petplanet

Must have high ceilings in your place.

Pro salt is designed for use with RO water only. If you are using Christchurch tap water then you should use the normal salt mix as your ground water probably has a high mineral (calcium) content.

You can use clove oil if you can find it. http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/smpufferdentistry.htm

Starting is the easy part. Finishing, that's a different story.

Yeah and that is why shops don't like selling SPS. Far to easy to frag. More often than not a small specimen will do better than a large one in a new tank anyway so there is no real advantage in buying a large one. Also to get the really awesome colour they would need better systems and sit on the stock longer while it coloured up.

I will make it easy for you. Importers order their stock from overseas. They don't see it first. NZ is a small market so the best pieces go to the suppliers best customers and biggest customers - so not NZ. Shops order stock from importers. They don't see it first. Best pieces go to the best customers/mates etc. Shops sell corals - customers get to see the corals first hand - best stuff goes first. Those in the know - owners, employees, mates, top customers, first in the door normally get first pick. Importers and shops do not have the room to sit on a massive amount of stock. It would be nice to have a better selection to pick from but it will not happen. Orders have to be a reasonable size. Importers and shops have to sell down their stock before reordering or the freight cost becomes a real killer. For the size of Christchurch you are probably better served for marine livestock than the rest of NZ.

So why are they closing down their ponds as well and no longer selling pond plants?

Ah man! I thought I had the biggest clam.

What type of tang is it?

You could try some Seachem Garlic Guard.

Hmm, might head north for the summer.....

There is a big difference between the natural environment and a closed tank or pond system. UV is a very useful filtration tool. If you can get away with going all natural and are happy with the look then that's great. Reality is most people cannot.

Was it the right sized unit for your tank? Did you run it 24/7? Next time you are out there looking, look up. Massive UV unit in the sky. I have dealt with tanks suffering from green water in the past. Good filtration, no phosphates, no nitrate but still pea soup. These units work. You do need to replace the bulb once a year and get a unit that is not to small for your tank. I have the Pondmaster UV on my own tanks and it has saved be at least $1000 worth of fish. Money well spent.

Man, I reckon that system might hold more water than all the private marine tanks in the country combined. 92000 litres (display + sumps).

One of these may be a better option. They do a 24w version for tanks up to 400 litres. They are fully submersible and have their own pump. Green Killing Machine If you went for a Pondmaster one you would have to plumb it into your system and I do not think you would find it to be any more effective. The replacement bulbs are also much cheaper for the Green Killing Machines.

Man, hit the buy now!!!!! It would almost be worth the road trip for me to go down and get it. Except the misses would do her nana. Hard to sneak another 6ft into the basement.

Something new to add to the tank. Skimmer UV Ozone RF

If it is not to late, I would go with a wider tank that was not to deep. Makes aquascaping the whole thing a lot easier. You will find 350 very narrow once you put the rocks in. 915 x 450 x 450 would be a much more usable size. It will make the tank cheaper to as the glass they use could be 6mm.

Better be powerball. I don't think just first division would cut it!!!

Interesting that it is tracking at the lower end of the temperature range for the last 10 years.

It is going to be a saltwater tank so metal and aluminium are not good options. It will be sitting about 900mm of the floor. I was told that the Butterfly Creek 11 metre tank is ply construction so I am trying to find out who made it to get some tips.

Well I have been humming and harring about what to do with my big fish and have pretty much decided that big fish need a big tank. Now the biggest problem is the price if I get a big glass tank. I was originally planning 700 deep x 750-1000 wide x 2.5-3m long. Got some pricing on various tank sizes and lets just say, not cheap. I remember seeing this guys tank 1700 gallon shark tank: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/diy_1700g_tank_1.php Now I don't want to go that big but he mentioned plans for plywood tanks on this website. http://www.garf.org/index.html This is the basic design they have. They don't recommend going as deep, wide or long as I would like. I thought if I used their basic design and beefed it up it may be an option. Space and weight are not to much of a factor as this tank will be going in the basement and feeding off my sump room. I would like to have a long, wide tank with a coral island at each end and bucket loads of swimming room. Dimensions of 4m long x 1.2m wide x 700 deep. That would be $4-5000.00+ if it was glass. Far out, that's 3360 litres of water!!!! I thought I could put the whole tank in a metal frame (probably stainless), use double thickness over lapping plywood(screwed and glued), and three or four glass front panes. The tank could then have the metal bands running right around the tank for support. Basically the plywood is painted with two-part epoxy paint for potable water tanks (nasty stuff). I could then silicon in the glass panes and then recoat the whole thing with this silicon epoxy pond paint (not sure what it is called but it rocks). Any thoughts?

More progress. I went for a Pondmaster 5500 dirty water pump. Flow Rate 5700l/h Max Head 3.0m. The filter I went for was a Laguna 8000. WAY to big for this tiny feature. It is rated for ponds up to 8000 litres but I had it lying around since I sold my shop so couldn't let it go to waste. I drilled a hole through the wall so I could place the filter in the garage for easy access. This also eliminated the need for any outdoor wiring. It did mean there was 8 metres of hosing required to get from the feature to the filter and back. Four concrete blocks were used to get the feature to the right level. And the water feature itself. All polished stainless steel (been in the garage for 18 months). I drilled a hole through the bottom (melted the tip of one titanium drill bit and snapped another) and put in a Hansen fitting so that the hose could come up underneath the bottom tub rather than over the side of it. Tub in place. Quick water test. Feature in place and running. I used pieces of leftover pond liner to level the tub out. This took a lot of trial and error. There was not enough flow for my liking so I hooked up an even bigger pump. Pondmaster MP7500 7600l/h Max Head 5.3m. Made the feature crank along but was to strong for the filter and caused water to slowly drip out of the seals. I have switched back to the other pump for now. One major thing I did not take into account with this feature is the volume of water required to get water flowing over the entire edge of the centre wave and lower tub. The lower tub has about 3 metre of surface edge. To have 1mm of water flowing over the edge all the way around, you would need 4320 litres an hour going into the tub. At 1.5mm it is 6480 l/h.

Sure can.

About 840 litres. Measures 150 x 140 x 40. Still got the water feature to add, filter and pump. Going to have fancy goldfish - fantails( possibly orandas), blackmoors and apple snails.