chimera

:lol: and that is the very reason there are people like this in the first place, because too many people just let it go. If you let people walk over you in life wasp, you wont get anywhere. My blood pressure is not high, I'm someone who deals with stress very well. In fact, the $80 does not overly concern me. While Im keen on getting my money back (simply to make sure they dont get away with it), its moreso the principle of the matter. :lol: Feel free to mention my plight for your own gain - their product is good, I admit that much. Its the service I clearly dislike - and it is possible its isolated to the single branch i dealt with. Exactly

Ok, I looked up 'bad service' in the dictionary and all it said was three letters, H.R.V. How bad? HRV service is the WORST you will EVER EVER receive, I guarantee it. You would think, "if it's just a problem with the sales person, contact the management and they will sort it out". Already done it. HRV management are WORSE than their sales people. Considering a job at HRV? Make sure you have a diploma in "rudeness, arrogance and poor people skills". Some key skills to have in order to get the job - "prioritise customer complaints as the lowest possible", "never ever return phone calls, no matter how many messages are left", "when you do speak to clients, be rude, blunt and most of all never apologise" Heres a summary of what happened from day one to now: 1. HRV sales lady, who was incidentally rushed, turns up trying to sell the system however to her credit, was on time 2. She eventually gets to price, price is very expensive. Says HRV offer all clients a "quick decision price" by taking the GST component off the cost if we buy then and there, this happens to be $3,280 saying us over $500. 3. Still have second thoughts about purchasing, she says she'll round it off to $3,200. Have a look at finances, ok decision made, we'll buy it 4. She writes up the paperwork, filling it out at $3,280, not $3,200 as discussed. She says "ooops, how about I drop you off a nice bottle of wine once the system is installed instead, will save me writing up the paperwork again". Should have said f-off, but was so taken back at how rude this was plus just wanted this lady out of my house 5. System is installed a several weeks later, product itself is good, no bottle of wine, no phone call 6. We decide to wait a little longer to see if she actually remembers, another week passes, nothing. 7. Another week gone so we phone up and leave a message, no call returned. 8. Another week, this time a call to the manager, says he's busy, will call us back that arvo, nothing! 9. Called back manager the next morning, says he'll call back in 5 minutes, no call back 5 minutes later, in fact no call back at all 10. Ok, we now decided that they wanna play games, so are we. Dont care about the wine now, my wifes breast feeding anyway so she cant enjoy it, would rather have the money instead, could have been $5 - it's the principal now 11. Another week goes by, finally get hold of the manager again who asks who the salesperson was and he'll sort it out (do you see a pattern to this yet???) 12. Low and behold, we get a phone call from the sales lady. No apology whatsoever, a simple "hi, now what would you like to drink red white or bubbly?" to which we answer "we dont want wine, we want our $80 back". "oh,... I think its already been processed", "well we want our money back", *lengthy pause* "oh ok leave it with me and I'll see what I can do" (it's like a broken f@#%$ record really isn't it?) 13. Another week passes, I wonder if they are 'doing something about it still?'... 14. Ah well, its been a couple of weeks might as well make another phone call. Ask to speak to the sales lady, "no im sorry, she doesn't work here anymore" (*raised eyebrows*, *shake of head*) so ask for the manager, not there, leave a message (ok, I suppose you just gotta laugh now - what was the point of that?) 15. Phone the manager today (now this part explains how obviously rude they are) lady who answers the call says "he's on the phone". We ask to 'hold'. Another lady answers, asks who it is, wife tells her her name, she comes back and says "manager is not in the office". "Thats funny, the original lady told us he's on a call", she then gets a little speechless and says "oh, errr, umm, he's in the office, he's just not in his office" (likely story) Hold a little longer and speak to manager who then asks for address and says he'll post out a cheque... Ok, so now we play the waiting game and see if 1. a cheque really does get delivered and 2. if they wish to retain any form of being a reputable company by offering more than just a $80 money back for mucking us around for several months.

I don't think that was his question. Safety wise those positions are fine, not too close to the edge is the important part as the glass can lose strength. Mine are very similar positioning to that although are more in a line about 150mm in from the back. Before you proceed though, I would design the aquascaping first and the closed loop around that.

mine didnt

bulkheads seems to be an american term, hence why most non-fish-geeks have not heard of the term tank valves or hansen fittings as mentioned above is most common, and KP's link above are the better choice

now thats ALWAYS a good reason

never had that problem - especially considering the bulbs are 10 inches away from the water

interesting. i read SE bulbs dont put out anywhere near as much UV as DE. also read various forms of UV are actually utilised by corals. i'll dig up the pages in "aquarium corals" (bourneman book) and let you know.

Its "anemone" - the smell will be BAD!

