hovmoller

It's just the dimensions of each glass pane... e.g. front glass pane - x is width and y is height

Yes he seems happy to be home but I think he misses his new friend.

Good news is that all my fish are alive (and some bigger) after being 7 weeks by themselves on automatic feeders and with only one waterchange halfway done by some friends. I will put some photos later on from a huge aquarium (in a zoo) outside of Buenos Aires I visited filled with native Argentinean fish. Very interresting. I don't have time to scroll through 7 weeks of posts but I'm curious if anything exciting has happened on the forum while I was away.. So... Did Henward get another aro? Who has put up a new monster tank? Did more fish get added to the biosecurity allow list? Etc.. Thanks a lot to anyone who feel liking writing a bit.

Ok this is just a hair brain idea... has anyone tried coffee filters instead of filter socks? David I know you mentioned that they clog up fast and you have to wash them all the time.. A coffee filter you could just throw out every day and put a new in with very little cost.. Maybe too small?

:sage: Nearly 17 year olds shouldn't be allowed a 1400L tank!!! No of course I don't mean that, I'm just jealous I don't have the space. But good to hear that you seem to have a long term plan for the tank

Yeah the Eheim Pro's are really really quiet.. even more than the Pro 3 I think!

Couldn't you rig a rotating garden sprinkler upside down?

A few G. steindachneri... They sift like mad and do not get very big. Not sure where you are (you could add that to your profile) but hff has them in store now.

A noob marine question: How often and how much water change is recommended if using NSW?

Have a look at this site: http://www.melevsreef.com/tools.html This guy is an acrylic guru! And good luck

Back home (denmark) predatory fish like Pike is released to control algea problem (phytoplankton). Reasoning: Pike eat little fish. Little fish don't eat zooplankton. Zooplankton population grows to "keep up" with phytoplankton population resulting in clearer water. I think it's called "top down biocontrol" or something. Stella please correct me. I'm not suggesting release of any fish in this case. I am not that familiar with natives behavior yet. Just thought the theory about cleaning a pond/lake with fish is interresting.

Don't feed your dog lemon pie

Price?

Looks nice and healthy :nfs:

Silentone did you drill the glass in your Juwel Rio yourself? No problems?

Fishie are you saying that your garage door is pretty much open 24/7? If so it would help A LOT if you could keep it closed as much as possible... Your tanks heat up a small layer of air around the sides of your tank and that helps insulate against heatloss.. This works best of course if there is no movement of air in the room, but as soon a little wind blows in this layer is removed and you loose a lot more heat from those surfaces.. I'd say keep the door shut as much as you can and insulate with 25mm poly on whatever sides you can.. best you can do.

Yeah Epsom here.. and quite sure we're on Waikato water.. Tested tap water again last night with two different test kits.. it was back up to "normal" - 7-7.5 So I wonder if it was just a fluke. If tapwater can really change that much on a single day or if I simply tested wrong (several times) :nilly:

No gain.. Poly and pink batts have around the same insulation properties.. Pink batts should be cheaper than poly but cannot support itself on eg. a wall so need framing and lining. :thup: That's a great idea but unfortunately on a tank there will always be large uninsulated areas (front and top for obvious reasons) so even though we can almost eliminate heatloss from the other sides we will still lose lots of heat... Whereas a room we can insulate much better all around (and then fill it with heaps of tanks without worrying about heatloss :bounce: )

Of course 50mm is always better but not by very much.. E.g. Fishies 1200 tank that went from $105/month to $65/month by using 25mm poly. If he used 50mm instead the bill would still be $58/month. So unless you can get 50mm at around the same price as 25mm I wouldn't bother. What would be the really good way of doing it is 90mm pink batts everywhere. But of course you would need some framing and lining with that.. Which would be quite a bit more expensive than poly, but a good solution long term of course. With many/big tanks it would pay for itself in only a few years

Yes something like that.. Instead of the whole door in the door business you could build an insulated wall across inside your garage and make it your fish room.. Like Josh did!

Thanks David, I've got lots of sea shell rubble (don't ask me why, has something to do with wife and decoration :lol: ) and I'm leaving in 2 weeks so can experiment a bit before then.

Yeah normally I'd agree but I'm going away for 7 weeks and don't want my tanks pH to crash while I'm away. That's what I thought too.. more rainwater to dilute whatever solids washes out of the mountains.. I think I'll add some sea shells to my filters.. not too many but enough to prevent ph crash.. does anyone agree with this approach?

If room is 17° and you want your water at 29° then you need at least 575 watt heating. This is assuming no insulation except 10mm on the bottom and on ply. This will cost you $105/month in power!! In addition if you put 25mm poly on the back and sides then you would then need 340 watt heating to sustain that temperature and it would cost you $62/month. Oh and if you leave the garage door open you can forget about these numbers.. it will be much higher then.. These calcs are based on a room with little air movement.

Tested my tanks last night.. found pH around 5.5 - 6 on all of them.. Then I tested my tap water a few time to be sure and it was around 6. I hope my test kit is wrong but could it be that it has something to do with winter having higher rainfalls and so water supply is more "rainwater like" than in summer??? and then this causes a lower pH? Just speculating here of course. I live in Epsom, Auckland and I believe we get water from the Waikato river Anyone else experiencing the same?