spoon

i wouldnt bother buying the balancing fluid or whatevea(sounds like a product called proper ph) , a ph of 6 is fine for those fish but likley you will find with regular smaller water changes your ph will go up slightly as a low ph with high nitrates indicates overfeeding and excess fish waste(could also be from dead fish (unless they were removed quickly) fish waste is acidic so will lower the ph nitrates can be removed via plants using them as fertiliser although in a case of high nitrates you are better off doing a water change quickly posiibly 20% everyday until it comes down then go to 20% each week, remember the more fish, more often you will have to do water changes. a good thing to remember is "if in doubt do a water change" a lot of on here dont use any of the potions the pet shops try to sell us as messing around with chemistry of the water often has worse effects than leaving it

only ones ive ever seen here were rainbow lifeguard ones expensive too

can the pump be screwed to something solid? to dampen the noise from the pump? not the cabinet its in though as this may amplify the noise even more

i had the same thing happen with one of mine i just found i had to use heaps more silicon and thicker beads i also left it to cure for a week its been going well for almost 3 years now

how quiet a sump is depends on how you plumb it they can be quiet if you do things properly or if you dont do it properly they can sound like a toilet flushing(well not quite but you get the picture)

im not sure i have two in a 7l tank i dont even know what sex they are if i ever get fry i will know lol nice colours under subdued lighting though

sparkling gouramis they are tiny

looks like you are off to a good start the lighting should be fine altough if you wanted you may be able to order in a 11w pl bulb at 14k as its going to take an awful lot of blue leds to offset the yellow colour of that 8K bulb (ignore this if you are using high power leds) another thing to be careful of is the shaft in the pump for your overhead filter it will more than likely be stainless steel which will eventually rust . there are small wave type circ pumps availible now http://www.fish-street.com/resun_mini_w ... gory_id=35 the small model (pictured in link) is 2000lph forget what you know about pumps such as your eheim the flow from the wave pumps is much slower and spread out so a pump this size would be perfect . the eheim would also work however it directs the flow into a very small area and would damage corals if they were placed directly in its flow salinity should be raised to 1.024 its hard to tell sometimes if you are using a hydrometer to measure it. see if you can borrow a refractometer from someone (or get one for around $60 shipped from ebay, get one with automatic temperature compensation as salinity changes with temp) also not to put you off but have you thought about how you will keep the tank cool if it goes over 28 it could be disaterous ( again ignore this if the room its in is airconditioned) remember heat from the pl bulb and ballast will also contribute , fan cooling the lights and tank may help combat this

coral sand is good for buffering and easier to keep clean than calcite sand but there are other ways to buffer a african tank , i have grey marble chip its not enough for buffering on its own so i use coral pieces , calcite(in mesh bags) and dolomite in a large cannister filter

my work phone is xt it has crap coverage in certain parts of chch even on blenheim road sometimes it also takes hours for missed call alerts to come through

ferns like shade i would suggest overhanging foliage to shade the water as well as helping keep the water cooler you may see more of the fish as they wont be as frightened when you come up to the pond

i passed 5th form with good marks got awards for academic acheivement and the highest score in the school in science , lost interest in 6th form and left school i found having good marks in 5th form useful for doing tertiarty course none of which i ended up finishing but i find now employers wont even look at your high school acheivements its what you did after that and is relevant to the industry you are working in(that tractor unit would be handy now im a gardener but we didnt get that opportunity) so even if ncea is a nightmare work hard get to uni or tech as this is what will matter . im currently doing an apprentiship in amenity horticulture , i have some level 4 electrical credits that have been cross-credited so im passing half of level four in horticulture with units such as " demonstrate knowledge of 3 phase ac theory" :facepalm:

my live rock is covered in these white worms they are like sweeper tenticles and come out more when i stir up the tank i know they area type of worm but i dont know the name of them . where they are near sand they build a tube out of sand tonight i noticed one had homed its self in a minute gap between the overflow panel and the side glass of the main display i found it difficult to photo graph but you get the idea what you can see is basically a cross section of the worm and whats in its tube , the actual worm is the black part the white things are attached to it i presume to catch food cod king you should photograph this for me! :nilly:

