JDM

i have seen 3 of the tanks, one is very nice, one is still in its eairly days and the other is my mums tank that was my frist tank, that one i look after and is going very well. the other 3 are people i have met and one i introduced into the hobbie, i havnt had spare time to go see there tanks although i will be trying to make time in the near future, (somthing like coming to see your tank kp)

I think it will be interesting to have a poll of all out there who currently have a saltwater set up, be it a reef tank or fish only, or cold salt water or any other salt water tanks, if you have one, let us know, everyone please. full tank photos would be cool too. heres mine

im fairly sure there would be a heap more people with reef tanks that dont use this forum, it took me 2 years before i used this forum. i also know of 6 tanks in hamilton that the owners are not even regestered on here.

i just read this from the start (again), you have done a top job fay! please keep us posted on the happnings in your tanks, and all the excellent photos are real eye candy!

as the title says, THANKS REEF!!!!!! he gave me a set of new bushes to fix the noise comming out of my skimmer, they have worked a treat!!!! i can now hear the air entering the skimmer! and that is great news. :bounce: so thankyou reef!

i collect 440 ltrs at a time and this lasts me about a month, the water needs to be stored in a dark place and it will last for ages. i allways have enough salt mix to do a 100% water change just in case. with a 60ltr set up that wont cost you much. the rock i can spare is not much, but it will "seed" it with the bacterria you need, and will shortin the cycle time. your lfs might be able to sell you a peice of live rock, this will do the same and save you a road trip.

i have a 2 foot tank set up with a cheep and nasty aquaone hob skimmer, its doing well, i have 2x white fluro and one blue, i do 25% water changes weekly (using water from my reef tank(nsw)) i have some small peices of live rock that i could spare, but you would need to pick it up from me in hamilton. i have one power head (4500 lph) and the skimmer for water movement, i keep mushroom frags star polop frags and some torch and hammer corals, i have a maroon clown and a yellow tail damsel, looks good for what it is, but it will not support many speices of corals, mushrooms leathers and easy to keep softies. also i do not feed the fish in that tank, maybe twice a week as i am concerned about degrading the water quality with such a useless skimmer. will be a cheep way to start but you will soon be bitten by the bug and want more more more, as kp said more water volume is better, this is becouse it is easier to keep the water quality better for the inhabitants you choose to keep, this will require a good skimmer but the rest you could do as you can afford it (light upgrade power heads etc) as far as rock goes, from what i have experanced you will not need much more rock if any to support the extra volume. the best advice i can give you would be to read and read and read some more, and just when you thort you have read enough, read some more, referace books are excellent and these sort of fish sites can be very helpfull. ask questions on things you dont understand and most of us are keen to offer advice. enjoy marine keeping, its a challange and very rewarding.

drill a hole just below the water level in the display, this will suck air in and stop the syphon as the level drops below the hole.

sounds like you mean bristle worms not flat worms? other than that i will have to let the others help you as i have never come accross this before.

anyone in christchurch got a tank suitable to keep this guy? Or, maybe just safe enough to keep him alive while we sort out a new home for him. ooooppps didnt see tm's post about the same thing.

i had 3 seio 1100s in my tank, removed them and put in one stream 6100, the seios flow rating is very misleading, at a guess i would say the stream is half as powerful again. and thats 1 compared to 3! i have seen photos of people using a open weave filter gauze as a cover for the stream, would be fine for a few weeks untill the anemonie gets settled, then remove the gauze and enjoy.

i could come for a visit and bring my camera its not as nice as some of the guys on here have though :-?

there growing well, the montis are about 2mm per week, i have some pics of when i added one of the montis, i wil put a then and now pic up. one acro is growing quite quickly but the others seem to be a bit slower. the ca reactor is working perfectly, no extra doses in the last 6 weeks.

i think this may have been what lead up to the death of my maxima clam, cant be cirtin, i know when i removed it from my tank it did not have its foot anymore. that monti looks great, any chance of a full tank shot?

some more, taken tonight.

thanks for all the nice comments, to be fair, those first photos i posted on here were taken with my cell phone, these current photos are taken with my new cannon. i had no idea how to take photos even when i borrowed my mums camera i was using the flash. it has come along way, and i am still learning (i will always be learning) dosing is the main thing i have altered, keep levels correct. when i started 2 years ago i was only concerned with nitrite and ammonia, didnt even know what po4 or Kh was, didnt own a test kit for Ca. no one had told me about these things. next on my list of things to do is auto top off and heater controller, then i will be looking at upgrading my tank, i have run out of room and as things grow i will need more space, not to mention all the tempting corals at jansens. hmmmm 8x4x2ft, sounds good costs bad :evil:

pay me the same as i earn now and ill be there in a heart beat!

had a change of aquascaping while catching a fish. 8) got a cool cave going on now, it is open from the top at the back of the cave and i have some mushrooms down there, will be interesting to see how they do. here are some update pics lots of micro bubbles in this shot, they have gone now as i have made yet another change to my sump setup the cave as mentioned above the sps rock full tank shot

very very nice wasp! your colors are amazing! when it gets better than than this it will be beond words! what zeovit products are you using? what quanites and frequency? (lets all just let wasp answer this question without the zeo debate starting yet again)

the first thing i would try is to carefully syphon it out, this dose not have a great sucess rate as they attach themselfs very well. if you have access to kalk, make up a thick paste, turn off your pumps and cover the little buger with it. if you dont have access to kalk, i have used boiling fresh water with limited sucess. whatever you do try not to let any part of it float away, as this will grow another one.

im a week down the track and i havnt seen any nudis on my montis for 3 days! had a real good look tonight and i beleve they are gone, there eggs however are probably still around. i will keep an eye on it but dose anyone know how long the eggs take to hatch? are the eggs visiable? i cant see anything under it.

i have this set up at the moment, very very little noise, but it is hard to tune, and when i do a water change i have to retune it. works good though, i have a cap over the top of my standpipe to prevent anything from getting in there and blocking it, a saftey standpipe would be good for peice of mind, but i havnt had any issues with it blocking and even if it did block it would only put around 2 ltrs of water over the top of my tank. give it a go, its not expensive to try and you can allways go back to the dorso.

i had cyno, i fixed it with flow, added a stream and within 2 weeks the cyno was gone without a trace. it also dose seem to be a time of year thing as quite a few people i know have had issues with it recently. i have read the sticky articles and there worth the read.

a 2 foot t5 is not 54w, it is 24w as apposed to 18w for standard 2 foot. why not just add a t5 ballast and waterproof holders, mount it to the top of the tank with a good reflector over it, keep the fitting standard. if you remove the blue you have taken 18w out if you then go to the trouble of changing to t5, you will refit a 24w tube, giving you a gain of 6w, not really worth the cost in my opnion.

my goal is to somewhat copy what you have done chimera, and go in wall, 7ftx3ftx2ft so im trying to hang in there with this setup till i get brave enough to cut some serious holes in my wall. i suppose a few extra holes to gib up wont be too much of a problem. ok if i go through the wall, i would like to have the sump raised a little from the floor to allow easy water changes, i dont have any limit to space (within reason) in the room behind my tank as it is a spare room. might need to change the title of this thread to jdm's tank upgrade. did you reinforce (dam (EDIT DAMN) spelling!) the floor under you tank chimera? i will defenaly need to look into that, it is the only job im not sure how to tackle and then the in wall could get started!