Feelers

Will I still get algae without any lighting?

Hey petplanet is $52 expensive compared normal cement? How big a bag was it? Does anyone know if standard cement mix has lime in it? Most of the bags I can find don't really list ingrediants. Can anyone reccommend a brand? I might try and find the portland stuff just to do it right. And about the oyster shells - are you sure this creates phosphates? Would they even matter in my proposed setup? Is anyone in Chch keen to team up and make some base rock- split the work/cost ? - Layton?

Haha yeah not really the forum to say so!! , I dont know why, dont get me wrong some are very cool, I like the bizzare ones. Probably explains why I'm getting an octopus!!!

Those do look very cool, and I dont like the look of many marine fish, how much do baby things like these go for roughly?

So pies wouldnt that mean that your lionfish is legal? As you collected it locally

They look a lot happier than this one

My friend from the far north said that while diving he saw what he described as a cuttlefish, but I cant remember which place it was, possibly 3 kings, poor knights islands. One of those two places I think. http://www.tonmo.com/cephcare/cephcarejump.php Has the basics required. You can keep cuttlefish in an aquarium relativly easily apparently. Many of the problems of them dieing comes from lack of information, which is much less of a problem now than it used to be. They are best in a species only reef tank, and they have some speical requirements, primarily with food. All their food should be marine, primarily crustaceans. Breeding them has been done, but it's difficult apparently, http://www.stickycricket.com/cuttle/bandensis.html Written by one of the guys on tonmo who is trying to breed them. A On the cephalopod related topic I'm trying to get a job through the giant squid guy who was on Holmes and 60mins - Steve O Shea. I managed to talk to him in a chatroom on tonmo.com ,and hopefully I can a job possibly looking after one of his projects maybe. It would be very cool, he's the man!!! How bizzare are those robotic fish? They swim really well, and its amazing they dont crash into the glass as would be expected.

You can keep them in a reef tank, but without stinging things like zoos. They will eat all the livestock aswell. And apparently they dont like bright lights, so it has to be low light corals too. What does reef safe mean exaclty, the whole reef as in fish too? It would be great just watching them devour hundreds of dollars worth of fish. Has anyone even thought if keeping an angler fish? The one on the video is obviously a tropical one, it looks super evil.

Some really cool videos of cuttlefish and other things - an angler fish devouring stuff. Does anyone know of cuttlefish in New Zealand waters? I have heard that they are around, but not sure about it. http://www.stickycricket.com/aquarium/movies/index.html The angler video and imperial march vids are real cool, and flamboyant cuttlefish looks real weird

Thats very cool!!!, how much rough estimate for the whole setup? Just out of interest?

I was browsing through trademe and found this, http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 801361.htm it says its rated to 800L and its VERY cheap. I have a weirpro 2014 and that is only rated to 500L. I have heard that vortex's make skimmers more efficient but would this really be half as good again as my weipro? What do you guys think? Anyone tried one?

Doesn't this mean that there isnt a defined end time to get your species in?

Thats cool that collecting is illegal. Learnt in class the great barrier has the greatest diversity of organisms on the planet.

My original letter, so that the previous reply might make a bit more sense. (Well I'm not a memeber of the reef hobby yet, but poetic liscence. 8) )

Hey Reef, got my reply from ERMA today!!!, What do you make of it reef? Is it stuff you have heard before? He seems like a helpful guy, its quite a long response. I saved my original letter somewhere.......... ill try to find it.

A mangrove plant in an aquarium would look awesome

Just went out and got the led moon lights thunderstorm(I was listening 8) ) reccommended. Pretty cool, at the moment its just lighting up my new base rock, without going though water, so a filled tank might look different. I just laid them all accross the top of the tank and chucked a towel over them, they definately need some sort of way to hold them in position. Very hard to get photos of for obvious reasons. They look a lil different from in the photo, maybe a little less saturated.

Well I went out today and bought some base rock, whats the deal with this, do I have to do anything to it? I had never seen any coral rock before, its pretty nuts stuff , I can see how its needed for surface area. $42 for about 12kg. I dont know how I'm supposed to make a cave for my octopus, and can you just plonk it straight onto the glass? I was worried about it scratching. Also an octopus can hold up to 40x its own body weight, and they like rearranging the tank to suit themselves, can you fasten it in anyway? And how many kg base rock per litre do you you guys use , I'm told half of a reef tanks requirements is acceptable for an octo, as they also like to swim around.

When I say conditioner, I mean, on a site I was trying to compare the teco ca 200 and it implied that there were two types of cooling, the teco ra 200 is classed as a chiller, and the teco ca 200 is classed as a conditioner, it might possibly be that a conditioner has a heater aswell, not just a chiller, but im not sure. Anyone know what the max temp for a cold tank should be?

Hey guys whats too hot for a cold marine tank? I dont think I can afford a chiller, I was just wondering if its a necessity. I would love dogmatix's one but I'm very short of cash at the mo. Also what is the difference between a chiller and a conditioner?

Is this a mantis shrimp? I picked it up with my hands, I might reconsider handling shimps in the future if it is. Can't they spilt your thumbs open? That doesnt sound too good. So NZ has mantis aswell? Also, this got me a bit concerned about my tank, as I will have the atman pump 3500 and my new laguna 7000 running 24/7, how much will these raise the temp in a 300L? As im going for a cold water system, would this bake my octo? I dont think I want to buy a chiller..............

Double post

Well, he didnt last very long, I just realised I forgot that the pump heats up the water, and there is only 3 litres in the system he was in. He was slowly warmed to death, I'll see if I can get a good photo. Do we have mantis shrimp here?

Went to the rock pools at Taylors Mistake near Chch today and found this cool shrimp and chucked him in my drink bottle, I was thinking he would be great in someones tank, reef werent you looking for one? I doubt its a cleaner shrimp tho. At the moment I have the water circulating with my atman pump - no leaks, I didn't think that they were leak proof given the price, I was quite surprised.... He's an awesome looking shrimp, green with orange veins and striped blue legs, they are a lot brighter than in the photo. Sorry admin about the huge photo, my photoshop stuffed up, so I couldnt crop it, any smaller and the details lost. Is the maximum size 150kb,? I couldnt find the thread about that. Anyways here he is........... I dont have any filtration, just circulation how long will this guy last roughly?

Yeah I was wondering if you can actually use LED's for the lighting requirements of a tank? I ask because in my plant bio lab we used an instrument to measure photosynthesis, and that used LED's as a light source. Obviously you would need heaps of powerful ones, but they are so much more efficient than metal halides. You could even taylor your lighting spectrum to perfectly match requirements.