my live rock is covered in these white worms they are like sweeper tenticles and come out more when i stir up the tank i know they area type of worm but i dont know the name of them . where they are near sand they build a tube out of sand tonight i noticed one had homed its self in a minute gap between the overflow panel and the side glass of the main display i found it difficult to photo graph but you get the idea what you can see is basically a cross section of the worm and whats in its tube , the actual worm is the black part the white things are attached to it i presume to catch food

heres a photo of the hairy mushrooms and green star polyps under actinic light light with no flash as close as i could get it to the correct colour they glow awesomely

i will tell him that alan . its allmost like he is on there as his deckhand is all ways telling me what he got up to out at sea

my brother says facebook is for mall rats little does he know i have a photo of him on my acc

i remember helping builders renovate the 7th floor of the rutherford hotel in nelson i got put in charge of making the sure the gib board was evenly spaced out around the floor . if we had of put it all in the one room it would have collasped but even so we were putting a couple of tons in each room and we would of had plenty of leeway with that

yeah u you can at the moment the bubble algae is not a problem as it has not spread and is easy to get to so lets use the hair algae as an example algae needs light and nutrients to grow and getting rid of the light is not an option with reef tanks so you have to starve it of nutrients the main ones being a problem here are nitrates, phosphates and silicates , in a cycled , maintained tank nitrates should be pretty low if detectable in my tank i have the skimmer which removes some waste before it can break down into nitrates (or ammonia etc) , there is also the live rock which will get rid of nitrates and convert them into nitrogen gas , i also run purigen in a sachet that absorbs some of this as well . so really we are looking at phosphates and silicates i run a phosphate remover to minimise phosphates(it also removes some silicates) however at the moment i dont have a rodi unit which produces pure water with a total dissolved solids of 0( 0 TDS) so every time is mix up new salt water im adding silicates these (or any dissolved solid) do not evaporate . my tank is sitting at 27 c now i have a fan over the sump cooling it (it would be warmer than that other wise) the fan cools via evaporation so i lose about 8l of water to evaporation each warm day like today im topping up with tap water (to keep the salinity correct ) but tap water contains silicates so im adding silicates to the tank basically fertilising the hair algae. one i run a rodi unit i can virtually eliminate silicates so the hair algae will die off leaving more room for benefical algae like coraline algae to grow(the purplely stuff) another way of getting rid of the excess nutrients is to use a refugium in here its basically a partioned area in your sump with bright lighting. you can grow macro algae in it(seaweed) the growth of this strips phosphates and nitrates from the water (providing it grows and is trimmed every so often) as far as i know it dosent remove silicates. another method is an algal turf scrubber

rodi is on my to do list this year im gonna save a bit of money and look around for a nice 4 stage unit LA the bubble algae is on the piece of rock the kenya tree came with it hasnt spread at all so far (has hardly grown at all) theres some red macro and green and brown hair algae under that mushroom .

try the vinegar thing just to be safe none of your fish like a high ph if it does fizz a little you could give it a crack anyway with a couple of rocks at a time but test ph after 24 hrs it may help to stabilise your ph

had to google that but appears only one guy plays all the instruments the other two are vocalists as well :evil:

limestone will buffer the water - increase ph and hardness not necessarily a bad thing depends on what fish you have in the tank to me those rocks look fine

ive had 4 of them 2 stopped working - due to water getting in them two work fine and work well but the tops are out of the water

joe the photos are a couple of weeks old i have added another 3.5 kg of live rock but its not really arranged how i want it , im still thinking over how im going to lay it out finally the live rock i have in there is basically piled up with not much space in between i ideally want to make two islands and go quite high with them . as for the stocking i like the pj cardinal however he prevents me from buying a fire shrimp (will get eaten) and the damsel was the first fish i brought (30l nano) hes not actually a lot different to yellow tail damsels just slightly more aggressive and the yellow doesnt extend onto the body. i would like 4 or 5 of them (or yellow tail damsels) to school however i feel the tank will be too small for them(main display , not including sump or overflow is around 125 l.) so for now will most probably kepp my stocking as it is perhaps get a Nemateleotris decora. im pretty new to reef keeping but i have plenty of years left to upgrade and keep other fish for now im happy to get what i have working good and learn some skills along the way