chimera

makes complete sense

hell yes, the lighting is most likely to have caused the lighter colours

a mix of all different grain sizes is best and one made up of aragonite, crushed coral etc. no, not from bunnings! (mind you, i dont know what bunnings sell but i'd highly doubt it )

at what lph? would that be enough contact time? better than nothing i suppose. as i mentioned above, to do smaller but more regular water changes, i put a 1,000 litre container under my house (had to hack into the wall to get it in there and make a quick retainer wall for it ) for water changes. i gotta raise it up though as the tap at the bottom is lower than the sump at the moment. does anyone know what type and where to get a fitting for the bottom tap on the 1,000 litre containers? ie these ones: i see one dude has a fitting to attach a garden hose to it but it's $40 :-? must be cheaper fittings than that. i still have to get a ball valve in the sump room to ultimately control water to the sump when doing changes.

i was about to say, with a bayonet fitting i'd only run them internally. easily stealthed being black in colour. i ran my one externally for a while but got a bit nervous over the non-glued non-pressure pipe fittings!

maybe that's the key you mean have all of it pass through a carbon filter before it hits the tank or have it under constant carbon filtration for those 3 months?

(discussion based on this poll on water changes... http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/water- ... 15871.html ) I was most amazed at cracker's w/c's, being 30% every 6 weeks. Less than I thought and still a fantastic tank. Another question about water changes: if you were to store a large quantity of water for several changes over several weeks (in my case, 1,000 litres for 10 x 10% weekly water changes) do you think it would be more beneficial to leave it "dead" or place a powerhead in there for continuous aeration and change it "live"? Would one method be better than the other? does it really matter?

just had a look at my "log book" (whiteboard in the sump room) at how often i do water changes. in the last 6 months i've been bad so a question: on average, what type, how often and how much water do you change? nsw 20% every 5-6 weeks discussion on results here: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/water- ... 15873.html

sweet!

what a huge difference in price compared to lab grade, 25kg for $140 or so last time i bought. would be interested to know the composition of the food vs lab, see what else food grade has in it!

hell yes. might go get some water at 8pm tonight apparently ozone hole right over nzl today cant be out in sun for more than 5 minutes that screws my water changes. suppose i could dress in jeans and long sleeved T and head out

where in hamilton did you go to get NSW? everytime i've tested it's been 1.026 for me. perhaps different on the west vs east coast?

thats quite a tough one to answer i think. of course you can overskim, as skimmers take out the bad as well as the good, potentially leaving nothing left for the corals. however... it is much easier for us to control what is added than what is removed. so, IMO you should skim to the highest extent possible, then replace the goodness that the skimmer removes (within reason of course, no one's going to put a Deltec AP1002 on a 10 litre nano ). i believe thats much easier than having a barely adequate skimmer and assuming what it leaves is sufficient for good coral growth but no algae growth. so many other variables too, frequency of water changes? other filtration? etc. etc.

definately. 1020 is way too low, should be 1350 or thereabouts, for reasons as wasp stated above. however even if you correct Mg, you still need to get kH and Ca in balance by dosing calcium chloride or similar first.

im sure pies, ira and others in wellies would be keen on going shares on a 25kg sack! always good to have, esp. incase of emergencies.

yes, you can do that but i found it hard to get a gauge on usage though as i got separate rcd's going all over the place for the tank. best thing to do is hook it up to the mains coming into the house, turn everything off, take a reading (there is always some power used somewhere) then just turn on your tank equipment and see what it says. dont forget day time cents/kwH and night time cents/kwH are different.

Correct. A CR doses Ca and kH in a (reasonably) balanced fashion therefore you need to increase the Ca separately by using calcium chloride. Once you have it at the right level, only then will your CR keep Ca and kH in line. When they get out of line again, then increase with manual additives. Plug your figures in the calculator then read the text about how to achieve the desired result. It's very well documented... http://reef.diesyst.com/ Time. Wait for kH to drop to the desired level then increase Ca to what you want. THEN your CR will keep everything else in line if configured correctly.

sweet. i sold (well, swapped for corals) my grotech reactor recently it was a mutha had a heap of room. not difficult to DIY though will do that next time around!

puttputt - got that info yet? i found a number of sites, most stuff has the fine finish and is too expensive, made for the designer homes. im after something cheap like the barn rails that steve posted. anyone?

cool. doesn't look like you have a heap of room to move the media up/down though? or is it just a deceiving top down shot?

probably diatoms ? cyano? bryopsis green hair algae we've probably ALL had them all!

jdm, dude that sux! i would be gutted to lose my regal angel. it's fat as now and getting along with the blue tang really well. good that you got evidence in the way of a picture though. wouldnt see too many pic's like that around :-?

garf have been around for quite a while, most famous for their "garf grunge" which sells pretty well in the USA. helps kick start your reef by adding the necessary good bacteria and organisms needed to breakdown nutrients would be great to be able to get it here!

thats a nice piece of LR!