lduncan

How?

What are phosphate removers? Iron! No mystery there at all. I thought it was obvious. Layton

I was trying to find it to link to, (I thought I had bookmarked it, thinking it could come in handy one day) but I can't find it. If you don't believe it exists, so be it. I know what I read, and i'm quite satisfied with it's validity at the moment. Layton

True.

I never said they add phosphate, that would be stupid. And yes, it doesn't just remove phosphate, it binds other ions too, like the label says. But when you add it, you are adding a particular nutrient, which has been found to be a limiter on reefs. Layton

That's what I though too. Maybe it has a anti resonance detector . I'm sure if it hit resonance, it would be far less impressive than the Tacoma Bridge video. Here is a video of it: http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/Exhibits/ ... Bridge.mpg

I've read a paper which shows otherwise. It was looking at whether the phosphate stabilisers used in various plastics leached in a marine environment. The answer was yes they do. But no, i'm not about to rip out every bit of plastic from my tank. Who knows if these epoxies even use phosphate stabilisers.

How do you know this?

Exactly. No iron based product is totally immune from these problems. Layton

Here we go again. What if it was just the opposite which is occuring... a sudden increase of nutrients? Layton

I don't know. They do from PVC. (maybe that's why coralline is attracted to PVC). But if you are paranoid about phosphate, every little bit adds up I suppose.

I though zeovit was a phosphate remover. Must have been wrong Layton

You use phosphate remover, that's why you can't detect phosphate.

Phosphate based stabilisers are often used in those type of epoxies. I use superglue gel. Layton

A KH of that is physically impossible. Get a new test kit. Layton

Don't know, but you'd be surprised what is made in China these days. The only issue I had heard previously about the 400W 20k's bulbs in particular, was that one of the initial batches of them would not fire. Coralvue apparently replaced these bulbs for affected people. Their other bulbs may be different, but personally I wouldn't buy the 20k's again. Layton

Who knows. There is still a lot of crap you have to wade through in this hobby. With lighting at the moment it really does come down to trying different options until you find what you like. My last change of bulbs I got 20k CoralVue's, personally I'm not happy with them. They looked nice but coral colours are crap at the moment. I swapped one out with one of the old Venture 10k bulbs I had, and things are starting to colour up well down that end of the tank. Funnily enough the light colour difference is not noticeable from one end of the tank to another. I might try Radium "blues" next. Layton

The first link looks very comprehensive. VERY useful. Layton

I'm all for manufacturers giving PSD plots with bulbs rather than giving kelvin ratings. It gives a better idea of what "colour" they actually are. Layton

To me this makes no sense. With a calcium reactor, you are dropping the pH in the reactor by adding carbon dioxide in order to dissolve calcium carbonate, to add alkalinity and calcium. The pH of kalk solution is around 12, so why would you add this to a calcium reactor where you are trying to drop the pH to around 6? All that will happen is the kalk will precipitate out as calcium carbonate (due to dissolved CO2 shifting equilibrium). Seems pointless to me. Maybe there is another reason? Layton

So true.

How are your complex numbers ;-) VA is a measure of "complex power" (measured in VA) which is made up of reactive power (measured in VA) and real power (measured in Watts). The vector sum of real and reactive power is "complex power" Reactive power is used by inductive (coils of wire) and capacitive loads. You may have heard of "power factor" (PF) which related to the vector angle between complex power and real power. A PF of 1 means the power is purely real. For example Fluro ballasts are coils of wire, and often have a PF correction capacitor to cancel out the inductance. What it is doing is increasing the power factor from about 0.6 up to about 0.9. Which reduces the amount of reactive power used. Reactive power is virtually wasted power, but you are still charged for it. In the case of motors the complex power (in VA) can be about 30 - 40% more than the real power (in Watts), so the difference is significant in calculating the backup time. Just incase you were actually interested. Layton

At 1.6 amps that's 370VA!! I don't think it's that powerful. At 0.6 Amps it's around 140VA. You might want to double check the current drawn. It should be stamped on the motor. Also don't go by the wattage on the motor. Watts are different from VA (volt amperes). The UPS you use should specify a full load backup time. So you take you Rated UPS load (in VA) and divide it by the load you are going to power (in VA) then multiply this by the specified full load backup time. This gives you the total backup time. This is not strictly true, but if anything, you will get more backup time at lower than maximum VA. Or you could get a fancy UPS which displays and estimated backup time ;-) Layton

Last I read, I think it is estimated at around $500M. I would not call that huge in dollar terms by any means. It IS huge in the number of fish taken from reefs however. Layton

You mean ORA? www.orafarm.com