Intellidick.com - Pure Insanity

Has anyone noticed a steady decline of service quality in UPS here lately? My last few run-ins with UPS have not been pleasant.

The last major item that came in via UPS was a server that I purchased. It was damaged… I know the box was heavy and all but it had obviously been dropped on its corner. It was wet outside that day and I could see the water on the corner so I assume it happened on the way up to my door. No major damage, just the face place. Bummer. The next week the rails for the server came in and the box for them had suffered the same fate. The sad part… both packages were packed by “professionals” at the UPS store and shipped to me in UPS boxes packed by UPS employees. Pitiful.

I recently had to send my Xbox 360 back for service due to my run in with the Red Ring of Death. The UPS guy showed up with the empty box that Microsoft sends you and we both had a good chuckle because he already knew I had a dead console based on the address of where it came from and the fact that it was empty. He smiled and said he’d see me in a few weeks when they returned the console in that same box. Off to UPS my Xbox 360 went and one week later I get a notice from MS saying that it has been shipping back. (48 hour turn around, bravo Microsoft Xbox service center!)

Now I’m excited… I’m ready to have my Xbox 360 again. And here’s where the drama begins.

• 07/02/2008, Afternoon some time - I receive a call from an unfamiliar number. It’s an automated message from UPS saying I have a package arriving tomorrow that will require a signature. I jump online and look at the tracking number Microsoft gave me. Sure enough, it’s my Xbox. Now i’m really excited.
• 07/03/2008, 08:00 - I’m at home, waiting for my Xbox.
• 07/03/2008, 10:00 - I decide to track my package. I get the weirdest message… something is wrong with the label on the package but apparently it has been repaired. The package no longer has a delivery date and says “Exception” instead. Weird, but okay, whatever.
• 07/03/2008, 11:20 - I track the package again. The package is now back to normal status… to be delivered on Monday! Too bad i’m going to be out of town all next week and i’m already sitting on my tail at home waiting for this package. No big deal. I’ll just call UPS and set it up for a “will call” pickup.
• 07/03/2008, 11:23 - I call UPS. I get a really nice lady who tells me that she’ll have someone from the Palatine, IL center call me back within one hour with a status as to when I can pick my package up. Now i’m happy again. Nice lady too.
• 07/03/2008, 11:37 - Marie from Palatine center calls me. Wow! Fast response! Go UPS! But wait… The package never made it to Palatine this morning. It must be on the truck! Marie tells me that she’s going to find out and she’ll call me back. No problem. Now we’re getting somewhere and maybe the web site is just out of date. If a UPS Representative is reading this post, Marie was a really nice lady as well. She really was making an effort to help… read on for the part where the experience goes bad.
• 07/03/2008, 11:45 - Once again, super fast response from UPS Palatine. They’re either really good or really bored. Either way, i’m happy that they’re being so responsive. Marie tells me that the package is not on the truck nor in Palatine and that I can expect it Monday. If nothing else, call her and she’ll put the package on hold in Palatine and I can pick it up when I return. I’m a little angry at this point because i’ve now stayed at home today waiting for them. If I worked a normal desk job i’d have had to have taken off of work and would be pissed that my package didn’t show. But whatever, okay. I’ll figure something out.
• 07/03/2008, 12:03 - I decide to call UPS corporate back and have them track my package. Them not being able to tell me where it is right now is unacceptable. They really need to at least provide me with a current location of the package because it should be in Palatine. I get another nice lady at UPS corporate. I tell her the story and that neither Palatine nor the driver have it and I would like to know the location and expected delivery date so that I can make arrangements for someone to be home to sign for it. She tells me that it’s not a problem and she’ll have someone from the main Chicago center call me. It must be there still.
• 07/03/2008, 12:27 - UPS Palatine calls again. Wait? UPS Palatine? Why would they call me. I was expecting a call from Chicago center. Hmmmmm… Okay. It’s not Marie this time. It’s some other lady that I didn’t catch her name. She was talking too fast and in a very abrasive tone. She “informs” me that she was sitting next to Marie when I was on the phone and that there’s nothing else she can do. She then tells me that my package should go out on Monday and that I need to call by 07:30 on Monday morning if I want to have them pull it from the truck for a Monday will call. I started to explain to her that I wouldn’t be in town but decided to just save it because she’s obviously angry at me for calling again and isn’t going to help me. She was quite possibly one of the rudest customer service representatives that i’ve ever spoken to.
• 07/03/2008, 12:35 - The second time I called UPS, the lady told me that i’d have to call the sender of the package to escalate any further. It was a nice way of telling me to stop calling and that they weren’t going to help me anymore. So, that’s what I did. I called Microsoft. Unlike my first experience with Xbox 360 support, I get a really unfriendly individual with poor english skills. Oh joy… i’m screwed. I explain the situation. The first thing he does it try to give me the UPS tracking number and disconnect the call. I explain that I have the tracking number and I need Microsoft to escalate with UPS. He then proceeds to track the package himself and tells me that it will be here tomorrow. I try to explain again. He tells me he’s going to let me talk to his supervisor. After almost 15 minutes of holding, he returns… no supervisor on the phone. He then trys to give me the URL to get to UPS and track the pacakge. I explain to him that i’ve already done it. He tells me “but the status was updated 10 minutes ago!”. I jump on and check and no, it wasn’t… he’s in a different time zone and doesn’t realize that the web site isn’t updating for his timezone. I explain to him that it’s in central time, not wherever he is. That update was 1h10m ago, not 10m ago. Oh joy… I have one of “those” customer service representatives. We go back and forth for a few mintues with him insisting that my Xbox will be at my home tomorrow. I explain that tomorrow is a holiday and he just does not get it. I guess when you don’t celebrate Independence Day as a good US citizen should, you wouldn’t know that. He tells me that he’s going to go talk to his supervisor again, after another 10 minutes, I hang up.

