two just because he is sensitive and we all know tangs are ich magnets. I have never actually lost a fish to ich though. If the animal is eating, my conclusion is always that it will be ok. So what does all this mean? Basically we don't need to be afraid of ich, it will come and go like the common cold. We can go to extreme lengths to keep it out of aquarium, but did you know that ich can even travel into our systems on a coral! Its pretty impossible to treat a coral with copper or hypo. In one way or another I have come to the conclusion that it will always be in our system, and the best we can do is feed our fish a healthy diet and provide them with the best water quality we can. Meet all their needs and you will likely not ever even have to see the dreaded white spots.

without a q tank, best results ive had are with a uv sterilizer, and a good source of food, dont let your peramiters drop any though, with a good source of nutrition for the fish, and the uv sterlizer to kill the parisite it should heal naturley over time.

good luck, post a few pictures, because it could be a bacterial infenction

thanks for the info guys

thanks for the info yea i have no clue if their is like one major thing i need to watch out for in the process of building this

just keep in mind how you want to be able to access the tank,,, for instance if you want to be able to clean the glass with out moving the lights from atop/ or shining down on tank. do you just need feeding access. these are primarily the things about design to think about...cooling is another consideration, once you trap air in one space those lights will heat that air and not allow water surface cooling as well.

I like the the price of the octopus skimmers but the euroreef/reef dynamics are a more quality product. but i dont know whether either make a HOB.

Hey SlickRick, I have the seaclone 100. Do the google search and mod it. One thing I do is keep it clean and adjust the air intake daily if need be. It also took like a month for slime to build up on it for it to work. And, when you do clean it just run under water, don,t clean with any soaps. Good luck!

haha ok i get it yea its deff a pos but that's all the wallet could afford at the time any suggestions on a good one at a reasonable price for a 150g

Lmao, pos means piece of poop

what is a pos ? yea i will check out the mods thanks for the info melev

Try looking for "seaclone skimmer mod" in Google and you'll see a lot of people try to make this skimmer work better. It's a POS, but if you own it and want to try to get some of your money out of it, try modding it.

Good luck.

i have it hanging on my tank right now sorry i forgot to include that

sounds like part of the problem is water height that the skimmer is in. not sure about micro bubbles with out seeing the setup.

Yw, yeah they have nice retro kits for the price. I'm glad I could help! ;-)

hat i have been looking at the site you referred me two and they where a great help your right i think i am going to go with one of the kits it is cheaper then buying all the parts separately witch is odd usely its cheaper to buy all the parts separately thanks for the info

Oh cool, can't wait to see the blog entries for that build. :-)

hat39406 i have a 150g witch i am going to be building my own canopy for so i am going to also be building my own light no kit or light strip i am going to buy the end caps all the mounting hardware and hopefuly finde a place that sells a light reflectors too to attach to the wood canopy before i mount the lights

the thing is i am i was thinking t5vho and t12vho but i think im going to go with the t5vho so now i just need some suggestions on where to find a ballasts at a good price i looked at ice cap they say their ballasts could put out something like 80 or 83 watts out of a 48 in t5vho instead of 54watts witch all the 48in t5vho bulbs i see are all rated for 54watts they clame their ballasts can push out more i don't know if i really believe that and also they want like 175 for the ballasts i need i think that is way to much money thanks guys for all your input and hat im deff going to check out that site thanks