Dark

thank you all very much its been a challenging couple of years, and we are both glad that we managed to get to a point where we could get married and live happily ever after (i expect this will make more sense to those that know us closer...) we are having another baby too, which is cool because then i'll be able to register a re-breed! the wedding was over the atherton tablelands which is inland of cairns in australia. after that we spent a week there having our honeymoon, taking in the beaches, wildlife, heat and humidity. stayed at on green island and then at melaleuca resort in palm cove. we also picked up a love of sorkeling while we were over there and are thinking of trying scuba diving after we get past the being parents again thing. i'm tired and not making much sense. feel free to ask all the questions you like, and take notes - we really recommend the hassle free wedding thing, and hay, getting married at 3900 feet makes it very hard to say 'no'.

check out http://www.dark.co.nz for, of all things, powerpoint slideshows. we eloped to the AU, else you all would have been invited (and they can only fit 20 people in a hot air balloon)

dude, its real easy... if you're out in the hutt sometime pop by & i'll show you what i mean

and about those soda stream bottles: the thread is the same as a normal co2 bottle. attach a normal regulator. heres the fun bit: instead of a big tap on the side of the bottle, there is a small screw. it is the tap, it bypasses the pin-valve in the neck of the bottle. using a screwdriver is beyond the scope of this post. caveat: it has been a long time since i did this, i can't remember the exactness of my claims, and i don't seem to own a soda-stream any more (???) so i couldn't verify. i would also expect that a soda-stream bottle would last about a month or so, on my system i guess a couple of days, and they cost about $15 (again, from memory) to 'refill' works out cheaper to hire a bigger bottle. and for those of you that didn't pick this up already; pressurised gas likes to absorb energy when it is released from captivity. this means everything around it gets VERY cold. be slow and methodical when playing with compressed stuff, unless of course you are running away from it. thread tape and spanners are your friends and 'hand tight' is a term to be applied only when using a long-handled spanner. if you are not using a spanner the term 'hand can't undo' works as a starting point.

my 10 cents: i went to BOC and got a regulator as used on a mig welder. $150ish i then went back to BOC and hired (and continue to do so) a 6.5kg co2 bottle for about $8 a month. a few parts from the gas supplier across the road that the BOC people recommended (about $100 for solenoid and all other connecting parts, and some thread tape) done. no more messing around. attatched solenoid to a spare light timer and set up a mess of piping and gang-valves, and inject co2 into about 16 separate tanks. i have plans to put a co2 line down the side of the house when i put a tank in the living room. there is enough pressure to do this with no worries, and if you do something like; run larger tubing (8-10mm) as the main supply with smaller with small/normal tubing (5-6mm) branching off into tanks; then you will not get as many problems with pressure drops when adjusting the flow-rate of individual injectors. similar to the 'token ring' method of running a high-volume air-pump. for tubing you can use air-line, but co2 can leak through the walls of the tubing. there are co2 resistant tubes available (see a tubing/hose supplier). comes in many colours, sizes, lengths, and toxicities. you can also get normal non-toxic air-line tubing for about 35 cents a metre.

someone mentioned to me that you might want to check the variety you use - apparently there are some for use on horses that get very hot compared to the ones made for people. don't think you'd be able to get them at the local sporting shop or chemist, just thought i would mention to save someone getting one of those good deals that turns bad... just in case and all

my first large tank broke in exactly the same way with a curved split. (i had it 1 day and lost 1000 litres onto my living room floor) i believe the cause was a lack of support in the center or the tank, but experience has told me the tank was badly sized and prone to break anyway, being the same dimensions as the 600l tank i have now, but a metre deep. (its actually the 'same' tank, just with most of the sides and all the bracing replaced) Those that know tanks better than me have noted that a split in that manner is somewhat unusual as glass prefers to break on a straighter line. Don't know how useful this is, but it might help with design considerations on fixing the stand. Enjoy

i took a lot of photos when i made the last one, and i am in the process of turning it into an 'article', or at least a lot of pictures with a few explanatory words here and there i'll post a link to it soon.