Do I have a right to be angry? I think I do. UPS called me and said I needed to be here. I stayed home and waited, only for them to say that something is wrong with the label. It made it all the way from Texas to Chicago before somebody noticed the label? It was supposedly illegible. Funny… it was legible when they used it to look up my customer record for my phone number. My other concern is that they can’t find the package and aren’t willing to help me track it. I wonder who’s kid just got a repaired Xbox 360. Only time will tell but it bothers me that UPS employees know the box and address of repaired Xbox 360’s that well. Even the UPS Corporate lady made a joke about it.

Maybe i’m over reacting here but damn… what an annoyance. A total array of cluster f*** just to get an Xbox shipped from Texas to Chicago. Time to find a new shipping carrier.

What do I have against Blu-Ray? SONY! That’s what. They own the technology, all of it. What does that mean for consumers? Licensing… lots and lots of licensing. Expensive players, expensive movies, etc. Sony knows this, most consumers apparently don’t.

I figure that we’ve got one shot left for HD-DVD and to not be stuck with Blu-Ray. That shot is to buy HD-DVD. Everybody, go find an HD-DVD player… buy it. Go find HD-DVD movies… buy them. Then wait. The technology is open, somebody will pick it back up and make it.

Let’s take our market back! If Sony REALLY wanted to do something good, they should give Blu-Ray to the DVD forum. Then i’ll buy one. Until then, forget it.

GO HD-DVD!

I almost quit the hobby last night! I was working on my new MTC PROCAL reactor and noticed a leak in the main chamber seal. I shut the reactor pump off and was fiddling around with those annoying little screws and decided to go ahead and pull it out of the stand.

Wouldn’t ya know, I managed to find the only piece of tubing that didn’t have a clamp on it! (Lesson 1 : Tubing is easy, PVC doesn’t come loose) Apparently I neglected to go back and clamp that one piece of tubing on that end. What a dumb mistake and a testament to why one shouldn’t get in a hurry when building a tank… needless to say, I knocked the drain hose off with a big reactor in my hands.

