chimera

sourced it through a mate. its been in a friends tank for ages so probably before MAF had there regulations as not being "on the list". not to worry, its only poisonous if i touch it :lol:

blotches of white. dont seem to be worms. btw, i also got a rabbitfish for my tank this morning. he seems happy as! i reckon they're such beautiful fish. plain compared to some (such as some species of angel) - but personally i just love the colourings!

he heeee, thank goodness for a sumproom under my house the amount of water thats been spilt on the floor in that room would fill my tank ten times over :lol:

i have a couple of rocks in my tank covered in little white spots (up to a couple of square mm each, average about 1mm square) These only came up when i looked in the tank this morning and are only covering a couple of rocks high up in the tank. any ideas what they maybe? i will try and get a pic up here tonight. btw, i searched the net and found this answer from a post on another forum: sounds like it could be the case? (coz the rock is covered in corraline otherwise)

i have a small trailer i got for free. structurally its sound but the wheels are small (12's i think). not sure what weight its rated for so am hesitant to use it just incase it falls to bits as im driving home!!! if anyone knows of a good strong trailer in auckland going cheap let me know!

it's at the bottom of the tank under hallide light. its never as full as this one though:

ok, well thats what alois told me - i obviously didnt explain it well enough

yeah, more or less

i wouldn't completely full a 1,000 litre tank (depending on the trailer of course) thats a ton of water (or more being salt) interesting to see the trailers suspension and tyres after that

anything boats/marine is VERY expensive. i would guarantee way more than the $40 this reserve is on.

its a torch coral, cheers. btw, it looks completely different during the day - more "solid".

in that case, he can keep it then!!!

whats this coral called? it's a night photo, he's not shown such (good?) polyp extension before. only since calcium reactor went in. would this be why?

coralline growth is getting better the more stable the tank gets. here's a before and after shot (unfortunately different angles and the second is a night shot) of a rock 6 weeks ago (15th sept) versus tonight (1st nov) however you can see the growth at the base of the rock.

he just said he has high nitrites. his coral is dying because his tank is not fully cycled. i doubt it would have been purchased in a "failing" state from the LFS.

nice work! how about a pic of the tank ON the stand?

i assume since you got rock from steve you're in auckland. you can keep the coral in my refugium in the meantime if you like. PM me if you are interested.

no, not good at all!!! nitrite is slightly less toxic than ammonia. you need to wait much longer for the tank to cycle - if there are nitrites, then it hasnt cycled yet (then nitrites are converted to nitrates) you need to wait for your nitrifying bacteria colonies to build up first. this may take some time but i wouldnt introduce too many corals yet. in fact, no more than what you currently have. it takes time and patience - but thats well worth it than flushing money down the drain.

...and pretty much what i said in my post

nice work bro, keep the pic's coming!

Thats exactly why, because RO isn't 100%. With marine's (or rather reef tanks), when you're talking about anything over 0.03ppm of phosphate = bad for corals then you want to get rid of as much crap as possible. Additionally, RO by itself doesn't last long and is relatively expensive. DI (after RO) does last long (a year or more). Having pre-filters and activated carbon filters prior to the RO means even longer lasting for both RO and DI. Having pre-filter, activated carbon, RO then DI means you're covering your arse by filtering as much bad stuff as possible - even that extra 0.05% means alot in a reef tank.

not practical with the mounting, plus the nozzle must be reasonably submerged for optimal efficiency. i will try my check valve idea (if i can get one big enough) and keep you all posted! I bought 25mm pressure piping to replace the current 20mm pressure pipe heading upstairs. When you actually measure the inside diameter of the pipe its not actually 25mm, more like about 22mm. The 20mm is more like about 16mm. I guess its rated to the outside of the pipe. Its going to be an increase in inside diameter nonetheless so we'll see if it actually makes a difference. Will post results when done.

cheers. the actual tank is new, but the water parameters are not (the 5 footer used to be a 4 footer which had been around for several years) reactor will easily keep up as it's rated for up to 2,500 litres i already am and have been dosing kalk for the last 6 months. pies, i also have about 10% magnesium chips in the top of the reactor (see the different colour on the pic )

cheers, already read the first one. i havent tested calcium levels separately but last time i did (several weeks ago) it was a little low too, so dosing from the calcium reactor should theoretically overtime increase both calcium and alkalinity to better levels. question was, how long this should or will take? guess its a hard question to answer and I would imagine it should be achieved slowly over several weeks or more. is it safe to increase either co2 bpm and/or effluent dpm?

my kh is low, at about 6, but not overly major as i have very few sps at the moment. i havent measured ph for a while but i would imagine lack of buffering will mean its getting too low? if my calcium reactor is dripping 40dpm running 24x7 (havent tested kh coming out of it, but assume its about 20? - i believe you should aim for around 30 once the reactors "broken in") how long will/should it take 1,000 litres to get up to kh of about 8.5? i obviously dont want to raise this too quickly, so co2 bpm is only about 10 (which instructions say to start with) how quickly can you up the kh and what is defined as "too fast?" An interesting excerpt from Randy Holmes-Farley on discussion of Alkalinity: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/feb2002/chemistry.htm