i have one of those co2 'ladders' - i must say the one that comes in that pack isn't all that bad as far as bubble ladders go it is double sided, so the bubbles pass between front and back - nothing overly special there. i had a single sided one about the same size that didn't have as much of a run for the bubbles. the nutrafin kit pictured is actually pretty neat - they are about $20 wholesale from memory, and for that you get a whole pile of stuff, most impressive of all being the brewing canister - beats messing around with old coke bottles etc. not trying to get you to buy one - but as the kit is sold as a going concern i will use it for comparative purposes. the down-side to the bubble ladder included in the kit is that it isn't big enough - something i'm sure you can improve on in your experimentations! when using the brewing canister with a 100% effective reactor, it could raise co2 levels to near toxic levels in a 600l, heavily planted tank. that give you an idea of how much co2 you can get from a 1/8 teaspoon of yeast and 5 tablespoons of sugar... the kit, however, is rated at only 120 litres (memory...). the reason for this is that the ladder isn't all that effective - the bubbles do diffuse, but most of the co2 ends up leaving the ladder un-dissolved. if you still want to make a ladder, my advice is to make it as large as you can - the one in 'the kit' is about 10cm wide and 20cm tall (memory...) i would suggest going about 4 times that to get good results... then all you have to do is make it look pretty alternatively, i can show you how to make a cyclone reactor from old undergravel filter parts

i'm lazy: i do two at a time: take two upside down coke bottles with the bottoms cut out place them in something so they can't fall over (i use a spare fish tank) in a 2 litre jug, mix three tablespoons of rock salt with some really hot water until the salt dissolves top up with cold water to two litres pour half of the water into each coke bottle add an air-stone to each bottle and turn on so that the surface of the water is bubbling, but not foaming (i have found the foam traps the eggs) add a 1/2 teaspoon of eggs to each bottle wait 24 hours turn off air, remove airstone, apply light to the bottom of the bottles, use another air-line to syphon out BBS into a fine mesh net (muslim cloth is cheap and can be fitted to an old net frame) rinse briefly with water - non-chlorinated is probably best (i use fish tank water) feed to fishies - either dump them in the tank, or put them in a small container with an amount of water, and use a syringe to collect and deliver 'measured' amounts as you can see, i don't care much for heating, and i'm certainly not going to worry about the pH of the water. after 24 hours the eggs hatch with good yield, i wouldn't say perfect, but i'm not overly concerned - i often have more BS that i can deal with. the cultures tend to survive after hatching for about 24 hours, after that the contents of the bottle start to smell funny helps to have more than one culture on the go at a time with staggered start times so you get staggered hatch times i'm sure there are plenty of ways to improve my technique, but it works

Without all the BS? yeah, right! :lol: That was like reading the script for an info-mercial! It does sound interesting, but personally i like the ingredients like to say a little more that 'flavour bursting particles' and 'component 1-5'. or in other words: we can't get it to mix properly, so we came up with this amazing excuse to cover ourselves, and of course to benefit you! the consumer! :lol: (order now and get a free set of steak knives) on a more sane note, there are plenty of things you can feed baby fish - microworms, egg yolk mixed with spirulina, brine shrimp flake, crushed up normal flake etc... and i'm sure there are recipies out there for DIY (or 'Poor-mans') fry food. i have used a few different brands of liquid fry food which seem to work about the same as our comical advertising maniac above, and i have seen some brands of flake food marketed at fry - but again, i think it is simply the left over powder from the machines that make the larger stuff, re-packeted and re-marketed, perhaps with an additional 10% of something so they can't get sued. to this day, brine shrimp is worth the hassle, especially if you have a good setup for growing and harvesting them, and supplementing diets is important too (translates to 'variety', unless you are in marketing, when supplementing translates to stupid products and $$$!)

those drums are ideal for lots of things - water storage, daphnia bins, bulk gravel storage. you might be able to get one from a place that sells livestock feed - Sharpies in Lower Hutt has had them in the past. 'Food grade' is good. 'Previously used for toxic chemicals and radioactive substances' is bad. (talk about stating the obvious!) if i had room, i would plumb one up with a float valve, overflow, auto doser for water ager, aeration, in-line heater... and UV sterilizer just to be sure... actually i would probably do a couple linked together... try to mount it somewhere up high so you can drain water into your tanks, thus making it easier for your powerhead if you even need to use one. one of our club members has three outside for daphnia - occasionally they have to be emptied and washed out to get rid of the accumulated leaves and algae and so on... i don't know if you would run into this indoors, but it might pay to think about how you would go about overhauling it if the need ever arose (radioactive possums falling in the water tank?) too late at night for more inspiration...

i had a mercury therm until recently - very fast to tell the temp and accurate too; temp range from -50 to +250. it was from a chemistry lab. it met the floor at high speed and shattered and lots of little highly reflective balls of liquid (mercury) went everywhere... gutted. the floating ones are a therm in a glass tube and so they are slower to react to temperature changes - i think the extra layer is for bouyancy and protection, most likely the former. i tried using the digital ones, but i have three of them and they all read different temps when placed in the same tank - can be out by about 3 deg in either direction! my old man has what i think is the ultimate temperature measuring device, similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002Z07QA/002-9677788-9569630?v=glance&n=228013 it uses infrared to gauge the temperature of an object and has a laser pointer to aid with aiming it. great for telling which beer is the coolest :)and you can stand on one side of the room and check all your tanks without moving but without going overboard, a medical or lab thermometer is probably your best bet - i'm getting another one to replace the one i smashed, and i'll be keeping it in a safer place next time!

