suphew

I was running one on my marine tank, only removed it a couple of weeks ago to save my power bill. I plugged a power meter into it and it was drawing about 100w 24/7 just to run itself. It's an APC which is one of the better brands, I never tried it but going by the manufacturer spec it should have run my return pump and heaters for 10+ hours.

If you consider smacking to be a violent act then Alans statement is 100% correct. Most of the criminals in our jails are there for crimes of violence, teaching kids that smacking is a way to get someone to do what you want has been the NZ way for ever as has our increasing prison population. Putting some one in jail is also a violent thing to do to them, so they are just coming out with the idea that violence as a way to solve your problems further reinforced. It's time to considered that if something isn't working (like our prison system, and our young peoples behaviour) doing the same thing harder isn't the answer. Does any one really think that criminals really think about how many years they are going to get and weight it up before they give the wife a bash?

The nine million we just wasted on this pointless referendum would have got a lot of those kids shoes and a feed. As far as I know the only case that has been to court was the guy with his kid on a bike, riding onto the road? If you look into the whole story the Police visited the guy, and just warned him, he then went to the media and made a big deal out of it. So they looked a bit harder into it and after interviewing the neighbours they took him to court and he was found guilty of punching his kid in the face. With the way the law was it's likely he would have gotten away with 'smacking' his kid in the face because he could have pleaded reasonable force, if the police had even been called in the first place. If the guy is willing to do that to his son on a public street I wonder what goes on behind closed doors.

I think this belief is the is the reason the referendum even had a chance, and is a view propagated in the start by the media to make a story out of nothing and then pushed by a small but loud group, family first. Sue didn't pass a new law, Sue removed a ludicrous clause in a law that says, you are not allowed to use force or violence on your wife, or your neighbour, or someones else's child, or a rugby player, or anyone else, unless they happen to be your own child in which case you can go for it. Because of the sensationalising by the media the Police were given the option to prosecute at their discretion, so good parents who give their children a light smack aren't going to be prosecuted. But parents who are in court for smacking the bejesus out of their kids are no longer going to be able to use the defence of reasonable force as happened in the past. She removed a loop hole, she never promised she was going to fix all the woe's of the world.

But this is the core of the problem, have to seen the clip shown on TV a couple of times of a mother hitting her young girl on the bottom with an open hand?? She's holding her by the arm and whack whack whack the poor kid is being lifted of the ground shes hitting her so hard. IMO the problem in New Zealand is there is still this view that violence is okay so long as it happens against young kids or on a sports field. Listening to talk back last week over the rugby brawl in Auckland I couldn't believe the number of people that rang to saying things like "it's just young boys with passion getting the better of them on the field", what a load of rubbish, they are young lout's that have been taught by their parents that when some one's not doing what you want the answer is to hit them. I wonder if those same people are going to defend them when these louts wife's don't do what they are told. It seems that 80% of NZ are going to support them when their kids don't do what they want.

I for one voted yes. I was smacked as a kid, but well with-in reason. I can't remember a single time it actually happened. What I do remember is waiting for Dad to get home to give me my punishment, the actual punishment didn't mean a thing. What did it prove to me, smacking is useless as a punishment, if a parent needs smacking 'in their tool box' it just shows how poor a parent they are. Bob McCoskrie proved what a small minded, bigoted, hypocrite he was just a couple of days ago. After spend weeks interrupting other people to push his "you should have the choice line" he was asked about the gay couple's adopting issue. What a surprise, according to him they are sub class humans and not fit to choose to have children. I was raised in a strict christian home, I saw too many "good christian" parents beating the crap out of their kids with canes and rods to ever listen to one try and tell me you "need" to be able to smack you kids to bring them up right.

If you setup an overflow box you wont need to cover it. But if you did decide you needed to there are a few vent things that plumbing shops sell that will do the trick or as Jolliolli suggested an end cap with holes drilled. Whatever you do use, make sure the holes aren't too fine or you will risk algae etc blocking them.

Sounds like you have a pretty decent setup. I would just wait it out you seem to have the bases covered. You should also add your location into your profile.

Not sure what your point is? Slugs with toxins found in two locations doesn't explain anything, just looks like someone desperate to find reason to point a finger in a different direction.

My overflow bulkhead is 40mm, my stand pipe is 50mm. I little bigger than I need, but I'd rather it was too big than too small.

For most a couple of months with out a water change aren't an issue. Personally I wouldn't risk it. As you said the results so far are pretty vague. To me they make no sense, as far as I know slugs don't travel huge distances, so how do they explain the distance between affected locations. If it's not the slugs moving then obviously it must be the toxic algae that is all over the place. Yet they are saying it is safe to swim etc. I have also read that the toxic algae is unlikely to be want effected the fish, penguins, and dolphins, they seems to have gone very quite on the other deaths. I still like my DOC cover up conspiracy theory. There were eye witnesses of DOC dropping posion pellets into the sea as they were flying to one of the islands. It makes perfect and easy sense to me that as school of fish ate the pellets when they hit the water, the penguins and dophins ate the fish, and the dogs, could have eaten any of the above. :lol:

Actually just realised this isn't the saltwater forum, the surface skimming isn't as important for a fresh water tank, but an overflow box is still the way to go.

You need to build and overflow box, do a search and you will find plenty of information. More importantly than stopping fish going for a hydro slide, the overflow box takes water from the surface which is were the proteins tend to end up.

