Feelers

Yeah I figure I'll have a ball valve on the fuge pipe to control the flow, as I want lots of pods ect.

The left is the skimmer, the middle is the return, and the right is the refugium, water will be split coming from the overflow into the left and right chambers. Im gonna have a dsb in the fuge, hopefully I'll keep heaps of live octo food, crabs ect in there. Whats the deal with baby crayfish, are they legal and how much/where do you get them? Anyone know of any sources of macro live food?, (ie not brineshrimp or plankton.)

You might get around gst, customs wont know what they are, claim they are worth less than $400NZD, I had a problem with an Ipod as the sender declared the value at $17 USD, but as soon as I mentioned $389 they sent it straight away.

Well, probably not the most exciting news, but all my small achievement got was weird stares from my flatmates. A scary crash course in siliconing, and one incorrect baffle height still ended well. Tank was $35, glass was $28, 90L total tank volume. I ran the skimmer for a few hours and the temp was much higher there than in the other sections, a lil more than 5 degrees C, Is this anything to be worried about other than a crap inefficient pump? I still have to decide on a return pump, and at the mo another atman 3500 seems to be winning, just because of cost- $65 new. My sump, My sump on drugs.... Cheers for your everyone, got a bit of a way to go......

On the sump topic how do you silicon the baffles for the bubble trap, obviously the first ones easy, but it would be real hard to silicon on the side facing the 1st installed baffle, 1 inch gap. Am I sweet to just silicon on one side? (I will do the baffle on the return side first, as it has to hold the water,)

Hey jet ski is there supposed to be an elbow from the pump into the weipro? Im just using a u peice of bendy tube.

Hey chimera how much did the PVC cost for your overflow?

He was on 60 minutes for the thing I saw about him

The NZ expert, the guy whos obsessed with squid(Steve O Shea) who comments at the bottom of that article is practicing his squid rearing (they are incredibly difficult to keep) to prepare for another archyteuthis infant that he hopes this time will be able to grow to full size. He has a live web cam you can control and look around the squid tank(not archyteuthis but deep sea ones I think) they are pretty small but they grow real fast http://www.thesciencesite.info/squidcam.shtml

Thanks for the info and pics, Sweet, well I wont drill for the return, altho I had acocunted for the difference, 5 gallons I think, but I spose its probably better to be able to use 5G more in the sump. So if I have, say a spray bar as return, can I just drill in the top corner for the overflow? chimera why is yours drilled with it at the bottom? Can't you just drill a hole at the top, with excess water flowing out it and down a pipe? I dont really follow whats happening in your overflow. Is the upsidedown "U" part of the tube where the water goes down the pipe and the bit at the top allow air to get in to let the water go down? Do you think I should try and emulate your setup? I'd have to do some siliconing........hmmm

Sorry if this has been posted about before, I found a post by chimera but the diagram wasnt working anymore, Anyways............ my tank in 50 inches long x 23 high x 16 wide, and I want to get the tank drilled for overflow/return. Where and what should I drill, I figured I'd account for a flow of 10000lph to figure out the width of the holes so as not to underestimate. Does the return from the sump get drilled 2 inches below the overflow? I think this is the case but why not at the same height? If someone could post or link to a good schematic or draw a map with O marks the spot youd make my day Also the guy at the glazier said that drilling would weaken the glass (I realise this) but shouldnt the tank be able to cope with this? (there are 3 huge bracketts on this tank, outa the whole tank theres only 2 30cm x 40cm gaps to put anything in)

Hey all, just got a nice new tank perfect for a sump and was wondering where to get the glass to make the baffles ect. I dont think new glass would be worth it, so anyone have any suggestions? (Im in chch) Also I bought a glass cutter but tried it on a small peice of glass and it didnt seem very easy, so I figured getting it done by a glass company might make more sense, what is a reasonable price for getting glass cut, for example i'd be looking at maybe 3 - 50x30 cm peices. Also does the glass have to be thicker than window glass if its used in the sump? the tank is 66x40x30 cm's Thanks

Cheers guys, I figured you mostly ran dsb's, I was quite surprised to see your answers. Still a small sample size but hopefully more with time.