Water is now going EVERYWHERE. I scrambled to get the reactor back on the ground, grabbed the hose and got it back on the bulkhead. As i’m walking away to go get an army of towels, the pump runs dry. Enough water had run out of the tank to successful drain the pump chamber. And then… I start to hear the inevitable “sizzle” sound from a surge protector that had gotten wet. Any body want to guess where a large portion of my electrical was sitting? Fortunately, all of the GFCI actually worked and everything shut down. (Lesson 2 : GFCI. Always, Always, Always)

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Just when I thought I had it back under control…

I get all of the affected electrical out of there and start soaking up water. During that process, I managed to KNOCK OFF THE CANOPY! Okay, so apparently, my canopy has no nifty piece of wood on the back to prevent it from sliding forward off of the tank! (Lesson 3 : If your canopy will slide off of your tank with just a push, FIX THAT ASAP)

What a mess… i’m standing there, wedged behind my tank, holding on to my canopy that’s loaded with expensive lighting and reflectors. Anybody want to guess where I set my new electrical stuff that I was about to install? You guessed it! On top of the canopy! Seeing as the canopy is now at a 45 degree angle, everything has now slid off… into my ATO reservoir, which I just moved to the front of the tank so I could get behind there. (Lesson 4 : 12″ from the wall is NOT far enough, you will need more space! Deal with the look of it or run a smaller tank that you don’t need to get behind!)

So I have now managed to ruin my old electrical stuff as well as my new electrical stuff, gotten water all over the floor, and have no idea what equipment works and what doesn’t. I got the circ pumps back up, set two of them to break the surface tension, tossed in a heater and WENT TO BED. (Lesson 5 : If you’re that tired, you’re probably doing more harm than good)

Insert 8 hour sleep break here

I have now spent the better part of the morning putting everything back together, all of the “core” equipment is working but I have yet to test the calcium reactor, ATO, etc… my 3 IceCap 660’s survived the splashing and all of the bulbs survived. Even my moonlight LEDs made it. I’m not sure about the reactor pump just yet, but I consider that a minor loss if I have to buy a new one. That last piece of flexible tubing is now CLAMPED in place. (Lesson 6 : Using Flexible tubing as PVC elbows is a neat concept but turns out to be a big PITA in the end)

So, that’s the end of my story. I was ready to start bagging livestock and taking it to the various stores. But man… i’m sooooo close. I can’t help but love this hobby. I’ve invested all of this time and money to get it running, and now i’ve learned yet another lesson that will make my next tank even better!

I’m still in the fight, but wow did I want to quit.

Let me summarize all of this into one small, informative list and add one more…

Lesson 1 : Tubing is easy, PVC doesn’t come loose
Lesson 2 : GFCI. Always, Always, Always
Lesson 3 : If your canopy will slide off of your tank with just a push, FIX THAT ASAP
Lesson 4 : 12″ from the wall is NOT far enough, you will need more space! Deal with the look of it or run a smaller tank that you don’t need to get behind!
Lesson 5 : If you’re that tired, you’re probably doing more harm than good
Lesson 6 : Using Flexible tubing as PVC elbows is a neat concept but turns out to be a big PITA in the end
Lesson 7 : Big calcium reactors are freakin’ cool… After all of this crap, i’m staring at my PROCAL going “Wow… that’s just cool”

When we got the 90g tank, it came with a Lifereef LF1-125 Berlin system. This was a great deal for us because we had heard of Lifereef and heard it was good, and it saved us from having to go find a pump, sump, and refugium.

Being relatively new to the hobby, I didn’t really know how to hook up all of that stuff, so I took a chance and sent an email to Lifereef. I got a response from them requesting a model number and telling me where to look to find it. Within a few hours, I had the instructions faxed to me and I was up and running that night. That was my first interaction with them.

Later on, I had some more questions about how I should design my new system that i’m building… I fired off an email to Lifereef to see what they offer. Once again, I received a thorough response showing me their offerings and some realistic suggestions. It’s nice to work with a vendor that’s not all about pumping their products.

