Phantom

I'm just starting out on planes as well. Have a few heli's and wanted to try something different. I got told to buy a ParkZone Super Cub by quite a few people and it seems to be a reasonable starter plane.

MDF isn't earthquake proof either

29 year old male. Looks like we have quite a good mix of all ages in here

From many different sources. I bought the last stock of the violet and blue LEDs from the company I got them from. http://www.ledsales.com.au also sell the 420nm violet and 450nm blue LEDs although they're out of stock on the violet at the moment. I ended up paying a bit more for my white lighting and got it from an NZ company. http://www.briteledtech.co.nz they list MR11 warm white lights but if you email them they're able to do cool white as well. I also got some white globes from http://www.ledwholesalers.com which look the same but were heaps cheaper. They have a wider colour range. I'll probably build a cover to extend out to the side of the edge hood to house those to give it a bit extra light. I plan to run some controllers for each of the different colours and then computer control the blending of the light giving it the effect of the sun passing over the sky during the day then the same for moonlight at night.

Yeah that wave maker is for 300L tanks. I'm guessing it's at least 10x that in flow. I decided not to hijack your thread any more for my tank. You can see my progress here instead: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=53458

Decided I should stop hijacking other threads and post my photos in here instead. I'm working on getting a nano marine tank up and running using a Fluval Edge I got cheap. Step 1, sort out the lighting. Note: All of these photos are taken at low settings so you can see the shape of the beams etc. The actual result looks a lot brighter. ISO 100, shutter 1/15, aperture 5, AWB off, dark room. What I've managed to find online says you should have a blend of daylight around 6500K, blue light around 450nm (royal blue) and some violet light around 420nm. After a week or so hunting online for appropriate LED's, I found everything I need to achieve those 3 requirements. Starting point (original edge with 2 x 10W halogen lights): Then I got 2 x 0.7W wide angle MR11 globes that fit into the existing halogen fittings. These are rated at 6400 - 6600K. Total power 1.4W @ 12V: Tonight I've just finished wiring up my 2 x 3W 420nm violet LEDs along with 1 x 3W 450nm royal blue LED. Blue and violet only (the violet doesn't come out very well on my camera, but it looks good in real life): All 3 blended together: Next step, work on a fitting for the top to prevent evaporation.

ISO 100 Shutter 1/15 Aperature 5 AWB off Dark room Halogens (20W): LEDs (1.4W): I just received my 6W of violet 420nm LEDs and my 3W of royal blue 450nm LEDs along with another 5W of cool white. I'll get that going tomorrow hopefully. It looks dull in the photos because of the lower settings .. lower ISO and shutter speed. I did that so that you could clearly see the shape of the halogen beams.

My killies love the JBL NovoColor granules. In fact all of my fish do. They'll eat that rather than bloodworms if you put both in the tank. Even my bristlenoses go nuts over that JBL food.

OK I'll make sure I set my camera to manual settings and do it again tonight. However, it really is a lot better than it was. What you see so far is only 1/5th of the lighting I'm putting into that tank. The others haven't arrived yet.

I've been talking to John at Organism. He's got a nano marine set up there. I'm just going to run the standard HOB filter that came with the tank. Inside it I'll use Purigen and SeaGel. I'm adding a water pump on one side to add additional flow. I am in the process of making a seal to go over the opening in the tank so that I can avoid evaporation etc. I'm just using some polycarb and made a wooden jig to mould it into. I'll put a flap in it for feeding etc and also have a hood that covers over the HOB filter. The wide angle of the LEDs makes quite an even distribution of light, so it looks far better now. I'm hoping for the same when I add violet and royal blue.

Mines a fluval edge so there is a pretty limited area to work with. Couldn't get any of the pre made LED kits for that really apart from one in the UK. It's just white light though. I'm not sure about the colour blending. I'm just going to try it and see how it goes. I made sure that all my LED lights are wide angle (minimum 120 degree beam) so that the light is reasonably even. You can see what I mean from the pictures below. So far I've recieved 2 x 6500K white lights. These were drop in replacements for the existing halogen lights. I'm expecting my blue and violet any day now along with power supplies and controllers. I'm actually going to see if I can rig it up to a PC that can control the 3 different colours so the light changes with time. These white lights combined are 1.4W replacing 20W worth of halogen lighting. Halogen lights (20W): White 6500K LED's (1.4W):

I'm just doing this myself on a Fluval Edge. I ended up replacing the halogens with these in cool white (6500K): http://briteledtech.co.nz/led-replacement-bulbs/led-globes/mr11-21-smd-12v-dc-globe-warm-white I'm also getting some violet 420nm lighting: http://www.ledsales.com.au/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=148_188&products_id=801 And some royal blue 450nm: http://www.ledsales.com.au/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=148_160_162&products_id=522 However, these aren't kits. It's a bit DIY.

Paint.Net might be worth a look at as well. I've installed it on heaps of PC's. Not sure if it does red eye reduction kind of thing though. Pro's are that it's small, quick and reasonably powerfull for all of the basics.

