Pies

From what i've read, lots of light, lots of current and pristine water conditions. In the wild Anemones are most common (with clownfish or shrimps) in the same places as SPS corals. So it stands to reason they require the same conditions. Pie

Well then, no goni Cancel my queston.

Skuzza! Looks really good. I know what you mean about additional cost, same with me, although my tank isn't quite as large as yours. What are the dimentions? Sump size, skimmer etc? I would love to see some pics of the sump etc. Also what lighting? Get someone to stand in front of the tank to give it some scale, hard to belive its 1600 litres! How long have you had the goniopora (2nd photo bottom left). Awesome coral but often short lived. Looks like its doing great. Nice work, more photos Pie

The holder is the same on the maginet as it is on the strut thingie anyway. Mine been running for a couple of years so far without issue. $60 isn't too bad. I will hold off until I know exactly where I am putting my pumps though, don't need another gadgit sitting in the drawer. Pie

Layton - ALL of my acros are brown except my brihgt purple and a metellic green And because the new tank is under lit by about 600 watts I don't expect it to change until I throw some money and time at it. O-well, at least they are alive. Drifty. 2 of my streams are mounted through the over flow comb, so the maginet holder wouldn't work. I may need a maginet holder for the 3rd stream, depending. I have made one out of a mag float maginet, and will see how it goes. Good feed back thought, what are they worth? Pie

Lighting is on hold at the moment until Steve comes up to visit and I shake this nasty throat infection i've picked up. Not feeling good at all. Still though had a chance to take some snaps of the tank and its inhabitance. One of the acros i've had in reserve in 'survival mode'. This will be purple or blue judgeing by its tips with awesome green polyps! Blue Tang wants to get in every photo. Frogspawn, this started as a frag from Alois has since budded 2 new heads. Has taken about 8 months to produce the 2 heads so not exactly a fast process but still at least its growing. Ever woundered what a Galaxia polyp looks like up real close? I did. Such awesome looking corals, slowing becomming one of my favorites. I have one I grew fron a single polyp, is now over 50 polyps! Shame these things kill everything within reach. This is a softie frag i've had kicking around. You can't tell in the photo but its skin is actually lime green. Cool looking coral and never did well before hand but seems to like its position in the new tank, polyps out most day and looking fully inflated and happy. Thats all for now. Pieman

Layton - Same could be said if your making your salt mix from tap water, can't be to sharp for consistancy. However i'll stand by my own results with NSW, some pretty sharp looking corals if I do say so myself. That aside, taking water from the harbour would be silly anyway, when the cook straight is just around the corner. Pie

I would drill the tank. A weir can work, but they are problematic. Syphon or 2 pump systems are flakey at best. Drilling the tank works. Other systems may or may not work. The problem is the 'sleep at night' factor. Good luck. Pie

Ben - Its normal for a fish to not eat on introduction. You sound like you have lots of food, I wouldn't rush out and buy any more or add any more to the tank. When a human is sick, stressed or unhappy its common for them to loose weight, the last thing you want is to be force fed a tonne of food, not unreasonable to think the same of your fish. And like humans, they can go for weeks without food so don't worry. I would just continue to feed as normal, the addition of extra food will not help your tank. Pie

Using a syphon to drive a tanks sump is for suiscide pilots only, it will NEVER work. Have a look at the use of a 'weir' which will work, or drill the tank with an overflow (reccomended). Pie

Port Nicholson Glass in Wellington. Peter made my tank and did an AWESOME job. Hes a professional tank maker, and a very good cabinet maker. He makes many of the cabinets (pine) you see in the stores around NZ. He may even deliver as I know he is going to Auckland to deliver some tanks in the next few weeks, and often pops around. He charges for the delivery of course, but his pricing is very fair. If you want holes drilled, open lids, custom braces or whatever you need to plan out the tank (as per my previous posts on my 'first look' thread). He will take it from there. If you send him the tank valves he may even glue these in for you depending on the size of the tank (makes it hard to move a large tank with them in). Also get the overflow box made (should cost less than $100.00) and he will glue this in too. Garantees his work, makes steel framed stands. Can do collars or lids as required. I wouldn't use anyone else. Pie

Lighting continued - I have 2 ballasts from RADIUM LIGHTING in auckland. They are 400w, wired back to the mains via 3 pin, with a femail 3 pin (round earth hole) to run the bulb. $100ea, these will run Radium 20k & 10k bulbs, also should work on all/most Eurpoean bulbs. Big thanks to JetSkiSteve who not only went and grabed them, but sorted out a great price at the same time, thanks Steve. Will get them on the tank later in the new year. Coral death? Almost but no quite. One of my staghorn acropora corals had started bleeching from the bottom up over the past few days (since being moved upstairs). Not sure whats causing it. I broke of the end and re-afixed it and its doing fine, but I expect the bit left behind to be dead when I get home tonight. Strange, obviously some sort of infection or diesese. Otherwise tank is doing great and looking good. Fish are so much happier than I have seen them. They really enjoy the extra swimming space and all the rocks and current. They are acting differently than they had in the previous tank. Corals are all doing fine, still have some rockwork to finish. Should have most of it sorted in the next few days. Lots of little things to do but overall its really taking shape. Finalise the positions of the STREAMS so I can get my cable management in would be nice, but the big negative of the streams, stupid mounting system. Also I am keen to get the return pump sorted sooner rather than later. I could do with more turnover simply to clear the water up a little more as when the sand/rock is stired up it takes a day for the water to clear as the sump turnover is so slow. Anyone ordering IWAKI pumps soon? The exchange rate is good right now. Pie

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/ ... reeder.htm Cultures and info on growing phyto, rotifers etc.

