Phantom

http://rapidled.com/ That's where I started out anyway. My design is a take on their design, but I made a layout that suits my tank and where I really need the light. Not sure on shipping. I'll get heatsinks locally. LEDs shouldn't be too expensive, maybe $50 shipping at most I'd say. Drivers would depend on how many I get and how bulky they are. I'm playing around with the idea of being able to control the different colours independantly but also controlling each section of lighting independantly. So I'll need quite a few drivers.

LEDs themselves about USD$300. Heatsinks and drivers probably another USD$300. + shipping on top of that. I haven't settled on what heatsinks or drivers I'd like to use, but I will get dimmable ones.

The problem is finding LED strips which give the right wavelengths to promote healthy coral growth. You need quite a lot of Royal Blue (455nm ish) / Violet (420nm ish) lighting as well as cool white. My initial design has the following: CREE XT-E - Royal Blue x35 CREE XP-G - Cool White x26 Violet UV x14 CREE XP-E - Green x3 Philips Rebel ES - Deep Red x3

Depends on the price difference and what you want out of it. Unless you have a poor quality or slow ADSL connection, you probably won't notice much difference. The real advantage of UFB is higher upload speeds which is great if you do a lot of uploading and sit around waiting for it.

I run 4 x 54W tubes. I am actually looking to replace them all with custom LED lighting, but that's quite expensive compared. I've got a Juwel Rio 400 tank, so I wanted to be able to fit lighting within the lid. I have 2 Juwel tubes and 2 Geissmann tubes. I also have 2 x 24W T5HO's running on my algae scrubber. What is it you want to have in the tank?

Not that are worth visiting, unless you are into marine, then Living Reef in Dakota Place is good. I only go to Organism and Redwood for tropical stuff. The others are expensive or limited selection in my opinion. The guy that used to breed for the shop in Stanmore Road does sell fish on trademe. He has a unit out in Bromley where he breeds a lot of fish.

I run a 450L marine on 4 x T5HO tubes with no problems. Only thing is you can only really have soft corals and fish.

That speedtest isn't the greatest. Here at home I get 15 down / 10 up on that one. At work on FX fibre I get about the same. speedtest.net does typically give better results. This is my home connection on speedtest.net (chch server) Same connection to Sydney The problem with residential connections in NZ is that they don't make the consumer aware of what the CIR is and everyone gets sold on the PIR. CIR is the committed information rate, the minimum amount of bandwidth that they purchase per customer. PIR is the peak information rate, or basically the speed your modem syncs at. 2 years ago, almost everyone on ADSL (via Telecom gear) was on a wholesale product called BUBA. BUBA had a restriction of 45kbps (dial up speed) per subscriber for the connection back to the ISP. So basically, if every customer in the area was using the internet at the same time, no matter how much bandwidth the ISP had available, the link would saturate and each customer would get an average of 45kbps. Now, most people are on EUBA or gear from other providers. Only rural areas are still on BUBA. EUBA allows the ISP to buy however much bandwidth for the link back as they want. In saying that, most ISPs still have pathetic CIRs, could be as low as 45kbps, or maybe if you're really lucky, as high as 1Mbps. Given heaps of people connect at over 10Mbps, that's still not a huge amount. The only reason you can get higher speeds than the CIR is because not every customer is downloading information at the same time, so it averages out to give you higher speeds. In peak times like evenings and school holidays, people often complain that the internet is a lot slower. That's because everyone is using it. The other thing that helps is that ISPs have caches and CDNs which allow them to deliver international content to you from a local source. Local traffic doesn't tend to have restrictive CIRs.

Upload is pretty much the same on ADSL1 and ADSL2+. Download depends on how far you are from your exchange / cabinet and also how much bandwidth is available to you from your ISP. Loading webpages typically isn't too noticeable when you jump up in speed unless they're really photo heavy.

That one is actually for sump pumps, but it does need a 3" tether with room to move. There are plenty of other float switches on that site.

The 240V one I linked is a sealed unit, works by tethering the cord to the side and allowing the angle of the unit to change as it goes up / down. Shouldn't fail, but is expensive.