So anyway, more Lifereef equipment is on it’s way to my house and I just can’t wait.

Hats off to Lifereef Filter Systems. Check them out their web site and shop with confidence. Lifereef Filter Systems is a high quality vendor with a great product and the willingness to back it up!

The quest for moonlight in the fish tank rages on. A reef is great and all… when you can see it! Not having moonlights in there is doing yourself an injustice. I was against it at first because it seemed rather silly, now I can’t live without it.

When I first got the Current USA fixture, the moonlights feature just didn’t matter to me… until the first night. My aquarium came alive with lots of little nocturnal things. Some of them are out during the day, but definitely not all of them. And the glitter lines of LED moonlights are neat for those of us without point source lighting like Metal Halide.

On to the review… the new 90g tank now has it’s new lighting system, but it needed some moonlights. I did some shopping through the various LFSs and came up dry. A little reading and searching and I came across the R2 Extreme LED Moonlight. It looked good on the web site and seemed to get good reviews… so I ordered one and installed it.

First impressions : You’re kidding… right? I got the unit with 2 LED cylinders and the single power brick. It comes with a cheesy Y-cable that looks like it just rolled out of the bargain bin at Radio Shack! Same thing for the power brick and power switch. Not that I really care that much, but in the aquarium world… exposed metal is a BAD then when it comes to power. A little plastic shielding goes a long way guys. For $40+, a little engineering on the power cord side would be great.

Mounting Setup : Adequate. Nothing fancy, but very usable. It comes with double stick tape and screws so it should suit just about everyone’s mounting needs. I highly recommend powering it up and moving things around a few times to get the lighting position right. For me, right was under the front lip of the canopy mounted horizontally with the LEDs angled slightly towards the center of the tank. Another gripe here is the relatively short length of the crappy Y-cable. It limits how far apart you can place the LEDs. I may have to hunt down another power brick and ditch the Y-cable.

Power On : WOW! Now this is what i’m talking about! Damn… these things are bright and the color is amazing. The glitter lines are really good as well. Very nice and it gets great coverage in the 90g. I tested out the other set on my 46bf tank with similar amazing results. Can’t wait to get them on that tank as well… the old Current moonlights just don’t seem the same anymore. My 46bf looks horrible in comparison to the 90g now.

Overall Recommendation : Buy with Caution. It’s a good product but it definitely has a little bit of growing to do in order to become a great product. If you know your way around AC power, you could easily make up some custom cables to solve the problems that the included ones have. I’m definitely considering a run to Radio Shack or Frys tomorrow for some ends and cable to make my own.

I have just one word for my fellow aquarium owners who rely on their thermometers and heaters… don’t. Everyone talks about how bad aquarium heaters are, what they don’t tell you is that the thermometers aren’t exactly the most precise pieces of equipment either.

Lemme lay down the time line here of what happened to us the other day. A problem that has been causing me problems since day 1 in my tank and I never knew it due to fault equipment.

04/30/07 - Fishtank 1.0
We started the tank setup. Added water, dropped in the thermometer. Put in the heater and started running it. Over the next few days, we managed to stabilize tank temperature at 76 degrees by setting the heater to 83. Kinda odd that it is that much off, but hey, even the guy who sold us the thing said they weren’t that accurate. And the heater was down in the sump, not in the tank. So whatever. At this point in time, I don’t know any better but the thermometer readout is good so we decide to just go with it!