We're fine in Cashmere. Didn't think it felt as big as others, but that's probably because we're pretty close to the Lyttleton fault which produces much sharper jolts. Nothing moved in our house, even the full fish tanks stayed put with no water loss.

Well it turned out all of the eggs went white and none made it. Would be quite keen to try and breed some cories in the future though. I think 30 or so cories moving the silica sand around on the bottom of my 350L tank would look awesome. As for the killies, I've got Mr T's whole collection now. Some gardneri blues, whitei?, striatums to go with my golden panchax and gardneri golds.

I put some bronze cories into a tank to help it cycle and the next day I see heaps of eggs on the glass. I don't think the tank is actually going to go through a cycle at all as I've got some filter material from another tank in there at the moment. I don't have any breeding tanks available at the moment due to the quake but I do have a large net breeding unit. What is the best thing to do to try to get a successful spawn from these cories? Should I remove the eggs from the glass and put them in the net unit? P.S. I'm going to have a lot of hungry killies in this tank this weekend provided the ammonia / nitrite / nitrate levels continue to remain at 0.

I have silica sand in one of my tanks and I think it's great. I have a team of cories though that are constantly turning it over. Never need to clean it.

If the laptop cost more than $2k 2 years ago, you might be able to get $500 for it. You'd have to play the waiting game though. As said by others, there are many cheap new laptops available now and there are heaps of 2nd hand ones available too. Let us know the specs.

I lodged a claim for contents with EQC online. They sent back a form to fill out. It says you need to support anything with a replacement value over $100 with a quote / valuation. I'm getting all that info together before I send the form away. Only waiting for the quotes for our tanks now. "To help with the speedy processing of your contents claim please complete the attached “Schedule of Contents” form. This should describe all the affected items. For each item please list the name, a description, its age and a replacement value and then give this to the Loss Adjustor when they visit the property. If your claim is for contents damage only then a loss adjuster will probably not visit so please forward the completed Schedule Of Contents to EQC at the address below, along with any valuations or quotes for the replacement of your damaged items."

We had our assessment exactly 24 hours before the 6.3. Takes them a while to get around. We're going to have to go back on that waiting list once again.

Hehe in this last quake you just described the tanks that smashed at my place. The tanks on weaker stands or those without lips all survived. Basically those with lips must have developed some momentum which forced them over. Those without lips just slid and we were able to rescue them while they're hanging half off the stand. My Juwel Trigon 350 was only just pivoting on the stand when I got home. It was a good 40cm over the lip of the stand.

Just to clarify, I'm not worried about the cycling part. I know the filters I have available have plenty of good bacteria built up and i'll also be using 110L of existing fishy water, existing substrate etc. What I am concerned with is trying to minimise loss of any more fish as I need to add around 200L of water from our possibly suspect water supplies in order to get my 350L trigon tank running to house my fish. I've already lost over $500 worth of fish and I really don't want to lose any more if I can help it. I do have some prime and cycle. I can run carbon in a CF1200 in a 150L breeding setup I have to filter the water for a while before putting it into the trigon.

I have 4 filters that are all cycled, or at least were running before the quake. I'm now down to 1 x fluval 305 and the filter included in my juwel trigon 350. I also have a CF1200 that hasn't been running for a while. I had to empty my trigon 350 as it was half hanging over the cabinet ready to drop any second. I couldn't save that much water. I managed to keep 110L and have that water running in a 100L hospital tank. I've got the fluval running on my hospital tank at the moment. What I need to do is get my trigon on the ground and running again as I have too many fish for this hospital tank. It's stressing them out and I've had a few further deaths. I can take the 110L I already have plus another 30L I can bring up with me as I'm currently in Oamaru - my rescue plan for what was left of my fish. I do have some breeding tanks which aren't damaged that I can use to treat water in. I can run the CF1200 with carbon on these tanks if that's the best thing for it. I'll use my test kits to test for ammonia and nitrates in the tap water. So I need some carbon and something like stresscoat?

I've got all my fish living in a small 100L tank (it's small for the number of fish etc) and I need to get my 350L tank back up and running on the ground. Given we have to boil water, that is going to take a long time to fill it. Are there any products available that help treat the water or anything I can do so that the tap water has the least chance of killing what's left of my fish? I already have a UV filter and a fine particle filter designed to go inline on a hose.

I was at work in the CBD at the time. Our buildings aren't in good shape. Big cracks in the road that are running right into my office. Had to wade through sewerage to get to a car. The squashed bus really hit home to me. I saw it as we drove past. I believe it's the same bus I was on 5 hours earlier I hope everyone on these forums, your friends and family are OK. As for my home, I'm in Cashmere. Lost a 250L tank and about 100 fish. Managed to find my snowball pleco buried in gravel about 2 hours after and he's still alive. We did a quick cleanup, damage assessment, emptied all our tanks and went down to my parents in laws house in Oamaru with fish and our kitten in the back. Our place smells really bad of sewerage under the house, lots of liquefaction, cracks in the walls. I'm going to be looking for a job in Auckland over the next couple of days. It won't take much for my partner and I to just pack up all our stuff (it's on the floor anyway) and go. I won't be back at work for weeks and she's temping at the moment.