wasp

Not nessecary to spend heaps of money. When I did it manually, my whole set up costs where just a few dollars. A person only needs to spend the money if they don't want the ongoing hassle. Not sure about mixing enough in one hit to last several years, you would need HUGE storage tanks for it. When I was doing it I used 3 x 5 litre containers for the 3 parts, to dose an approx 800 litre set up, I seemed to be mixing something every few weeks. Admittedly I had massive growth & use of calcium as I was selling stuff, but the amount of room needed would have been a factor if I wanted to store several years worth.

From a few posts up :-?

Yes you can drip via gravity, however tubes will clog a bit and drip rate will vary. This matters because the important thing is you have to get the right amount of alk in relative to calcium, one cannot vary against the other, so dripping from a bulk container is not going to work very well if you want it to be constant. So if you want to drip it, what I would recommend anyway, is to have 2 drip containers, one for alk and one for calcium. Tip enough alkalinity mix into one that will do the tank for say, 4 days, and allow it to drip in over a few hours. 2 days later, tip the measured amount of calcium for 4 days, into the other container and allow that to drip in over a few hours. BTW the 4 days is not important, some people only do it weekly, or you could do it daily if you want & can be bothered hassling around with it. If you want really steady levels you need a dosing pump as someone suggested, however as stated this is quite a cost. Long time ago I used to dose 2 part, well in my case 3 part, manually as you are considering, I did it daily worked fine but was an ongoing hassle. Eventually I got a three way dosing pump (alk, ca,mg) and this made life a lot easier, although I still had to make mixes of it every so often which does eventually become a pain.

Very nice, it's about the same size as my tank, makes me realise I put too much rock in mine! Anyway, be great to watch progress .

Yes you can, and in fact should, run a protein skimmer, there are small hang on ones that will do a good job for you. My opinion only, get a needlewheel one, rather than one of the cheaper ones, of course this depends on your budget, end of the day any skimmer is better than none, but the quality of the skimmer will be the main factor in your water quality, and therefore how good, and clean looking, your tank is. Fish, and soft corals, do not need any supplements. In your tank a 30% water change once a month will be all that is needed provided you have the correct filtration running (protein skimmer, liverock).

Good score!

Yes that would work, and in fact a shrimp can look very attractive. How much light are you going to have? If not too much, some good corals would be some zooanthids, and some mushrooms. A candycane might work also, if you can get it far enough away that it can't sting other corals. Here is a pic of some of these kinds of corals, just to give an idea what you can do in even a small tank.

Hi Yarimochi, personally I think a 30 litre salt water tank can be done, but it will be so restrictive that you would be better to spend a little money and buy bigger, especially if you want to keep fish. In fact, the cost of the tank is only very small compared to the cost of the other things you will need. But don't let me put you off, if you just cannot go bigger at this stage, do the 30 litre, but it will be harder than a bigger tank. Here is a quote from another thread with some advice for someone starting from fresh water, to marine

HMMM..... So what did I miss? Seems I miss all the action yet again! :lol: No, don't tell me, enough said I suspect!

This question has come up a few times lately, the problem with sea salt (dried seawater) is that during the drying process some of the elements precipitate out, for example the calcium and alkalinity react with each other, and do not return when the dried salt is mixed with water. Any of the salt brands sold for marine aquaria will be fine for your purposes, or you can simply get some seawater and dilute it. As it seems the fish may be suffering bacterial infection, perhaps an artificial salt may be best. Treat the tap water with prime, or aerate it for 24 hours before using. Longer term though, if you keep using tap water, regardless of whether you use prime, you will get an algae problem, RO or deionised water is best, although will not matter for the short term, the main thing is to get the fish into better water as soon as possible. Secondly, have you tested the tank water for ammonia, and nitrite? You need a filtration system that will effectively deal with these, adding prime is some help, but on its own, not enough.

EDIT - double post

There is anumber of factors including not just the lph of the pump but what the pressure rating is, the lift, and how the SCWD will effect it, best plan now it's set up is try it & see . The set up is starting to look good, if you have sps you will want good flow, plus some quite spots for other types of coral. In a tank this size will be quite a challenge, but looks like you are heading the right direction.

Rule of thumb is a minimum of 10 x's flow but in your tank you may be able to get away with less. Just wondering what kind of corals you are thinking of getting as that will be a consideration if it's softies and LPS you might get away with 8 x's flow. But to achieve that through a SCWD you need 10 x's flow assuming it cuts flow 20%. I once had a 60 litre tank with assorted LPS and sarcophyton, the flow was a 400 lph powerhead plus the skimmer probably 200 lph, the flow was very gentle but the growth of the LPS was extrodinary I had to frag them constantly. If you use a SCWD will it be internally or externally mounted?

Which is the comparitive article or do you have to compare with different articles?

