wasp

Oh I see! Well maybe bring KH up by 1 or 2 KH tonight, then another couple in the morning.

With KH 4 I wouldn't muck around too long. Howsabout mix a batch of baking soda with water, put in 4 containers, and ask your wife to tip one in each day. Use Crackers calculations to figure out how much, but to be safe only aim to bring KH up to 7 by the time you return.

Is your ca reactor still out of action? If so, a greater amount of baking soda will be needed.

If you add unbaked baking soda, it will dissapate some Co2 into the water and cause a temporary drop in PH, however this only lasts until the Co2 has reached equilibrium again, with a smallish amount of baking soda it is not a great concern. Baking the baking soda rmoves this Co2 so that baked baking soda will not have this effect. Agree with Pies, you may get away with a sudden hike in KH, but gradual will be better. My non scientific approach for a tank your size would be to daily add 2 heaped teaspoons of baking soda dissolved in a liter or two of water. Add slowly, to a high flow area. After a few days, KH will be where you want it.

No you won't always have bubbles, just keep skimming, the frothy stuff will get removed. But give it time!

Actually if someone does want a FO type fish, I have a very healthy Niger Trigger, 3-4 inches long, free to a good home if you give me a frag. Actually he is reef safe, it's more small fish that he may take a swipe at. Fine with most fish though, PM me.

Oh yes, NOW I remember , diatonomous earth filtering was once suggested for marine tanks also, in fact, there are a few web pages floating around still advocating its use. Probably no harm in it but more not needed nowadays with the improvement in other technology such as skimmers.

Mine put bubbles in the tank when new also, don't worry it will go away, but may take longer than the suggested week. Set it so the collection cup is only collecting a smallish amount of skimmate, not filling up real qiuck. Other than that, it's just patience & watch the slow improvement. BTW many new skimmers do this.

Don't know anything about Durso's, however as to the water barreling through the overflow comb & making noise, I had the same thing & was able to solve it by getting several strips of glass an inch or so wide, and siliconed 2 on top of each other immediately below the comb, enough to catch the water. Below them I siliconed a single strip angled at the bottom towards the glass, then below that a thin strip, and all this pulled the water in & back to the glass, so took 90% of that noise anyway.

They are just fine filters, could be a carbon block cartridge or anything fine enough to not let diatoms through. They are not normally used in a tank, an application would more typically be for filtering NSW prior to putting in the tank to remove parasites, or some similar use to that.

I temporarily housed a banded butterfly in my frag tank, with the damage he did in only one day, I had to get him out. Even ate mushrooms that were 3 cm or so across, amazing appetite. He is a great fish in a FO though, very friendly & nearly jumps out of the water to grab food from your fingers. Non aggresive to other fish, just a shame he can't go in a reef.

Here's some info (basic) on marine fish breeding http://animal-world.com/encyclo/marine/ ... marine.php

It can get too high, but this will only happen if you add too much and overdo it. Anything up to a kh of 12 can be considered "normal" in a tank, but for the sake of the livestock try to avoid sudden big changes. Due to natural processes, including precipitation with calcium, kh tends to slowly fall. It only goes up if you add some, via a water change, or adding directly a kh raising product such as baking soda. If seahorses are the only living organism you are keeping, a kh of 7 to 8, and calcium around 380, would be easiest, it will stay fairly constant and could likely be maintained simply by regular water changes.

For you, the simplest would be a kh (carbonate hardness) of 7 to 8, same as natural sea water. People growing corals have it higher than that, to assist calcification in their corals, and coraline algae. However the higher you have kh, the more calcification you will get in the tank, pumps, etc, a lower kh is easier to manage. If PH is low, it can be raised by increasing kh, however at a kh of 7 or 8 PH can be maintained at acceptable levels by having sufficient aeration.

Just one thing to add to that though, for the rock to cycle ( become stocked with all the needed nitrate cycle bacteria ) takes around 6 weeks. For the rock to stop or slow down shedding, can take many months. Most people want to start stocking their tank, this can be done once the cycle is completed, don't have to wait till the rock stops shedding.

Cool! New they'd do well in your tank, well set up and good water quality.

Tried a few different ways, the very best results have been from curing rock in the rock pools at our local beach, I think it's because they get a 100% water change daily, they come out smelling sweet. Next best way is what you're doing, in a clean tank with BB to allow crud removal.

Same guy Cookie, same tank you saw also. :lol: He simply sold the ciclids, put in salt water, and one FO system, slowly turning into a reef :lol: Next year he'll be qualified and able to earn some good money, I suspect we will be seeing a good sized well equipped tank, although he is wanting to get a house first.

Agree with Pies. I think most new hobbyists, including myself, go through 3 stages :- 1. Wanting to breed clownfish 2. Wanting to breed cleaner shrimps 3. Realising this will be near enough impossible & giving up. Having said that I have been able to syphon some baby clowns out of my sump & keep them alive for a few days, if we had a steady supply of rotifers in NZ I think with a little care they could be raised. I do know 2 people in NZ who have raised baby clowns.

It's simply the bacteria coming back to life within the rock, once the rock is put in water. They begin to consume dead waste that is in the pores of the rock, and the sheer volume of bacteria creates more mass and forces matter out of the rock, it has a sandy appearance on the bottom of the tank but in fact a lot of it is dead bacteria jammed together. It is rich in phosphate and should be syphoned. In addition released phosphate will enter the water colum, hence the best possible skimming should be used during rock curing. Once the rock stops shedding, and assuming the water has been kept relatively phosphate free, your rocks are as clean as you are going to get, and give you a head start in running an algae free tank as they will not leach a lot of nasties into your water. Not everyones going to agree fully with this but here's some different perspectives on rock curing, crud cleaning, etc. http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthrea ... enumber=4g,

My son is, he's at Uni also, however he has been unable to resist & a few frags are starting to accumulate in his tank, despite him saying he would not be bothered with corals His tank is not up to sps standards however most of the softies and lps he has put in are doing nicely. For most FO tanks, there will be some corals out there that will live in them and do make the tank more interesting.

A 90 litre tank will be fine, and any 2 shrimps will do as they are hermaphrodites. Mating takes place the same night they moult, which is every few weeks depending on several factors. Getting them to breed is no worries the average cleaner shrimp is carrying eggs a lot of the time. Raising the larvae is the hard part it has been done in captivity but extremely difficult.

Sorry to hear about that Ghostface. Agree there may have been something wrong with him, when I saw it I remember noticing he just didn't show any interest in his surroundings, whereas copperbands are normally quite curious always poking around looking in crevises etc. Anyhow, hope all else is well, that sps frag you gave me has grown slightly, the goniopora still about the same.

To reach perfect hydrogen carbonate / carbonate equilibria could take 24 hours plus. That's according to Randy Holmes Farley. However the difference in KH is so minescule that for common folks like me and Duke it would not matter. I test after a few minutes. However, I do use baked baking soda, cooked myself, but even with straight baking soda unless adding a huge amount it's not going to matter a whole lot.

That would have to be the highlight!! Bring it on