The Lightning Project

The ongoing saga of the PNG Lightning Maroon Clownfish breeding project.

Browsing Posts in General Topics

Ah, this brings back memories…good old Reef Central (from which I’ve been banned since 2006 for being a “commercial seller”, which I’m not nor was at the time in question, and in fact I was following ALL the published rules; got the smackdown for what the mods called an “unwritten rule”; well more precisely for […]

A long time ago, when this whole project started, I knew what I’d be in for.   Not everyone would be on board with my methods, my plans, and my decisions.  I knew there’d be criticism and disagreement. Of course, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the sharpest criticisms seem to come from those who […]

It’s not every day that you’re go stumble across an artistic rendering of your fish.  Wildlife artist Heather Ward had been looking for a maroon colored animal to incorporate into a piece for a contest, and somehow found the one and only PNG Lightning Maroon Clownfish.  I definitely had to share this rendition here – […]

I got some feedback on my writeup of troubles with communications between my server and the Apex and it got me thinking.  The short – I’m already using DynDNS.com to create a virtual domain name that points to my dynamic IP address – it uses an updater that runs on my computer to check and […]

I’ve been watching the tank these past few weeks and looking at coral health. I probably should be keeping track of actual water changes, but I haven’t. The other night, I did one and reserved the water for a pre-water change and post-water change test comparision. Here’s how things shook out. PRE water change: Specific […]

Short and sweet, after being gone for almost a week, and preparing to transfer in a mate this weekend, I thought I should take a quick snapshot of my water quality. pH – 8.2 Alkalinity – 4.25 meq/L Calcium – 420 ppm Magnesium – 1170 ppm Nitrate – approximately 2.5-5 ppm. I’m continuing to dose […]

Back to back “wins” for the Lightning Maroon Clownfish as it’s photoshopped kin succeed in fooling many aquarists for a second year in a row! No doubt you may recall the annoucement of a “Third” Lightning Maroon being collected on April 1st, 2010. This amazing piece of artwork was done by Guin Apora and honestly […]

Just before heading out of town to speak at PNWMAS in Portland, Tal Sweet and I had the opportunity to do an interview with Kevin Erickson for MASNA Live.  The main thrust of the podcast is the MBI and MBI Workshop, but the Lightning Project got a little sidebar early in the interview.  Always fun […]

Tested again this morning – Calcium on the Salifert was down to 425 ppm and that was after another day’s worth of dosing 3 X .25 ml/gallon of C-Balance.  Hmm.  Did I just use 10 ppm of calcium overnight, or is it really just that there’s a certain margin of error with the test kit?  […]

I’m continuing to get the tank “dialed in” as they say.  Thursday and Friday I dosed the tank 3 times per day with .25 ML / gallon (6 ML) of each C-Balance 2-part solution.  Thursday evening, Jay stopped by and brought his Salifert test kit for Magnesium.  We ran it side by side with my […]