Warren

Go with the 1200. Discus don't mind current as long as there are some still areas. With only 230L you'll only be able to keep 4-5 discus tops and they prefer to be kept in groups of a dozen or more as they're a schooling fish. Discus are big messy eaters and need lots of food. You'll need a really good filter to keep the water quality top-notch and water chabges weekly of 25-50%. It's also not a good ide to keep discus and angels together. They generally don't get on and neither will look it's best if both are in the same tank.

Get one called 'The Pump". It's expensive but it will go for just about ever and will easily cope with 30 tanks. It comes with about 12 outlets but you're better to run a fat hose past all the tanks and tap into it with smaller hoses.

As long as the bulb is running the correct voltage any ballast with will be fine. I'm using HPS ballast on my HQI tubes as they are both designed for a 100V tube voltage. Some MH bulbs could be 90 or 110V and if run on a 100V ballast will run at the wrong temperature (so give out the wrong colour / spectrum) and will likely shorten their life if they run too hot (90V bulb run at 100V). It's important to get the correct ballast to maximise the life of the bulb and to get the correct colour. The bulb and the ballast usually have a number at the end. Mine are something like HQI250DL-100 and the ballast HPS250-100 (where the 100 indicates the operating voltage). As long as the watts and volts match it will be ok. The tube voltage is not the same as the mains voltage. The job of the ballast is to drop the mains voltage down to the correct voltage for the tube. It also creates the high voltage required to strike the arc and maintain it.

HPS uses a glass case and HQI uses quartz. Glass blocks heaps more of the available UV than quartz. Most marine bulbs use a quartz case to get the very best performance. It makes the bulb more expensive.

They also really need to be HQI or better (not HPS) to be better for aquatic plant growth and specialised lamps for marines. You won't easily find marine lamps at electrical / hydroponic outlets in NZ.

Cool.

Hi Freshwest, I'd dump the UGF it will be no good with Amazon plants. Most Amazon plants like an iron and mineral rich substrate and deeper than 50-60mm (go for 80-100mm). Amazon plants (Echinodorus species specifically) do not like too much water movement past the roots either. The gravel will not go off if you use undergravel heating and lots of plants. It probably won't go off anyway if the plants are growing quite quickly but undergravel heating is a really good guarantee everything will work out fine. The plants use up most of the waste and undergravel heating provides just enough flow to keep things fresh but not so much that the iron and mineral leach out into the water. Use about 5% of the total heating power under the gravel. With your external sump filter you won't need the UGF anyway and it will have about 20x the effect of the UGF anyway. Progress looks really cool though, it's going to be a fabulous looking tank. 8)

Here's my feedback on the book. It's an excellent book for people who want to keep plants but do not know the proper requirements. It has details for optimum growing conditions and I would recommend it to others in a second. Other than the 'Optimum Aquarium’, which is currently out of print in English, it's the best book I've seen for plant keepers. I've been successfully growing aquatic plants for over 10 years. In that time I've learned a lot from websites, a little from books and some by trial and error. This book confirms everything I've ever learnt and currently practice. It's also a great reference for plant species and their individual requirements.

By moving stuff you could have released a whole pile of organic matter. The filter would have broken this down quite quickly. This can sometimes lead to an oxygen shortage if the bacteria in the filter use it all up. Does your Eheim use Effisubstrate in it. If so this is a very effective media that can house huge bacterial colonies...

