suphew

Yep. It's not as a big a deal in fresh water tanks since there isn't the life like good algaes, sponges, worms, copepods etc that you get with salt water, but it wont hurt and IMO a good idea to start doing your husbandy (water changes etc) now as you plan to go on.

Bit confused as to how long you have been cycling so far?? Is it 10 days plus the 9, 19 in total, if so you should start to see it dropping soon. Water changes will help to, it's a myth that water changes shouldn't be done during cycling, most bacteria live on the rocks and substrate and the high nitrite/nitrate levels in the water will kill off any stuff you have living on the sand and rock. If you have access to rock pools I'd also recommend collecting some glass shrimp and adding them in, they will cycle far better than manually adding ammonia and will also help clean up the algae which will but starting to show up soon.

The down side to doing it here, evening classes poor visability cold water takes a lot longer you still have to pay for your diving when you get there which cost about the same anyway learning boyancy control is harder in coldwater weather is a bigger factor from what I have seen the classes are a lot larger and lets be honest, as nice as diving round New Zealand is, it doesn't compare to reef diving The standards are the same, you work your way through a book so there isn't really anyway to avoid doing the hard work.

From memory it cost $500 to do the course, but it was 6-7 years ago. There were 3 people that started it and one dropped out when it came to actually getting her feet wet. I priced up doing it here before I went and I'm pretty sure the cost was about the same, only the water is far warmer :lol: They do a pool dive, then some harbour dives, then open water. The harbour was a bit murky when we went out so we ended up doing only two closed water (pool and harbour) and the rest outside the reef.

Yeah just the open water. Ended up getting a couple of extra dives free as well, and they took us for a bit of a tiki tour in the boat. I didn't go to any of the other islands, they are expensive to get to. One of my mates that I was traveling with is a native and had cousins on Atitarki (sp?) so we looked at heading out there but was just too much.

Get your Raro drivers licence and hire a couple of bikes. It takes about an hour for a slow ride right round, head in land as well and you will get to see how the people actually live. I did my divers cert there, at the Rarotongan dive centre. It was run by an English couple, really nice, and aways gave a bit extra.

You're far better off addressing the cause of the algae, UV is just a bandaid.

If your filter is without power for more than a few hours disconnect it and give it a good rinse out before the power comes back on. The lack of oxygenated water flow over it will kill the bacteria and when the power comes back on it will blow nasty water into your tank. Its not as big a problem with internal filters because he oxygenated water will still move around to a small degree without the power on.

There are two curing types of silicone, for the life of me I can't remember the names of them and I know I should. The one you want is the one with the really strong smell, a quick search in this forum should tell you what it's called the question it has been asked before.

I also like 2 strokes but mainly cause I have a number of chain saws and trimmers, having two types of petrol is a pain. Trying to get a 2 stroke mower is not easy nowadays

Unless you have some special switch it doesn't make any differnence where you turn them off. I suspect that the microscope had a fan or something that cooled the light, turning it off at the wall would also turn off the fan letting the bulb overheat. Projectors have a similar system.

The warehouse sells cheap mowers with B&S motors, they sometimes have $100 off which brings them down to about $350. The rest of them is pretty tinny but the motors are good. Another place to look is auction rooms, I always buy my mowers secondhand, typically they are from estate sales and work fine.

Dad still has the undergravel and air powered sponge filters he started using before I was born, been 40+ years now. Modern powered filters use the same filtering concepts that have been used for decades.

You are correct, but the key word is "sometimes" there were no or few standards when older houses were build and often the people building them had no idea about structural engineering. Modern houses have to comply with weight ratings for the floors so you can be pretty certain what a floor will safely hold.

The supporting beam running from end to end of the house well be a main beam and will sit on the piles, if your close to this it will be fine.

In that case a google on 'trickle filters' should give you plently of results, have a look at wet/dry filters as well.

The mechanical filter stops the gunk getting onto the noodles etc, the pores on noodles and other splintered type media's get blocked very easily causing them to loose effectiveness quickly. If you could stop all the solids getting into your biological filter it would never need cleaning. So in a nut shell the mechanic filter actually saves you from having to clean your filter so often.

That isn't much weight spread over quite a length, IMO there's no need to reinforce your floor unless you have very old dodgy floors or your putting the tank in the middle of a room and there are no piles under it. My house is round 150 years old, my biggest tank 800+ liters and only ~1700 long. It has been fine for a number of years now.

Fresh or salt water? How you set it up really depends on what you what out of it. Is it just a big filter, somewhere to put equipment so the ugly bits are out of your tank, refugium, somewhere to propagate plants, raise fry, all of the above??? etc etc

Your correct it is Aluminium oxide, the reddish type you can also get is iron oxide. But before spending more money or building anything, have you tested your tap water? If it's not too high why not just increase your water changes. This will also dilute any other compounds that might also be attributing to your algae like nitrates. Almost all plants use their roots as their primary nutrient gathering source. The advantage of Indian fern is that it grows happily with it's roots in the water column rather than needing to be in the substrate. It is also very fast growing and easy to propagate so you can harvest it regularly and actually export the phosphate etc from the tank rather than just binding it in the plant.

Do a search on "weir's" it can be done, and you can actually buy pre-made weirs. But when all is said and done, they will never be as reliable as a drilled tank and can be pretty limited in the amount of flow they can handle

There is no such thing as UV blocking glass (will not in this context) what you are looking for is just plain old toughened glass, any glassier or glass shop can supply it.

If your not planning on a heavily planted tank you could go for an under gravel filter, air powered can be okay, but for a few extra dollars you can get power head driven UGF's which work better and don't have that air pump hum.

Might be the high winds, I was driving a 9 ton truck today and it was getting blown round!

You don't have to atttend a meeting to join, if you contact the treasurer (usually) of the club they will send you a membership form. There were 6 at the KMAC meeting last night