"Gill Passman" wrote in message
...
jthread wrote:

Sorry, I misinterpreted your post. I see what you mean by my LFS. The guy
I talk to is a very nice guy from Okinawa. Well meaning and I think my
nubeeness is compounding the issues.

Well being a newbie myself (only having started around 14 months ago) I'm
still very much treading the same path as you.....most of the LFS guys I
have spoken to are very nice and some quite knowledgable but it really
helps to go in armed with a few facts and having researched stuff....the
book I suggested gives you a very good basis on the theory on how to
achieve what you are trying to do....variations from this are obviously
taken and I don't think I've followed to the letter but at least I've been
able to go in and have an educated discussion....


It's interesting separating the wheat from the chaff. The good news is
the result has been less water changes and healthier water. I'm confident
enough now to slowly start buying inexpensive corals again.

What corals are you looking at buying? Softies are easier for a beginner
and help build up confidence - zoos, mushrooms, xenia, star polyps are
very rewarding.....


It seems this field is full of different ideas. Some probably born from
unusual isolated incidents that may or may not apply to my situation.

But this is part of the fun :-)


My wife sits and reads books until the cows come home and she lost us a
small fortune in coral. Seems I can get right to the root of the problem
here. :-)
Well, that is good (I mean that you can get to the root of the problem
rather than your wife's loosing corals). I hit it really lucky in the past
few weeks and have found a hobbyist who has set up a small internet
business selling his stuff and he is very local. I spent a morning with
him last week and learnt far more in those few hours than any book or LFS
could have taught me, or indeed forum or newsgroup - it was like a brain
download of everything he knows and even then I reckon I only got a
fraction of it. I am now far more optimistic about getting to the bottom
of my algae problem on my new reef tank and very confident in the advice
he gave me....part of the reason being it confirms what I have already
read in the Tulloch book....

Newbie mistakes happen all the time.....I'm still making them because I'm
still a newbie to reef.....the key is to learn from them and move on...


Gill

i get brain over loaded quick on new subjects like this. it's coming to me
slowly. i still wonder how i made it through school. after school i swore
i'd never read another book again.

we just got a nice size pale grass looking thing $20. the lfs said it was
very hardy. has a tiny tiny brittle star fish and a zoey bud so we got 3 for
the price of 1.

my wife has a book on order that is supposed to be "the new bible" of reef
tanks but it's yet to be finished. i'll let her read it and explain it to me
i don't know the name

a lot of the coral we lost was due to a rabbit fish. he kept nipping at them
until they finally gave up. the nitrate problem is pretty much a thing of
the past except i think i'm still having to change the water too frequently.

i think we're starting to get pretty good at this. we've got several mush
species, including some pretty exotic ones. my camera can't do them justice.
some have split to the point we are going to take some back to the store to
sell back.

i'm pretty sure we have just about every thing you mentioned and all is
healthy. i'm just trying to get my tanks where we only need to do water
changes once a month or so.