chimera

phat man, looking great. that bubble coral looks edible!!!

cher bro on a lighter note (lighter?) the better half gave birth last night to our second child. a little (ok, not so little, 9lb 5ou and 56cm long!) boy. looks jist like his daddy size is probably due to his dad being 6'3 and mum 6'1 :lol:

updated sump room pic's. added larger holes to outlet pipe into refugium helps disperse the flow a little better! hard to see but it's the mass of water on the left side of the first pic. i hooked up the small aquamedic skimmer to the glass on the fuge just to test (seen in first and third pics) got a little bit of skimate out, might be ok for a small tank?!

first one of mandarin is cool!

i love that colour blue, will look awesome if it becomes really vibrant

its a euphyllia (hammer coral)

what green coral?

i bought a marine angelfish book from jansens at their sale the other day. a whole $3 worth it had a really good chapter on the regal angel at the back. the book indicated that this was by far the hardest of all angels to keep. hard to get to eat and even if you can, keeping it's nutrition up because of its partcularly fussy diet is difficult. however, i have had my angel for about 8 weeks now and he seems to be fine. chris brought me over a small frozen seafood mix sample which I used to feed the angel with. outcompeting the tang was the hard part for him i decided to continue the same seafood mix so want shopping today, chopped it all up and made a seafood marinara. couldnt resist taking a photo of it, it looked so disgusting! mussels, shrimps, oysters, prawns, terakihi and chopped up nori. mixed it all up and froze it. i think i made way too much coz seafood generally only lasts 3 months or so in the freezer. here's my beautiful stew... followed by a picture of a single mussel i threw in the tank for the fish to chow down in the meantime. the regal angel was the first on the scene! regal angel the first fish in for a feed... blenny looking down from above...

not the best photo, but is this a nudibranch? appears to be one. saw it cruising along the glass in my fuge...

also depends on what you're planning on keeping, lps, sps, softies? fish only?

yeah, coz if you have let me know where you sourced everything from!

Stevea, your comments on how crap the small in-tank Aquamedic turboflotor skimmers are prompted me to go out straight away and buy one In fact, I just went to the Jansens sale and picked up two of them "miniflotors". At $15 each you cant really complain and if they dont work, a $30 investment is like having a few beers at the pub, easily done and you dont think twice about it I plan on using both on a small tank later either as a nano or breed clowns with. There was only one left and all the other "cheap" skimmers were gone There were other aquamedic and prizm skimmers but they were in the hundreds still. Incidentally I also bought another grunty magnet ($7) and nice hardback book on angelfishes ($3) so urge anyone around that area pop in and get some reasonably cheap deals. Back to the skimmer, someone needs to provide some hardcore evidence rather than opinions here. Its all personal opinion rather than scientific proof.

queen skimmer not a bad price @ $20. i was going to make the effort to head out there today but was flat out. as reef says, you cant go wrong at those prices!

Anthony, what model skimmer do you have?

i find a large fuge and sump really good, more volume = less change of minor problems becoming major problems. fuge is great because it grows all the unwanted algae that you may get in your display tank. large sump is good for ease of water changes too. you can hold more livestock in the main tank. the skimmer doesnt have to be rated to sustain the entire volume of the system because the fuge and sump dont necessarily have livestock in it (or minimal) in fact, the fuge means greater area for biological breakdown of nutrients, growth of pods, an area for harassed fish, etc. only downside is larger water changes

yes, but the idea is still the same, just on a larger scale. no different just cut it down for your tank. for a 180 litre tank, consider having a 2 or 3 foot sump. if you're bold, go for a separate refugium. a 2 foot fuge (or plastic container!) and 2 foot sump would be ok. you need to design it for the room you have. if you can fit it, you could even go for a 4 foot tank with 3 sections (2 sets of baffles between each section) one for fuge, one for skimmer and one for return. the options are endless. the main things you need to watch for is: - most important: allow a reasonable amount of room in the return section for back flow if the power to the return pump goes off! - always better to go larger on piping down to sump then too small. however return plumbing is crucial to work out correct size (see me later for this if you like) - use baffles whenever possible to reduce microbubbles - especially in the return section - keep fuge separate (or segregated) from skimmer or return - you dont want caleurpa getting sucked into and blocking the skimmer inlet - or if skimmer is first from overflow, you dont want caleurpa getting sucked into return pump - you get the idea. - design for the flow of return (which is same as flow into sump) to avoid your fuge sandbed getting disturbed too much (ie: both my and pies setups have so much flow into fuge it's almost bubbling over the sides!) - allow for future expansion, bigger skimmer? rowaphos? zeovit? nitrate reactor? - ... more?

Anthony, I'll do you a favour and sell you my Eheim 1060 for $120. I was going to keep it for emergencies but I could do with the money right now. PM me if you are interested. This will be perfect return pump for your size tank. Otherwise, if you get Iwaki you will have to pay money on things like bulkhead fittings, ball valves etc as well. Not at all saying Iwaki is bad - in fact they rock, but if you want a cheaper alternative let me know

second! already got a 2 1/2 yr old

1060 second hand about $120 1262 second hand about $200

so about 180 litres then. flow rate with an in-sump skimmer is not as important as a skimmer plumbed into the overflow/return (as it is obviously directly effected - however if you had heaps of flow you can always T it off). for that size tank i would suggest an eheim 1060 or 1262 as your return.

iwaki 55rlt, flow rate depends on head height. 4500lph @ 0ft head. anthony, what are the dimensions of your tank? height x width x depth. rate of flow back into your tank is more dependant on what sort of skimmer you are running - ie: is your skimmer plumbed into your overflow/return system or is it an in-sump model?

this weekend? hahahaa over my wife's dead body. she is preggers and due tomorrow (although date's been pushed out to sunday) if i went out doing fish-geek stuff, i'd get a good swift kick in the... you know what

i'll take some high res pic's for ya craig,... when i come pick up my egg-crate and zoo's :lol

i think we've already covered that

looking good... but get a new camera