suphew

I used to heat the tubing up with hot water to make it bend easier, with the fluval also used to cable tie the bends on so they didn't pop off later on.

Both Pies and I have both

Yes raising it will loose light, but you are losing a ton of light by having the those lids on. I have no lids on my tank, and you will find that most (marine) users of Mh lights dont have lids either. The other problem you might find is that the water temp will get very high as well, removing the lids allows water to evaparate and will add a lot of cooling to the water.

Most of the corals in there are soft corals (they actually came from my tank, I gave them to Tammy). They should be okay but will sulk, if they start to rot/break apart then take them out they wil pollute your tank. The rock in there is cycled, the the tank has been through a few hands and been setup for a while so it shouldn't take too long to come right. Doing some water changes is a good idea, if your using ASW make sure you make it up at least a day before you use it.

It will just be die off from the live rock, how long has it been setup??

http://www.netpets.com/fish/reference/reefref/

The blue coloured tubes arn't a kevin rating they are called arctinic (sp?) blue tubes

Does anyone know if butterfly fish will eat bristleworms? (just hoping on the off chance!)

Ditto what Caryl said. If you dont want to add a fish yet, just put in a pinch of fish food each day. But to be honest,, in a tank that size you could put in a few fish now and they would be fine.

What about little nippers?

How many watts is a 2 foot fluro? must be 18-20W times 4, your just about at the same power comsumption as a 150w Mh, but with 4 times fittings to buy and bulbs to replace. And remember a normal house bulb is 75-100w so your Mh would be no worse than leaving a couple of lights on for 8 hours a day.

Steve is good, I'm sure he will sort you out. BTW the lower K bulbs should be really easy to get, your local lighting shop should have them, its the about same kevin range as they use in offices etc so they are common as. But if you do get stuck I'll happily get one for you and do a swap, I know the shop down the road from me has them

No you need a valve before the reg otherwise you can't fill it. Doh ;-)

No the cyclinder needed to be re-certified because it had expried, hence it was at the metal recyclers. It has to be a CO2 fire extinguisher, you can't convert other types to hold CO2. Also even if you left the handle thing on top you would need to take it to shop, because if you look closely you can see that the pin is still in and the handle isn't depressed, therefore it must have had the valve removed from inside. Also you would need to have a fitting attached to to the output to attach the regulator to. My one has had the whole handle part removed and a normal valve attached. I just checked the invoice which is still attached to the bottle, valve was $100, cert was $20 and fill was $25. The only problem I came across was finding a certifier that would do it, the guy at wards in the hutt wouldn't do it and told me it couldn't be done, and that my only option was to buy one of his $300 cylinders. Haha, and he was grumpy. The guy in Porirua was good as gold and had it done the next day. He also sold me a regulator at really good price.

My Co2 bottle is an old fire extinguisher. I picked it up from a metal recycler, got it tested and a value added, from memory all up it cost me $150 or so filled. The tester suggested using the steel type (if you can get one) rather than the ally one's but just because they are less likely to fail the test.

They wont be any harm to the fish, but other than helping the surface move a little bit they don't help in the tank at all. Only there for looks.

Dead base rock will turn into live rock given time (months). By mixinig dead and live you speed up the process. There are also alot of interesting critters you will add to the tank using some live rock, worms, pods etc.

The problem is that the light will be so bright the rest of the tank will look very dim compared, you will have the same problem with a 150w. The only way round this is to lift the light up high enough to light the whole tank but then you lose the intensity because the light would have to be 2-3 feet above the water

More is better. The important factor here isn't how many liters you tank is but how deep, at 600mm I would advise going with the 250w, also you want to have a light about every 2 feet, so you need a couple of them.

I most have sucked sand out of mine 4-5 times now and still have some under rocks etc. I have been amazed how much crap ends up on the bottom that used to end up in the sand. But I would still have sand if could, once my tank matures I might add it back in

do you know what model it is? The most common is a T1000 they retail for round $600 new I think.

They will find their own balance after a while, and will help keep the algae down in the tank. you can get some products that kil them, but don't know how well they work. if you do decide to use one, keep and eye on the tank all those snails dieing at once could cause problems.

If you do decide to use a cannister filter (with carbon/resin) don't what ever you do plumb it in as you have drawn. The first problem you will have is that they are built to work like a closed loop, i.e. the intake and output at the same water level. your design has added a large amount of head to the pump so it more than likely wont work, second problem is that if you do manage to get it to pump, when the power cuts out it will syphon all the water out of your tank

When I had a planted tank I used aquadic clay that I got from a plant shop (Dyltons I think was the brand). I mixed it with a bit of gravel then put a couple of inches of gravel over top of it to hold it down. I never had to dose any other fertilisers and in the end removed the CO2 as well. I was pulling out a bucket of plants each week. Tank ran for two years with no problems, other than a short period of green water when I first set it up. Also had 4x4foot T8 fluro's on tank, and 2xfluval 204 filters

I use a couple of blue 3 foot T5 tubes on my tank, I've been able to get some from reef, but the last lot I imported from Singapore. If your Mh is looing yellow, you could try going to a higher kelvin rating. People generally use 10k or 14k but you can go to a 20k which is very blue/chrisp looking. The down size to going to higher kelvin bulbs is you get less light as you go up which is why 10/14k combined with blue fluro's is so common.