06/30/07 - Panic mode
I wake up and go to feed the fish and notice that the tank temperature is down over ten degrees… it’s 65 in there! PANIC! Something is very wrong. It’s the heater or the thermometer. So, I toss the thermometer in a bucket of cold water, temp readout drops to 50 degrees. Then on to a bucket of hot water, temp readout starts rising. Thermometer is working so I pull it out and shove it back in the tank. It must be the heater! Toss the heater in a bucket of cold water and crank it up. It kicks on but takes forever to get the water warm. Hmmmm… yup. Must be the heater. (I’m totally not thinking here and not realizing that heaters don’t work well in STILL water. Oops.) Off we go to our favorite LFS… no heaters in stock. Okay, plan B, Petco… The only acceptable choices are a 300w AGA heater made by Hydor or a 200w Visi-Therm Stealth. Well, the Visi-Therm gets higher ratings most of the time and all, but seeing as I have a dead one at home… forget that. AGA/Hydor it is! We get home and drop this thing into the sump… we set it at 67, trying to be conservative and not shock the fish again. It kicks on for about 30 seconds and then shuts off so I bump it up to 68. Again, 30 seconds. I pull the heater out and slam it into a bucket of cold water. It stays on for several minutes before it kicks off. At this point, I should really have a clue as to what’s really broken here but it’s just not registering. I’m in too much of a panic about which pieces of livestock i’m about to lose!

07/01/07 - Problem solved!
Temperature still not rising. No matter what I do, I can’t get the temp over 67 and kicking the A/C on in the house drops it back to 66. How weird. Just then, the still water paradigm hits me and we notice the water level in the wet/dry is WAY too high compared to normal. Oddly enough, the skimmer hasn’t erupted salt water like it normally does, but that’s a story for another day. After some serious amounts of checking, turns out the filter medium was too dirty. We recently switched from the super porous spongy stuff to the thin felt-like stuff. Gets ALOT more out of the water, but nobody told us that you have to clean that stuff once a week and sometimes even more! Oops. We pull that out and clean it, water levels return to normal and the temp in the tank goes up 1 degree within a few minutes. That must have been it. Not wanting to shock the fish, I set the heater back down to 68 and wait a while. Heater keeps cutting off. Probably b/c it’s too tall for our sump. Knowing now that it probably wasn’t the original heater but the filtration material… I replace the new heater with the old one.

07/02/07 (Early morning) - Maybe that wasn’t it. Part 1
It’s midnight, i’m still up. Temp still won’t go up. The heater is now at 72. By 2AM, i’m done. I reinsert the new heater and go to bed. The girlfriend wakes up in the morning, sees the temp still low and bumps it to 75. I wake up, see the higher heat but still nothing on the thermometer and throw in the towel. It must be this new heater not getting the right amount of flow. Next thing you know, the skimmer is out, the filter material is gone, chemi-pure is out… we’re at max flow… nothing. Still nothing. Same old 67 degrees in the tank and the heater is on 80.

07/02/07 (Evening) - New sump… that’ll fix it!
For quite some time, i’ve been wanting a bigger sump. The wet/dry is fun and all, but I want a better skimmer and some more room to work. And I don’t use the bio-balls anyway, so the wet/dry is nothing but a fancy airation chamber with tight proportions and a huge potential for overflow. I’d also like to have some more water in the system. 50g is fine and all but 60g would be even better! So at around 5pm, the swap begins. By 8pm, the new sump is in, heater in place, and operation is restored. Just to help out, I used the powerhead from the old skimmer to push water over the heater and keep things moving in the sump… but I still have the same problem. Can’t make the water heat up any more than 68, yet i’m sweating when i’m around the tank and it’s humid as hell. Then it hits me… It’s the thermometer. It’s always been the thermometer. It was the thermometer on day one. Back to the early picture, the tank was never 76, even though that thermometer showed it. My 150w visi-therm heater was set to 83 and if I had to guess, the temp was somewhere in the low 80’s. It explains a lot. I’ve had really bad problems with algae, even before my T5HO lighting setup. Oh sure, all tanks have algae, but not this bad. The tank has been a petri dish for algae.

I slapped another heater in there… New Heater : 83F, Old Heater : 66F. The fact that I haven’t lost livestock at this point is AMAZING. Now I begin the slow process of backing the temp down slowly so I don’t shock them.

07/03/07 - Another Thermometer?
While at the fish store, I picked up another heater for when I do water changes. Sure enough, it’s within 1 degree of the other new heater, and at least 10 degrees away from the old one. Tank temp is now 81F.