Scroll down for the QUESTIONS You guys crack me up, DSB's vrs BB will never be sorted one way or the other, but it keeps popping up over and over. Jettin suggested a new thread because yet another persons thread got assimilated, so here it is. This argurment's not all that productive, its the major polarising issue in reefkeeping and unfortunately there isnt much more than annecdotal evidence passing around(scientific papers are few and far between). Maybe it might make an interesting masters thesis.... Why dont some of the long established DSB tank owners take out some sand and test it for builtup nutrients ect, possibly get them tested by a university ect, it would be interesting to see, and a lot more useful than arguing. Can this forum do a proper poll ? (the ones wtih mulitchoice options and fancy bar graphs ect) I'd like to see the percentage of people using each method, and how many peoples tanks have crashed ect, and if they are happy with their system. You guys are a little rough on each other and I rekon that definately puts newbies like me off, - the answers to my first post scared the hell outa me I cant figure out whether this site can do those cool poll things so how about these THE QUESTIONS 1.What system of sand bed/ non sand bed do you use? 2.Why did you choose this? 3.a)Asthecticially which type do you prefer? b)practically which do you prefer? 4.Have you ever experienced the "crash" if using a dsb? What happened? 5.Are you happy with the current system you are using? 6.What are the benefits/negatives you have found when using this system? 7.Have you ever changed/considered changing your sand/no sand system? If so Why? 8*.Labour or National Note: * denotes an unrequired and meaningless question. Its totally anecdotal, but there might be some interesting aswers/results. I'd laugh if there was a correlation between political affiliation and sandbed preference, I'm swaying towards DSB personally but I'll see after this...

so 4 inches? I want to use the sand from round here as its the natural habitat the the octo. I know you guys generally want white sand, and this would be the golden/browny colour, would this stuff cause any problems? Would it be "live" sand if I dredged it off the bottom? does 50L of sand sound about right?

Hah thats quite expensive, I figure with .5kg per gallon thats like $350, which is a long way outa reach. So that means I'll have to go with W/D filtering im geussing? and I'll just use beach rocks for aquascaping. What effect does W/D have on nitrates? Nitrates arent particulary dangerous for an octo but I'd rather have none at all obviously.

So you can buy dead base rock? How much per kg? I would try to get relatively porous rocks (ie not boulders) but are you saying that no beach rocks have enough surface area?

Oh yeah, will I need circulation and will I need more pumps than the 4000LPH one with that goes with the skimmer? I dont really have a clue about plumbing so if someone cold give a breif outline that would be great. cheers

Hey all, I'm looking for some suggestions for setting up my octopus tank, and I want a sump but have questions about bio filtration. Basicially, so far I have a 300 litre tank, getting a weipro 2014 skimmer, and I have a large cannister filter.I will be using the cannister but probably filled with activated carbon and sponge for chemical and mechanical filtration. Im also gonna drill the tank because I dont want an overflow. So I still need a sump, I was thinking maybe a 90L?, but I am not sure if I want a w/d trickle filter or just the live rock method. I think I read that wet/dry increases nitrates, which would make sense but not sure on this. What would you guys suggest? And a possible small refugium like 40L just ot keep crabs in ect for live food. Since this is for a NZ octo I can get all the live rock I want at the beach and I also dont need any lighting. Im probably gonna rig up some LED's for effect tho. I was thinking I'll make a 2 inch sand bed from sand at the beach(from under the water so its "live") What will happen if I go chuck loads of live rock and sand straight into my tank with FSW? I'm geussing this will result in an explosion of phosphate and nitrate, but I wont have any inhabitants so would the situation clear itself up over a moth or so? There wont be any light so algae wont be a problem. Anything I've missed or any suggestions would be appreciated, cheers (appart from suggesting a new skimer)

Hi all, found this skimmer design the other day, it seems simple to build and isnt really tall like lots of diy skimmers. I'm geussing its based on one of the proper commercial skimmers, so can anyone geuss as to how good this design would be? What size tank would this be good for with say a 4000lph pump? the main skimmer page http://www.tonmo.com/cephcare/DIYskimmer.php this is the schematic for the whole thing: http://www.tonmo.com/images/cephcare/DIYskimmer/diagram11.jpg

they call good dark skimmate kopi-o or something, which is the word for coffee possibly

http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?s=5a4d3ae8f41e718e01762ac9b99413ef&showtopic=5674&st=30 is the comparison thing, I was looking to find how good a weipro was. This thread was amazingly hard to find !!!

About those needle wheel skimmers from deep blue, I read a thread comparing cheap skimming options and quite a few people said that they just werent worth the extra $ compared the normal weirpro, they said they were of comparable skimmate. (obviously I have no idea so no replies about how im living in fairy land) Ill try and find the thread if anyones interested.

Just a word about gluing acrilic to glass, I built a small ramp for my turtle out of acrlic and glued it in the corners to the sides of my tank, and its came off easily with pressure, but it was fine for the turtles weight. One way I got acrilic to stick was by placing a flat peice of acrilic against the wall with silicone, then gluing the new ramp to that peice, kinda like a sandwhich, the "bread" acrilic was real hard to get off, (so hard I just left one on)

Hahaa cant believe I wrote that much, this questions been bugging me for a while.