For a UV filter there is a fairly general rule called 4. 1. The UV must cantact the water for at least 4 seconds. 2. The UV only effectively kills 100% of organics to a depth of 4mm. And thats it. If the flow rate is too fast it will not be as effective. If the water is too deep past the tube it will not be as effective. The flow rates shown in the add are a bit on the high-side to get a 100% kill of bacteria and algae. They will still be effective though. Work on about 1 watt for every 50L of tank size. So 5W is good for about a 250L tank to keep it crystal clear and disease free. The problems I've experienced or know about with UV are: 1. Fry don't like them operating on their tank. 2. Fish living long term are much more prone to disease if moved to a tank with no UV. 3. Nitrates go up faster. 4. Kills Pollyps on mirines (way reduced colonisation). Other than that, if sized correctly, they work great. I used to use a 40Watter on my fishroom (when it only had 2000L of tanks on a central filter). There was never any algae in the tanks and no disease when it was running. I used to run it for a couple of weeks after adding new fish and for about a week now and then to get rid of algae buildup. I made mine by getting a 40W UV Germicidal Tube from Mastertrade (about $100). Got a piece of PVC pipe with an inside diameter 8mm bigger than the tube diameter (so there was a gap of 4mm between the tube and pipe. I glued endcaps to the pipe and siliconed the tube onto the PVC pipe. This way the water directly contacted the quartz tube for best performance. I worked out how much water was in the pipe (PIr² of PVC Pipe ID - PIr² of the tube (3.1415x16.5² - 3.1415x12.5² = 855.27mm² - 490.86mm² = 364.41mm²) x the length = 364.41mm² x 1180mm = 0.43L) The flow rate was set to 0.43L/4 seconds x 60 seconds in a minute x 60 minutes in an hour so 387L / hour. This guaranteed a 100% kill rate of any living organism going through the UV unit.

Shadded pole induction motors similar to those used in aquarium pumps do not usually have a cap. Some larger pumps can though (>100W). An induction motor still has a whole pile of extra harmonics in it too. The current waveform often changes drastically and the heating is higher. Instead of bing sinusoidal with a phase-lag, the waveform ends up looking very pointy (still with a phase-lag). The RMS is still almost the same but higher harmonics cause extra heating in the iron of the stator (due to delta f cubed). The extra heating isn't a lot and the pump should work ok. I've never tried running a pump on a quasi-squarewave type UPS. My pumps run on a dual-conversion sinewave output one. Keep in mind, it will only be running on quasi-squarewaves when the mains is absent. This usually isn't long. For the short amount of time the pump will ever see non-sinewave voltage it should be ok. Most UPS's with long holdup times are sinewave output. Most smaller units won't run a single small pump for more then 1-2 hours anyway. Sorry I can't be more help on this.

It cause the impeller isn't turning. I think they are a shaded-pole permanent-magnet type motor. These motors have very low starting torque. As the motor ages, either the shaded pole piece has changed it's characteristic or the impeller has lost some of it's magnetism due to permanently being in an AC flux. By banging it (experimentally) you are effectively giving the impeller a kick. There's a couple of things you can try: 1. Unplug and replug the power plug a few times until it starts (sometimes doesn't work). Depending when the power is put on during the mains cycle will change the starting torque a bit, maybe enough to start it. 2. Give it a whack!! It seems to have worked so far and it's a well-proven starting technique I used to use on mine regularly. 3. Do as Ira says, siphon start it. The force of the water going past the impeller starts it. 4. Buy a new impeller. When you take it apart each time, you are putting the impeller back in a slightly different place. Sometimes you get it where it needs to be to start on it's own, sometimes not. Fluvals also have quite small diameter rotors in their pumps, making them more prone to this problem.

Swap him, then you'll have the perfect tank for oscars...

A 9" oscar is 1/4 the length of your tank and 1/2 the width and height. The tank is far too small for a fish this size and oscars easily grow to 12". The smallest tank I've ever seen an adult Oscar in was 1200 x 500 x 500mm and even then the tank looked too small. I kept 2 Oscars in a 1800 x 600 x 680 tank (680Litres) and I considered that a minimum. Do the fish a favour and get a bigger tank if you're going to keep Oscars.

