myxsptlk

Just go big, you will eventually, and I don't think it will cost you anymore in the long run (that's what happened to me)

That second last pic looks like a massive poster just pasted on the wall! Must look real good in real life

I've only ever seen red sea salt in stores around here, could have more choice up north but it's been a mission getting any salt down here due to the supplier running out :-?

I bought the second one you listed for my nano, it's the worst 40 dollars I've ever wasted. Just gonna stick to water changes.

it'll be all right, you'll only have half of that hanging on each end anyway which is pretty much nothing

These things send shivers down my spine. We used to go crabbing at Diamond Harbour with chicken bones as bait. 10 minutes in the water and these critters were all over the chicken, the sight of them... Brrrrrr.....

hahah yes happy ending but fish is still recovering, poor guy got stuck in a rock! He would've been stuck for a whole day, maybe even the night before. Found him with the help of a torchlight, he was in a bad position as well, a C shape. He must've gone exploring then tried to turn around and wedged himself. He's staying clear away from the rocks now, which is an unusual sight. He should come right in a few days.

yup checked everywhere, behind the tank, under the canopy, in the little spaces behind the sump, not there there's 2 clowns, one blue tang, 4 chromis and the wrasse in the tank when the wrasse was in my little tank the only time he wouldn't come out was when he was "rebuilding" his bubble nest/sleeping place after i moved the rock around. I don't know where his sleeping hole is this time though so I can't check

My sixline is missing and I fear the worst. I checked my ammonia level to make sure he wasn't rotting somewhere, and the level is somewhere between 0 to 0.25. This was after feeding (to see if he came out from his hiding place: no) and moving all the rocks in the sump and shifting some sand in the process. I'll do a water change later just to be sure and will test again later in the evening, but is this within an okay level? Man I hope he shows up, he's my favourite fish, he was the first!

I buy stuff from overseas because I can get them cheap, that's all No wicked scheme to put my LFS out of business, if it was only a few dollars difference I would have just gotten it there, but it's a few hundred dollars difference, which maybe doesn't seem like all that much to some, but it is to me.

a reef octopus, went with a big one so it's one less thing I have to change if I ever decide to upgrade, well have decided but that's still a long way away hehe

wawawewowverynice! amazing how much more volume a few centimetres here and there adds Gonna chuck more lighting in there? 2x54 watts aren't really gonna do it justice

Little update! I rang MAF today and they do have a centre in the mail sorting place in Auckland, which was annoying because both customs and nz post told me there's no way to get in touch with them. The first person was not helpful at all and told me they released it back to customs 10 days ago. I asked nicely, so it goes from NZ post, to customs, to you, then back to customs? But he just grunted something and said I should ring customs. So I rang customs and an equally helpful person said he had no idea where my skimmer is because according to them MAF still has it so he insisted I ring MAF again :roll: Rang MAF and thankfully (I mean thankfully) I got a nice lady who was extremely understanding and helpful and took all my tracking numbers, notice numbers, invoice numbers and ran around her office looking for my parcel but couldn't find it, so she rang up customs and asked them where it was and apparently it's been sitting somewhere for the past week or so waiting to be shipped out, imagine that! I wonder how many packages they have just sitting and waiting till someone bugs them enough to do something about it. So after being subject to govt department ping pong my skimmer is going to sent tomorrow, hopefully! Here's hoping

Oh also apologies if this is in the wrong section, sorta off topic but still fish related hehe

I had a skimmer shipped from overseas, it's a brand new skimmer. It got into NZ 3 weeks ago, then customs got their hands on it. They farted around with it for a week before finally sending me my invoice. I rang them up and asked how much I had to pay, then they told me oh it's below 400 dollars so you don't have to pay anything since it's for personal use :evil: 3 times before I've brought in aquarium stuff, and this time they decide to have a look-see The words "protein" "filter" and "aquarium" must have sent bells ringing through MAF. After getting it released I waited another week and still no sign of it. Rang up customs and they told me MAF has it and "are doing tests on it to make sure there are no biological agents remaining" There should be a smiley for slap myself on the forehead. I told them it was brand new, from the manufacturer and it's just some round pieces of acrylic stuck together with a pump, they would've been able to tell just by opening the packaging! So apparently neither NZ Post nor customs has any access to MAF. There's no one I can contact in MAF for enquiries and both NZ Post and customs have advised me to just sit tight and they'll release it once they're done with it. Has anyone else come across this? I can understand with NZ being a small country any unwanted biological substances would wreak havoc on our eco system but to test a brand new skimmer is just ridiculous! Does anyone know how long I can expect to wait? I don't know how things operate behind the doors of MAF, but if it's anything like immigration, I have many water changes ahead of me

Yea she is dumb, she runs away from my hand only to swim back when she realises the clown didn't run away with her so it should be safe then runs away again when i take my hand away and put it back :lol:

Hey olli, I have an mdf canopy with the fitted inside, then glass lids on top of the tank. The canopy is open back to help with ventilation and also makes it easier for to run things into the tank Heatwise, the water temperature is very stable, my lights are like 10mm from the glass lids and still haven't had a problem with them yet, but I might redo them to put them a bit higher up, it's a bit of a pain to get the glass lids off. The canopy however, doesn't like the heat too much eheh. When it gets cold it sags down the middle and looks funny, but once the lights go on and things heat up enough it goes right again. Not ideal but hanging is not an option for me and I like the look of a canopy.

