kinnadian

What do you mean by 0.86? TDS is measured in ppm, 0-100 ppm is considered quite good but a very poor tap water is up to about 300+ ppm. If you mean %, 0.86% is 8600ppm, which I doubt could be possible from a public water source or I extremely doubt it would pass drinking water quality standards.

It's fairly straight forward, tank with powerheads inside, internal or external overflow, drain down to a sump, skimmer and any other media you want in there, return pump back to your display tank, MH/T5/LEDs over it. What size are you looking at?

As others have said, top up with fresh RODI water and not salt water. Think about it, evaporated water is just water with no salt in it. To counteract the evaporation, you need to add what is removed, which is just regular water, while the amount of salt in solution remains the same.

Definitely bigger than mine as well!

As big as you can get away with really, for 750L you would want at least 100L I think. That is close to the bare minimum for a tank that size to fit in all your bits and bobs and not have it horribly cramped. I think you may struggle with a sump if you aren't DIY-inclined.

I agree with Morcs, get something like a WP-10 or WP-20 from fish street. On low flow they won't overly disturb freshwater fish but give wide flow rather than strongly directed flow like with traditional powerheads. Directionally you just want to target them towards dead spots in the tank, or point them forwards from the middle of the tank to give the particles enough force to reach the filter inlet. Really just experiment until you get the flow patterns you want.

How did it happen?

Nooooo, just because ammonia goes down to 0 doesn't mean you're ready. You also need no nitrite, and you need your bacteria to be at a level to handle the bioload from the fish (is immediately convert ammonia to nitrite to nitrate). Marine are much less intolerant to poor conditions than fresh water, you need to keep feeding your tank ammonia and ensuring ammonia stays at 0 before adding fish. Generally for a seeded tank (ie has live rock in) you are looking at 4-6 weeks, for dead rock 2-3 months. You will also need to do larger water changes at first to combat the nitrate produced, until your denitrifying bacteria are established (nitrate to nitrogen). Definitely take mussels out, you only need a couple pieces of frozen shrimp really. Mussels would be extremely overkill for ammonia. You can get rid of the fishy smell by either doing a 100% water change, or chuck a bag of decent activated carbon in.

You don't want to put a powerhead inside the tank?

Depends on where he got him from. Invertebrates from the rock pools can be easily acclimated to tropical temperatures (I have cats eye snails, ghost shrimp, hermit crabs and starfish in my tank, all local). They may have a shorter life span, it is not really known as far as I'm aware, but they won't necessary die easily. However if the mussel is from deeper water he may indeed struggle. Also note that once a native animal has been removed from its habitat and placed into an aquarium, it is illegal to put it back due to potential contamination of any diseases/parasites/etc that may be present. This is true regardless of the tank's age. If you want to follow the letter of the law, the mussel has to be disposed of and not put back into the sea. It's definitely not a myth, shrimp is the best thing to kickstart a cycle as it is the type of food that the bacteria will become accustomed to eating. Basically the decomposition of the shrimp is allowing formation of ammonia, to start your ammonia-nitrite-nitrate nitrogen cycle. I used freshwater Nutrafin Cycle. I don't know if it helped, but I can't see why it would do any harm. Freshwater and marine bacteria are different, so probably the only thing it will do is give more food to your marine bacteria once the freshwater ones dies off. Also mussels are difficult to keep alive for a beginner, even moreso on a completely uncycled tank. I wouldn't bother with it. Once the cycle is on its way, you could catch a few fish from the rock pools to put in your tank and keep generating food for the bacteria. Although note as before they need to be disposed of after you have finished with them.

Saw all your items on Trademe, I was shocked! What is the coral below your WP-10? How much are you after for the WP-10 and Coralbox M1-30?

Coralbox looking nice and bright!

