Phantom

It's kind of new, but I think it was a short pilot season. New season is starting up in Feb I believe. At least the fish tank kings have a marine biologist / self proclaimed fish geek on staff who cares about everything they do with livestock.

There is a better show that is on National Geographic in the USA. Nat Geo Wild - Fish Tank Kings. They're a little less flashy, little more professional. Not sure if / when it will make it to NZ TV, but if you download TV shows then you should be able to get it.

The other option is to buy an external drive enclosure if you know for sure the size and connections on the drive. They're probably cheaper.

I buy these things from Dove (wholesaler) http://www.dove.co.nz/products/cables-a ... pters/2987 They work well, come with a power supply and you can connect it to old or new desktop / laptop drives. They're only about $27 +GST wholesale, so shouldn't be too expensive retail. Not sure what stores you have near by. Edit: Any stores you do have nearby should be able to get one overnight from Dove anyway as they're bound to have an account. $27.85 + GST is the wholesale price.

I don't really clean mine. I have 1 sponge that I'll clean randomly whenever I remember when doing water changes, but other than that, I run all bio media + purigen. In the 4 years or so of having the trigon 190, I've probably given the filter 2 cleans.

I haven't got either of those 2 tanks, but I do have a Juwel Rio 400, Juwel Trigon 350 and a Juwel Trigon 190. They're good tanks, the built in filters work well enough. If you're buying new, they should all have the T5HO lighting now, but some of the older ones have T8 lighting. I'd avoid those ones.

Yes still using skimmer, although it pretty much stopped producing after about 5 days running the scrubber. Instead of filling the cup every 3-4 days, it is still only half full after emptying it about 10 days ago. I haven't done water changes while using the scrubber as I wanted to see how well it was working. The nitrates may have dropped, it's hard to really tell where the results sit. I'll do a decent water change this weekend.

Week 2 photos. Nitrate has stayed constant between 10 - 20 ppm the whole time. These pics are after 9 days growth. The growth was easily twice as thick as my week 1 result. In unit: Out of unit: After cleaning:

Not trying to hi-jack, just thought this might be the best place to post. I was inspired by RUNAS to do one of these as well. Mine is a bit bigger and uses 24W T5HO's at the moment. My mesh is 550mm x 190mm, light from both sides. 2200L/H flow. These are my week 1 pictures (I'll take week 2 tonight as I didn't get a chance to clean it over the weekend). Algae was about 2mm thick in most places. Left half: Right half: Both out of the scrubber ready to clean:

I saw heaps of MX5's outside the Cashmere Club in Christchurch not long ago. Wondered why there were so many. Guess it was this. Nice pics

We're in Cashmere and I've just booked a trip away for xmas / new year and wondering if there is anyone here or if anyone here knows someone that wouldn't mind feeding our fish and cat between Dec 24th and Jan 6th. Happy to look into companies as well. Going to give a few a call in the morning to see what is available. I'd rather not put our cat in a cattery and give the fish feeding blocks, but I will if I have to. Of course, happy to reimburse for the trouble. Ideal if someone has responsible kids that want some extra pocket money for xmas and are near this side of town. Orbiter stop right outside if that helps (happy to pay bus fares on top).

I don't have an all in one marine, I did up a Juwel tank instead. However, I think if you like the look from one of those all in ones then go for it. Lots of people use them and you get results without having to put in a lot of effort. I wouldn't get one if you wanted hard corals though as you'll end up changing the lighting. In saying that, if it is your own house, you can plumb up and build in a custom tank / sump arrangement that can look a lot better and probably work out bigger and cheaper. From personal experience, I'd call that a huge pro. Every tank I had on a lipped stand went over in the Feb quake. Every tank that was on a flat base (no lip) slid but stayed up. However, the smaller (say 6.0 or less) quakes do move my flat base tanks and I pretty much have to empty them to move them back.

Possibly skimmerless in the long run, but no rush. Background: I have a Jewel Rio 400 tank with fish, live rock and soft corals. Hasn't been drilled. Currently using a Deltec MCE-600 HOB skimmer. Planning on putting the algae scrubber on top of the tank for the moment. 600x200x200 unit with 22" T5HO tubes either side of the screen which will be about 550x170. Head height required could be minimised to just over a foot from the pump. AS.net forums say I need about 3000 lph of flow for a screen that size. My scrubber design I am getting made on Monday:

Doesn't have to be in the $50 - $100 range if it's worth spending the money. I am just making the assumption that the main brands like Eheim are selling for such high prices because of the name, and also to give the LFS a bit of profit as well. I have no problem supporting LFS, but if I am paying 3x the price to do so, I'd rather get it elsewhere. Where can you buy the Lagunas?

Inspired by RUNAS and his DIY algae scrubber viewtopic.php?f=3&t=60272, I've decided to make one myself. I'm on the lookout for a pump that can do 3000L/Hr as that is the recommended flow rate from the FAQ at http://algaescrubber.net/ . Had a look in LFS over the weekend, and I'm looking at about $300 for one of the main brands such as Eheim. TM has quite a selection of what look to be Chinese brands. Does anyone use, recommend, avoid or have any other comments on any of these brands? SunSun (model HQB-3500) Tempercon - that's possibly just the name of the NZ seller (model WPHM6081) Sobo (model WP5200) Rio Aqua (model Rio Plus 3100) They're all in the $50 - $100 range. Edit: P.S. This is for a saltwater tank.

