suphew

All cats are vet checked, have up to date vaccinations, worming, de-fled, etc. It's very uncommon for cats to be micro chipped by SPCA or pet shops. Also because of the low numbers of kittens they are monitored closely, and handled very regularly by staff and customers. To clarify, in case you were in doubt, I do work at The Pet Centre

SPCA are expensive, I was told recently the Wellington SCPA is selling cats for $150 and kitten's for $210. The Pet centre in Porirua is selling them for $99, which includes a 7 day health guarantee and 5 bags of food for the cost of 2 (you get 1 with the kitten and two 2 for 1 vouchers) and a pack of vouchers, samples etc. Kittens shouldn't be nurtured until they are round 6 months old otherwise they don't develop normally.

Where abouts are you? Some of the LFS's would be able to supply one. If we know where you are we can advise the shop to go ask. You can update your location under the user control panel at the top of the page.

I think breakaway is trying to have as little in his tank and as little drilling as possible. The beananimal system required 3 drilled holes and a box in the tank large enough to hold 3 pipes rather than just 1.

Your light will depend on what corals you want to keep, how you want to the tank look, and how much money you want to spend. T5's will give you flat light and to have a decent amount of light, you will also need to have lots of tubes (which cost lots to replace each year), on the plus side is less heat and more control over the colour. Mh light will give you glitter lines, and plenty of light from a couple of bulbs. Have you looked into LED lights? BTW ditch the tank cover, it will just get covered in salt spray and block your light and well as trapping in heat. You need the correct (or larger) sized skimmer, would you put a little air powered box filter in an Oscar tank? It's a really common mistake to think you just buy a small cheap skimmer, which is why most marine keepers have a small cheap skimmer rotting in a box somewhere. It's a waste of money, you will just have to replace it, do it right first time. Minimum requirement is 20 times turn over, so for you tank you will need at least a 3000lph power head. It's not uncommon to have 50-100 times tank volume in water movement. Have a look at a Tunze nano pump or similar. Ditch the canister, if you want a DSB put it in the sump or use a bucket, a canister is too small to be much use. Don't forget about your live rock.

Yep those two points, plus they are a bit of a pain to fill the bend with water when they are hard plumbed. You have to watch extended power cuts or if you loose all water in the bend. For example when you do a water change and the tank water level drops below the power head venturi, breaking the air lock in the bend. The power head venturi doesn't remove the air fast or strong enough if you loose all the water in the bend so you have to manually re-prime. HTH

Weir's work fine, they have some limits but so long as you work with-in these your wont have any problems.

In a fresh water tank ideally you want to take water from the bottom of the tank, but in a saltwater you want to take the water from the top. Proteins tend to go to the water surface, which is why a protein skimmer works, proteins going to the surface of the bubbles.

The overflow box is a good idea because it will take water from the surface where most of the proteins are. BTW the 'durso' design you have there is incorrect and wont work correctly. You need to have the elbow in the overflow box so it doesn't suck air in, otherwise it will sound like water going down a bath drain. You also need to have a restriction in the pipe on the outside. You need to follow the plans on the Durso website, there are lots of incorrect methods floating round.

You can also run an external durso, in which case you only need an elbow in your tank. The down side to this is you might loose more water out of your display when the power goes out. Have a look in the durso web site it has plans for external dursos http://dursostandpipes.com/

In a sump that small I wouldn't worry about dividers etc, there main use is to stop microbubbles.

You have lots of choices depending on what you want to do, but as a start I would just use it for phosphate remover and maybe carbon. It's too small to use as a deep sand bed, so I wouldn't add any sand at all.

I think it was implied since your posting in a "Do it yourself" forum, under a topic of "Build Your Own Fish Tank Light". :lol: But I'm glad you hear your not planning on doing it yourself, your sparky will have no trouble connecting up multiple light into one hood.

If you don't know the answer to that question you shouldn't be considering wiring up your own lights. Please ask some one who knows what they are doing to do it for you.

Do you have good lighting on the tank as well? Unless you have the 3 things plants need to grow in balance (light, CO2, and Nutrients) adding the fertiliser is just going to feed algae. Very often light is the limiting factor to plant growth, not the fertilisers since fish provide plenty of this.

Oh and no problems from MAF collecting water, but some times the locals look at you a bit funny.

In Answer to your question,the only thing you can collect from the beach is seawater and there are some ricks involved in doing this. There are is no coral rock (live rock) naturally round NZ and the sand is also not coral based so not really suitable. Regards the other questions that have come up, Lighting isn't important for shrimps and live rock (coral rock), light only becomes a factor if you want to keep corals alive. Air filter/air flow. Not needed. You don't use biological type filters in marine tanks like you do fresh water, the live rock takes care of this, plus a protein skimmer. If you are willing to do large regular water changes it is possible to get away with no skimmer. Particularly if you stay with only the shrimp and have no corals. It is possible to do what you are looking at in a small (45l) tank but as others have said stability is the key to success and the smaller the tank the more difficult it is to get that stability.

There's nothing complicated about it, and it's quite likely your doing someting similar with out even knowing it. What I have is a 2inch layer of daltons and a good couple of inches of gravel on top. Because the daltons has a fine silty consistancy it works just like a DSB. I also have a BIG pile of bog wood on top and most plants attached to that so very little with roots in the substrate.

I think posting would be the big problem, just like a filter losing power it will only last a few hours with out oxygenated water flow.

Thanks for the information, some interesting stuff. I actually already know it works :oops: , but where would be the fun doing a science project if you already know the answer. I run a 450l loach tank this way, water change every month or so, and almost never have to clean off algae. I also know a couple of breeders that run thick layers of sand in their breeding tanks doing the same, although I'm not sure they realise what they are doing just that they get far better survival rates.

How much time do you have? The main reason for doing water changes in a fresh water tank is to remove nitrate. For years in salt water tanks we have used deep sand beds to remove nitrate. I have often wondered if it would work in fresh water, if it does it could be the end of algae and water changes. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work. The only problem is, it takes a couple of months for the anaerobic bacteria in a DSB to start working.

There was a company in Wellington that tried a similar thing, spent a ton of money (6-7 figure money), they basically did food/alcohol/etc delivery, but would deliver pretty much anything they could fit in their cars. Seemed like an okay idea to me, get the KFC and a six pack delivered... but they failed

How old is your tank? I had problems with bubble algae for a long time till my tank fully matured and I got my nutrients very low. From memory my tank was a couple of years old.

I'm diagnosed dyslexic, and had no issues reading it. If anything I think it would be easier to read for Dyslexic's, we are used to what we see not matching whats in our heads lol. With regards text speak as short hand I don't really have an issue, what does wind me up is using incorrect words just for the sake of it, like juss, anyfing, gurl.

You can get fine mesh stainless steel strainers that will stop fry going down.