lduncan

Well, breaking it all down, he doesn't seem to be talking about "maturity" at all. He's describing the cycles that DSB's go through, and how some parts of this cycle are detrimental to inhabitants. Reading that, it makes me wonder why he advocates the "natural" method in other writings. Setup a tank in a "natural" method, and it's going to emulate nature, warts and all. The one thing I did have an issue with when reading this was this statement: That is all dependant on how you run the tank, and I think is very misleading. He goes on to say: So it's really the sand bed that needs a long time to "mature", not the tank. Also brings up some interesting things related to all those "bacterial" systems too. Moral of the story, don't trust bacteria ;-) Layton

That's easy. Bora Bora. From the pictures in this thread it would be my top pick by far! http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... =bora+bora

Looks like a very nice A. turaki to me.

wow, looks like some sort of massive polyp bailout. Get in touch with Eric B, i think he was wanting to hear from people who witnessed this type of thing.

Not complex to make no. But the reason behind how they work is actually pretty complex, far more complex than a full siphon. Calling a durso full safe is just being deluded, it is not. And clearly for some people isn't quiet enough... otherwise they wouldn't go to the extent of trying to make modifications to make it more quiet. Layton

What ever happened to keeping things simple. :lol:

I assumed that meant a tap on the return as opposed to a tap adjusting airflow. If you just remove the durso "head" plumbing you won't have that problem. It sounds like your trying to run a durso as full siphon to eliminate noise which comes with the original durso design. But then the durso head plumbing is getting in the way of the full siphon operation after a power outage etc. Get rid of the durso head and you'll be right. Either that or run the durso as designed. Layton

Having a tap on the return pipe effectively turns a durso into a full siphon.

Been done. It's called a full siphon These overflow designs, including this Hofer one, are all unnecessarily complex. It's clearly been influenced by the durso, a derivative to try and solve some of the problems the durso has. In reality, It's a pretty simple design problem. Air in the overflow causes noise. How do you stop the noise? Easy eliminate the air from the overflow. Unfortunately these designs don't do that. Layton

That must be the millionth thread this year with that title Yip the price of electricity is unnecessarily high, that's what you get when the government does it's best to make it expensive, and more or less impossible to get stuff through RMA. Not to mention archaic policies on nuclear energy.

Oh, I thought it was "Random pictures of people as sheep Friday". Don't worry, Christchurch isn't that "interesting". :lol:

you can't pretend it didn't happen though wasp ;-)

No comment... Sorry couldn't resist. changing to FS is no big deal. Just need a valve and a standpipe cover. You'll need to lower the height of the standpipe as the durso will be too high for the FS to work it's auto tuning magic. (just replace it with a straight pipe, or you can even remove it completely depending on your sump capacity) Layton

Sure the lunen/watt isn't there yet, but there are other factors to consider too: Rated Life: • 10,000 to 20,000 hours for halides. • 50,000 hours for LEDs Lumen maintenance: • Typical halides lose 66 to 70% of lumen output at 40% rated life. • LEDs looking at 70% loss at end of rate lifetime. Spectral shifts. Ability to dial in colour temperature without changing "bulbs", on LED based lighting. Layton

Last month Advanced Aquarist magazine had an article by Dana Riddle reviewing a new LED lighting system promoted to replace metal halides. This obviously could have huge benifits, from massive power savings, less waste heat input to the water, possibly reducing the need for chillers. Or even advance control of dynamic lighting intensity, different light intensity regions in the tank, long "bulb" life, and small spectral shift over time. Possibly most interesting, the ability to set colour temperature dynamically. Looks like it could be a real alternative to halides. (They produce glitter lines too) It also mentions photoinhibition (which I mentioned in the "Is there such a thing as too much light?" thread) http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/8/review2

That assumes that they are carbon limited. Are they? That also assumes that it's bacteria causing the skimmer to go nuts. Is it? Remember cyano are bacteria too. But looks like they don't get skimmed... if they did, you wouldn't have a problem. So what's the difference between them and the bacteria which make the skimmer go nuts, if it is bacteria making the skimmer go nuts? Layton

yip that'll work, same controller. I'd like at least another 3 6100's too.

Flow... get this stuff suspended into the water and to the skimmer where it's removed. You might need to rearrange the existing flow, or it may take more pumps. And you can never have too much flow. Layton

nope. If you want proof you'll have to look for it. It'll be good for you.

How about attacking the root cause of cyano: phosphorous? Vodka etc may help appearances, but it's just skewing the balance from one bacteria type, to another, less visible type. Doesn't fix the root problem, which is an accumulation of detritus and associated phosphorus. The cyano is there for a reason: to break down rotting stuff. Get rid of the rotting stuff, and you get rid of the cyano. That's the approach i'd take anyway.

Isn't this kind of expected? If you're not expecting stuff to get trapped in filter wool in a powerhead, how do you expect the skimmer to remove anything? The stuff that ends up in the skimmer cup was obviously floating in the water, so why shouldn't the filter wool get dirty? Layton

Both are designed to handle a certain range of water volume. Not only is it unrealistic to expect, but if the durso was capable of taking double the water flow, it would be damn noisy running at normal flow.

The discussion on durso compared with full siphon is here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/help-w ... highlight= Basically my opinion, specifically in relation to the "safety factor" argument, is that the probability of a durso blocking is small, and the probability of a full siphon blocking is a tiny amount higher. The difference is marginal. See the thread for the argument for that opinion. Second, you should not rely on the overflow design to protect you from blockage of the overflow - that's what stand pipe covers are for. Which makes the whole safety factor argument irrelevant anyway. A single durso is for all intents and purposes no safer than a single full siphon. Layton

There's that classic wasp tactic, taking a comment completely out of context, just to be argumentative. The context was: And as you see, the statement was conditional, based on keeping the design simple, avoiding micro bubbles and avoiding having to think about placing baffels. And what was the justification for not using the durso? Well it was because a durso deliberately introduces air. That's not an opinion. It's how it works. It wasn't a blanket comment "don't use a durso" like you've been suggesting. Layton