It would be nice if companies would be willing to provide livestock insurance for accidents / acts of god. I lost thousands worth of livestock after the Feb earthquake

Try element14 or rs components. E.g. http://nz.element14.com/durakool/fcnb37 ... -PD-NEW-ST However, they are far more expensive than a DIY approach.

I'd like a calculator too. However, I think using LEDs is still in the experimentation phase and everyone has different ideas. It also depends on optics, height above the water line etc too. What I've done (for a marine tank) is to take the specs and look at the design of commercial fixtures that have some good reviews and used that as my base.

I do. All of my Juwel tanks survived, all my non Juwel tanks fell. Main difference was that the Juwels slid on the base and I came home to have them overhanging, almost about to fall. The other tanks all had lips on the base, so when the tank moved, it took the base with it. I've got a Rio 400, Trigon 350 and a Trigon 190. Haven't got any other tanks any more.

It's all personal opinion. I'm new to "DSLR" photography as well, got a new next generation DSLR equiv camera a few weeks back. I'd always wanted to get a Canon, something like a 50D / 60D. However, I got a really really really good price (buy the lens, get the camera free) on a Sony mirrorless one so decided to buy it. I got a Sony NEX-5N, which dpreview rates as being about on par with a Canon 60D, but it's so small and light at 269g. I'd personally just have a look at what is out there for your price range, pick them up in store and make sure you like how it feels and where the controls are. Make sure they either come with or you buy lenses with image stabilisation on any zoom lens. From what I read, having a lens or range of lenses to cover something like 18mm - 200mm should pretty much do all you need as an intro, except you'd probably want to factor in purchasing a fast (low f number) prime macro lens if you're into that sort of thing. You'll also want to factor in buying UV filters for each lens, if for nothing else, to protect them. They're about $30 - $60 each. Once you've decided what is in your price range, take a look at the reviews on http://www.dpreview.com/ and even compare the different cameras you're looking at. They're pretty good at covering all the details you would ever need to know. As for the whole Canon vs Nikon vs other cameras, this article shows what the pros were using for the top photos of 2012. http://www.thephoblographer.com/2012/12/03/reuters-announces-its-list-of-best-photos-for-2012-redditor-breaks-down-all-the-gear-used/ Image below comes from the article.

Ahh, that's what I'm doing wrong then. Is the Selleys stuff safe to use in the tank with fish / corals?

What kinds of epoxies / putties do people use for this? I've got some dupla marin putty, but after 24 hours, it has gone hard and hasn't stuck to the rock at all. I can just pull it off with virtually no force.

Panda cories - they're so active and playful Pictus / silver mystus catfish - I just like catfish Bi colour blenny - saltwater fish, but my one has so much character

I've got an Aqua One branded one, was about $30 from LFS. Aqua One Easy Reach Tongs Xtra Large

One of these

What I mean is they put filtration / skimming systems etc in that are rated to handle much larger systems, meaning it's more forgiving when maintenance isn't done as regularly.

They go overboard with their filtration etc on these tanks and they all hate using living plants / corals because it adds to the maintenance. One ep of Fish Tank Kings, the boss is trying to tell Francis (fish geek) to steer the client away from live corals in his tank and just go for the inserts. They also often refer to customers as long time customers, meaning they probably gave them a tank a while back and regularly go in to maintain it for them. Can't imagine too many customers ordering super expensive custom built tanks on a regular basis.

Yeah, it's better. It's good having someone like Francis in it. Still has to appeal to the american audience though

Xbox - Kinect is great, will only get better. If you're into shadier things, Xbox's are really easy to chip *cough*. Xbox also have a focus on being more than just a game console. They're trying to be your total entertainment system. Windows - Apple like you to do things their way and charge you a fortune just for "pretty". Google in my opinion is becoming too much of a superpower and I don't like that. Sure their company motto is "don't be evil" but who says that won't change with a change in leadership. Windows on the desktop / laptop does everything you need, everyone knows it and it does it all well. I'm also biased towards Windows Phone, but that's due to the previous statements about Apple and Google. Windows Phones are really nice to use, but they do lack the apps that the other 2 have. It's getting better though.