wasp

Yes dive bottles are fine, although the valve has to be changed Co2 uses a different thread.

By the mark on the impellor blade it looks like it's had an impact with a foreign object, could that have something to do with it?

He He !

Your onto it Ross, got it sussed. Cracker has a PBT which has had white spot for quite a while but must be slowly getting immune. One thing to bear in mind if you have such a fish in the tank it will be putting more stress on the other fish as large numbers of new white spot are continously being produced by the infected fish. However it is clear all your aother fish must be immune, so should be OK provided you don't have a stress event such as overheating.

Hi Helifax, I suspect you've had some bubble algae show up on one or two of those corals? If so, best to nuke it now while it's easy and not leave it too long. There is some debate as to wether popping them spreads it or not, but best play safe and don't pop it. Best way to treat is to remove affected piece and carefully apply boiling water to it. The bubble algae will look much the same when you put it back in the tank but will turn white over the next few days. If you just can't do it with boiling water cos you'll hurt the coral, algae rid used in fresh water tanks will do it, use as per my post in this thread, page 2. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/2-vt11 ... l?start=15

If the rock is in QT, to get rid of the last bits in the rock pores, use boiling water carefully applied to affected area. However if this cannot be done without hurting the coral, get some of that algae rid they use for fresh water tanks. Remove the coral, and drip the algae rid straight on to the affected areas, trying not to get it onto the coral. Leave out of water for 1/2 hour. Put in a bucket of tank water for 2 hours. Then rinse several times in fresh tank water and return to QT. Don't put back in main for several days, you don't want any algae rid in there.

Years ago when I had a different tank about 1/2 the rock in it was scoria with no ill effects. I took it from the sea so it was already cured. However it did not perform the same filtration as coral rock, when I replaced it with coral rock my 'trites etc improved a lot. If you're buying, best place to get it is a quarry, or some place they sell it by the trailer load, way cheaper. Look in the phone book under gardening/landscaping/soil type places, ring around, you'll find some. Edit - Been thinking, scoria from a quarry may leach. The rock I got was from the sea, and been there since Rangitoto blew up around 700 years ago. That would mean that much of the leachable stuff would have already leached, whereas "virgin" scoria that has not been exposed to the sea may be loaded with metals etc that could leach.

Well Craig, you the chemical man, when can you get me some sodium silicate? ( stir stir )

Jeroen it's more normal for the full flow to go to the sump, then refugium, then back to the main. By refugium do you mean an algae refugium for the purpose of cleaning the water? If so, a good rule of thumb is to have the entire volume of the tank passing through it 5x per hour, same as the sump. But if it's just for growing pods, etc, a much lower flow through would do. A common way to plumb this is the sump is set a little higher than the fuge, so the water can flow from the sump to the fuge by gravity, and the return pump is in the fuge.

Well first time I've seen this tank, nice clean tank, nice big yellow leather too! A bigger tank will be even better though! Lighting is going to be the expensive part though. You're right 4 meters is quite a bit for most pumps, it means you'll need a big pump that will use more power, I wonder if the sump could be raised quite high off the ground so as to be closer? When Cracker upgraded he simply added another skimmer, and is happy with the result seems to be working well. Others will dissagree but I'm not a big fan of closed loops, can't see the point in a crapload of plumbing outside the tank there is better and better pump/stream type things coming out to do the job with no external plumbing.

Don't worry nobody thought it could be done anywhere close to $200.00 I just asked cos I wanted to see how the real price would end up.

Tested it?

Hmmm... Looks like the Hamiltons score OK on PAR, if not on looks. There's definately a few bulbs to be avoided though, and the trap is that the average reefer does not even know how much PAR his bulbs are giving off.

Good find Reef, very interesting, and quite surprising too. Interesting the 10,000k hamilton gives exactly the same washed out type look it does in my tank also. Coralife looks good to me. Just it doesn't give the PAR anywhere.

I too have a bioball tower, in my case it's a big heap of bioballs in my overflow. This is because my nitrates were so close to absolute zero that stuff including corals couldn't grow, the bioball tower is to try to get some nitrates, although they are still undetectable, salifert. However this cuttlefish guy must have something else in his tank or management that is removing the nitrate, it would not be possible for him to still have zero nitrate with a bioball tower and nothing else, unless the bioball tower was running anaerobically.

If money is an issue & you already have the skimmer, I once made the same one work reasonably by having it on a 400GPH pump, plus having a wooden airstone in it. Still not as good as a Deltec or something, but better than useless certainly.

Is it meant to look that bad, or has it also got whitespot or something?

Small, how small? If the tank is quite small the 14,000k bulbs may be OK because it is not such a big tank to light up. Also it depends what livestock you will keep, 10,000k bulbs over a small tank may be too much if you wish to keep mushrooms or similar.

Can do, providing it's "balanced". The most economical way to get the most light on your corals, but still have a good look, is to use 10,000k MH bulbs, and also have some blue actinic floro tubes that run the length of the tank. My MH's are 150 watt also, and I found that I liked the look of 14,000k, but it just was not enough light for some of the corals. Now I'm running 10,000k bulbs, plus some blue actinic floros, seems to work.

Each manufacturers bulbs are slightly different, and in addition, a bulb rated 14,000 would not just put out 14,000, it will put out a whole range, but 14,000 would be the average of them. Some bulbs come with a colour chart of the colours emitted by that bulb, and that would be the most accurate way, for that particular bulb. But in the end it comes down to what looks best on your tank, and also bear in mind that the average 14,000k bulb only puts out 1/2 as much light that can be used by the coral, as the average 10,000k bulb

Slappers algae control in a marine tank is all about phosphate control, if you can get the phosphate low enough the algae can't grow. If that SAT stuff does in fact do what the label claims, it would work, provided you had a good skimmer. It claims to encourage bacteria which will then consume phosphate (among other things). Provided you could skim these bacteria and remove them, the tank should clean up. But in any case, high phosphate = algae, very low phosphate = no algae. There are many ways to remove phosphate from your tank, if you check into them you will find the solution for your algae problems. Excess phosphate causes other problems too, such as stopping coraline algae from growing.

When I was a schoolkid I heard a story that in some Pacific Island they caught large octopuses with "human bait". They would dive down & when the octopus grabbed them they would bite the octopus in some vital place that stunned it and make a powerful kick for the surface, we were told it was very dangerous. Never did find out if it was actually true though! But maybe!!

Good insight Rossco. It may be their cleaning instinct cutting in.

Yes they grow super slow and the larger ones are centuries old. Pull one out and you will feel the heat, although I believe they are still harvested overseas, no doubt this will not be sustainable.

Wow that really does look awesome! Probably need to wait 12 months so they'll discover and get the bugs out of it & then hope someone will import some for local sale