spoon

the drilling a few small holes idea will work and will be easy to get off later on otherwise use super glue gel ( which will be safe to use with water in the tank)

well the first one is no go get the second one and re plumb it then buy di resin and replace the granular carbon with di resin neither of the ones you looked at have di resin which is an important part otherwise you will never get a TDS=0 reading from it you will also want the DI resin to be after the RO part. the post RO filter dosent really have any effect for fishkeeping purposes and could be binned

i remeber being told there isnt the necessary protiens in freshwater for it to work i dont know how accurate that statement is though

wont work it wont foam up i dont know why but it just dosent work

i think you just end up skimming out trace elements which will happen to a degree anyway( a lot of people dose trace because of this) if theres nothing to skim out it wont skim anything so its not so much of a problem really you would need to spend a lot of money to overskim a 450l tank though.

i reckon you would be ok with one of them they are quite a big skimmer its just over 50cm tall. from what ive heard they are quite good

i also upgraded the extra drain on the overflow weir to 25mm instead of the previous 20mm now im really confident it will flow what it needs too this photo shows the placement of the return plumbing also to reduce the chance of bubbles forming in the weir and also to start the syphon . ive routed 4mm pipe through a tee to each eductor this acts like a venturi drawing out any air bubbles ( also water ) it gets some serious suction as well . a lot of people use a another pump with a venturi fitting to do this but i couldnt find a small enough pump to be visually unobtrusive and big enough to be reliable so went with this instead from my trials its working great. it was suggested to me to use an aqualifter but i was quite worried it wouldnt be able to start the overflow fast enough the loops are to give the tube some "give" so i can adjust the eductors without kinking the pipe i was going to drill a small hole at the water level to prevent the return back syphoning in a power -out or pump failure but i read on a another forum that the back pressure from a eductor is a lot and and it makes a huge noisy jet of water also i decided the the eductors were more effiecent with as much back pressure as the pump could provide. so to stop back syphoning ever happening i brought this one way valve its 20mm plumbed and is quite large and unrestrictive it works really well also heres a pic of my ro unit i have yet to plumb it up and i also need to get some DI resin this the filter sock ill be using on the overflow where it enters the sump i also took a few photos of the nano

to keep the tank secure during an earthquake i had two problems one was the tank falling off the stand the other was the whole unit , tank and stand falling over. my original plan was to attach the tank to the stand somehow the bolt the stand to the wall using a custom bracket but after talking to codking a few weeks back i decided against this he was saying he had seen large cabinets that had moved and taken no-load bearing wall with them. he reckoned a better idea was to add a few pieces of timber between the joists then drill through them and the floor, then put threaded steel rod thru cut to length and bolted up his idea is good given that the walls and floors move differently in a quake and all the weight of the tank is on the floor , by being attached to the wall it could break the cabinet forcing it out of square. however my wife to be wouldnt take to kindly to me drilling two holes in the carpet(considering we are buying our first home soon) also having two bolts in the stand may make it harder to set up the sump. so heres what im doing instead i built some aluminium corner brackets to hold the tank on the stand they may bend or break during a quake but if they do they will absorb enough of the movement that it should be safe secondly instead of bolting the tank to the floor i plan on taking the feet off the cabinet then getting a heavy piece of ply which is 400mm bigger than the base of the stand all around( except the back ,which will be 200-250mm bigger as theres a wall there anyway) ill cover it in some nice looking carpet and screw the stand to it this should make the stand heavier and give it a footprint of about 1.25m2 which should be enough to prevent it tipping over it will aslos double as a place to soak up accidental spillage without ruining the new carpet underneath.