mine are an orangy brown colour - they started off white and went that way over a couple of years. it hasn't caused anything strange to happen in my tanks, i think it is just staining from all the brown stuff that gets stuck in it. as far as cleaning filters go - if you go overboard you will kill all the bacteria that is in it, which might not be a bad thing if you are starting fresh, but it would mean the filter needs to be allowed to cycle for a bit to build the bacteria colonies back up again. i know i'm probably stating the obvious, but you never know the ribbed hosing on some models of the external fluvals seems to be exceptionally good at collecting gunk - most noticable as brown chunks that come out when you switch the filter off and back on again. i blast them clean with a hose from both ends (when i can be bothered taking them off my tank) and even that doesn't seem to get all the rubbish out. fluval do sell a 'bottle brush' type thing with a long handle, but i can't see myself ever paying them for the privelage.

mine were at least a couple of inches long before i noticed they had spawned - about three years old perhaps? the babies tend to hide out with dad until they are free swimming, and even then slowly leave their cave. you might be lucky and not get any eaten. on the other hand, one tends to notice that bristlenose cats have spawned because the tank is suddenly covered in small fish anyway - if they do take three years to grow, imaging the number of tanks you'll have by then!

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/hypancis/229_1.PHP found a nice pic whilst looking around - link above. cool looking fish drawing from experience with other fish in the hypancistrus, hemiancistrus, and plain old ancistrus genus, i would say that your fish are exhibiting 'i like to hide in dark places and never come out' behavioural characteristics - typical of any fish you are proud of and want to show off to your friends male and female 'plecs' (refering to body-form not taxonomy) seem to like being hidden - most of my plecs spend their time wedged in logs or hiding behind tubes or under rocks etc, even when they are not breeding. although i'm sure it differs for some species, the male tends to find a cave, entice the female in to the cave, then kick her out and guard the eggs. as with any fish, the best way to get them breeding is to give them ideal conditions (in this case lots of places to hide), and good food and drink. according to research done in america, you could also try playing them barry white - it seems to have an effect on dog-fish, so why not cats!

they are just as cute when they get up to a few inches through accidents and 'newbeeism' i have managed to put bristlenoses in a lot of situations that would (or did ) kill other fish - extreme temperatures, high ammonia levels, dirty buckets outside for a week (siphoned one out) the only one that ever died managed to get itself stuck inside my cannister filter and (hope this isn't too graphic) got munched by the impella. again, my fault as i didn't take care to protect the fish from the equipment. be warned - when they start to breed there is a high chance of an epidemic one male will take eggs from multiple females and guard them - enjoy them when they are small and cute! so yeah, i give these little guys a 10/10 for toughness, cuteness, and longevity. others opinions may vary, results may be localised time/space distortion effects, not suitable for tanks without water or children under three, batteries not included etc etc...

it all seems about the same from my experience: the heaters that use a bi-metal strip for temperature reading tend to end up rusting and are not often accurate the electronic thermostat variety are often callibrated badly when you get them the ones with the external control system are probably about the same for accuracy, and they all break down after about 10 years the good thing about the electronic thermostat ones is the lack of moving parts - no click when they switch on and less parts inside to rust once condensation gets inside the stainless ones have external thermostats because the walls of the heater part are too thick and too heat conductive for accurate temperature measurement. the advantage to these is that large fish can't break them as easily as glass ones - even heater guards can be broken by large fish personally i would not use the heaters with the bi-metal strip again - i have bad luck with all heaters getting condensation inside them and the bi-metal strip rusts quite quickly. the last straw was a 300w heater that got jammed on and cooked a tank. the electrically controlled ones have some form of safe-guard to turn them off if they are on for too long and fail in an 'off position' (according to the advertising material...) oh, and the stainless ones have electronic control systems you'll be pleased to know 10 cents>

