So the power went out here sometime yesterday in a very odd way. It was like a 24 hour continuous brownout. There was enough voltage to power incandescent bulbs (with very low light output), my cell phone and laptop charger, and that’s about it. The CF lights on the tank were on, but very dim. The pumps were on, but just clicking, unable to make any water move. I powered the whole tank off with the master switch.

It went out like this sometime yesterday. Now all my networking equipment was up, which is good - but that was useless because our cable carrier’s equipment was down.

The power just came back on full a few minutes ago. I power my tank back on. Last night when I went to sleep the tank was at 78 degrees, the normal temperature of the tank. Right now it is at 72 :(.

Most things look okay. It looks like I lost one head of frogspawn for sure, and maybe my hammer coral. I think if anything is going to die it will take a few days to know for sure.

My freshwater tanks were fine, nothing adverse in there. Yet they are not nearly as sensitive as my reef tank. I don’t even run heaters in my planted tanks, and could likely get away without a pump in my 12 gallon!

Much to my delight and surprise the new halide lighting fixture that I ordered on Wednesday arrived yesterday. Last night I set it up on the mounts. It was only on for a few hours but WOW what an amazing difference. The unit has a great fit-and-finish and the 14k Metal Halide bulb looks fantastic with the true 192W of true atinic CF.

I will take some pictures in the next few days and post some before / after shots.

One of the big reasons that I waned this light was so I could house some clams. They are the best looking thing in reef tanks I think. After my system gets used to the additional light (I am expecting an algae bloom) I think I will pick one up.

I have had my current (192W CF 50/50) lighting fixture for about a year. I need to replace the bulbs. In looking into getting new bulbs I decided that I should just get a new, more powerful fixture. I selected a fixture with the following specs:

• 1x 250W Metal Halide 14k
• 2x 96W CF Actinic

I am thinking I am going to hang it from the celling with some wire. The fixture is not designed for this but I think I can rig it up to hang from the fan vents in the top. It also has standard mounting brackets which I may use.

Now with the Halide lighting I can keep things like Clams and SPS, which I could not keep with the CF alone.

Additionally, I am going to attempt to get my reef on real parameters. This means actually testing various settings and adjusting things based off it. I have a feeling that I have a few things awry. Some of my coral do GREAT and others do AWFUL, examples: My Torch, Bubble, an Xenia do GREAT. However, Zoonathids slowly whither and die, as do Gonaporia. Muchrooms do OK but don’t seem to grow as much as they should. I suspect a Phosphate or trace problem.  To put this into perspective, I have never tested. Like not even ONCE any parameter in my aquarium other than salinity.  I don’t do any dosing other than weekly 10% water changes with real saltwater from Catalina.

I am going to pick up a test kit at the LFS today so that I can hopefully get the problem(s) identified before the new light arrives in a few days.

Yesterday my wife and I rode our bikes to the local coffee shop for a quick cappichino and treats. This particular parking lot is a stone’s throw from LAX, and is on the corner of a busy street. We sat on the patio so we could watch the cars, something I really enjoy doing. This had the added benifit of making sure our bikes didn’t get lifted by a passer-by.

Anyways, we see this guy hop into his Black / Black Ferrari 612. When it gets closer we notice the GIANT (22″?) chrome rims on it, clearly exposing the now 5″ gap between the Carbon-Ceramic brakes (with the signature yellow paint) and the wheel. It ruined the car.

Ferrari (and Pininfarina) design good cars. They don’t choose rims, rim size brake disk size, or any of that other stuff lightly. The 612 has a well balanced, soft design. Throwing giant rims on it is like garnishing a beautiful Kobe Fillet with a slab of lard.

So, if your reading this and you own a Kobe Fillet, leave it well enough alone and enjoy it.

Today I found an article (via autoblog) that details the 10 sexiest cars that a woman can drive. Orignal article here

The article labels the following as the top ten:

Top 10 cars to turn men’s heads

1. Mercedes 300SL Roadster
2. Porsche 911
3. Mitsubishi Evo
4. Land Rover Defender
5. Subaru Impreza
6. Rolls-Royce Phantom
7. Range Rover Sport
8. Fiat 500
9. VW Golf R32
10. Caterham

Now, I have a thing or two to say here. First, these are obvious demonstrations of style, or class (or a lack thereof) so a women driving a car with a motive says a lot. So your standard Jetta’s and Beetles are out. What is the coolest car that I think a women could drive? Well, the cars I like are obvious choices, but what is truly impressive is something that I don’t like - but can respect. When I was driving home from work not long ago, in the normal drab of Merc’s, Bimmers, and Lexi - I saw something that really stood out:

This is an ’80’s Toyota Land Cruiser. The example that I saw was similar to the above, restored and in great condition. You have to respect an old oddity that you don’t see often in urban environments. I loved it, and now I want one.

