suphew

Use an oil based paint for the glass, anything in a spray can is fine. The trick is to get the glass very clean before painting, isopropyl (tape deck head cleaner) is good for this if you get your hands on some

I'm guessing not yet. :lol:

I have at least two that aren't on your list :lol: Is Taxifolia actually illegal in NZ? It's generally illegal in most places but so are lots of others, all of the ones you list above are illegal in California

Don't think you will be able to get any illegal one's. The banned one the gets all the media exposure is taxifolia which has a feathery look to it

The answer to all your questions is yes, other then being able to keep an anemone which are at least as hard to keep as corals, requiring high water quality, lots of light etc etc. Regarding the type of Caulerpa, your better to have a mix of types you like and not have too large an amount of one type

The answer depends on lots of variables. On a good floor in the corner of a room, 500-600 liters should be fine, in a dodgy old Wellington house.......

properly worked because she was over feeding, reducing your feeding or increasing the number or size of your water changes should help too

If you google kevlin colour chart you'll gave a bunch of listings that show hwat the lok like, here is a link to one http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/colour/colour-temperature.html And a detailed explaination of colour temperature from a reefing web site http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-05/sj/index.php

An in sump skimmer must sit in the water (doesn't really have to be in your sump but would look pretty ugly in your tank!) A hang on the back skimmer (HOB), does just what it says, can also be on display or sump. An external skimmer, can be in or out of water, but must have water fed to it either via a pump or gravity from your display tank, so would normally be either in or next to your sump. But there's no reason you can't pump the water out of your display tank to the skimmer. All skimmer's must have the output free flowing out, so the output has to be higher than water level of where ever your feeding it back into.

Yep it would be, the higher the kelvin the whiter, crisper the light.

How long is a piece of string, I've sold second hand skimmers for $100 and saw one advertised the other day with an RRP of $20,000. You should be able to sort out a low end skimmer for about he same price as a good canister filter, a few hundred $

By the time you buy a pump and pay for plumbing bits, you won't save much. It's also very difficult to DIY skimmers that aren't in a sump. You can make simple air stone powered skimmers but you need a large air pump and performance is pretty poor.

This is likely the cause of the problem. When water evaporates, only pure water evaporates leaving behind any nutrients , heavy metals etc etc, you then add more water with phosphate, nitrate etc, which in turn evaporates leaving behind more. In a nut shell the evaporating water is purer that the water your adding so the 'bad stuff' is slowly building up. This is the reason Marine fish keepers use RO/DI (very pure) water to top up the evaporation from their tanks. You have a few options to fix the problem:- Use cleaner topup water, which might be too soft for your fish, plus will cost $$$ Large water changes, Chemical removal, phosphate resin etc Accept the high levels and use plant to out compete the algae, plants need 3 things, nutrients (which you have), light, and CO2. You could increase your light which should make the plants grow. If the extra light doesn't help then you might be CO2 limited. Wow almost reads like lots of conflicting advise but if you read between the lines we are all saying the same thing, that you need to get the tank into balance, light, co2, and nutrients

Our chain loaches charge around quite a bit, we have a small school of them and come feeding time the water just about foams.

There is no way of knowing how long it will last with out knowing how dirty the water is that it is cleaning, but you should get thousands of liters out it it. There is no "usually", just the more stages the better the filtering and the longer it will last. Mine is a 4 stage, pre, carbon, DI, and RO. I have seen as many as 6 stages.

Its a carbon block filter and DI resin, pretty standard kit for a marines tank. Both your carbon fither and your resin need replacing for it to be any use. The carbon block filter should look clean, spotless even. The DI resin is blue when fresh and goes yellow/gold when exhausted. Neither are that expensive to replace (in marine terms anyway) prestons (?) in Auckalnd sell resin for about $20 a liter, the carbon block filter you can get from bunnings etc for round $30 from memory. Here is a link with some more information about what DI resin does. The carbon filter is the same as carbon in your tank. Normally you would have at least one pre filter, to filter fine particals before the carbon filter which would be why yours looks so dirty. No harm not having it, it just means the other filter parts don't last as long.

You might be able to keep sea grass with metal halides but most sea weeds need too much light to be practically kept.

Click on "X new messages" at the top of the screen, once you are in your inbox, in the left side there is a thing called "compose message" this will give you a blank PM

I have had to replace my sump which took a couple of days. Changed drain plumbing below tap a number of times (which I could have done with out the tap off, but would rather not have water dribbling over me while working under a cabinet). Also when I work on equipment in the sump it's often easier to have a low water level so turn off the tap and pump as much water as possible into the display. Remembering I have a salt water tank to draining and replacing a couple of hundred liters isn't a simple task. The other benifit of a tap is they double up as a union which is very handy on any plumbing bit and cost about the same as a union.

This depends on a lot of factors. How low the outlet is, my display level drops by a couple of inches when I don't have the sump running which is about 100 liters less water and this tank is 1/2 again longer than mine! . How long the sump is out of action, low water for a couple of days might be fine, a month and it might be get annoying. How low the surround on the top goes. Having a tap also lets you pump extra water up into the display from the sump, that extra inch or two in the display can make all the difference it being able to do some tasks in the sump without needing to drain lots of water. In all the years I have been running sumps, I have only needed to use that tap 1/2 dozen times, but every time I had to use its been worth 10 times what the $30 tap cost me.

Sorry I can see how you ment the sentance now, but it is unclear and can be read both ways.

Leave the tap there, if you ever want to run the display tank with out the sump you are going to need it, or you will have to lower the water level in the display to below the drain inlet. What the point in this?? Just get the correct sized pump to start with. Would you buy a falcon then fill the boot with concrete cause you only needed the power of a corolla?

Your flow into the sump doesn't need to be below the water level (by much anyway) it won't make any difference to the noise and the back pressure caused by this might make the water level in the tank slowly increase. Using an over sized pump is a waste, and will increase problems. A waste because it will cost you more for the pump, more for the power, more for the plumbing, and you don't gain anything. Problems, all other things being equal the bigger the pump the more noise and heat. Also have you looked into the flow curves for pumps. Pumps usually have 4 ratings you need to be interested in, 1) flow rate, this is a zero head, i.e. nothing connected to the pump 2) Head height, this is the MAXIMUM height the pump will pump to. But doesn't include plumbing, taps, etc etc, so a pump rated at 3 meters head, by the time you add some plumbing might only pump to 2 meters, and this is the maximum so you wont actually get much if any water flow at this height. 3) Watt's, this give you an idea how efficient the pump is, which also relates to how much noise and heat it will give off. 4) flow curve, this is curve that shows you how much water it will pump at a given head height. To use this you need to work out what you head height is, there are calculators on the net just google it. One of the great things about sumps is you can have a trickle or wet/dry filter area, this is how you should be using you bio ball's, they will work many times better. Have you allowed for what happens if the power goes off and the pump stops working? Your drawing doesn't look like it allows for enough room to hold the water that will back syphon from your display tank, you also need to look at how you set up return into the tank and your drain from the tank to minimise the back syphon.

I changed my bulbs a month or so ago, thought it is interesting to see the difference between the new bulb (2-3 days running) on the left, it's a BLV 14000k. The bulb on the right is an old (12+ months) Narva 14000k They are different bulbs, both good quality, but it pretty clearly shows why bulbs need replacing regularly.

You need to decide what the fish is there for. Looks? To clean sand? To clean glass?