David R

Interesting. Funny the little problems you come across with something like this. I just found that the two big LED flodlights I'm using for lighting my tank cast big straight front-to-back shadows from the black silicone on the bracing. Either need to add another in the centre or look at using something more like your set up, or the Beamsworks LEDs....

Yes I'm certainly looking forward to sitting down on the couch in front of the tank with a nice beer and watching the fish swim!

About the only thing you can really do is make the last chamber bigger, though it does look like a big waste of space. Could you put a 90* bend on the end of the drain and run a higher water level in the last compartment?

Looking good! Regarding the sump and auto system, what happens in the even of a power cut? It looks like when the pump switches off a lot of the water will go out the drain from the sump, when it switches back on will the auto system detect the low water level and top it up? Does the control box remember all your settings when the power is switched off and back on?

Cemix Builders sand from Bunnings, ~$8 for 25kg. just don't believe them when they tell you it is "washed"... That pic was taken with one poxy old 4' fluro on the tank with the rather average [in poor light] camera on my phone, so it doesn't really show the sand that well. It is the same stuff I had in my 1400L, there's pics in the link in my signature, it is nice and natural looking and completely inert. I've added a couple of kgs of beach sand to help buffer it or else rain water + lots of wood = pH <5...

Nice, fish, and good pics too! I love it how you can see the Alto's little teeth.

A few rocks if/when I find some suitable, there's an old ballast pit in the middle of nowhere next to the railway line between Wellsford and Helesville I need to stop and check out one day. And a big pile of tangled wood down the other end of the tank trying to replicate a 'snag' in an Amazonian river where one would expect to find plecs.

Substrate makes it start looking like an aquarium rather than just a big glass box, getting excited about adding fish now! Drained and refilled the tank after adding the 150kg of sand, took a little under two hours to fill with the hose...

oh lawd what have you started... http://youtu.be/zykLGUqr2CE :sml1:

Looking good! Any signs of breeding yet?

HA! I did make the same mistake twice, should say "big sTump has sunk"... :oops: Mickey the stand was made by Northland Metal Industries up here, first one they've done AFAIK but a good friend has worked their for years so I was fairly confident they'd get it right. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Cucumber is 99% water, so while your fish will probably eat it there's not much nutrition in it. I agree with the suggestion to add more rasboras to your school.

Bit of an update; I've been sorting out little things like plumbing, only had one small leak in one of the bulkheads which looks like it is sorted now. The drain from the sump is now plumbed back thru the wall to the tank room where it has an opening that I can siphon into from the tank, and from there it runs out thru the wall of the house, under the lawn and out into the bush. I need to make a spraybar too, the pump is a beast! Even with 40mm return plumbing the current coming out the end would blast the fish across the tank. One of the 50mm drains running at full siphon handles the flow, just, leaving the other to tank any excess should the lower drain get blocked. The big sump has sunk, so I'll add substrate this weekend and test-run the sump with the foam and media in place. I've added a few pics to the thread on MFK, but nothing too exciting so I won't repost them here. I will post pics once it has substrate and lights!

Ok so now I'm home and have my eyes open, the video looks good! Could do with a bit more flow, bit of a dead spot in the top left? I think you said you were adding another powerhead right?

:facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :oops: too many long days this week...

makes post about exciting new moving media sump ..... posts pictures not videos. :facepalm: :slfg: looks good, I'll have to come see it in action soon.

No we decided it was better to embrace and accept the pH spike as one of us instead of disagreeing and arguing over its origins, even though sometimes it is necessary to disagree about agreeing to disagree. Though now I think about it I don't really know if that means I've agreed to anything or not. I do know I like ice cream though. I saw an ad on the television about how ice cream makes everyone happy. It sure makes me happy. At least we can all agree that we don't need to disagree about that. What were we talking about again?

Alan you're not wrong, but the type of filter you're talking about is very different from a standard aquarium filter. You are talking about cleaning and purifying a continuous flow of water, rather than processing and removing waste from a closed system. I disagree, I think mechanical filtration is a very important, and often overlooked, aspect for even a "standard" tank. Waste caught in mechanical filtration can either do one of two things, A; sit there and decompose, being broken down into nitrite then nitrate by the biological filtration, eventually to be removed by a water change, or B; be removed from the system by cleaning the mechanical filter media. Option B is far better IMO, as removing waste from the system before it has time to break down reduces the load on the biological filter, and will reduce the amount of nitrate created and therefore decrease the amount/frequency of water changes needed. The only reason mechanical filter media would act as biological filtration is when it isn't cleaned frequently enough, and if the system has sufficient biological media then there is no need to rely on beneficial bacteria in the mechanical media to keep the nitrogen cycle happening.

Only if you don't have the correct density pads in there.

Good idea for biological filtration, bad idea for mechanical filtration or anything like canister filters that combine the two.

Engineer friend who built my stand suggested it would have been easier to go live in a submarine than set up the 2000L tank.... :rotf:

If by "tank water" you are talking about a rain water tank (not fish tank), then the pH will be the least of your concerns with regards to keeping rift lake cichlids. The lack of mineral content/hardness is what you should be trying to measure, as nudge suggested. You could chuck some limestone/shell/coral/aragonite in and hope for the best, or buy yourself a GH/KH test kit and TDS meter and actually keep track of how much of what you need to add to the water to keep it in the ideal range for your fish. I am also on rain water, and a small amount of beach sand (crushed shell) keeps my pH neutral to slightly acidic, despite having a large quantity of driftwood in my tank, without pushing the hardness/TDS up above where my Amazonian fish prefer it. I'm certain with a bit less wood and a little more shell I could get the pH up around high 7s and have people tell me the water is fine for Lake Malawi cichlids, when in reality if you measured the hardness and TDS you would find it somewhat soft and lacking in hardness compared to the lake. This article was posted here a while ago, and if you're going to start messing around with your water I'd say it is well worth a read. http://www.tbas1.com/Exchange/The%20New ... d%2011.pdf

haha, who says learning Latin names isn't of value!

Looks like it could do with a little more over the back? Or is it just the pic?

I'd agree with that. If you can't upgrade then do the clowns a favour and move them on to someone with a bigger tank, a 60L tank is no place for active potentially-foot-long schooling fish, even at a small size they really want at least 4' length so they can stretch their fins. A group of dwarf chain loaches would be far better suited to your tank than clowns.