you are not a nice person faran

i read an article in a trade mag whilst waiting around at Norgren - apparently you can reduce the noise from equipment (read 'pumps') by adding a current smoother to your power circuit. the theory goes that the vibrations are quieter if they are constant and even - unfortunately home electricity is not quite smooth enough to ensure this. as the electrictly goes through its tiny fluctuations so does the pump, which might cause it to swing slightly further in one direction, or not quite as far back again before beginning the return trip. this basically causes more noise. Power smoothers ensure the supply is 'clean', which has been shown to cut down the noise of vibrating equipment. we are talking a whole 5% in one example, but the noise they were talking about was from a 300kg (dry load weight!) washing machine that you needed ear-muffs to be within 10 feet of. for those of you who have considered adding a UPS to your fish setups, you'll probably already know that most UPS devices contain forms of current smoothing

personally, the ticking of second hands does annoy me... as does the 50Hz hum from electrical items like tvs and those energy saving light bulbs, hence my comment about being able to hear one in the LHPC from the front counter. anyway, talking about cheap japanese knock-offs - shouldn't we theoretically be buying the european ones the japanese ones are copied from? they out-perform the japanese ones in so many ways its not even funny. i reckon people just buy what they have seen or heard about, and what they can get their hands on, rather than looking around for a decent alternative.

never late - two days makes no difference always interesting to hear what other people have, which was kinda my original intention for this topic! so when you say quiet, are we talking small air-pump quiet, or fridge quiet, or tractor quiet? i'm not overly impressed with the noise of the linear pumps - ideally i want something that i could install in a church, or babies room - no sound at all. i'm probably dreaming

the pump is now spending the rest of its life in a box considering all possible meanings of the words 'silent as the grave'. well after a week or so of *cough* dedicated *cough* construction time, i have managed to construct a housing for the pump. because i am lazy there are no pictures of this, so here is a no-so-accurate description of my box: length: 380mm height: 330mm width: 330mm materials: 40mm thick fire-stop doors contents: one resun aco-008 air pump (120l/m) additional features: LRF support (courtesy of Packard Bell) making the box was easy, although i discovered too late that i double-checked all my measurements EXCEPT the size of the pump - as a result there is no room at the back of the pump for sound-proofing - and thanks to luck this is not a concern at all. the hardest part of the construction was the creation of the cross bulk-head connector - sounds impressive (or dumb) but basically translates as follows: i didn't want to have a hole in the front of the box for the air-hose to come out of - i wanted a 13mm air-hose connector (hosetail) on the box which was internally attached to the pump. the problem was the 13mm hosetail wasn't designed to attach to wood, so a piece of pipe was set into the hole and the hose-tail was threaded into that. from the inside a second, nylon, pipe was run from the back of the hosetail to the hosetail on the pump. after talking to the pneumatic techs that sell me all my robotics gear, they advised that the pump wouldn't care if it heated up to about 100degC - although i believe them i wouldn't say the same for the wood, so we devised a simple air-intake system that would cool the pump without the need for additional materials like fans. a series of holes were drilled through the wood at angles underneath the pump - the idea being as follows: the pump will pump 120l/m of air which can only come in through those holes as the rest of the box is sealed. at 0.04bar pressure (getting scientific here) the flow rate through the holes would be [blah] and would create a fan-like effect with air spiraling in around the base of the pump. because the pump has cooling fins on it already, and all the circuitary for the pump is mounted underneath, the heat should transfer to the air, and warm air would then pass through the pump and out - into the tanks. despite my belief that it would explode or catch on fire, the internal temperature of the box with the pump under load has never risen above 60degC - only slightly higher than it was running before. the damn thing is about as loud as a very small air-pump and is doing about 120 times more output. so, even though there are quiet air-pumps available, i can recommend getting a cheap loud one and putting it inside a box to block the vibrations and sound it creates. i will let you all know if it does catch on fire, but while i was constructing it i did realise that it makes an excellent stool, so if worst comes to worst (assuming i still have a box) i'll have a great piece of functional furniture

i usually just run my finger over it - but by the time i get around to that point my fingers are already covered in silicone which probably helps them not stick. as long as you start at the bottom and work up and over the edge you don't leave any fingerprints... either that or i am just a greasy 'lil bugger... you decide

there are versions of the same 'the pump' pumps available in NZ - there are also OEM versions available that don't have all the pretty housing around them. these pumps all operate the same way that my loud one does - they are called 'linear pumps' because they have a piston that moves back and forth inside them. the smaller the pump rating, the smaller the moving parts inside, thus creating less noise and less overall vibration - the large versions of 'the pump' which pump 120litres/minute or more have a dB (noise) rating only slightly lower than that of models comparable to mine. to save importing and ordering stuff, it might just be worth checking out the pumps that your LFS has - these 'the pump' and 'not the pump' pumps are all created from the same design(s), and most of them are manufactured in the same plant, just with different branding on them depending on who comissioned the product run. in essence, it doesn't matter what brand you get, they are probably all exactly the same