Ira

You're doing something wrong if you have to suck the water a meter and a half high. All you need to do is get it up and over the back of the tank until it starts draining into the cannister. An asthmatic mouse should be able to handle that.

I think I'd go with acrylic, assuming it's not too expensive. With a cold water tank you'll want as good of insulation as possible, so that's the acrylic would be best. And obviously that would help with any weeping. But of course, if the cost difference is big, it'd wouldn't be worth it.

You could also try running it in a vinegar solution. My Deltec MCE600 ran great for a week or two after that. Now it's back to barely skimming.

Find someone with some guppy fry and throw a heap in the tank. That should cheer him up.

It will hold up just fine, you'd have more strength than needed to hold the water assuming it's well braced and good quality glass. Anything above 1 is just to resist things like stupid kids running up and banging on the tank. 1.2 will hold the water just fine. But will break the first time a kid decides the fishy is being boring and not moving so he hits the glass. Serve the kid right to be drowned in the flood for banging on the tank.

Then I end up with things like a silicone cannister firmly attached to my chainsaw...

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/uploads/media/GlassThicknessCE_01.xls There's Warren's glass thickness calculator. 10mm gets you a safety factor of 1.2. So, it won't break, but it's really borderline. Obviously 12mm is better, 14mm gets you 2.35 safety factor. I think thicker than that you go from painfully expensive to ridiculously expensive...

I find the big caulking gun ones are definitely a good deal, but kind of a pain since I usually only use a little squeeze at a time. I always end up having to dig out the big plug of hardened silicone each time I need to use it again. I think part of the advantage of acid cure is it etches the glass a little bit so should hold a little better. It just looks to me like glass where I've accidentally put some silicone looks a bit cloudy even after I've cleaned it off as well as I could. Might be some residue instead of a bit of etching though.

I'd just throw the meter into a sandwich bag and drop it into the tank. Quicker and easier than disassembling it and somehow waterproofing it.

Only cold water fish might survive until they freeze. Tropicals don't. I've kept an eye on some of mine when I've put them in the freezer. They're dead hours before the water freezes. I consider it the easiest and most humane way to do it. Their metabolism simply slows down as the water gets colder until it stops. It'd be like falling asleep.

Less selection, but you can poke around at Mitre 10 and play with the fittings without the surly Mico employees getting mad at ANOTHER pain in the butt fishtank guy wasting their time.

How much kalk and Zeovit does THAT one use?!?!

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure I saw some of the right fittings in Mitre 10 Mega when I went a while ago. They have a much better selection than the normal Mitre 10s. I wasn't looking specifically for them though, so I'm not sure.

The oxygen level isn't going to be depleted significantly by the time the water gets through the cannister. A denitrator, which is designed to have all the oxygen used up usually doesn't flow more than a trickle and the water takes ages going through a LOT of biomedia before it leaves the filter. Your average filter like a 404 isn't even going to make a dent in the oxygen level.

They eat the long slimy squirmy earthworms. Which is...Umm...All of them.

It keeps jumping because that's what they do. Probably something startled it or it just wanted to go on an OE.

Depending on how good of a photographer you might just be wasting money(Well, not wasting, but might be better spent elsewhere) spending heaps more on an SLR. A good prosumer camera would still probably be able to take good enough pictures that you're the limiting factor, not the camera. Something to consider anyway. Though, I'd go for the DSLR if the budget fit though.

SLRs use film, DSLRs don't, that's what the D stands for, Digital. Film SLRs are pretty cheap.

Yeah, a DSLR would be my suggestion, That would be the best but of course, that's expensive. Even used they hold their value pretty well. You might be better off, if you don't have a huge budget, going with a lightly used good prosumer grade non dslr camera instead.

I'm not sure, but I suspect the extremely high PH could degrade the amino acids.

Blood's blood, they don't care if it's warm or not.

I've been thinking of trying something T'd off my return pump. You'd only need a tiny bit of flow.

It'll be from the garden center. If you get it from the beach that would have been in saltwater and anything on the driftwood would have died when put into freshwater. Cause, you know...No pet shop or garden center EVER has any kind of pest of any description on their plants. Has never happened in recorded history...

If your fish start singing karaoke and beating up their girlfriends, you're dosing too much.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing as most tanks PH tends to drop due to acids in fish waste.