Never thought it would happen but it did, my little clown jumped Dad text me to say he couldn't find one of my clowns and I thought she's either hiding or she jumped. So I rushed home from work and glanced in the tank and nope she wasn't there so had a quick look behind the tank and there she was. Poor thing. The hole she jumped through is where my return enters the tank, its not the smallest of gaps but with the pipe coming through and wires for pumps and heaters etc she would have had to have excellent aim to get through there! How long does it take for a dead fish to dry up? According to my dad she was still there around 4, and I got home at quarter to 6. When I found her she was completely dried up and stiff, eyes and mouth sunken, literally mummified. What I think happened was she jumped and landed on the lid and got dried up by the halides while slowly wiggling away till she dropped to the back, which makes it all the sadder cos she was dying while she was frying. Hope that's not the case If anyone remembers she was the sick clown, she never was right but did well to start eating and get her strength up. She always swam funny and at times looked like she was gonna go anyway but always picked up when I waved my fingers in front of the glass. I always knew she'd be the first to go but never thought it would be like this :evil: She'd just been moved into the new tank last night, but was swimming around with her mate exploring the tank nicely and got along well with the blue tang (blue tang is about 4 times her size by the way). Does anyone else's tang have a habit of swimming round the top then suddenly shooting off to make the water splash? I've seen her do that at least 3 times. I'm wondering if she did it when the clown was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh well I can only wonder what made her do it. Gonna get some plastic mesh or something to put around it. No more fish of mine are gonna jump through there!

3rd-ed(?) hehe, like others have said Lucas, you may be able to get away with starting out cheap but it'll all add up. I have a little tank, the same one in the link that Dixon posted, with just two clowns and a wrasse, a built in filter and no skimmer. I do weekly water changes and you'll think at first oh once a week isn't too bad. It is. It gets annoying and I've used up probably the same amount of salt (if not more) as I would have with a proper big tank. And it's not just a matter of adding salt to water, you have to check the salinity, make sure the temperature is right, stir it, blow it around with a powerhead, aerate it, bla bla bla. Hehe scaring you yet? That's just the water side of things! I'd love to have nice corals and beautiful wavy things and fish swimming for more than 2 seconds before turning around. Temperature is another issue. I have to check the temperature in the tank when I turn my heater on because the heat from the room does heat the tank up quickly, and when it's cold it cools down just as quickly. I have to make sure my fish tank is more comfortable temperature wise than I am hehe. If you want to make the tank look really nice, you'll need good lights, and that just adds to the heat. If you have a life outside of fish (I'm sure you do ) you'll want something you can sit down and admire when you get some free time. That really doesn't happen for me, the only time I get to sit down and watch my fish is feeding time, and even then in my head it's always "how's the temperature, when was the last time I did a waterchange? crap i've gotta do it again soon, should I test the water to make sure everything's ok?" It's fun when it's a hobby, it's not fun when the hobby becomes a chore. Pretty soon you'll be wanting more, it's inevitable. Heheh no use telling yourself no that'll do for me. That's what I told myself at first. And four weeks later I ended up getting a 4 ft tank. I'm not saying it can't be done or don't do it or it's a stupid idea, far from it, you'll learn a lot from it. I did it and I'm glad I did, no regrets. Just be prepared to do the work if you really want to go ahead with it, or you'll end up with a lot of headaches and heartache that'll discourage you from going further. As with all things: cheap, easy, reliable; you can only have two outta three

nope chromis are gone (well still there but on hold) 8)

yep yep u replied just when I replied, all good then

eeps it looks like hair algae or bryopsis which both say bad on them! Will they start to spread or should I just leave it and hope that it clears up by itself?

no no, not black, its green, almost a yellow tint

Hey peoples, I've been cycling my tank for about 4 weeks now, probably more, and all this while there hasn't been any algae or diatoms of any sort. For the past 4 weeks my tank has been looking white, white rocks and white sand. I only just got my lights sorted last week so I suppose the lack of light caused the lack of algae. The first few days the tank looked even whiter with the white-ish lights on it. Last night I had a look to see if there was anything and nope still white and I sighed to myself, weird I know but I always thought that the algae was a sign that the cycle was nearing completion and at the very least the water is capable of sustaining some life form. Came home from work today and boom, brown patches all over the place! Ugly as sin but I was happy haha. I was expecting the brown stuff, but what I wasn't expecting was tiny little patches of what I can only describe as grass all over the glass. If you can imagine a bare field where someone stuck shrubs of grass nice and evenly across the field, that's what it looks like. I read up a bit and saw hair algae being mentioned, could this be it? I thought that usually only happened after the brown stuff disappeared and not appear all at once. Should I just leave it or scrape it off with a glass cleaner? I don't want to scrape it off only to find out they're like aiptasia and grow from tiny bits. Thanks all!

8 people in my house, 5 rooms (one being a loft on the top floor with no door) and everyone hates the cold so heaters are almost always on. No one can be bothered waiting for oil heaters to heat up the room too so it's nice expensive to run fan heaters for everyone! Powerbill last month was close to 700 and that was before I started turning my halides on for 12 hours a day. It's only getting colder too.....