smidey

nice work, your setup must be going well. if you get the tank setup right and feed well the side effect is masses of fry.

i worked on that house, epic build

i'm over it haha, bring on summer!

does the canister have more media than the internal you plan to use? i think the canister will be better and filtration is the most important thing in keeping the fish healthy and well.

cool idea, i like it. from a construction/cabinetry point of view, you'll need a stronger beam to go across the opening in the front and lose the central member on the upper base so you can have one piece front to back which will make it handle more weight. depending on what hinges you intend to use the doors above the sump will most likely sag in a short time but using specific hardware will limit that.

that sucks. ah well, guess all you can do is start again.

welcome back from a fellow whangarain resident

or buy a tap to suit and turn it off.

i kept 4 red zebras, 6 yellows, 4 fryeri, 4 peacocks, 4 cobalt blues. start off with smaller fish as they will get along better as adults. Have plenty of hiding places and make sure your filtration is 5 or 6 times your tank volume per hour. this is a pic of it, not a good photo but you get the idea. I couldn't find a pic of it when they were bigger.

it's possible to keep smaller africans in a tank that size. I have kept zebras, yellows, peacocks, fryeri and auratus in a tank that size. you could also keep shellies and dems. Haps will get too large for that tank but it will give you time to upgrade in the future.

great news john, well done. some africans would be a great start that shop has always been more toward land based animals than fish but i assume you'll be changing that?

i have 2 jagers verticle and 1 horizontal and they all keep the tank at the desired temp. I only put my 300W horizontal as my tank is only 450mm tall and the heater is about 500mm long.

For them to work the best your tank should have enough circulation so all the water is the same temp. This will make your tank an even temp but no flow won't harm your heater, it will just shut off before the entire tank is at the set temp

of course, there probably isn't a product on the planet that has never had a failure. It's just some products have very few failures (Jager) and some products commonly or mostly fail long before they should (jebo). All heaters will fail eventually, it's just when and what they achieve when they do.

when was that?

the problem with that is most times people post about a heater failing and losing their fish is in the morning. what happens is as the tank cools at night the heater has more work to do so is more likely to stick on and therefore cook the fish while you're sleeping. the other feature of a jager is, as i understand it, if they fail by sticking on a fuse type wire burns out and they shut off so you can't cook your fish with a jager. it is far better for a heater to fail and shut off than fail and stick on, the fish can cope with a cooler tank better than a hot one and if you check your tank daily you'll pick up it's getting cool. when i feed my fish every morning i touch the glass to test for temp. also if you are concerned about the accuracy of the dial of a jager it is calibratable but all my jagers have been keeping the tank at the temp i set on the dial so have been spot on out of the box.

that's proof the above statement isn't very accurate. the better quality of heater the more accurate they will be. i also found the jebos to over heat but have not seen that of the jagers.

Not sure if others are better but I doubt you'll have any problems

What would be the cost of replacing your fish like for like if you could source them? And if you look at the cost per year it's probably cheaper per year to buy a Jager every seven to ten years than a cheaper one every year or two it's just the amount up front. Taking away the costs side of it, they really are the best at maintaining the tank at the correct temp constantly.

a jager will fix it i learnt that lesson early on, had a few jebos and they are junk. inaccurate temps, tank ranged about 4 degrees under and over the desired temp and between 12 and 18 months they all failed. Bought jagers, possibly 5 years ago now and not had an issue since and the tank stays about 1 degree to what you set them at, never much over if any.

great setup indeed, clearly have spent a good amount of money on it and it really shows. well done! one thing, from the pics it looks like your using a jebo heater? if so, from experience i recommend not relying on that for very long. I had a few of them when i first started keeping fish and they all (about 4 or 5 of them) failed between 12 & 18 months and when working properly never kept the tank and a relatively constant temp. When they failed they stayed on so it may cook your fish so i'd recommend getting a eheim/jager heater. Would be a shame to get a year down the track and have it ruin your livestock.

What you going to use it for? You some sort of high tech peeping tom?

plastic tanks or concrete? if plastic the ph could be very low to start with and now your not adding the buffer it is climbing like it was.

Yeah, it might be a great thing. If they want to tax the earnings they will also need to take into consideration the cost of producing it, looks like I'll be in for a tax refund because the cost is far higher than the income

I wonder where all the ones I sold went. I had hundreds of fry, sold around 100 fry and in the end was feeding the fry to the Malawians I had because I couldn't sell them for $2. IIRC Kiwiplymoth took about 40 in one go.