I can see clearly now the impurities are gone...

I wanted to do things right this time around and that meant getting at least two things which I didn't have the first time to make things better. 1. a refractor instead of the float value salinity tester. 2. an RO/DI unit so I wouldn't use crappy water from the tap.

Well, tonight I finally got the second thing plumbed!


I'm flushing the system now so I can rid the first 5-10 gallons of water that's coming out but I'm so glad it works! I was worried for a bit about splitting the lines behind the washing machine but thanks to teflon tape, it's working pretty well so far. Anyway, I still have to install the float value so it doesn't dump water into my garage but hopefully it's smooth sailing from here on out!

FINALLY! Some Southdown down south.

Finally, what seemed like an exhausting month of tracking down this argonite reef sand, I finally got about 100 lbs of Southdown in my hands from a local reefer. I won't lie, most of the hold up was due to the local reefer who decide to hoard the sand and sell for profit to people he doesn't know. While I am all about capitalism, what I didn't understand was why all this shit went down for just a few dollars.

Anyway, this stuff isn't impossible to get and in fact, argonite based (live) sand is available at most LFS and online stores, they're just not too cheap when sold as live sand. The dry version of this sand may be a bit more difficult to find, but if you're lucky, you can usually get sand for cheap or FREE if you find local reefers breaking down their tank. In fact, someone else around here was giving 100lbs of live sand away for free. If I could only have seen the future, I would have avoided all of this shady mess.

For those of you who are new reefers, make sure you do not get silicate based sand (e.g. QuikCrete from Home Depot). As far as I know, it promotes algae growth and in the long run it's just not a good thing.

So now that this dark chapter in my reef setup is over, let's move on to BIGGER and brighter things.

Shameless Plug - ReefTraders.org

Okay... many of you reading this will not know my website related background but believe me, I have good ideas. While the idea of trading, selling, giving away coral frags on the web isn't new, my friend and I are in the process of creating a new frag trading site that will out do frags.org. Anyway, if you're interested in being in the loop on its developments and stuff, please check out http://forums.reeftraders.org for now.

The forums section isn't much but it actually has a lot of good participation. We're not looking to replace ReefCentral or anything but once completed, this new system will rock your frag trading world. Anyway, just thought I'd get that out there. ETA to completion is about 6 months.