lduncan

The dark surgeon is either: A. dussumieri A. blochii A. mata plus a few other possible species. All their juvenile colours are really similar. Redwood have some nice powder blues for $120 Layton

Actually Bomber doesn't do regular water changes at all. Apparently he hasn't changed water for months. He only does it when he sees the corals need it. What he DOES do is keep is tank clean hence the BB. He uses a beckett skimmer, and uses UV to kill all that nasty bacteria and algae. He doesn't use phosphate removers (that's what a skimmer is for after all) He uses snails to keep things clean. As well as "Doug" the long spine urchin.

They are generally very hardy, similar to kole tangs. They lose their colouration when they get older though. Layton

My tank sucks $120 + a month. 4 400Watt MH 2 Streams Return pump and heating / fan

A couple of interesting posts this morning: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthrea ... ost5171311

One of my lecturers at uni worked for bell labs in the mid 90's, and was one of the engineers who worked on creating the VDSL scheme. Very smart guy. Layton

Hey Pies, the 10 meg link, is that FTTC ethernet? Is it expensive? Brianemone, are they putting in adsl2 or adsl2+ dslam's, or maybe even vdsl? Layton

Depends where you are in the US, if you're in most parts of California, your screwed. There's not enough power to go around, so prices are sky high. Other places are dirt cheap compared to NZ. Layton

It still doesn't work. Around the uni, i'm lucky to get 1 bar of signal, often no signal at all! That is poor. Oh, and don't get me started on jetstream, i've been trying for months to get telecom to fix the port at the exchange which my line is terminated, it's so dodgy that i often only connect at 96kbps!! Not what you call broadband! Layton

Mantis shrimp. Nasty things. When they strike, their claws are moving at up to 23 meter/second (83 km/hr), so fast that cavitation bubbles are formed! Here's a video captured by a high speed camera (5,000 fps) slowed down 883 times: http://support.mvz.berkeley.edu/%7Ewkor ... ps_cav.mov

Multiple comms vendors in NZ? Not if Telecom has anything to do with it :lol: . Seriously though, I think Telecom should be putting a bit more money into strengthening their network. Not that I know much about their network, but from an end user perspective, it doesn't seem as robust as a telco's network should be. Jetstream is dodgy at the best of times.

It is highly unlikely it is the capacitors, even if the capacitor is bung, it wouldn't cause the bulbs to go out. Could be the starter. But most likely it's the bulbs. Either they are faulty, or not properly matched to the ballasts. Although most bulb ballast combinations work, some bulbs can be picky on their exact operating voltage. Layton

DR, ha that's a bit of an understatement. It's alot of time to reclaw 99.999% uptime reputation. 50 years without downtime. And since when was two links considered a redundant system! So, will you be funding a tank upgrade out of all this new found work Pies? Layton

Now that telecom have managed to put the New Zealand phone and data network back together, i can reply. It's frustrating when every second cell phone call you make gets a busy signal, the internet dies for half the day. Anyway. Capacitors on metal halides are completely optional. The provide nothing to the operation of the bulb. It's difficult to explain what they do, but here it is. They provide power factor correction. The value of the capacitor is matched to the inductance of the ballast. What this does is pulls the voltage and current waveforms into phase, so that, from the power companies perspective, electricity is used efficiently. With out the capacitor, extra "reactive" power is drawn through the power lines during one half cycle of the AC signal. Then on the other half cycle it is put back into the power lines. This extra power transfer is lossy, and costs the power supplier money. Here's more info http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlux/hv/pfc.htm Layton

It took me 3 days to move my tank, luckily you're tanks aren't quite as big. I had another (smaller) tank setup at the new house 1/3 filled it with new salt water (let it sit for a couple of days). Then bagged and packed all the corals and fish into poly boxes. Then moved as much live rock into this holding tank as I could, adding water from the original tank at the same time. Once the liverock was in, I unpacked the corals an put them in the holding tank. I transferred about 60% of the existing tank water into drums. Then moved the big tank. Re-plumbed it and dumped this water back into it. The moved the live rock corals and fish back into it from the holding tank. I found some minor damage to the wallboard where salt spray from the sump had eaten into the plaster core. So maybe some sort of aquanamel type paint would be a bit tougher. Let me know if you need a hand when it's time to move. Layton

Most people who have kept them would recommend a maximum of 0. These fish often turn into terrors, chasing and harassing other fish, often much bigger in size. I would recommend staying away from this fish. Layton

To give you an idea of how much iron is leaching. Typical surface concentrations in the ocean are around 0.000006 ppm. If all of the above iron which leached from the zeolites was dissolved and accumulated (which it wouldn't, but lets say it was), it would correspond to 4ppm! Testing the water is not simple at all. Similar problems to testing phosphate and iodine. The various speciations, iron (II), iron(III), organically bound iron complexes, make a simple test impossible. It's easier, and more accurate, to test the zeolite before and after. Layton

It has been done. http://www.teichratgeber.de/ma_zeovit.html Element Symbol After 5 days After 47 Days Iron .......... Fe ........ 12300 ........... 7930 4370mg of iron gone in less than 50 days from 1 kg of zeolite. That is a LOT of iron. Layton

I agree with SteveA. I'm sticking with calcium, alk and Mg additives, leave the rest to waterchanges. Layton

Actually, that suggests that they work in the exact same way, and could potentially be from the same mine. This is the pitfall of the system. The "specialness" of the zeovit zeolite more than likely comes from the contaminates it contains. If it was a pure zeolite it would be white to transparent in colour. Anyone seen freshwater ammonia remover? That is zeolite. The greenish and orange tints in the zeovit stuff come from iron contaminants. It's these which are suspected to play a major part in how the system works. Zeovit zeolite is not unique. If korallen-zucht, can get it, tunze can get the exact same stuff. Layton

It appears to be a stomatella snail. It's a good guy. Layton

That tank is much more impressive. Also, i didn't say that the tank looked average because it uses zeovit. I it because it is average looking to me, zeovit or not.

You can't deny that people have had coral loses with this system. It is well documented, to the fact that it is now mentioned in the "zeoguide". Layton

For what it's worth, I haven't been amazed by any of the tank of the months this year. It's just an averagely nice tank. There are thousands of tanks around like it. Layton

And you need and advanced understanding of reef tanks before deciding NOT to use zeovit. Don't really want to go through this again. To me, the method works, but is a micky duck way of going about achieving something. Read this for more insight on what the zeovit system is possibly doing: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... enumber=11 Layton