on that link its 45cm for 15w which is pretty standard its not gunna fit if its much bigger

looks like it should http://www.reptileone.com.au/lighting.php but they have 15w single tube 520mm which confuses me as a 15w t8 is a lot shorter than that perhaps the 520mm is the overall length of the fitting

give me another week week as we will know for sure when we are moving and all that

they only sell dymax and berlin and the stock has been there for ages too , mind you they dont even use those brands on their tanks

if you were wanting to live in bryndwr we might be able to help as we are buying a house very shortly and need to get out of our lease its a small 2 brm unit in a good area new kitchen, double glazed and insulated , good neighbours and landlord

there was a leaflet distributed around chch about this, with religious undertones , i have a real hate for hell-fire preaching and this is why many of my workmates wives and g/fs were freaked out by this. i found the whole thing distasteful and if i find out which organisation distributed these they will know more about they end of the world

i have more to post but have to take more photos

i wonder if its the gut breathing that cories do? if if it is perhaps increasing the water agitation may mean they do it less

the lights are a chinese led unit i ordered from ebay its 120w (112,1w leds) and has two power cords one for white and one for blue. i had some of the leds changed out and got 405nm added to the blue and red and green added to the white the leds are all 90 deg angle i also got a led moonlight its a nice cyany blue here the pics im not happy with the mount i made and i will get a steel one welded up and painted at work some time soon moonlight blue white blue and white reflections showing layout of leds on nano tank look at light on wall the shadows caused by leds are cool but by using green and red it cause another shadow behind the fist shimmer line so i have to find some diffuser plate to help blend it in over all im very happy with it its very bright and i love the colour

once i got my eqc money i started buying the things i needed for my new tank. the tank is an aqua one aquience 650s its a 650mm cube its over 200l it had a 80mm wide 10mm thick brace right across the top of the tank which was in the way ive removed this and euro braced the front and sides with 10mm 80mm across, the back has two layers of 6mm 20mm across up the other way. i used such i wide braces to reduce water sloshing out in another quake. i wasnt to keen on drilling it as my last cube cracked there in the quake so decided to go with an overflow box instead it wouldnt flow the amount of water i neede through the bulkhead fitting at the back so i added another drain to it the one pictured is a 20mm ive upgraded it to a 25mm since. i had to cut part of the aluminium trim to fit it on. i used flexible return piping as its cheaper than pvc and flows around corners better as you dont use 90 deg or 45deg elbows on it. for the return im using my old pump its a sensen 4500lph, ive split the outlet into two with one side controllable to make it so i could have a different flow on either side. it runs into eductors(from fay) which are nifty little things which work like a water venturi, these are on loc line for adjustable direction. the pipe ive used is threaded 20mm thickwall ppvc for irrigation etc. i used this because its cheap and its black. it works well ( please note all the threads are tapered and require the use of teflon tape to seal them)

after pretty much losing my marine tank in feb with the big quake , ive been planning my come back since then. i was fortunate enough to save the 4 fish i had , 2 common clowns, a pj cardinal and a blue damsel, lambo on here looked after them for me for a few months until i set up a 30l tank which was meant to temporarily house them until i could get a new tank, (was waiting on eqc cheque). now its 7 months on have been paid out but the fish are still in the 30l and i have been given a few frags and brought a few as well. the 30l started off with a 9w flouro and a small HOB (from bdspider) with a sack of purigen in it. it now has a large aqua medic hob skimmer (with a barstardised pump) and a diy ato and 36w pl flouro. i lost the blue damsel in june i think he jumped out during a quake . the clowns are going well and can be hand fed they also think the hammer coral is their nem and give it bit of a hiding. i also have some gsp and pulsing xenia which is growing well. these photos are a few months old

from what ive read about that id agree only really good for a nano as most of them are peltier type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling there are lots of diy peltier coolers but most would only be suitable for a nano also they also draw a lot of current and can be troublesome. if you were to buy a refrigant powered water cooler you would be well on your way to owning a proper chiller for the money it would cost. if you are big into diy an evaporative cooler could be a go but you would for ever be topping

i own a bubble magus it works great and was good value for money too. i dont think id look at a aqua one skimmer some of the products they advertise for marine systems look dubious

test your rainwater first no point getting a phosphate reactor if your topping it up with fresh phosphate very second day

rainwater is not the best still contains nutrients have a quick look over this http://www.hydrologynz.org.nz/downloads/JoHNZ_1976_v15_1_Fish(1).pdf

are you using Rodi water for top ups? also how much and how often are you doing water changes? phospahte remover may be of some help but not much use if you havent got the basic nutrients levels sorted

whistler tadpoles are smaller and very dark compared to bell frog