June 17, 2004

First the hardware, bought a Seio 620 powerhead, without going into details this thing is great. It has two different ways to mount it, has a huge range to aim at, has a wider outlet so you don't get a high pressure jet spray like conventional powerheads, and ontop of that uses 8 watts of power while pushing 620GPH, there's a 820 model that pushes 820GPH but that is 18 watts. Considering I have the previous one had a flow of 300GPH and used 23watts, this is a big savings, I plan on replacing the other powerhead and getting an additional one or two for some nice steady flow. They are seen as alternatives to the Tunze model, which are pretty damn nice too 1600GPH at only 11 watts, but they're also quite expensive ($200 range and up for bigger models), now the Seios are NOT designed to be flipped on and off with controllers so that's a disadvantage, but maybe soon.

I also managed to nab a CSL dual 175W metal halide ballast w/ bulbs from ebay. I'm really worried about the power consumption though so am hesitant to fire up both bulbs, and as such I only have one temp mounted that I turn on for a few hours a day to simulate the overhead sun. Plus the thing came with 2 10000k bulbs, now they are way too yellow for my tastes, now I know not all 10000k bulbs are created equal, but excuse me they should damn well be close to equal otherwise why call them 10000k? Do they have one particular spike at a certain region so you get to call them 10000k? I'm sorry but a 10,000 kelvin black body doesn't have shit for yellow and is blue! A type-A star is one with a surface temperature between 7,500 & 11,000 kelvin, Sirius and Vega are two examples, now they are bright whitish blue stars NOT yellow. Ok sorry for that asside rant, basically what I'm saying is I'm probably going to be looking at some 14000k or 13000k bulbs

Now the live stuff. Got my order from floridapets.com 1 pistol shrimp,10 nassarius vibex snails, 20 micro stars and 4 portions o' pods. Let me first say 'pods are great for a tank, and not only if you have some blenny or something that eats them, they are microscopic (some macroscopic) 'bugs' that continuously eat all the crap in the tank that you don't want in there, they're a smaller version of all the cleaners like snails and hermit crabs one gets for tank. That being said, unless you get someone with an established sand bed to give you some sand with pods in it they dont just magically appear (unless you're lucky to have them survive on live rock through a curing process), now I have a few times attempted to get sand from others but a few times it fell through because they were major A-holes and decided to sell it to someone else after telling me they'd sell some to me, other times I've gotten it I dont think there was much living in it. Although I'm sure I had some stuff in the tank, as I've seen bubbles in the sand (which I'm told is a sign of activity) and I see what look like worm tunnels along the glass. Now there were essentially two other places to get pods one place ipsf.com which sells a 9 for $99 thing, so you get a bunch of things I guess, they dont have ANY pictures of what you're getting (other than hand drawn cartoons) and they don't let double up on anything, so you end up getting 4 or 5 useful things you want, then the rest is crap you don't need, another place is inlandaquatics.com now they have a 'detrivore kit' which they only sell for $70, but with shipping it'll easily end up about $90-100. Floridapets cost, $5 per bag, each bag has 100+ assorted pods (usually with a tiny sprig for macroalgae), and they're small bags so you can have one bag shipped to your door for $15 or two bags for $20 (shipping has a flat rate, then increases as weight increases which is why one bag costs $10).

Also got a new anemone from a LFS, which original was thought to be a green bubble-tip with bright whitish-green tips, but after some researching it looked like a gold-tipped Ritteri (H.magnifica), and afteer some consulting it seems it is one. Now the LFS owner did think it was one at first too, but the behavior was nothing like it, so sold it as a BTA, now he said if it died on me he'd take care of me, or if I really was uncomfortable with it I could bring it back, but I think I'm going to hang onto it and see if I can't keep it alive. But whatever type of anemone it is it looks beautiful.