Jeroen

My Eheim return pump doesn't have rubber feed or place to attach them too. It now slowly moves to the glass and you get the fibrating noise. What material is suitable to but under the pump (i.e. doesn't leach into the water). Thanks.

Hi, I have 2 torch corals in my aquarium. One white and one brown with green tips. The brown with green tips is doing great but the with one is slowly retracting and at the moment its 'feelers' are very thin and small. Mark got also both torch corals at the same time and his white one is also slowly retracting. Do they need specific food or what else might please it? Thanks, Jeroen.

Hi all. Went to Mitch and took some pictures. Mushroom are suitable for big tanks (or for making lots of frags ) they are well proportioned. This is my first attempt at uploading pictures so see hot it goes. Here are 3 of the mushrooms A closer shot of 2 of them (there are 5 in total. All large)

Pitures!!! :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Sorry to hear about your loss Kermit. I just started my tank and have not experienced any outages yet. I though a power outage would be the worse. We have a few a year but in general they don't last that long. But a RCD tripping is something else (especially iof you are away). I also thought that the worse would be lack of oxygen. If I look at the setup the our aerator is the overflow and the skimmer. With these being turned off oxygen will not be replenished. I had indeed thought about building a battery operated airpump in, that is switched by a relay that is kept open by the mains supply. I had given this a low priority there our power cuts are short but this puts a dufferent light on the issue. Jeroen.

I am in the 0-15% group. Currently on the low side there I am still very new to fish keeping. in general I will only reply if I feel I can contribute. Jeroen

Is that all Ben. You are almost finished then.

Great looking corals Ben! great looking tank!

Resistors can be connected either way. They don't have positive or negative. Cheers, Jeroen

Sounds indeed a bit like what I saw. Must say that both clowns are now really nestling into my (their) brain coral and now seem to be sleeping in or against the coral. Jeroen

Good thread to learn things but I must say that Wasp is very stubbern without adding any substance to the story besides getting very good explanations from Layton. Layton, from my understanding reading this thread is that orthophosphate is a very strong oxydiser and will practically be consumed as soon as it appears. This means that we will only measure orthophosphate when we have more total phosphate in the system then that the bioload needs / can handle. This does indeed mean that as soon as we can measure it we do have too much. Wasp, what method do you use to measure orthophosphate? What numbers do you get and what is the accuracy of the method (not only the meter). In my line of work I am always very carefull with measument numbers. Customer often ask me how much is in a sample and if you give them a number that ill be used a fixed without looking at how that number is established. When testing such small quatities lots of things have to be taken into account besides the test itself. Like sampling method / stability of sample between sampling and testing / all kind of ways to get the sample contaminated and the list goes on. We do certain testing and the results might be +/- 30% but nobody that takes that into account. Not all testing is fact. Only testing where everything is taken into account and we understand the meaning of the result. Jeroen.

I just have my first tank up and running and start to learn a lot. One thing that surprises me was the night behaviour of clown fishes. I have a pair of clown fishes and at night time the do a kind of swiveling dance in a corner of the tank. First I thought there was something wrong with them but then a day time they swim normally and eat also properly. And this behaviour repeats every night. To me it looks like there night time behaviour looks much more exhausting then there day time behaviour. Is this indeed normal behaviour for clown fish? Further they also surprised me the other day. I read that clown fish sometimes adopt a coral in the absent of an anemone. I have a nice bubble coral and expected them to go for it but they preferred my green open brain coral. Strange combination. Jeroen

I am setting up my first aquarium and have trouble finding a decent thermometer. I wonder if anyone knows a accurate thermometer. Looking around almost all thermometers read at 0.1 decimals and +/- 1C. I dont find this that accurate especially if you try to keep your tank within a 3C band. But it gets a lot worse. I bought a 2nd hand aquarium with an analogue hang on thermometer. This read reasonble but to my feeling about 1C low and changes too slow. I have another 2nd aquarium and this had a digital thermometer that to my feeling reads good but only shows whole degrees C. So I bought a digital thermometer (the aquaminder). This is terribl, it reads about 3C high and changes too quick. So I bought another digital one from trademe. This one fluctuates about 0.3C but about the right temperature for the first few days, now it reads also about 3C high. I checked this with a thermometer from work which I could check with a calibrated thermometer In total I have now 4 thermoters in my aquarium all reading different and a spread of almost 4C (betwenn 25.5 and 29.5). Anyone out there that knows a good relaible thermometer? Jeroen