07/04/07 - Happy Fish
Tank temp is now 79F and i’ll continue to lower it slowly until I get to 76F. My fish are very actively swimming now, the Coral Beauty isn’t attacking the smaller fish anymore, and everyone is eating like mad. I fed both of the anemones today and they’re all puffed up and happy. I’ve been adding a touch of Garlic to their food lately so the fish colors and bright and vibrant. Everything looks great!

The moral of this story is that you need two heaters and two thermometers. Also, heaters stick so use an external temperature probe and an aqua controller so the heater doesn’t stick in the “on” position and boil your fish.

* Thanks to Jungle Rob for his speech bubble idea and the template drawing.

I just wanted to say a kind few words about a really pleasant shopping experience I had today. In the never ending quest for neat aquatic stuff, we stumbled upon Rod’s Reef in DeKalb, IL. That’s about 40 miles from my house, but i’ve heard LOTS about this place. He makes his own food and has a famous pair of Onyx Clowns that he breeds. And it’s not like I haven’t driven further to go to other shops.

Anyway, long story short, this is apparently a small shop with one guy at the helm. He’s a really nice and helpful guy that obviously LOVES the marine aquarium hobby. He’s got lots of tank setups that are obviously not for sale, so he’s just doing it because he’s into it. The guy has multiple fish that will eat out of his hand and such. It’s really amazing.

Another note is the fact that he didn’t try to push anything on me. He sells food and he’s proud of it, but he never tried to hard sell it to me. He just told me about how he makes it and all of the ingredients that are in it and what it’s good for. That’s absolutely fantastic. I did buy some of his food because i’d heard lots of good things from other people. That stuff makes my fish go WILD! My anemone loves it as well and was perky for hours after being fed some of Rod’s food. So, he’s definitely got a reason to brag!

So, if you’re ever in the DeKalb area, call Rod and stop by his shop. He’s a great guy to talk to and it’s worth the drive. I’ll definitely be returning there for some more of Rod’s food. I don’t think my fish can go back to their old flake food after this stuff. Between this an Arti-Pods, I should have some really happy fish.

If you’re interested, there is a link to his site on my fish links section. CALL FIRST though… he’s apparently a one man show and sometimes things come up that keep him away from the store.

Welcome to Stupid Aquarium Tricks! This will be an ongoing series as I make my way from a true aquarium novice to someone who can keep a fish alive longer than 90 days. (This could take a while)

These posts will contain tricks on how to do the “silly” things in your aquarium. You know, all of those little things they don’t tell you when you spend over a grand for a tank, some sand, and some rocks. *sigh* Then you get to feel like a jackass when you walk back into the store and ask and they all laugh at you. I’m sure they’ve all made the same damned mistakes too, but it’s some sort of a right of passage or some other sick cult deal.

Without further ado… here we go!

Q) I’m starting a new tank… what order should I put things into the tank?
A) Backgrounds (if you’re using one) first, Substrate (Sand, Gravel, Crushed Coral, etc) next, Rocks / Scenery, then the Water.

Q) How do I pour water on the sand w/o the sand going everywhere?!?!?
A) Use some clean plastic to stop the impact of the water from hitting the sand directly and POUR SLOWLY initially, don’t get all crazy and pour like a madman unless you want a sand cloud in there! You’ll probably get the cloud anyway, but oh well, I think everyone does. The plastic helps though.

Q) Speaking of backgrounds… how do I get that background on the tank? This tape SUCKS, looks like crap, and the background keeps wanting to bow up.
A) If you’ve already set up the tank, this is going to be harder, but you can still do it. (I did this the hard way too) Either way, lay the background on the side of the tank where it will be mounted. (note : they go on the OUTSIDE of the tank) Cut the background down to size… leave an inch or so on the sides, you can trim it easily with a razor once it’s attached. Now… get out your plastic scraper and some cooking oil! Yeah, that’s right… cooking oil. Pour a few SMALL areas on the surface that will be touching the tank, set the background on the tank and line it up, then use the scraper to push the air bubbles out and spread the oil. It’ll stick like glue and you can peel it off later with no harm done to the background or the tank. Messy at first, but neat. Once it’s firmly attached, use a razor to trim the edges so everything is nice and neat… then wipe all the damned cooking oil off of everything in that room!

