suphew

To use copper treatments in a SW tank you need to move the fish into a bare hospital tank, with some plastic pipes for cover. Any coral rock will absorb the treatment and never be any use in a marine tank again. The problem is if your trying to treat white spot velvet etc, treating the fish is only a small part of the battle because the parasite will still be in your display tank. The only way to get rid of it is to take the fish out for 6-8 weeks so the parasites have no hosts. Usually the stress of keeping a display tanks worth of marine fish in a small bare hospital tank is more likely to kill them than what ever it was you were trying to cure. Google will also tell you, UV, cleaner shrimps, and garlic will all cure marine white spot. Although some of these may help with symptoms none will cure white spot.

+1 the white ones will jam when you need it to work the most. With regards the metal tap don't put it anywhere near your tank, any metal even most stainless steels will rust

Just bear in mind the skimmer will take a couple of weeks to break in, so you might not see much skimmate for awhile and it could be very hard to tune.

Sounds like your describing a plenum with drain system, as idea that was tried out in the 80/90's (?). It never took off, I'm not sure why but assume it just because it didn't work very well. The idea behind a plenum is to create an area with anaerobic bacteria which will convert nitrate to nitrogen gas, nitrate is the main reason for doing water changes. One of the problems with plenum's is they tend to fill up with silt etc (like UGF's do) so the drain was to let you drain this out

If the first shop has looked properly and can't get them then the second wont be able to. There are only a few importers of Aquarium products and all shops use the same suppliers. Controllers/ballasts for T8 tubes are out dated now, bit like trying to buy an old curved screen TV. Your best bet is to keep an eye on trade me or ask round at your local fish club, a lot of guys have old units sitting round.

I wouldn't worry about it, draining that slowly into your overflow box isn't going to be a problem by the time it mattered you would have bigger problems to worry about, like the tank getting too cold and lack of water movement.

If it was me I'd go for one of each, the lifeglo's look brighter to the eye and are a lot cheaper, the powerglo's give the fish great colour but when you have tanks with the different bulbs in side by side the powerglo's ones look duller over all.

See thats the thing, to me it looks a lot like the ammonia chips they put in new filters now days. It doesn't look porous enough to be bio media (or good media anyway). The point being it could be anything and for the sake of $25 why stuff round?

Unless you can be certain what it is you should just replace it, a liter of bio noodles will only cost you ~$25.

That depends if you are cooking or cycling the rock, cycling in light is fine, if fact it helps to get the coralline and sponges etc growing.

I actually think it's a great idea, and try and ease the lights on as much as possible on my tanks, typically I use a blue light to come on first and go off last and stagger the other main lights. There's a lot of assumptions being make about how much sudden light does or doesn't stress the fish when really none of us have tested it. The logic I use is how much I would stress if my bedroom light was suddenly turned on particularly if it was at random cause a timer wasn't being use. If you have access to the gear to do this go hard.

For the sake of the $20 it would cost for some wood to do the job, I'd pay it just for the peace of mind.

When I worked in IT and we had a saying, "We can do fast, cheap, and good, pick which two you would like"

It depends on the type of damsel, it's current size, and how long you plan to keep it in the small tank. I currently have a tiny Domino damsel living happily in a Fluval edge tank which is all of 23 liters, one day it will get too large for the tank, but in the mean time it's a great little tank to have on a desk. Having no skimmer isn't a problem when 25% weekly water changes are only 5 liters!

Canister filters are mostly under vacuum not pressure so it if it was a seal it would be sucking in air not leaking water. But for it to be sucking enough to make it whistle you would have tonnes of air bubbles coming out. I'd be looking at the motor and checking that everything is lined up correctly and not rubbing

Personally if I was going to use a canister I would use it for running chemical media, carbon, phosphate resin, Zeolight, etc. You can use it like a fresh water tank filter if you are running fish only, but with a low fish load you shouldn't need to and the problem is sooner or later you will add corals, plus you can run a far cleaner, healthier, better looking, tank by doing it the 'proper' way. Skimmers cost no more than good canisters now days, and they often come up second hand, when you factor the cost of losing expensive fish because of poor water quality it makes sense.

The idea is to use a skimmer to remove most of the waste before it breaks down then the live rock removes whats left. If you start using canister filters etc they are designed to collect that waste and break it down (which is what you want in a fresh water tank) and will do this before the skimmer has a chance to do it's job. So in effect your creating Nitrate that you didn't need to have in the system, canister filters are nicknamed nitrate factories because of this Fresh water filtration systems in general are designed to collect the waste in big chunks and break it down, salt water systems are design to keep the waste in the water column so that the skimmer can process it. One of the reasons that salt water tanks have so much water movement is to keep waste from settling. HTH

Bio noodles are very good for hosting aerobic bacteria which results in nitrate. Coral rock is very good at hosting anaerobic bacteria which takes the nitrogen cycle a step further and converts nitrate to nitrogen gas. Nitrate at reasonable levels isn't a problem for fish even salt water ones but it is deadly for corals and other invertebrates.

What part is rubbish? The bit where I have only even seen fish only Marisys's, cause I'm not sure how you know what I have seen? Or the bit where wet and dry filters and air powered skimmers are 20 year old tech, and needle wheel skimers are the latest reef keeping tech? I never said you couldn't keep corals with a marisys system, but when your asking which is better, there is no question that new needle wheel tech is going to win hands down over nitrate factories and air pumps.

The tank sold in Porirua for $1300 was a 130d, I should know I sold it. 250's are selling for about $2700 but you wont be able to get one until Christmas, there were only 4 in the last shipment and they all sold before they even landed.

I would be careful running over sized heaters no matter how much you pay for them, the rule is 1w per liter, the reason for this rule is so when it jams on you don't boil your fish. Large heaters will also change the temperature quickly and more locally, neither are good for you fish. Two heaters is aways going to be safer than one because of the redundancy.

The Marisys is a wet/dry filter with an air powered skimmer, the tech here is 20 years old. RSM's use needle wheel skimmers. There are some Aqua one tanks working out there but all the one's I have seen are fish only. If you are wanting to keep corals, there is no question in my mind which is the better way to go.

The RSM is a better way to go. The aqua one system is a bit out of date now.

Wouldn't it be far simpler and less risky to just divide up a large tank?

There are plenty of screw in power saver style UV lights ranging from mid $20 to over $100, your LFS should have a range, if not drop me a PM and I can sort it for you.