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Throw some plastic sheets over them or something. You could even buy plastic table cloths from the $2 shop...

Oh and of course, that's assuming you don't simply put the pump in a chamber that doesn't hold enough water to overflow the main tank if the return blocks...

I think I agree with whoever said it before. I don't think that setup will work very well, chim. At the very least it will let a lot of air in making it difficult to tune by adjusting the airflow. And it will let a lot of noise from the water out. I think you're better off running a whole seperate tube down to the sump. It would be empty and dry most of the time and your durso wouldn't be interfered with. It should only cost you a couple extra feet of piping...Which the elimination of the T join might pay for anyway.

I miss my lawnmower blenny. He never seemed to make a huge dent in my hair algae, but was nice and fat until it disappeared then he wouldn't eat anything else.

Interesting, the numbers I can see for california put it currently at 20% increase from 3 years ago. Less than that if you take inflation into account. http://www.californiagasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx Here we go. According to this one http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/statistics/gasoline_cpi_adjusted.html to get a 100% increase in cost adjusted for inflation you have to go back to Err...Actually, I can't find any time where the annual average was $1.19, but the closest was 1972. Not adjusted for inflation, it would be 1992.

You can get pond pumps that are designed for pumping dirty water. Maybe something like that would work? If it can deal with fairly big clumps going through I'd imagine a bit of dust wouldn't be a problem.

I'd rather have a pet cuttlefish.

Be nice to live somewhere sunny where you could put in a big skylight, maybe some mylar film to help reflect sunlight and suddenly FREE LIGHTING! Of course, wouldn't work with the weather we've been having lately....

6"-8" blue rams?

nah, the reef complete wouldn't have lowered the alkalinity. Well, hypothetically used in HUGE amounts it may have. But that's only by causing the calcium to start precipitating out of solution. Your tank would look like a blizzard and you'd have calcium snowdrifts everywhere, I guess.

That low your best bet is probably big water changes instead of dosing heaps of expensive additives.

I found frozen bottles of water completely useless. No noticable effect on the tank's temp(This was a tropical) and I had to replace the bottle every 20-30 minutes. Took several hours to freeze.

No, it won't. And anyway, salt dissolves in water and the slight harmless trace of it you'll get will be gone after a few water changes.

Duke, was it white when you bought it? If it was, then it wasn't healthy. That means it's bleached. It's dumped all its zoox and can not photosynthesize any more. You HAVE to feed it otherwise it will starve to death. What I've been doing is feeding mine whitebait. So, go buy a frozen packet of whitebait and feed it one defrosted whitebait every day or two. Probably best to tear it into chunks about half an inch long with your fingers and put them directly into its tentacles.

Aww thanks, Brian. I've been slowly trying to nurse this guy back to health for must be about 9 months. Once I managed to get him on a kind of a peak and he didn't want to head down from there. But it will take a while for him to get used to the light, I think.

He might, he might not. Depends on the species and the individual. And if he does...Well, cichlids are better than tetras anyway.

Put a large cichlid in the tank with them. Schooling is a threat response for fish. They don't feel threatened they all swim around doing their own thing...

Very few pumps or filters have metal parts that are exposed to the water. The few bits that are stainless steel like screws and impeller shafts on cheap powerheads. Almost no motors have ballbearings.

Mine was bubbly at first, I mean big noisy bubbles. But after a little while it settled down and was just more of a foam, makes a quiet hissing noise that's totally drowned out by everything else in the tank.

There are a lot of ways you could make a chiller that will work, but not necessarily very effectively. You don't NEED titanium coils unless they're actually going to be in contact with the saltwater, then they corrode. You could use plastic tubing, but that loses a bit of efficiency. Probably the simplest way is a fan on the sump or main tank and replacing the evaporation constantly. But that's only good for a relatively small temperature difference. There's the option of buried hoses deep in your yard, that may get the difference you need, but after everything would probably be as much as a commercial chiller. There's the fridge with hoses coiled up inside it, again, doesn't really have the capacity for a coldwater tank over the summer. Maybe if it was a really big fridge... I'm probably one of the cheapest people around here but I'd say if you're going for a coldwater marine instead of looking to keep a tropical from getting too hot, just buy a chiller. It'll work far better and probably be more reliable.

Spirulina isn't seaweed. It's a freshwater blue green algae. But, give it a try, could be good for any filter feeders.

Oh no, drano! Hehehe.

Nah, the pump shouldn't have any problem with it, it'll just lose a lot of flow.

And apparently from what I noticed last time I was driving in chch, all the turn arrows on the traffic lights too...

Ah, so that's what the potato is for. I was trying to figure that part out while looking like this O_o