Q) Okay, I put in everything, but I think I need more substrate… now i’m sitting here with a bag of sand and no idea how to get it into the tank without dumping it all over my beautiful live rock display!
A) Use a measuring cup or something to help get the sand into the tank SLOWLY. Do it a little at a time, it IS going to cloud up… not much you can do about it. If you can, kill the pumps for a bit so the sand settles faster and doesn’t get all in your sump. Trust me here folks… it sucks ass to clean all of your filtration systems b/c they’re coated with sand. And next time, when you set up a new aquarium, don’t make the same mistake I did… get enough sand… if it’s not enough, go back to the store and get more… don’t pour the water in there until the sand is right… you’ll be pissed later when you’re brushing sand off of EVERYTHING in your tank because it got in the stream of your pump.

Q) I set up the tank first, then realized that I needed/wanted more sand, and now there’s sand everywhere in the tank. Any hints here? It’s covering my beautiful plastic model of Poseidon!
A) Step one, ditch the model! Seriously though, you have a few options. Numero Uno on the “easy to do” scale is grab a big ass turkey baster and go to town. Just blast the water right off of there and rock! (Use the tank water, not faucet water) If you have a powerhead in there that’s easy to unmount like a Hydor Koralia, then just pop the magnet off and use the powerhead… I don’t recommend this though b/c you have the cord and such to deal with… and it’s probably not a good idea in general. Not to mention that if you accidentally fire it at one of your fish, you’ll probably blow him across the tank with the close range current blast. Although it’s funny as hell to watch, it’s just not nice. Go with the turkey baster for the easy win.

Q) Great, now i’ve got all of this sand and it’s really starting to look nasty! How do I clean sand?
A) Don’t clean the sand! Get something to clean it for you! Nassarius Snails clean sand for you, and they’re a hoot to watch around feeding time. There are also Sea Cucumbers and lots of different fish that clean sand. Got to your local fish store, they’ll help you. If you’re buying your crap from a big chain with a bunch of high school kids running it… stop buying it there and go to a respectable fish store. Describe to them what you have in your tank. Better yet, take some pictures so they can see exactly what’s going on in there! They’ll get you some snails, crabs, etc to get rid of it! Most fish stores will know about how many cleaners you need for different size tanks and different amounts of live rock, etc… You’re likely to lose a few crabs in the process, maybe a snail or two. It’s okay… it’ll balance itself out.

Q) My fish are ugly? What can I do to make them look better?
A) Get a better lighting system so you can see them better. Good lights bring out the colors in your aquarium. If you get good lighting and your fish are still ugly… STOP BUYING UGLY FISH!

Q) I got a better lighting system… now there is algae all over my tank!
A) Cool eh? Seriously, more clean up crew. Don’t get crazy, just add a few more to keep up with the increased load. Again, talk to the people at your local fish store.

Q) Does this quest ever end? When do I stop buying stuff and just get to look at my fish?
A) I don’t know… maybe I can answer that by the time i’m writing Stupid Aquarium Tricks - Part 20.

That does it for SAT 1. Tune in next time as I attempt to re-arrange my live rock for the 87 millionth time this month! (My poor fish must HATE me by now)

In an effort to improve the quality of my blog, i’ve decided to create a category called Useful Information. This category will be used when I feel that the post is actually relevant, as opposed to my normal whimsical posts.

As usual, i’m actually doing this because i’m bored and decided to start posting some of the handy aquarium stuff i’ve been picking up lately, but I might post some other stuff as well. Hell, maybe one day i’ll get excited and work on Eluminate again. *cough*