Ok here's an update Danny...

On the Hiatt system in general...
We now have a bunch of tanks running on this system and I can say it works exceptionally well in the short term for sure. On a couple of tanks that have been running this system longer (Mark's and Bill's) though we've ran into a problem where nitrates are rising up to around 15-20 and staying right there no matter what. Hiatt says that these tanks are deficient in some trace elements and that is keeping the bacteria from being able to fully deal with the nitrates. He has been sending some different mixtures of trace elements to add to these tanks. We just received a batch he made up that he says he's sure will correct the problem so Mark will try that on his tank so hopefully it fixes the problem. Once we get it figured out I'm going to pressure him to say exactly what is the deficiency (he's too secretive about all this stuff LOL). Just too make sure we haven't been dooped, Mark replaced the carbon to see if just the large amount of carbon that was giving the results was. The good news is that his nitrates did not drop afterward so it does seem to be some kind of element deficiency that is responsible like Hiatt says. The bad news is his nitrates didn't drop LOL. We have tried dosing phosphate and also potassium with limited results. Hopefully we'll get that figured out soon.

My 29 and 92 have performed "as advertised" so far. Although my 29 isn't a good full test since it is just a holding tank and, other than some hermits and a few really smart or really fast ghost shrimp, it is not stocked most of the time. On the 92, nitrates have risen up to between 5-10 twice and then dropped back down following back flushing the torpedo's like they were supposed to.

On the 92...
I gave up on the kelloggi's after eventually losing the next batch to the exact same problem as before. I know now that they are actually hybrids since they all only had 34-35 tail rings and true kelloggi's should always have 38-41 tail rings. So my theory is that they are a weaker animal since they are hybrids and therefore they can't handle being in a mixed SH tank without succumbing to the normal bacteria that would be present. Probably an animal that has to remain in a species specific tank.

I still have the two barbouri's and also have some H. erectus which have done very well. Other fish in the tank are the 3 firefish, 4 scissortail gobies, 1 redheaded goby, 1 Steinitz goby, 4 Pearly jawfish, 1 scooter blenny and I think I'm forgetting a couple. Here are some pics. These were taken at night after the lights had been off for awhile so not all the corals had opened up again and most of the non seahorse fish had bedded down and didn't want to wake back up. I have to get over to Michelle's office some afternoon when everything is up for the day and get some pics then.

Oh, and a new D70 that I really don't know how to use yet but some of these came out ok I think.