jolliolli

depends how pure you want it, medchem sells calcium chloride in 25Kg amounts, otherwise if you're not as fussy about purity try the farm stores

i'd agree with your you on tuttos, and tonys great food. I've also had poor service at winniebagoes and henry africas (and bad food). I also like lone star (but you can't book the tables), little india is nice, somewhere really really fancy (and expensive) is rotherhams, the food is fantastic but its more of an intimate fine dining afair

i have the tunzes and like them - good points -quiet -small -reliable -good lph out of them bad points the clips on the magnets tend to break i don't think hydors are available here, could be wrong, they are a lot cheaper but i have heard very mixed reviews on them, plus they are much larger than a tunze and i don't think the flow is as strong haven't used seios think they are supposed to be pretty good but can be quite large

not a horror story but more a funny story from when i used to manage a retail store. I was interviewing a candidate for the job with along with the owner of the store. I asked the guy what his duties were at his previous job, he started to list them off and then stated that at his old job he was in charge of the 'weekly Mod=Warren: Swearing removed, warning sent'.... he meant to say 'weekly banking', the poor guy was mortified, went bright red and just kept apologising over and over, saying i can't believe i said that. I think he was more embarassed as he was a guy and i'm a girl. The whole time i just tried to keep a straight face, i couldn't look at the owner of the store as i knew i would just crack up laughing... alas he didn't get the job but i shall always remember him

you might be remembering my experience with corktiles lmsmith. I had cork tiles which were sandwiched between pieces of rubber in the sump of my marine aquarium and when the tiles disintegrated some form of toxic poison was released killing 90% of my fish in around 30 minutes. I suspect it is likely it was the glue that attached the rubber to the cork that was toxic, but its not a risk i would be taking again

you can dissolve and add to the water, or if your fish is still eating you can mix up in their food and administer it that way

also your fish are probably stressed from all the medications (do you have any carbon in your filter, as this will neutralize all medications and needs to be taken out before treating). I would lay of the meds for a bit and just try the water changes

lol great minds think alike!

Hi Piggyvir, if you added all the fish at once to the tank then and then you're probaby still having water quality issues due to it cycling. If you replaced all the gravel then you've probably removed a lot of the 'good' bacteria which live on the gravel and help with processing the fish waste. Try getting your water tested for ammonia and nitrite to see if water quality is the issue. You state your nitrite reading is 100pm, do you mean nitrate? at 100ppm for nitrite i would expect your fish to be dead! The red edge to the gills might be burning of the gills due to ammonia or septacemia due to a bacterial infection. Keep changing your water, and take some water in to your fish store and ask if they can test it for you (some of the animates stores do this). I would suggest doing 50% daily water changes until you get a reading of zero ammonia and zero nitrite, but do not clean out the filter as you will be disrupting the good bacteria. Hope that helps

Hi Jo1, when i had my tank i kept the internal filteras it was already installed, but since you'll be making one from scratch i would do as you've suggested and just run a very large external canister filter (or two smaller ones in each door) as the internal boxes are pretty ugly. the new juwel vision 450s come with T5 lighting as well

Hi Jo1 I have a juwel Vision 450 (but its my marine tank). I have also got a juwel rio 400, and I have to say that you are better off using both the internal filter system and an external canister filter ( I ran a CF1200 and hte internal filter on my rio 300 when i kept discus). RE: the cracking seems to be only the curved corner tanks that i have heard this happen too, visions are bowfront and so don't have the curved corners so i don't think this is so much of an issue (haven't heard it happen on a juwel). I personally think the juwels are a nicer tank that the aqua one tanks, well-made. Really recommend a juwel vision 450, very nice tanks , you can remove the lighting and lids and replace with a pendant light system if you ever decide to do this (or if you decide to use it for marines

try isopropyl alcohol, its good at removing gum/residue on glass. Have you tried a glass scraper as well?

yes i just used the report listing and chose other wrote something along the lines of 'inhumane/animal cruelty'

i think it would be a good idea to to report the listing to trademe on animal cruelty grounds, would have more of an impact if multiple ppl report the listings

usually caused by high levels of protein/fat foods causing a film. You could try feeding a different type of food. skimmer for a fw tank would be no good as they require saline water to produce the bubbles and remove the organics

welcome back , hmm don't think much has changed, a couple of new faces but thast about all

Top is bicolour blenny, next sixline or eightline wrasse, next blue tang, next sailfin tang, not sure about the last one

doh just realised that link is rockerpellers tank

I found buying an existing setup was a good way to get in to the saltwater hobby, that way your plumbing (if you have any), skimmer, lights eg are all sorted and you don't have to worry about the hardware side of things in the beginning and they can be a lot cheaper than buying something new It can be a little daunting in the beginning but, doesn't have to be as scary as it sounds. There are a few nano setups floating around on trademe at the moment that are all setup for on the hardware side of things, which means you can slowly stock your tank at your own pace and add rock, fish, coral etc slowly. If you could get it from auckland something like this might be a good option http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 286921.htm I thoroughly recommend saltwater, the action and colour in the tank is fantastic. If you have any questions feel free to pm me

what sort of things are you looking to keep? With that sort of tank you will be ok with small fish (eg gobys, firefish, clowns) but if you decide you want fish and corals then you will need to make sure you either keep up the water changes religiously or get a really good quality skimmer such as the ones listed above.

well done! re you going to leave the ram babies with the parents or separate?

NW200 would be fine for your tank i'm running an NW150 on my 400 and its fine, i have acros in there and they survive no problem so your tank should be fine depending on your stocking levels Lighting will depend on what time of livestock you want, if its just fish then whatever lighting you want. If you want mushrooms, leathers then lighting that you have is fine, if you want acros then you'll need more lighting. i run 2 x 250W and 2 X 54W T5s. Fmxmatt has i think 8 T5s on his tank?

yeah i'm with you on that one alan

Just for interest i thought I would post the results of water tests carried out on Chch tap water and bottled water. These results are from a handout I attended at a talk at my work today. 22 tests were performed on 3 brands of bottled water and chch tap water. The results from some of the more relevant tests are posted below. For reference the 3 bottled water brands tested were NZ Natural bottled water(NZN), Signature Range bottled water (SR), and Pump Spring water (PS). Christchurch tap water is shown as (CTW). Enjoy Nitrate Nitrogen (the lower the value the better) CTW - 0.4mg/L NZN - 0.8mg/L SR - 0.5mg/L PS - 0.5mg/L pH CTW - 7.7 NZN - 7.8 SR - 7.0 PS - 6.9 Total Disolved Solids (generally lower the better) CTW - 78 NZN - 89 SR - 110 PS - 120 Hardness CTW - 39 NZN - 54 SR - 12 PS - 12 There are a heap more but i though these were most relevant. You can see that CHCH water has come out really well! I've often seen it mentioned (more in the saltwater section) that buying bottled tap water can be a better option than standard tap water if you don't have a RO/DI unit but it would appear the water out of the tap is actually better

cowfish are great if you only want one fish ... problem is that if they are stressed they can release toxins killing everything else in your tank. Thats not to say you couldn't have one if you wanted but you'd need to be aware of the risks involved, there are some marine ppl out ther ein nz who have a similar experience with boxfish/puffers. i'd say 400l is a good size, at that size your water parameters are able to stay fairly stable, thats the size of my current marine tank and i find it pretty good maintenance wise. Most important this is to get a good skimmer, general rule of thumb is usually to get one that is rated for twice the volume of your tank. Lighting and water movement are the next biggest things, usually MHs or a lot of T5s if you want hard corals.