chimera

the growth pattern is fantastic, the lighting must be evenly dispersed over it. i find that mine grows on one side slightly better than the other because it's closer to the centre of the halide!

:lol: amazing how a camera can be so deceiving taking pic's on an angle. lets just pretend its 'by design' here's another view of the wonky tank (or should i say wonky hands)

monitpora capricornis

updated tank pic acro frags required

all i hear is crushing it will allow spores to float around the tank and cause more growth

interesting looking substrate?!

that'd be one for layton to answer i think!

took the wife and daughter to visit kelly tarltons today. its been about 15 years since i last went! the penguins were cool (excuse the pun) and the stingray tank awesome too. 220kg stingray is the largest fish they have there, she was HUGE. amazing to watch them feed. one of the marine tanks was riddled with cyano. all sand, rocks covered in it. quite embarassing for a public display tank i thought - even though most of the public probably thought it looked 'pretty'. the other tank (clowns) had a loan aiptasia although pretty basic too. it would be nice to see a really good reef tank there. even though thats not what nzl is about, having a coral reef on display to the nz public would be a good way to get people interested in the hobby.

No, what they are saying is people say "Oh, they put a DSB on Freds tank and guess what, it worked. That means it works for all tanks". The bottom line was Every tank is different. There are so many variables that can cause one system to work well where as other will crash. To prove their statements, they had created a lab experiment with DSB's versus Plenums and posed the question "which is better?". However, instead of just creating a single DSB tank and single Plenum tank and doing the test over a week, they had a fine sand DSB, they had coarse sand DSB, they did a mixture, then they did 3 tanks of each type, then they did the same with plenums, all the different types, etc. They ended up having quite a number of tanks, all the same sizes, all in the same room, all water sourced from the same location, all using the same test kits, etc etc. They added exactly the same amount of ammonia (8ml daily I think?) to simulate bioload in each tank (amongst other things) at the same interval then measured the results of ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate, salinity, alkalinity, pH (and some others) via test kits DAILY for (from memory?) 18 months. Then they graphed the data. You could see that the differences for each system varied only slightly in the majority of cases (although alot with nitrate - fine sand worked much better immediatly than coarse) but then after 28 days, all figures worked out identical and stayed that way for sometime. He is performing the same test with corals in the tank next to see if they have a differing effect on the same tests. As I said, interesting to see. I would personally summarise what I got out of it as: "what works in your tank might not work in mine"

exactly, coz who would want to live in wellington

:lol:

supply/demand, import costs etc

ooops, didnt see that the lights are only fluoro's - ok, fair is a better description!

:lol: after seeing the data, i really couldnt say one is better than the other. obviously there were indications of one working better than the other at various stages of cycling but after (about 30 days?) they both panned out exactly the same. it was nice to see the test was done with a number of tanks (was it about 30 tanks?) over such a massive period of time (a year and a half I think?) and how they added ammonia to simulate excrement from live stock etc. also how they took out any bias by using a guy who didnt know what the tests were about. also good to see they didnt use one specific test kit. of course there were several points that could be argued against, such as the size of the tanks were only nanos (i wonder if much larger tanks would actually have made a difference?) but all in all, intriguing information.

that is a WAY good price. if i was starting out, i'd buy it

man that was some funny sh!t...

yeah cheers, was all good - even better to relax, have a few beers and hold conversation face to face. some interesting information! oh, and I tried that new and improved formula and you know what? my tank has never looked better...

your regal sounds EXACTLY like mine. he (she?) is shy, gets picked on by large tang, was nibbling at rocks within an hour of going in the tank etc. he is now (mainly in the last week or two) MUCH happier and was even eating a clipping of nori right next to the tang, without the tang chasing him away. usually if it's floating food like flake, or frozen etc, the tang is so quick to eat it that the other fish are scavenging around at tidbits he missed. greedy bugger i simply feed half the food on one side of the tank and half the food on the other side of the tank at the same time. tang cant be in two places at once generally i put a little bit in so they can all smell it at first then feed in two different areas.

so was i

i have 3 little yellow star polyps steve gave me that look like E.T. on steroids (thats the polyps, not steve i had several more but they floated around the tank and disappeared somewhere) anywho the little buggers wont populate. how do they spread? is it like xenia does when its stalk attaches to another rock and it splits?

yeah, coz the ocean is really really small and overcrowded, the buildup of decaying organic matter must be huge... :lol: im sorry what's that? fish, corals and inverts live in the ocean??? are you sure about that? i thought they all lived in artificial saltwater tanks? :lol:

but it also misses out on alot of the goodies that NSW DOES have in it

if they are WHITE (as in brightish white) then yeah, kill 'em. like this?

astrea is fine, assuming it is an astrea. got a pic? here's an astrea snail (covered in coralline though):

if I make up a 200L brew of ASW, how long can I keep it for? i assume if I keep it aerated I could keep it indefinately? i want to make up a 100 litre brew and keep it in a barrel for emergencies