dan_from_nz

I like to keep my fish well fed (most of them are gluttons) and i always have a divers range of food for them at the moment i have: bloodworms flakes white flakes crumbles plankton (freeze dried) tubefix worms (freeze dried) gammarus (freeze dried) so they are always getting a good variety

has anyone used thee they seem a cheep system especially as they dont require a balast to run what are the cons and / or pros? http://www.reefonline.com.au/shop/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=214

hmmm might have come out a bit big can everyone see it?

Just posting a pick i uploaded to day (first ever) and want to see if i done it right Pic Removed due to size. (Almost twice the width of the screen.) See below for new pic. Moderator. Bill.

Ah so thats what i have been doing wrong :lol: So how do we turn little nemo into a kiwi then? :roll:

are you sure i heard there wernt any in new zealand and was told it would be $500 to import one at 180 they are only just deerer than gold nugget pleco's

Re reverse osmosis water not being too good, with old tanks gh goes up because water evaporates out of the tank leving the salts and minerals in the tank increasing gh in this scence it is important to make sure you arn't adding too harder water because doing water changes and adding soft water is the only way to reduce the hardness (or peat).

oh never thought a pepered cat could be aggressive i have one and you would think the tetras would be more of an issue than a pepperd cat. Although fighters can attack anything for any reason i had a fighter that had been fine with my tetras for months and then all of a sudden one day i found a dead neon and a blind one and my fighter chasing another one. your peppered cat may have done it out of self defence

make sure you add fish slowely. Remember when a tank cycles it can only produce enough bacteria relative to the food that is available (niterites and amonia) when you add alot of fish all at once you get another cycle again as there is a peak in these poisons take care and if in doubt move slower Daniel

what type of cat is it? some cat fish will even eat tetras when they get big

I dont know if there is a web sit but it is fairly simple all you need to do is in one browser window (A) click reply to the topic (or start a new topic). then in another browser window (B) have the web site up on the page you want the link to go to. Highlight all the text in the adress bar of browser (B) and go EDIT, COPY (or right click mouse button and click COPY). Now go back to browser (A) and in your text box right click and press paste. The web site as it was written in the adress bar of browser (B) will now be in your massage body, now you simply highlight this and click the URL button at the top right of the post reply section. the exact same steps are used for an image but you hit the IMG button instead of the URL Good Luck Daniel

I agree with caryl totally I lost a fighter to my Kribensis

I think if you were to use tempered glass and it were stiffer then it would be alot more reactive to elastic potential energy (just a guess i know stuff all about science) thus making it more prone to breaking from a hit when under pressure and as you say shatter every where. I have a four foot tank (1200mm x 400nmm x 400mm water volume) that is made out of 6mm glass had two side supports @ 150mm and two centre supports @100mm so the top had 3 openings and I had snapped one when i first got the tank, It still worked fine for 6 months untill i snapped the second one and it still didnt break I left it over night and then replaced it with a new tank and we now use itas a tank for our turtle). so in theory i think 12mm would be fine but wouldn't go any less (without working things out mathmatically from an engineering perspective) remember as you increase demensions pressure increases exponentially Good Luck Daniel

I don't know much about the pebbles but I know alot of the rocks in napier are limestone, if there is limestone in the pebbles the hardness and ph of your tank will be off set (although i think it is ok with some cichlids)

slight tangent here but i know of a blind company i use to work for that stuffed up the blinds for someones house 4 times (at two weeks manafacturing time each error) these people had to get changed for 8 weeks hoping no one was peering into their windows. Hope you don't have a similar thing happen to you chim

hey at least they are prepaired to replace the pump and refund the shipping im sure it would be alot worse if they said well your in new zealand and were in america so what are you going to do about it

you might be able to get away from a centre brace but you would need to get them to cut the centre out of a sheet of glass so you had a full surround of about 2in. (this gives much more support than 4 2in. strips running around) and i would go up to 14mm glass for the walls if you were going to do this. In my small amount of experience with glass I have found tempered glass to be amazingly strong I had 400mm x 400mm peice of 6mm tempered glass that i could hit with a hammer or throw down on the concreet without breaking, in fact one time it chipped the concreete and not a mark on the glass (this is only impactual strength though i dont know what it is like with constant pressures). Unfortunatly it can't be cut so it is very expensive buying at a cut rate (i think glaziers in New Zealand charge about $180.00 per S.Q.M although i managed to get it as low as $60.00 /S.Q.M) There is also diferent types or clarities of glass available normal glass can look quite green aparently compared with starfire glass the link below is an aussie forum that discusses some tanks being built http://www.masa.asn.au/rtaw/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=General&Number=105213&page=2&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1 Good luck Daniel

You could run a ball valve that vias off into a T so that only a trickle runs off into your ref and the rest that into your sump this would mean you would at least have one overflow workig if one gets blocked in saying all this i am only an amature and would advise you talk to chem, pies, reef or brian they seem to be the ones that have given me the most advice (sorry if i maissed any ones name) and as they said to me if you can see someones set up it makes things a whole lot easier

most large cichlids eat snails i have two fresh watter tanks one for breeding guppies and one for my larger fish and when i get to many snails i feed them to my larger fish, or my turtle he loves them

why dont you try going thriough a local freight forwarder i use combined cargo in palmy (for my job not fish stuff yet) Ray Fleet is brilliant. The problem with letting anyone in the us organise freight is that there is such a large range of freight companys organising such a relatively low rate of freight comming into new zealand that they dont get good rates freight forwarders will get much rates. Also they will inform you that if it comes in by sea freight the customs clearence is rather high if you are bringing in a small light package sometimes it can be cheeper to air freight when it comes down to the additional fees we get at our end. Has anyone thought of getting a group of people together to put in one massive order a 20' container from the us cost nz$5,000 plus us internal freight and your freight forwarder should not be left to organise that the trucking is run by the mob so you need somone in america that has the right connections to get around the jacked up internal freight prices. But a 20' container is a hell of a lot of reef gear and some pretty neat looking tanks

lol still must be a nice sized tank does running bubbles through really get rid of the chlorine? and what about the hardness, as you do watter changes and water evaporates you always add hardness as it is my tank has a high gh 340ppm (although only 50ppm kh) and that is from using the filtered water that only contains 50ppm

there are only a places that import fish into and maf is very strickt about it there is a thread in this forum that takes you to the link of the maf aprooved species list ill try find it for you but dont know how to post it up ad i have the business card of one of the sales team at brooklands when i find that i will give you his number but you will probably be told to go to your lfs (local fish store) and ask them and they will order them through brooklands (sory no cutting out the middle men) if you are after saltwater fish pm reef i am pretty sure he imports direct good luck Daneil

sory aj i did explain to cat on pm that it was my fault that i had left it too late and i have recieved the info now and will try drop it off to leanne if she is working tomorrow

800l a week ira?????? what size tank do you have????