skippy

:lol: Where do you reckon the main cost comes into it with the tank? The lights?

Ouch how many tanks do you run? My bill is only while running one tank

My bill is already around the $300 mark every month and I would like to upgrade my lights Scares the crap out of me as the bill is scary enough. Have seriously thought about getting a little generator to tide the tank over when the power goes somewhere else (mind you, we watched Auckland in the dark while we had power. I knew I moved north for a reason (apart from traffic jams) :lol: :lol: :lol:

Layton The crosshatch is a beauty but my shrimps may not be too pleased Suphew You think I feed them too much?? They certainly get rid of it quick enough and hang about for more (I know that fish are expert at the "starving to death impersonations". What is this cyclops-eeze? Seen it posted a few times but have no idea what it is or where you get it. There is not much in the way of algae, and the yellow tang harvests that pretty well, have never had a problem with phosphates even on tank water, but always struggle to keep my nitrates below about 20ppm. I have a couple of sand sifters that hoover my sand for me on a fairly regular basis and they seem to clean up any leftovers that the fish miss

Layton have you got a trigger in your reef tank?? If so what type. I was setting up a trigger tank but it crashed and my niger died along with a spotted toby. Got depressed and pulled it to bits, deciding to concentrate on my reef. I know there are some triggers that are reef compatible but always been a bit reluctant to take the plunge in case it wrecks the joint. It is a long way back to the lfs from here :lol:

Looking great Chim

Nice

Following on from HeliFaxNZ, without hijacking the thread, what do folks out there feed their fish and corals. I mainly feed frozen (defrosted) stuff twice a day, morning and night. would probably feed them lunch too but I'm at work. Occasionally I add a bit of nori for them to gobble on - they seem to like it. With the frozen stuff, I add cubes of a variety of different things and defrost and feed it, just to give them a mix. foods include marine tucker, marine tucker green, mysis shrimp, blood worms, brine shrimp. I also occasionally feed flakes and Salifert Energy plus granules (they go ballistic over this stuff :bounce: ) - the shrimps just about climb out the tank to get it. Corals generally get Coral Food, coral grower

I take it you don't have a boat Puttputt :lol: :lol:

I'm lazy!! :lol: Use ASW at present. Much the same as Drifty though, only use a couple of hundred worth of ASW a year. But I did use NSW once but the tank didn't seem to like it much and one of my fish died Not sure if it was the water or a coincidence. Despite what the media says about all the sewer spills in the BOI, the water is actually pretty good. Once Puttputt gets up here, collecting NSW may be another excuse to get the boat out :lol: :lol:

My clowns laid a new set of eggs again this afternoon. It was the first time that I have actually seen them doing it (felt like a bit of a voyeur actually :oops: is it wrong to watch :roll: Actually quite a cool thing to watch. It is a shame it will all be a waste of time for them but they seem happy enough :lol:

Cheers Steve Will have a look when I get the chance to. Thanks for the advice. Finally tracked an anenome yesterday (not to easy to get up in Northland) so my clowns are making fools of themselves in it at the moment Cheers again Skippy

Hey there LJ, I'm a reefy and freshwater tanks don't normally press my buttons, but your one looks great. Congrats, you must be stoked. Keep it up (BTW - has the girlfriend come around to it yet?) Cheers Skippy

Reef That is awesome

Hi Steve Welcome to the site (a bit late but better than never!) I've got a pair of fire clowns (red saddlebacks) that are laying eggs and being very stroppy to boot. would be interested in anything you (or anyone else) can pass on about getting the eggs from, well, eggs and into fish! I'm probably not set up for breeding them but it would be interesting to find out what is involved Cheers Skippy

Dude thats awesome. Does that make you a reef parent now :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hi Tel About 5 1/2 years. Prior to that the only track record was one of those horrible plastic bowls with coloured lid and base with a couple of goldfish. Marines are just a tiny bit different It is probably good that I didn't know about this site 2 years back before I had my house built - design may well have been different having seen the way some people have their set ups. My tank is fully self contained with sump, skimmer and refugium underneath. Only thing outside the tank is the chiller which was bought this summer. That was money well spent up here I can tell you. My crapper little stick on thermometer goes to 30 and wasn't coming below that. (I do have another thermometer! Chiller fixed all that though

Yip - what Skuzza said! I agree

Hey Cracker You psychic too One of the ones I lost was a mandarin :lol: Many of the losses I put down to rank amateur over exhuberence and basically not having any idea when I started on this expensive path. Shame I didn't know about this forum back then. Still have absolutely no idea why my clowns apparently went blind though. Its happened to three of them over the time. Hey Ira, I lost two firefish that just vanished as well. Went a bit coy for a bit and hid in a hole only coming out occasionally - then pffft - gone

Welcome Pixie This site is going global - great to have the UK on board too :lol:

Thanks Mystic (and Ballistic too - just read his unilateral post) (Abject apologies if he is a she - thats the problem with usernames - they're genderless :lol: :lol: ) Have had a great time on these forums and love checking out other peoples tank pics. Some of them are inspirational and provide heaps of ideas (not to mention a fair ol' dollop of envy ). Never mind, something to strive towards

Not too sure about the past 12 months but since I started reefing, I've bought 41 fish and I have 10 in my tank at the moment Geez its depressing when you put it on paper The last one I lost was about 3 weeks ago when I found a very dried up bi-colour blennie on the glass lid he must have been travelling when he got into the atmosphere as he jumped across three light fittings to where I found him I've lost a few corals and anenomes too but lets not go there I have lost a few that have gone blind - apparently - as there was no response to stimuli. Mainly clowns (3 of them over time). Has anyone else had fish go blind on them?

hi there - you got a bargain with that tank - wish I had some spare cash myself to spend on it. i've moved tanks three times in 18 months. I took the majority of the water with me in 20 litre carboys (those square barrels if you haven't come across carboys before) but Chims 200 litre barrel will work just fine. Just remember to put it on your trailer before you fill it up!!! :lol: The LR and corals I put in square/rectangular polystyrene boxes with lids and covered the coral with newspaper wet down with water from the tank. I bagged my fish (1 per bag) and my shrimps (same as they do in the fish shops and loaded them all in poly boxes in their bags. The sand I just put in a lidded bucket with enough tank water to almost cover it. Chims dismantle order tips are basically what I did. Mind that if you have any blennies (such as bi-colours) as they have a terrific tendency to hide in the holes in the LR and you find youve packed all your LR in the boxes and find you are a fish or two short and then you unload it all back into the tank to find it. Doing it this way was fine to move from it from Auckland to Kerikeri in Northland - about 4 1/2 hours with a fully loaded car and trailer. :-? Plus a couple of hours (or more) either side to pack and unpack everything. to be honest I pretty much just put everything in the tank on the unload side of things just to get it all up and running. went back to it a week or so later to make it look nice :lol: so the fishies didn't get to stressed out. Good luck with it - stick up some pics when it is all up and running - and ask plenty of questions here - some folks on here know plenty about this "hobby" Cheers Skippy

Yip I've got heaps of these in my tank - weird watching them "fish" with their lines

Hey Cracker Sad bugger that I am I couldn't sleep in so have sat here reading through this thread from woe to go since 6.00am. Stunned! To see what you have done with your tank from essentially nothing to what you have now is inspirational - has given me "oceans" of ideas :lol: Also, all the comments that eveyone has made, suggesting different ways of doing stuff is brilliant - one big collective "reef brain" - better than any books by miles Keep posting your photos as it all fills out