I am not sure why you want to do this. There should be a fixed voltage drop over the LEDs so you only need 1 resistor in series with all LEDs in paralel. See you want to have 5 LEDs of 3.3V 20mA paralel. For the calculations this means that you have the same as 1 LED of 3.3V 100mA. Of you have a 9V power supply then the resistor would be 5.7V 100mA. This wouls mean R= V/I = 5.7/0.1 = 57 Ohm (round up to 68 Ohm for available resistor). Take in consideration the wattage needed here is P=I*I*R = 0.1*0.1*68 = 0.68W. If the wattage is too small the resistor will get too hot and burns out.

I think your return pump setup is very smart. Head for the pump is water level in the tank minus water level in the sump. So, having the return pump lower then the sump makes no difference. I would ensure that the diameter of the line feeding the pump is big enough to ensure it can feed all the water the pump wants. Cheers, Jeroen

We just got a big white that closed our beach last Saterday and a twister going through the campground this morning. who needs people to make the neighbourhood interesting?

Very nice pictures. And still the tank looks better in real live. Was great to see it. Jeroen

Hi, I have just made my own stand for a marine aquarium. With regards to the electrics I would use a surge protector there we have a lot of water around it further whan making the plugs at the back make sure you can still reach them for maintenance (hard to shift an aquarium full of water). I would put the pugs at the inside of a cupboard against the backwall. Good luck with your project, Jeroen

Thanks Chimera. Mist that part indeed. :oops: Spent a lot of the day trying out different ways of plumbing and ended up with using 25 mm to the refugium and 20 mm with ball valve to the sump inlet with skimmer. With this set-up I can manage the split between the 2. Still hard to get it all nicely fitted in the stand. Jeroen

That's a very nice fish

Thanks Wasp and Chimera for your advice. My idea of the refugium is to minimize nitrates and grow food for the fish. I don't want the outlet of the refugium to pass through the skimmer which might take some of the goodies out again. My skimmer is a Deltec1250 and is a skimmer that sits in the sump. So my sump is split up to main inlet with skimmer. Secondary inlet for refugium and combined outlet with return pump. The outlet of the main tank is 25 mm and is 25 mm all the way to the sumps main inlet. I have a T-piece in tere that splits the flow to the refugium and that line I made 20 mm. But the way it is set-up I notice that I only get about 5 to 10% flow to the refugium and wonder if that is enough. I have now a bigger pump and the whole flow to the sump/refugium is now about 5x the tank volume. Jeroen.

Hi, I am building a new aquarium and sump. The flow out of my aquarium gets split between a refugium and the main sump where the skimmer is located. The flow from the refugium goes to the second part of the sump where the return pump is. What percentage of the flow should go to the refugium? Would 5 to 10% be enough or would it need more. Thanks, Jeroen

Thanks guys. This is a great help.It is only that I am currently do the plumbing of sump and am checking the extra space I will need for a bigger pump. The Eheim 1250 has a 1/2" outlet while the bigger pumps have 3/4" outlets. Jeroen

Thanks for the feedback Tankman.

Hi, I am new to Aquarium and are currently setting up my first aquarium. To do it right it will be a marine aquarium. I have been following this site with lots of interest and have learned heaps. My aquarium is a second hand one that I am currently building a new stand for and new sump. I am almost at the stage of putting water in it (getting more and more exiting). The aquarium measures 1200x 380 x 650 (high) and the sump is about 90L. The pump that came with it was an Eheim 1250 but with a head of 1.2 m this will only pump around 600L/hr. With the skimmer in the sump I think this is not enough. Looking on Trademe I see the brands 'Pondmaster MKII' and 'King'. I haven't seen these pumps yet on this Forum and wonder if people have experience with these pumps? Are they any good? Other questions I have at the moment are: -What kind of sand do you put in a refugem? -With my tank being 650 deep I probably will need MH lights. What wattage would be needed to get enough light at the bottom of the tank. Thanks, Jeroen.