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A lot of it is personal preference too. I have a 6000 LPH return pump which at the head it's working at should be about 4500-5000lph so something like 15X turnover. But that's being cut down even more by the spraybar, need to do something about that.

Electrical supply shop.

The float switch I'm using was $20 I think including GST, retail.

A distiller would be about the most expensive way you could find to make pure water for topoff. Uses HEAPS of electricity. Cheapest per liter is R/O.

No, it's head is on a pike out in my front yard.

A sump and a cannister filter are two entirely different systems. A cannister is sealed. A sump is not. The head height of a cannister filter is the difference between the main tank's water level and the cannister's outlet level. The head height of a sump is the sump's water level to the pump's outlet above the main tank. And don't assume because Eheim has been around for decades that the probably minimum wage monkey answering their emails has any clue what they're doing. That's as logical as saying that because animates has been around for a decade that bob in the fish department knows everything.

I always hated oompa loompas, stuck up goody two shoes....

Most people keep their malawis around 7.

Shouldn't that be a hobbit skeleton?

That's pretty much it. It works better with a sump though, you can design it so the pump chamber has larger differences in height for the amount of water lost so makes it more accurate than you could get in a tank. Mine just switches on an air pump that pushes water out of a 25L jerry can into the tank.

With a tank that small you almost might as well just keep a 2L coke bottle nearby and pour a bit in every night to top it up. Should only need to refill the bottle every few days.

Of course decreasing the head will help, you guys just can't figure out what head IS! But raising the cannister will only help marginally because it's assumed you'd be shortening the hoses.

Hahaha, I love it! Did you coat it in polyurethane or something? I'd think clay would pretty quickly soften and dissolve. Needs a jeweled dagger in its ribs.

When was the last time you cleaned the sponge? Probably it got all clogged up.

I think it has potential, but what you need to do is magnetize the electrons in the battery so it polarizes the out put of the amplifier.

Sometimes I think arguing in this forum is like running in the special olympics...

http://www.pumpcentre.com/psdwg/statichead.htm http://www.fluidedesign.com/tutorial2.htm http://www.pondarama.com/html/the_right_pump.html Read over all those webpages, look at the diagrams, if you still don't get it, it's time to give up.

No, head height is NOT from the pump. It's from the surface of the water source. If it's sitting at the bottom of a tank it does NOT have negative head. It is NOT different.

Have you looked at the brightness of your tank lights compared to the sun? I'm betting the sun is easily 10X as strong as your tank lights. 10 times the light without very good water conditions and lots of plants=algae. That's all.

But will also keep the KH up.

It's frustrating that we have to go over this almost monthly. It's about as basic as "fire is hot" and explaining why a large object released 3 feet above your foot hurts more than just holding it. Fishie, go get a gravel vac. Put it in your tank, start it siphoning. Now, plug the end, put the end at floor level, raise the end of it a few inches off the floor so there's a small loop below the end of the hose. Now, if the cannister filter had to push the water back up from floor level if you were to unplug the end of the hose the water would not move past the lowest point of the hose. Now, sit there and watch your carpet get soaked. Before your tank drains empties completely all over the floor lift the end of the hose. See where the water level in the hose sits once you lift the end above the tank's water level? Surprise, it settles at the same water level as the tank. If it worked the way you thought, the water level in the hose would still be sitting down at floor level. But, no the weight of the water in the downward side of the hose pushes it back up the other side. All the cannister filter has to do is lift the water the height difference between the tank's water level and the outlet's water level! And they have a max head height because that's the maximum head height they can pump. If it's 2 meters then they can pump up to 2 meters ABOVE THE TANK'S WATER LEVEL. NOT 2 meters above the level of the cannister filter!

Heh, you suck at math kermit! That'd be 54.2% sodium hydroxide.

NEVER use the marks on the side of the thermometer as anything more than an extremely rough estimate of the setting.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with it being too clean, I like that idea.

The reason the recommended height is 3'3"-3'11" isn't because of increased head pressure pumping higher. It's because the hoses they supply with the filter are about 4 feet long.