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Pe ... 820767.htm

only 15 mins further north

they're not bad, they're just a nuisance as they grow and multiply so quick overtaking everything else. i find joes juice works well, get some from your local hff. alternately mix up some thick kalk paste and inject it into the mouth (not yours, the anemones )

looking great. what lighting you got? looks like you need a bit more

likewise

yeah these reflectors (or rather there shape) are arguably one of the best, especially when looking at the results from the tests performed by sanjay from the link steve and i posted on the lux thread http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/lux-meter-vt14658.html make sure you get before and after shots - will be interesting to see coral colouration in a months time

gee steve, that looks exceptionally similar to the link I posted at the top of this page

awesome reflectors, copy or not, still serves there purpose. in regards to colour, what have you noticed the most? does the new light bring out the colour more in the blue range? what about the greens? is your red monti cap redder or worse? (mind you i recall that being on the left side)

you win lotto or something? what lighting config will you have once you're done? keeping some of your other halides too? they were quite good (big and chunky, but good!)

and you always double click when you hit submit

depends on how much you wanna pay, $111 for hardback aq corals - pretty sure when i brought 3 of them over from amazon they cost me about $70 each. shipping was only 5 days. if you want to support nz business, sweet as but i'd rather have the extra $40 go towards a frag when i last looked at hff it was about $110 too.

trademe. lux meter only has good accuracy at low range (0-50,000) seems to be able to do up to 200,000 but accuracy is not as good. so take the figures above with a grain of salt (i rounded them up/down to the nearest thousand anyway) i just wanted to get an approximate reading so i could see how high i should be putting the lights plus see how much there intensity drops over time (relative to when they are new of course)

that would be difficult considering the sensor and lcd unit are separate! easier to waterproof i think

Very interesting - I just lifted my lights up by 3". Other than it looking one hell of alot better (before it was aesthetically "too" bright) the lux are alot more even across the water surface, just as the study in the link above suggests. The bulbs are now approx 10" from the water surface, bottom edge of the reflectors at 8" away. The centre of the left and right bulbs is now 100,000 lux, centre of the centre bulb is 80,000 lux (again, probably a slightly more crap bulb from factory) Interestingly lux at the corners and edges of the reflectors have not varied much at all presumably because light emitted from the bulb/reflector next to the one I'm measuring is helping "add" to it. Much happier with the lighting on the tank now however it will be interesting to see how the corals respond (better, worse or the same?) Worth the $50 for the lux meter I think as I'm sure I'll continue to use it. Will post up some results once I get around to waterproofing it.

http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=BKACH http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=BKPGMF http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890087475/sr=8-2/qid=1153878789/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-0512495-9987038?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890087386/sr=1-1/qid=1153878921/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0512495-9987038?ie=UTF8 ask for snail mail to make shipping cheaper. i got mine from amazon.

All the discussion on lighting lately has intrigued me, so much so that i bought a lux meter. A lux meter measures the illumination of light (where 1 lux = 1 lumen/square metre and 1 lumen = the amount of light intensity eminated from 1 candle at 1 foot away or 0.093 foot-candles). As a rough indication, the amount of lux on the surface of seawater on a typical reef at noon is about 110,000 - 120,000 lux. While the preferred method to evaluate the intensity of light entering the aquarium is PAR (photosynthetically available radiation) or PPFD (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density), PAR meters are exceptionally expensive ($1,000+ supposedly) (PAR/PPFD units are measured as μmol/sec/m2). Supposedly these do a better job of accounting for colour temperature in their measurements as well. You cannot "algebraically" convert from lux to PAR or visa versa, as there are different variables involved such as the light source and kelvin rating. However there have been studies done in the past (by Dana Riddle) where he produced a table showing conversion factors based on different bulbs. This is what I intend to use to get approximate PAR ratings (I say "approximate" as the studies only provided conversion factors for radium and iwasaki bulbs from what i could see, I run narvas) The first thing I have to do is dismantle and water-proof the lux meter sensor. The next thing I plan on doing is taking lux readings from different depths in the tank (fingers crossed it doesnt leak ) The initial test I did was quite interesting. I took a comparison between two of the 400W narva bulbs I have (both were brand new and added at the same time, the third was added a month later). I have always thought the centre bulb was somewhat dimmer than the right hand bulb, but had always attributed this to the centre glass brace being the cause. My gut instincts proved me right, the bulb intensity is different. The reflectors as most of you know are lumen arcs. Here are some readings I took at the water surface. The bulb is 7" away from the water surface, the bottom edge of the reflector is 5" away: Centre bulb: centre of reflector: 140,000 lux corners of reflector: 30,000 lux centre of edges of reflector: 25,000 - 45,000 lux Right bulb: centre of reflector: 170,000 lux corners of reflector: 40,000 lux centre of edges of reflector: 30,000 - 50,000 lux The difference in lux at the centre/edges of the reflector were higher where the edge followed the length of the bulb and lower where it was the ends of the bulb. I am going to raise the whole hood up 3" and see how much difference it makes. According to this study (which I posted on fnzas a while ago) http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/ ... eature.htm it shows that 9" and even 12" from the water surface with lumen arc reflectors still provides good coverage without losing a great deal of intensity. Especially considering the lux at the centre of mine is 50,000 more than sunlight on a typical reef! From there, bulb selection is key on getting the right amount of useable (colour) light to the corals.