Couple of Hamilton reefkeepers I can think of, JDM, and Rossco, both got busy schedules but real nice guys, you could maybe drop them a pm and they might let you visit their tank.

Well I took the time & read it, very good article. Who is the author?

Yes, from several sites. The service is pretty good but freight costs heaps. Also you can only bring stuff that goes through our customs.

Not the best, because during the drying process some of the elements precipitate out and do not come back when it's mixed with water again. It will not be the same as seawater. However some brackish species are tough and might be able to handle it, I'm not sure. You can buy an artificial salt mix for marine aquariums at some pet stores.

Jaycar stock these type of fans, both in 12 and 240 volt, although they are not waterproof. However I have a 240 volt one that is covered white with salt spray, been running for 3 years no issues. Maybe one day I'll get a shock though , dunno.

Thanks Reef David good to hear that cats paw came back, a very pretty coral. That other one you mention, the parent colony is directly under a 400 watt halide & likes it & has good colour, so I'd say lots of light for it. I've heard from others with the same coral that it's a difficult one, but when it looks good, it looks Good!

Yes, that's the specialists hair algae killing one, and there is also a more general one, presumably more emphasis on the nitrogen cycle. Cheap? All depends how much you have to put in the tank. The Zeovit one is 30 bucks for 10 mls, but I only dose 4 drops a week. If you try the TLC one let me know how it goes, both results, and price.

Didn't want to breach any rules so I pm'd you. Also, if you do give this a try I would be interested to hear your thoughts in due course.

Well OK it's published by a manufacturer of a bacterial formulation to the aquarium trade (ie it's an advertisement), but contains some interesting information all the same. http://www.bioconlabs.com/nitribactfacts.html Summary of the important stuff:- Firstly, it is a fact that some bacteria are WAY more efficient than others. These are the ones we need to promote. From the article QUOTE "Nitrifying bacteria have long generation times due to the low energy yield from their oxidation reactions. Since little energy is produced from these reactions they have evolved to become extremely efficient at converting ammonia and nitrite. Scientific studies have shown that Nitrosomonas bacterium are so efficient that a single cell can convert ammonia at a rate that would require up to one million heterotrophs to accomplish. Most of their energy production (80%) is devoted to fixing CO2 via the Calvin cycle and little energy remains for growth and reproduction. As a consequence, they have a very slow reproductive rate". Also, I have wondered why we have to dose bacteria, when the aquarium is no doubt already loaded with them. Finally answered. Seems the most efficient bacteria are also the slowest to reproduce, and are rapidly overwhelmed by not so efficient bacteria. From the article QUOTE "Under optimal conditions, Nitrosomonas may double every 7 hours and Nitrobacter every 13 hours. More realistically, they will double every 15-20 hours. This is an extremely long time considering that heterotrophic bacteria can double in as short a time as 20 minutes. In the time that it takes a single Nitrosomonas cell to double in population, a single E. Coli bacterium would have produced a population exceeding 35 trillion cells". Seems also, we need to nurture our best bacteria, their hold in our aquarium might be tenuous. From the article QUOTE "None of the Nitrobacteraceae are able to form spores. They have a complex cytomembrane (cell wall) that is surrounded by a slime matrix. All species have limited tolerance ranges and are individually sensitive to pH, dissolved oxygen levels, salt, temperature, and inhibitory chemicals. Unlike species of heterotrophic bacteria, they cannot survive any drying process without killing the organism. In water, they can survive short periods of adverse conditions by utilizing stored materials within the cell. When these materials are depleted, the bacteria die". So to the final point, these desireable bacteria cannot form spores. So when we stock our tank with dried liverock, we get a host of other bacteria that have formed spores in the dried rock, but NON of the autotrophic marine adapted nitrosomanas. The only sure way to get them is we HAVE to dose them, or miss out. Just for completeness, I am going to add that there are several bacterial dosing formulations on the market in NZ, among them Prodibio, Zeovit, and a new product called TLC.

In an aquarium, a tomato clown will live in pretty much any anemone. For a tank your size, a bubble tip anemone is probably best, as the other types may get too big and fill 1/2 the tank, although this is your choice as it depends just what you want, you may be happy with a big anemone. Bubble tip anemones can have long or short tentacles, depending on the light. In bright light they have short tentacles with bubble tips, and in lower light they lose the bubble tips and stretch out the tentacles more. When you first put a bubble tip anemone in the tank they can walk all over the tank for a few days or weeks till they find the exact spot that suits them. During this time you have to keep all pump intakes covered with foam or the anemone may blunder into the pump and get shredded. Other types of anemones move around less, or not at all. Once your anemone is settled, you can add corals without worrying if the anemone will walk over & sting them. And hey, good choice, not much that is more awesome than a clownfish sharing it's amazing symbiotic relationship with an anemone. Here's my two nemos in their anemone