Ira

Noone was there to ask them about buying some gouramis. Wifey did get a couple guppies and 4 long fin bronze cories. Woman that was catching them was of the "Grab the fish and wack it on the table until it stops moving so it's easier to put it in the bag" mentality...

Jude, you can't really hurt the fish with a DIY CO2 system. Even one using a CO2 tank you'd have to try to hurt them and I think that'd be more from the PH drop than the CO2 itself.

*Insert blatant and obvious sexual innuendo here*

Hmmm, Actually, that's a really good idea.

It's not a tumah!

Bugger.

How much light do you have on the tank? Yeah, it's probably a very good thing. From the sound of it, it's little bubbles of oxygen produced by the plants. Called pearling sometimes because the bubbles look like little pearls. You only really see it when the plants have heaps of light and are growing very quickly.

Oh, yeah, the pots for bog plants, water lilies etc, that would be perfect. Picked up a float switch $40. But I'm going to have to DIY the plugs(Splice it into an extension cord, I think) and a way to mount it in the sump. Don't have a dremel or the nerve to drill a hole in the sump for it.

What you could also do as far as filtration. Go with the 204s, but throw a couple powerheads in the tank for circulation. Or do what I did with my tall tank, get a hardcore airpump and a couple big airstones. Massive amouns of current and airation that way.

Driving to the nearest payless plastics, 10 hours round trip and $100 of petrol.

Just go to mitre 10 and buy a bunch of the correct sized hose. Or is it the ribbed stuff? I think a single 404 isn't enough for a 400L tank. two 404s would be better for that size. No such thing as overfiltration.

That's an idea. Maybe I can find a small plastic mesh basket...

At the moment I've got it hanging in the overflow. That's something haven't quite figured out yet, a good place to put media, filter wool, etc. The return from the sump is only about half an inch from the bottom and I don't really want to cut it shorter so I can put the phosphate stuff under it because it seems to get louder the shorter it is. But, if in the overflow doesn't work well I will cut it.

Just about all your SA cichlids will produce those numbers of eggs, same for your larger africans. You're comparing the number of eggs a large fish like a goldfish lays to a tiny fish like a TETRA. The weight of a good sized clutch of eggs laid by a large cichlid would be more than the weight of most tetras. Maybe even several of them.

Or he could even get a boat winch off trademe for $200ish, a 12V inverter from Dick Smith for $150. But, there have to me 240V winches or similar around. it doesn't have to be particularly fast or strong because you can just use a few pullies to lighten the load on it.

Only takes maybe 2 breedings of a lot of midsized tropicals and only one for a lot of larger ones to get 1000 eggs. I still have over 100 fry left from 300-400.

No on the moss and pot, slightly on the wood (Acidic) and depends on the gravel.

Ok...I think we'll call this little experiment a failure. But it's nice to know that even with my sump overfilled a bit there is more than enough space in the tank to keep it from overflowing if something, like a sand filter with antiphos in it, plugs up the line down to sump. I rigged it up so the overflow goes through the sandfilter, through the phosban and into the sump. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to want to...Ummm...Fluidize so the antiphos partially clogged the intake pipe for the sand filter. So, I don't think that idea is going to work.

Just a thought I've had. I have a DIY sand filter I got free at an auction a few years ago(It came with a big bucket I wanted and got for a buck) and I was thinking, I now have some Aquamedic antiphos (Thanks Nicks) and I was wondering if I dumped that into the sandfilter and had a small powerhead running it would that be worth the trouble compared to just putting it in the chamber in my skimmer? The sand filter is about 18-24" tall and about 3"X4" base. I think I have some pumps that should be able to get everything tumbling in there. So, worth the trouble, or not? Something similar to this...

There are also pumps like the Sequence dart that are supposed to be really good, 90 watts, 13.5K L at 0' head for about $500, but that's off reefonline.com.au, so it'd likely be cheaper from the US if they can get you a 240 volt model. Not quite the bang for the buck as the Resun, Though, I think that $120 is better than you'd get anywhere retail? but it does use a lot less power than 3 of the resuns.

How big and what kind of tank are you going to need a 700 watt pump on?

Most likely it'll be your gravel. I have the opposite problem, the PH keeps trying to go down...

Hmmm, I didn't have too much trouble getting the holes right on my spray bar. At least the jets don't seem pointed off in every direction. I just drew a line from one end to the other straight across and drilled every 20 mm across that line. Of course, if I'd put a bit more thought into it I would have left out that last 90°bend so it wouldn't be sticking out as far...

Hmmm, Everything I've read says that electronic ballasts UNDERDRIVE the lamps. So they produce less light than a magnetic ballast and last a little longer than a magnetic ballast. Not the other way around.

I'd be inclined to keep the paradise fish, skip the neons and get something a little bit bigger that can live happily with the paradise fish.