So today I went to lunch with my wife and a friend of ours from work. On the way we stopped at an Orchid shop. I picked up a sweet looking purple / pink orchid. It looks great on my desk. I think I am getting the hang of this green thumb thing.

In my second trip to the LFS this weekend (yay!) I saw they had something I had not seen before. I was actually going wanting to pick up another Pistol Shrimp / Goby pair, but they did not have any Gobies that looked especially healthy, and they did not have any (small) Pistol Shrimps. They had the big Tiger Pistols - but I don’t want those guys in my tank.

They had two of these little ‘Panda Gobies’ (Paragobius lacunicolus). They were tiny, 1/3rd of an inch at the most. I bought one and dropped him in. I have had bad experiences with tiny gobies before - but this one is supposed to be a bottom dweller so hopefully he doesn’t end up in my sump like some of the tiny yellow clown gobies I have had prior.

Additionally, I was at a store doing some Christmas shopping and I picked up a salt shaker. I am hoping to pick up a Mandarin Dragonnet (Either spotted or target - I have no preference) the next time the LFS has some good healthy examples. I am confident that I can keep one as long as I target feed it with this feeding technique, in combination with my very active POD population.

Today I took a trip to my 3 favorite local LFS’s. I did a quick 10% water change before I left and brought my buckets to be filled. One of my favorite things to do is watch the progression and simply observe the reef tanks that these 3 LFS’s have to offer.

Anyways, I ended up with a Mushroom rock that was accidentally priced too low. It was a 4ish pound rock with tons of sponges and dusters on it. It had about 10 mushrooms (blue, green, red, purple) on the front and about 10 shrunken ones on the back. Not bad for $15!.

I took it home and scraped off the mushrooms from the back of the rock and let them float. I am optimistic that half of them will land someplace and call it home.

I put the rock in the last bare spot in my tank. It’s nice to look at with all of the activity on it.

I rearranged a few rocks so that my big colt coral pointed upright better.

After I was done with that I cleaned the inside glass of all of the coraline and wiped off the outside.

I have started to notice my clown pair looking around my large (12″) bubble coral. They peck at it, almost - and the coral will retract a little bit. Maybe they are trying to host in the bubble coral? Not sure.

After I cleaned everything up I noticed a brown flatworm on the glass. I wanted to make sure it was a) alive and b) not coraline so I poked it with a super long wooden toothpick. It moved! After a quick check on Melevsreef.com (http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html) my suspicion was confirmed: Red Planaria - reef safe but can multiply quickly. I decided to let it alone because I have seen similar things before.

One thing I should note about my tank. It has changed a lot lately. I had been getting busy lately and was neglecting to do water changes (over a period of many months) and it looks like a lot of the life in the sand died (bristle worms and peanut worms) and a number of my corals starting looking not-so-hot. After 2 weeks of doing 20% water changes with real sea water, and another 3 weeks of 10% changes everything is on the up and up. Mostly everything has recovered fully with the exception of the toadstool coral which is about 60% recovered. Time will tell.

Know what I hate? I hate it when a vendor advertises a price which appears like it might be quite low, but then charges you all sorts of surpluses and fee’s. A great example is a restaurant that REQUIRES gratuity, what’s up with that? Why don’t they just charge more for the food so they can pay their server’s a reasonable wage? Why do they need to trick me with low prices just to charge me later anyways?

Another thing is offices that have no public parking, and im not talking about downtown high rises where space is a serious issue. Here in west LA there is a plethora of buildings that are not stressed for space but charge for parking anyways. Why? because they can. It dawned upon me the other day when I was cleaning out my car and I had like 15 parking receipts. People should just charge the price all-inclusive without tricking people.

I had heard awhile back that in the mid-west some local politician passed an ordinance requiring movie theaters to advertise the actual time that the movie was started, instead of the industry standard of advertising the time that the 30 minutes of commercials start. This is a step in the right direction, kudos.

So today I was at lunch with a friend of mine. We were at a medium sized mall in West LA. The restaurant that we were at had windows so we could see outside into a major ‘game trail’. As we sat talking I couldn’t help but notice the countless lemmings that walked buy with the latest designer whatever’s and watdchamacallits.  It kind of grosses me out that these people were shouting their self image to the rest of the world, flaunting and struting.

I think what these people don’t get is that their actual personality shouts even louder, via body language and facial expression. It was quite apparent to me that most of these people had  very low self confidence and felt that by being aggressive with their dress and strut that they could fool others.

It is a sad world that people need to communicate via dress and fashion, but I guess that the retail company (who are making tons of money off of the fashion industry) are not going to do well if people just talked to one another.