I used to have a 1000L drum outside the garage where I put driftwood I might use one day. I diverted the drainpipe into it so it would get a waterchange any time it rained. Large driftwood can take 6 months to completely stop leaching tanins and to sink... I ended up giving all the wood away and dumping the container as it looked unsightly. It was a great resource to have though, - any time I wanted to remodel my tank there was sunk wood ready to go. Some of it was 1.6m long and over 250mm thick in places. I initially had to weight it down but after about 5 months it stayed down with no weight and stopped leaching. If your wood is quite small, it will probably only take a couple of months to stop the discolouration. It will be very dark to start with but will gradually reduce as the tanins diffuse out. Just watch your pH doesn't drop, some wood tanins can lower the pH as they are acidic.

Big tanks are cool!! With 12mm glass, worst case your tank has 163.6% of the strength required. While 220% is the minumum recommended and 380% is used on commercial designs, many home tanks are built to 150% or less. With only 163%, you'll need to make sure you have a very stiff base for the tank to sit on and it will need to be very flat (less than 0.5mm) flatness error. Polystyrene will not take up the stlack as the surface area is very large. While the tank is large, so is the surface area so the effective force on the poly is very small, not enough to deform it so it takes up more than 0.5mm over a large area. All poly does is take up point source loads to stop a bit of grit or a screw-head cracking the tank. It going to look great once setup. Have you got gravel yet? I can tell you where to get the 500kg's you'll need at a fairly reasonable price. If you're going to plant it heavily I'd recommend undergravel heating (about 5% of the total required) and gravel that resembles course sand rether than the standard 6-8mm aquarium stones and definately no undergravel filter. Keep away from potting mix etc as it goes off. If you can find laterite at a reasonable price, use it, - it's like putting a green-thumb into the gravel. As you've got the tank in another room you could put metal halides on it with only a very basic outlay (not the $1000's you need to spend on marine lighting). I'd recommend these as well as plant growth is much better with these than fluro's... At 770mm deep fluro's won't get to the bottom with enough intensity anyway. Mine's only 650mm deep and I had trouble with ground cover plants until I added the MH's. You've got what looks like an overflow in the corner. You'll need to make sure there is very little turbulence in the overflow so the CO2 does not escape... It looks well thought out though, with the sump there will be no need for pumps and heaters in the tank. It's going to look really cool when done.

Cool, what size glass thickness did you use? I have a tank with fairly similar dimensions set up as an Amazon Discus tank. I'll send you some photo's soon.

I have 2 x TLD96 18W tubes (tube is 582mm long and 602mm long including terminals). You can have them if you can find a fitting. The fitting will be about 610mm overall length. You'll need to check your tank to see if it's 2 feet or 600mm and 2 feet is actually 609.6mm long. If you use really thin meterial for the end of your hood, 610mm will fit fine. I had a 600mm long tank with a hood 620mm long and it looked ok with the 10mm overhange each side. The stand was also 620mm wide so it looked well balanced...

Cool!! and Welcome.

I've kept discus for years. I treat them almost the same as any other tropical. The only exception is temperature. They seem to like it a little warmer than the avarage tropical. I run my tank at 27-28'C. There's no need to go to 30+'C as they only get that hot in the wild for a couple of months a year. In the wild they can get as low as 24'C. My tank usually drops to this on a waterchange and all the males start fighting each other for the females as they decide they want to breed (again)... As long as the temperature or pH is changed gradually they don't mind (within limits) but they're not the fragile fish everyone thinks they are. A little more care is required if you want them to thrive but it's not hard. They're one of the hardiest fish I've ever kept...

Go here to correctly calculate your glass thickness: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/articles/techni ... thickness/ After reading this and using the calculator there is no guesswork... On the last page there is a MS Excel download. It's easy to use to calculate the thicjness required.

I don't and would get put through the ringer if I got caught!! 8)

Try now, put a link instead...

Red tailed sharks love to chase other fish. They can also get quite nasty when they get adult sized. It's possible the loach was being chased. I used to keep rtbs's when I had a community tank and ended up of-loading them as they caused too many problems. They're ok while small and have much better colour but once they grow up... It might be I've just had a bad run with them but then again I beleive it's a fairly well know character trait.

Mmm, nice new clean looking tea towel under the durso...