As I wrote in the other thread, I found the 24"-36" unit output VERY underwhelming on my 24" tank, considering the massive positive feedback the item gets. I'm perhaps spoiled with the normal brightness of a marine tank, but with the Satellite normal (non-PLUS, so slightly less wattage than the PLUS) I had to use it with a 24" 2xT8 fitting just to get decent lighting that I was happy with. With just the unit going, I found it very dim, might be OK for crypts or something but I don't think it would grow much more. You can barely see the fish and with it in the middle, the front and back 4" of the tank are noticeably dimmer than the middle (spotlighting effect of LEDs) The unit itself is good, nice finish, very slim, decent plastic and build quality, just the output sucks. I'm considering gutting the thing and putting in a bunch of 3W LEDs so I can run with just that item, but after looking inside it is not easy as the LEDs have been epoxied to the metal frame.

You can get really small float switches, if you're willing to go DIY auto top off.

We have a 302 and find it quite good and quiet. A bit of a pain to restart compared to Eheim but a good filter for a fraction of the price. My readings around UV filters agreed with what Adrienne said, also UV will pretty much only kill green water and not much else.

Jebao are pretty good pumps, quiet too. Their head vs flow charts are somewhat conservative. To that end the DC6000 should cover your needs, but for $15 more you may as well get the upgrade to DC12000 and you can just throttle back the flow as desired using their DC controller. DC pumps are inherently quieter and more efficient than other AC pumps.

Well it's your current stable conditions, ie what you sample now without any disturbance (without any frozen shrimp).

One way to find out, get your baseline and then put some shrimp in and see how fast your ammonia and nitrite is removed. Also if you have no nutrient source, you will starve your beneficial bacteria, until the dying bacteria is enough nutrients to just barely keep a small amount of your beneficial bacteria alive.

I have one of these sorts of lights, albeit by a better manufacturer. It lights up my 60L tank (2' x 1' x 1') fairly well but I think you would need at least 2 for a 200L tank. It would look good with 3 of these, though. These are kind of bulbs are too spotlighty for my tastes, I personally wouldn't be 100% happy with it to be honest. Rock is typically $12-$15 each. Once you factor in shipping I don't think HFF will be much cheaper.

Typically you're looking at 1W per litre to shave off around 5 degrees, more if you have a high temp differential.

If you don't disturb your substrate too much, and keep your filtration submerged, you shouldn't have much of re-cycle at all. At most, you will just have a lot of suspended crap in your tank for a while, which has been picked up when rearranging and disturbing the substrate/rocks/etc.

Like I said before, that light isn't great, it doesn't put out much light and you will be disappointed. 1W LEDs simply don't have the penetration. If you have a reasonable amount of money going towards your setup, you should get a light you won't be disappointed in. The quality of light will directly influence how good your corals look. Cheap light, you get poor intensity colors and everything is either washed out or dim. Here are a few popular choices: http://ecotechmarine.com/products/radion/ http://www.amazon.com/Maxspect-Razor-LED-Lighting-System/dp/B00AZMR0OC http://www.amazon.com/AquaIllumination-Hydra-Light-Aquarium-Black/dp/B00DCDN5NQ/ http://www.amazon.com/Aqua-Illuminations-Color-Aquarium-Light/dp/B009AEDH3Y/ http://www.fish-street.com/coralbox_m1_led_aquarium_lighting (90cm version) http://www.fish-street.com/maxspect_led_aquarium_lighting_220v-240v

Are you cycling with a piece of frozen shrimp? Doesn't seem like your ammonia or nitrates are high enough to be decently cycling.

Jewel Lido looks really really tall for my tastes, but it might be yours. The depth means poor light penetration and you have to awkwardly stack and stagger the corals vertically rather than allowing them to spread horizontally like in nature. Shallow reefs look much better in my opinion. Plus you would eventually go to a sump I'm sure Everyone does. Or you could always make your own false wall with some perspex. Evap does get quite high. Even in New Plymouth where it isn't humid at the moment I'm losing around 400-700mL a day of water in a 60L. Stocking will always increase! You are kidding yourself if you don't think that down the line you will start increasing corals, livestock and rocks :bggrn:

I haven't got a thread, got lazy taking photos and this one is just over 2 months into its cycle (cyano gone, just have green hair algae due to being impatient and not curing rocks. Some of the rocks are covered in green hair algae due to phosphate leeching).