JDM

lokks great! i love those clowns, and by the looks of it they love there new home!

i have just tested my NSW that i use for water changes, will the temp affect any of the results? i know it will affect sg but what about no3? it tests perfect, totally clear, same with po4.

one less tank forsale now, just sold mine.

Excellent!!!!! :bounce: cant wait for the pics

WORST: Loosing my regal angel to my anemonie BEST: Meeting other people that share my obssion and learning. got to say all in all it has been a great year for my tank.

i have put my recently setup anemonie tank on as i have decided to focus on my upgrade next year and dont want the distraction of 2 tanks to take care of while planing and gathering gear for the up grade. figured it was a good time of year to move a tank as well. someone will get a good deal.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

hows taht monti looking now wasp?

really guess we wont get much of a reply here then

ditto if the person has enough i will take some too.

i use a ca reactor to control Ca and Kh now, but in the begining i was dosein with seachem calcuim and seachem reef builder (Kh) as the demand began to rise i switched to the ca reactor. both methods are good, i was adding Ca one day and Kh the next. also po4 remover is an excellent addition to a tank. i use mg powder to rase mg when needed but my source of nsw has mg of 1300 which is spot on for me, so its very rare that i will need to rase the mg. strontium is somthing im playing with at the moment, my coraline has gone nuts in the last month and this is due to the addition of strontium, but be careful with it as it can be dangerous if the level gets too high. so in summary i add: Ca and Kh via Ca reactor, strontium at 1/4 the reccomended doseage.Mg as needed. thats it.

is it mobile? ie dose it move around the tank or is it fixed in the one spot?

everything pies said. however, i set up a 100ltr tank 2 years ago for my mum, i maintain it for her as well. she has an anemone a pair of clowns and 2 other small fish and misc soft corals, it has a needle wheel skimmer and 4xt5s, seio for water movement, live rock for filtration plus po4 remover and a small bag of carbon. this goes against the grain, but it is an excellent tank that has very good growth of soft corals and excellent water quality. we do 10-15% water change each week with NSW, and use tap water for top off, have had an algae problem i must admit, vodka has been dosed recently and this has sorted it and its a great looking tank. relatively cheap to set up, but i use my test gear for her tank so that removes some of the initial costs but even so, this tank has not cost $1500 and that's incl the live stock! BUT as a general rule, this hobby will cost you thousands, and you will become addicted, best advice anyone can give you is BUY QUALITY, don't think a $100 skimmer will do the job, regardless of what some people might tell you. think of it this way, 2 clown fish $120 (ish) anemone $150 few corals $300 and another couple of fish $200, that's $970, now if you are prepared to spend that on live stock, then you should be prepared to spend at least $500 on a decent skimmer. this is one purchase that seems to cost too much for what they are ( or more how complicated they look), however i don't know anyone who regrets getting a good (usually expensive) skimmer.

it would be very expensive if you did the learining while importing, probably better to learn what you need to know prior to importing.

with this being the case, do you really think the owners of the store are going to say, "yeah lets throw another few tousand into our marine and employ more staff to look after the QT, then pay maf to inspect them, i dont think so. it dose make sense in a way, to start your own import and retail, this is what wonder world in rotorua are talking of doing, im not sure how far along they are though. another side to import retail, would be selection, if i did this i wouldnt expect any of the importers to support my business by allowing me to buy from them as well as import (would you supply your competetor?), so the selection of fish and coral will be limited by where your import came from this round, more selection is what we want, why make moves to somewhat limit this? also i cant see how import retail will solve the current situation? selling direct from wholesale will still be cheaper than the shops, shops have leases power wages theft.........

the service i receive from Ben is top notch, i don't care if i could get the items up the road cheaper (no excuse to charge me more bro )because i find the staff up the road rude and unhelpful, i once needed to use the toilet while in HFF, the guy said that there was a public toilet at the end of the street in the park, this as i was handing him my eftpos card to purchase a large amount of live stock, needless to say i left him and the bags sitting on the counter and went to Jansen's where the toilet was available and spent the money there. i now consider Ben a friend and will shop in Jansen's regardless of what the owner drives (esp considering i would rather have my car :lol: ) if Ben can do me a coral for $80 and i like it i will buy it, if its $150 and i like it, same deal. Hff have only received my business twice sine the toilet issue, both times i needed the item asap and had no other option. having said that, i spoke to Dave the owner on the phone recently for some advice and he was great, very helpful. at the end of the day i agree with pies, i put my money where i find the service that i expect, Ben delivers on service and i shop there, if nothing else i will remain a long term customer and friend of Ben's. as pies said, sometimes money dose not compare to the having it now factor.

Funny thing is, I didn’t like this site for a long time, to the point where I wouldn’t use it at all, I preferred RC, I took me nearly 2 years to even register here. The reason for registering here in the end was being told time and time again to get on here by my preferred fish shop. Funny they would tell me to get on here if the wholesalers were a concern. If I had not found this site, I would not have met a heap of people that I now regularly contact and discuss my tank/there tank its great! at the end of the day, people will use the lfs when they start regardless of weather they have access to other sources, purely because when you start (or at least when I started) all you want is to see everything ASAP and buy as many of the cool pieces ASAP, this will require more than one supplier.

summed up in one easy statement.

I went to raglan tonight to collect some NSW, after having been there a while i was fulling my 4th or 5th drum when a lovely older couple were walking by, they must have been going for an evening walk by the shore. having noticed some crazy man fulling water containers from the sea, curiosity must have got the better of them and they came for a closer look. "what is it your doing here the man asked" "I'm collecting salt water" i replied. "what the devil for?" he said, "well you see, i have developed an engine that will revolutionise the way we travel, my new invention runs on salt water and will soon replace the combustion engine of today" well, the stunned look on both there faces was priceless! i couldn't help but burst out larfing! "oh so your pulling our chain" the lady replied. "yes" i said, "its for a fish tank"....... we spoke for a little while about fuel prices and current events, then they continued on, i could hear there larfter as they walked away, with a "good luck with your inventions" coming out of the fading daylight.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/3913DSC04705__Small_.JPG very very cool!

can you link the page that photo was from please Fay? seems RC dont want to share there photos.....

OK, so this is not unusal, why is it then, that people say we need an established tank when they will accecpt brine, mysis and pellets!!!! :roll:

boy, he would do well with the nitrate in my tank! just as a side issue, i removed the zeo reactor tonight, so i am not running any zeo products at all now, i will be interested to see how this affects my tank. po4 is now untraceable, but nitrates still 50 as i do not have the denitrator yet. lets see how long it takes for a visiable change from stopping zeo, then we will see how long till i return to zeo.... :lol:

bugger, here i was thinking i had some sort of mutaited mandarin. :lol:

fed my tank frozen mysis tonight, just as a treat. stood watching the fish go nuts over it, then out came my mandarin, at first i think he just wanted to be part of the action but then i noticed him chase a piece of food, the i watched him as he ate it and continued to chase and eat more. i was so shocked that he was eating it i didn't even think to grab the camera, but i will have it handy next time i feed frozen. dose anyone else have a mandarin that eats frozen or flake? could this mean he is running out of pods and the like? or could he be just experimenting?