wasp

The fact is Hanna did NOT say their meter "is no more useful than a hobby kit". They said it is this accurate - Accuracy +/- 0.04 mg/L +/- 4% of reading +/- 0.01 mg/L electrical noise. There have been blind tests run on hobby kits to find out how accurately people can interpret the colours. The results people get interpreting the colours on their hobby kits are WAY less accurate than the figures Hanna give as to the accuracy of their colorimeter. Sorry Layton, for you to say they said their colorimeter "is no more useful than a hobby kit" is well, I might as well say it, just plain untrue. They did not say it. You say you are not attacking the Hanna. But when you show an obvious bias by making things up, you clearly have an agenda. Not that it affects me, I use a Hanna and KNOW how good it is, when I first got it I had 2 other brands of kits and was able to run comparisons. Pity you never have. Just don't like seeing other people being given this misinformation. I still don't know why you feel this need to attack the Hanna in this type of way, even having to make up your "facts" to do so. I suspect you keep attacking the Hanna, simply because I have one.

Wow, even spelled my name right! Not many people can do that! :lol:

Absolutely you can! Bacterial diversity can become an issue with it after a time, but if this is suspected a bacterial additive such as prodibio or zeovit bacteria can be dosed.

You mean the one costing tens of thousands? I will confess that I did again wonder what planet you were on. :lol: Maybe the Hanna is more "practical" after all .

Yes that's exactly what I was implying. It's a fact. Why? Cos the Hanna will find phosphate where a hobby kit cannot detect any. Come back when you have personally used / seen one. "Hanna themselves say it" Please show me the quote. "experts" say it. Now let me guess, you are the "expert" right? Also, I'm not really sure why you have this fixation about attacking the Hanna colorimeter, it is a recurring theme with you. Have you ever used one? Have you even seen one?

Well leaving $$$s out of it, IMO it is a good idea to run phosphate removers. Trouble is, in a newish tank there can be a large amount of stored phosphate in rocks etc, and can use a heckuva lot of phosphate resin to get the job done. I'm not sure if you've done it yet Kyle, but vodka is also often effective at reducing phosphate levels.

Good point. In fact I think some of the bio indicators are actually quite useful. In the case of phosphate, the "how often I clean the front glass" test is a real useful indicator, IMO probably more practical value than using a hobby test kit.

Sorry, it was on Reef Central there have been several such threads, some of the posts a good laugh. I'll have a bit of a hunt when I have more time although we are going back in time a bit, not sure if I'll find it.

Good to see the guy actually does have a genuine interest! I do follow some of this stuff as I was once in the commercial fishing industry, and there are still some stupid decisions being made, look at recent developements re the bluff oyster fishery. However we do tend to be more progressive in our treatment of fisheries than most overseas countries. ( IMO ).

:lol: Long time ago, someone ran a bloopers thread, and trust me, your one is mild by comparison to some! Having never seen a skimmer before you did well! Bet you're feeling pretty good about the whole thing, be interesting in a while to hear back how you think the skimmer has affected things.

What actually happens Tang, is those diatoms require silicate to build their little "shell" from. Brand new tanks usually contain plenty of silicate in available form for the diatoms. But with good skimming, organisms containing silicate are removed from the tank, so the general silicate level of the tank gradually drops, eventually reaching the point the diatoms begin to die off. About that time an algae outbreak is common, and you start to wish you just had those diatoms to worry about! :lol: Don't worry how it looks at the moment, patience is needed in this hobby, long as you got things moving the right way that's all that matters. My own newly set up tank looked like crap for the first few months, and I took some stick about it too. But I resisted quick fixes and aimed at doing the long term stuff right, and it is now starting to pay off. BTW, diatoms are excellent food for some corals, one author recently recommended actually adding silicates to the tank to encourage them, to create coral food!

I'm just curious, what did you actually do that fixed it?

Cos none of us will be! But dude, if nothing but the best will do for you, you go!

Also, I didn't really see the article as an exhaustive study on phosphate in an aquarium, covering all aspects including the role of bacteria. But indirectly it did touch on the role of bacteria as the low pH in localised areas that it discusses, is caused by bacteria. The author just did not feel the need to delve into that, which is good keeps to the main thrust and avoids looking like he is trying to blind people with "science". But a good article nonetheless. Oversights? No. it does not claim to be exhaustive. Innaccuracies? Again I would beg to differ it was informative & useful.

True. Having tested quite a few tanks with proper equipment, not a hobby kit, it is unusual to find a tank lower than 0.04. However, Steves is many "orders of magnitude" lower than that . Most hobby kits though will say a tank is 0.00 even sometimes when there is a fair bit of phosphate.

Good article Tang!

I have one that will cut a 35 ml hole. Slight problem though when I bought it i took it to a engineer to turn the shank down so it would fit in my drill. They did that but it is slightly out of centre, so it wobbles a bit. OK if you go nice and slow, but on glass 10 ml or over it is easy to crack it if you go too quick. You can borrow it but hang out a bit & see if you can get a different one first.

The cycle goes ammonia, around 2 weeks, nitrite around another 4 weeks, or 6 weeks total, or thereabouts. You can then start stocking. Nitrate takes a lot longer to start getting reduced properly, could be 6 months give or take a few months. But nitrate is more easily tolerated by most organisms so at first you can just control it with water changes if need be. Something wrong with your skimmer perhaps the way you have it set up. When you do the pics how about one or two of the skimmer so we can diagnose it for you. The test kit seems like a good deal although I didn't see the brand. Once the tank is up & running the basic kits you need are nitrate, calcium and alkalinity, pretty hard to do things right without those three. You may also want to have ammonia and nitrite although once things are running right you will seldom if ever use them, just if something goes wrong. Some brands of test kit are a little unreliable, many of us consider Salifert a good brand.

This is not normally a good idea for several reasons. If the return pump slows over time, which they can do, you could get a flood. The system requires that both pumps push exactly the same amount of water. A tank should have the "I can sleep easy factor". This setup does not. Another way to do what you want is to build a weir overflow into the sump. This is a syphon, but it is a design that cannot be broken even if it runs dry, once the main tank is pumped full enough the syphon will start again. I'm sure you will find a design for this on google.

This would be a great way to go for a new tank, no more rock slides.

Reef just wondering, I presume there have been times you have used UV, and times you have not. When you went from no UV, to starting UV, did you find a drop in nitrate shortly after starting UV?

So they can eat crap, then get skimmed out of the system along with a gutfull of crap to remove it

1.7 ml aragonite, actually in NZ it's usually calcite but the shops call it aragonite. Not your only option though some may prefer and suggest a smaller grain.

Craig! Where you been? Biz on track?

A cannister with biomedia is acceptable for a QT tank, because it will adapt much quicker to the changing bioloads a QT tank will likely experience. Of course it will not process nitrate, that would have to be dealt with by water changes. When my own QT tank was a big tub with a cannister it could still go quite a long time with several fish before nitrate built to levels needing something doing about. If a copper treatment is done, the biomedia will not remove the copper from the water nearly as much as coral rock & aragonite (both based on calcium carbonate) will.