Hehe I meant to say 50cm x 15cm, or 500mm x 150mm. The lights I'm using have waterproof caps on each end and are made for mounting directly above the water anyway. I guess I could try it this way and if I don't like it, I could always glue the panels in. The channel is 78mm wide, so large enough to mount something underneath in the future. Will take it to some plastics places tomorrow and see what it will cost.

Changed my design, no slots any more. What do you think of this? Dimensions are 600 L x 180 W x 200 H. Inside the bays are 45mm wide for the lights and 78mm wide for the waterfall. Made the dividers in 2 parts. The bottom part is 50mm high and will be glued in to hold water in the middle section. Then I have 2 drop in pieces of acrylic that I can put on top as splash guards. I've got some 12V, 40mm square fans that I can put anywhere in the light bays. I'd just drill holes when I want to install them. I've also added some 10x10 notches in the 4 corners to allow cables to run out.

Depends what insurance they're talking about. Medical you are probably covered, but I'd be really suprised if it also covers contents and more importantly, liability. Contents cover requires the insurance company knowing details about the house and occupants, as well value of goods. These details won't be on your parents policy. If by some miracle they didn't need to know these, I'm sure that would just give them really easy loopholes to get out of paying out on a claim. As for your power usage, if your nano was only 20L then $20 / year would be about right on scale. But it all depends on heating, lighting, pumps running, temperature of the room it is in etc. This was also a few years ago now and power prices have gone up a lot since then. Those digital power meters are great if you want to know what it really costs.

I've flatted with fish tanks before. If your flatmates aren't so happy about it thinking it's going to chew a lot of power, you're best to nip it in the bud early and get one of those really cheap (I've seen them for about $6 at Bunnings) digital power meters. Put your power unit cost into it and let it measure consumption for a week. In one of my previous flats, a 240L tank was consuming about $20 of power a month and the other flatmates agreed that it wasn't worth worrying about. If they're still worried, just offer to pay a little more. Just be careful that you don't take it too far and want to measure other things like computers or you'll end up in arguments about who is using more power. As for insurance, you will need your own. Contents insurance is a MUST have for anyone renting as it includes liability insurance. If you burn the house down, you don't have to pay for it 20 years later as previously mentioned in this thread. Plus you'll find that most policies will cover accidental damage to the property. This was a life saver for me after the Chch Feb earthquake, otherwise I would have had to pay many thousands to replace floor boards and carpet that were damaged.

Did you put slots into the acrylic at all? This is as far as I got with my design last night. I was thinking that the slots would help hold the base and I'd run silicon along the edges after it was glued in place. Maybe that is just overkill and not really required at all. I got the idea off my Deltek HOB skimmer which does this. That design has internal dimensions of 600mm long, 140mm wide and 200mm tall. I designed it with 3mm acrylic in mind, but I'll go talk to some plastics companies to see what they think. I allowed 45mm for the lights and that leaves 44mm for the middle section. Do you think it needs to be wider than that? I have heaps of small fans that I use for cooling LED lighting, so I can throw a couple in there to keep the lights cool. The screen could then be at minimum, 50mm x 15mm which is the recommended size from that algaescrubbers forum FAQ. I thought that it might be a good idea to have removeable panels on the inside to give better access to the light fittings. I figured they only really have to be splash proof so it should be OK like that. I think to start with, I'll just place the unit on top of the tank. Then once I see how it performs, look to get some valves and work out how to make it siphon / overflow safe for mounting on the ground. That will be a good phase 2 and also means I don't have to invest a lot to see how it goes. If it works well, I may end up making a sump to go into my cabinet and plumb it all in.

Until you posted these photos, I'd never heard of algae scrubbers. I don't have a sump on my 400L tank as it is a Jewel with the default stand, so no refugium. However, I now want to make one of these algae scrubbers after spending a few hours reading about them. Did you do your own design for the acrylic case? Just been hunting in my garage and found an unused 2 x 22" T5HO unit that was on a pre-quake tank and think it would be great for this, so think I'll try to design something about 600mm in length that can sit on the ground behind the tank. Put a tube each side. Any tips or things you've learned while making your one? I've just fired up AutoCAD and will see if someone local would be willing to cut the pieces for me.

I like that. I've been playing around with other LED fittings, never thought of using G24's with PVC tube like that. Might import some myself now.

I have a few of those filters, they work well. I just load them up with the jewel bio media and then throw in a bag of purigen on top. The bio media containers can easily unclip if you wanted to put other stuff in them and have it fit nicely.

I'm with AA and I claimed on a fish tank that cracked (from my own stupidity - rock slipped from my hand) and they paid out on that. Then the Feb earthquake hit and I also had tanks to claim as well as water damage to carpets and the other things like laptops that died from the water. Was never an issue and they replaced everything with brand new ones.

You can always look on wotif.co.nz to find somewhere suitable if the holiday park doesn't work out. P.S. Willowbank is opposite Redwood Aquatics if you wanted to look at some fish while you're there