Hi Vicki. Try reducing your fresh food for a while and running some phosphate remover. But it's not unusual for a newly setup tank to go through a period of brown hair algae, your tank is a little late doing it but it's not that abnormal. Also what sort of skimmer do you have, what do you use for top up water, how often/much do you change water, what wattage and kelvin are the Mh lights. BTW turning the lights off wont really help, at most it might give you a very temporary respite but when you turn them back on iut will come back worse.

You could try the following attach a small mirror to the outside of the tank to distract the purple tang. rearrange the rock work in the tank so the territories change. borrow a fish trap or try a bit harder to catch the purple tang. Yellows and purples are of the same body shape and often will just never get on. Shape seems to be as, if not more important than colour with tangs. Purples also have a reputation for being mean. BTW how big is your tank? Tangs require a long swimming space to be happy, usually a minimum of 4 feet is recommended, the length also helps lower aggression since they can hang out at their own end of the tank.

Depends on the brand of your test, but usually with the drop in tests you would keep adding drops until the colour changed (to blue) the number of drop would be the Kh of your water. Although it is possible you have tap water with a very low Kh, if your supply is rain water then it will be low.

I knew I had forgotten something. You also need to put a oneway check valve on the CO2 line otherwise when the bottle runs out the tank water will drain back into your bottle.

In one of the pictures you can see a cross brace at the back. Looks good and strong to me.

Biggest problems I have found are 1) Getting a bubble counter, you need to know how much CO2 you are adding so you can adjust it. I made one out of a pill bottle, it had two tubes going into it one to the bottom , one just in the top, the bottle is filled with water so you can see the CO2 bubble as it comes out the lower tube and bubbles up going into your tank via the upper tube. Getting the bottle to seal properly is the biggest issue. 2) Getting a needle valve that give you fine enough control. It's worth investing a little money in a good needle valve, there is nothing worse than not having the fine control you need. 3) Diffusers are hard to find, expensive, and to be honest pretty ugly. The first one I made by winding some air tube round a cylinder with a hole in the bottom so as the CO2 bubble traveled up it draws in water, similar to how a air uplift filter works but on a very small scale. This worked, but ugly! In the end I just feed the CO2 into the input hose of my canister filter, worked a treat and completely dissolved by the time it goes through. 4) You need to watch the pH in the tank, planted tanks tend to have pretty soft water so the pH swings round a lot. 5) The plants can grow extremely fast, but you have to have a good rich substrate and strong lights, everything in balance or you will be growing algae rather than plants. That's about all I can think of off the top of my head, since you have access to most of the stuff you will need, I really encourage you to try it out. Literally being able to see how much plants have grown over the day is pretty cool, the only down side was having to pull out a bucket of plants each week!

Need to see the top, but I would say Majano. I have plenty if you would like some :lol:

If you get the sheet slightly bigger than the width of the tank our can bend them to jam them in place. If there is no water in the tank you could also silicon them in place, it wont hold well, but because the pressure will be equal on each side they would stay ion place. Another option is to get some glass strips cut and silicon these on each side of where you want the partitions, this would mean you could slide the partitions in and out.

This is a great idea and your plants will do well, when you consider how strong the light is in the plants natural environment I don't think you will be over doing it. Just so long as you also remember that you need to to balance the light with nutrients and CO2 Mirrors wont work, unless the glass in toughened the heat will break it. The need to fans will depend on the hood design, a lot of marine tanks use Mh lights but don't need fans to keep them cool. Remember that a Mh light will only produce the same heat as the same wattage of fluorescent lights, what makes it seem like so much more is that it concentrated in one spot instead of spread over the length of a tube. To be honest,if you need to ask this you shouldn't be doing the work. 240v and water don't mix, you need to know what you are doing. By far the cheapest and easiest way to run a fan is to buy a $10 mains one from the warehouse Wood is the only good option really. Plywood is probaly the best bet for strength, water resistance, and ease.

Just like LPG bottles your CO2 will have a date stamped on it, so long as this is hasn't expired they don't need to re-certify it. But it sound to me like they just didn't want your business, a cert in Wellington costs about $35 dollars and no charge if the bottle fails. They place that refills mine does CO2 fire extinguishers, maybe look for businesses that do this.

You might be better to approach the presidents directly, here is a link to all the clubs although I'm not sure how up to date the details are. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/index.php?PG=clubs There is also a National Marine club their website should have contact details for their president. http://www.nzmas.co.nz

Plants need a balance of three things to grow, light, nutrients (fertiliser), and carbon dioxide. Having one of the three out of balance will lead to algae problems. Light - as the kelvin (the K rating Phoenix talks about) get higher the light will look more blue or crisp and the PAR (amount of light the can plants use) drops. Personally I would recommend starting round the 6500 range (will have a code of 865, or be called 'daylight'), this is about as high as a standard office tube will go to, tubes from an electrical wholesaler should be under $10, so it's not expensive to try a few different ones. Nutrients - if at all possible you are far better to add fertilisers to the substrate. Most plants feed via their roots and only have limited uptake via their leaves. Fertiliser in the water is also available for algae to use. It will last for years in the substrate, where as in the water you will be removing it with every water change. CO2 - In normal situations there will be enough CO2 from the fish and getting into the water from the air. But DIY yeast CO2 systems are easy to setup and can make plants really take off.