Need?

Your kidding right? Iron sand and saltwater. Ever seen what happens to Iron when exposed to saltwater? Do NOT use NZ beach sand. Pie

Layton, thanks for that, just wanted to check. I will buy 1 and set it up and see how it treats me. Don't supposed you can take some snaps of your lights for me? Also are you using a 3 wire plug to the bulb? Any special considerations for cable length? How far away can the ballasts be (as I understand it only 5 feet?). Also do the ballasts make any noise? Anything else I need to do before I start? Steve - I am sure they will be fine. did you get a ballast price? Pie

Any electrical supplier have electronic ballasts (master trade, coreys, egley). There are many brands, i've seen people using ATCO. All available in NZ. Pie

You will need more the cyclopsezee to rare (rear? reer?) the young. I have some that a friend brought back from Eurpoe. Mail order may be your best option. Its good for coral, but so small my fish just ignore it (maybee 1/8 mm little orange bits). Pie

Layton - Have a read of this please and let me know what you think, regarding lighting: All ballasts are not the same. The role of a ballast in a MH lamp setup is to act as a resistor (kind of) and limit current through the lamp. Without the ballast, the lamp would "overdraw" and quickly self destruct. (Incidentally, the difference between an ideal ballast and a resistor is that an ideal ballast stores energy, rather than disipating it as heat, so does not waste electricity like a resistor would - real ballasts have some resistance, which is why they get hot and consume an additional 10% (roughly) of the total energy of the system)... but I digress. MH lamps of the same wattage differ in terms of their ideal current and voltage, and hence, need different ballasts. In 400W lamps, there are three lamp voltages that are common: 100V, 120V and 135V. What happens to the rest of the 240V? This is the voltage that is "dropped" by the ballast, so a 100V lamp requires a ballast that will drop 140V at a current of 400W/100V = 4A. From here I could work out the inductance of the ballast, but I'm sure I'd put people to sleep. Ballasts also differ in their efficiency. A ballast that is wound with "fatter" wire has less resistance and is more efficient. The down side is that it is also heavier, bigger and more expensive. But for you Mark, the bottom line is that BLV 400W lamps are 100V lamps. The ATCO OGB400-100 is for 135V lamps, while the OGH400-100 is for 120V lamps... you need an ATCO OGS400-100, an OGS400-109(TH) or an OGS400-106, all of which are for 100V lamps. The 109 has a thermal cutout, but otherwise performs the same as the 100. The 106 dissipates (wastes as heat) 34W as opposed to 37W for the other two.

FAY - Yeah I was going to hold off, but the downstairs tank has little rock, no coral and no light at the moment, so I just couldn't leave the fish in it any longer. So selfcontrol is still there, just didn't want to leave the fish in the dark The conditions in the tank must be good. The boxing shrimp spawned last night, I have a mated pair. She was loaded with eggs the other day and I watched her release hundreds of free swimming lavae last night. The tank want nuts, EVERY coral opened for a feed, as did the fish (even the clowns!). So I suspect none survived, but still, was quite a site. The male shrimp following the female EVERYWHERE gaurding her, very cool. But its nice to know that the conditions are good enough for spawning some of the critters in the tank, hopefully with 2x as much space they will be even happier. Pie

Ha! Yeah bloody thing, I didn't even know it was there until I took the photo! There is also a lone Marjano in there too. I promise to exterminate it ASAP! I've moved some fish upstairs. I wasn't going too, but in the end I felt bad for the in a big tank with nothing in it! So lighting and a bigger return pump take my priority at the moment. The rockwork isn't finished, but I have some macro algae attached to the rocks I want to use, so I think the best way to take care of it is to light starve it out. So will take a week or 2. Pieman

I have 4 filters running on my tank without spraybars, its driven by C02 and is heavly planted. No problems for me. Pie

Well the tank is now full, and the rockwork is about 75% done. The bommie is the main focus for me right now as it is the home to the anemone that I am most worried about. Its been walking all over the place but seems happy now and has stayed put for a few days. Still lots of ghetto lighting and pumps all over the tank, but some pics to give you the general idea. Sorry for the quality of the photos. This is the tank from the front. Note the halides are down the left hand side, hence the reason its darker down the right, even though its being lit by 4x T5s and 4x 4ft Fluros. This is the tank from the viewable side (left hand if looking from the front). Lobo looking healthy and happy. Love the clams: Am concentraing soft corals, exnia, star polyps and zoo's etc on the bommie. This should contain them and not let them run rampant down the right hand end that will be 90% stone coral. Cept for all the mushrooms I missed, HUNDREDS Pie

There is a thread on here about mine, jumped 3 times, everytime I saved it. It also jumped into my overflow 2 times. Saved it. Died when I moved house Pie

Yeah just black on the visible outside part. Pie