suphew

A UV filter will fix the green water, but you should really find out what is causing it, for the green water (algae) to be there, there must be food for it in the water. It could be that that your water tank needs cleaning, or your filter, or you need to do more water changes. Basically there needs to be a balance in your tank, nutriants/light/C02 most common problem is dirty water ie to high nutriants, sometime if a tank is in a sunny spot too much light, about the only ways I have heard of too much c02 is from running a gas heater and increasing the c02 level in the room (and I'm not convinced this is true). I had a green water problem for a couple of months this was from loading up my substrate with fertiliser for my plants and it leaching out into the water, I had a pretty good idea at the time that this was going to happen when I set the tank up and just had to put up with it till the plant growth caught up.

If your planning on going full marine with corals at some stage in your setup then you don't want to run bio-filters, they create nitrates which will kill the corals. Also running bio-filters now then trying to remove them later can cause problems.

TM is ok if you know what you are looking at, and the size/shape doesn't matter too much, but to be honest once you start looking at setups with skimmers, sumps, lots of plumbing, pumps, drilling holes, etc, the cost of the tank is a pretty minor cost. For me the option of having a new tank made to just what I want is better. It seems to be that the going rate is $1=liter or less at the moment.

Wellington airport?

Thanks for posting Dave, that web cam is great! BTW you have an extra "." on the end of the URL

Usless you have done some thing like stir up your gravel then it is likely an algae or bacterial bloom, you need to find out what is feeding the bloom. But doing some extra water changes will be a good start. It's not normal for this to happen so there will be a reason. Some more details would help as well, tank size, number/type of fish, how much you feed, water parameters,

PM him and PM me to arrange a time, we only live 5 minutes from each other

Hi Steve, there are a few of use here. My tank is round 800l, but theres a couple locally that make mine look small! Pies has a setup for sale at the moment from one of the local reefers that had commitments oversea which might suit you, it comes with most of the stuff you would need to get started, rock, test kits, skimmer, return pumps etc. Most of us are pretty happy to meet other reefer and show off our tanks! Other than Ira we are mostly round the Jvill, Churtonpark, Tawa area

I use a up7 as well, and my down pipe uses a 40mm bulkhead. I think this might be a little large because until I put some bends and extra plumbing on my down pipe I had problems getting my durso to work. I guess its a little late to tell you this now, but I always work on the idea that it is better to have the plumbing to large and use reducers (as I have done with my closed loops which are 32mm) than to use too small plumbing and not have options.

Perspex is expensive and will scratch easier, but on the plus side it is far clearer than glass

Sounds like a pretty high fish load to me already, but I guess it depends on your skimmer etc. You say in your other post that your having problems that you think are related to your sand bed, maybe the problem is your bio load is getting too high.

Think you should get some advise before cleaning it, by stiring it up vacuuming etc you might release more than just leaving alone. The suggestion I would make is to suck parts of the sand bed out with each water change and replace the sand, or possibly suck it out and clean it out of the tank.

I just use a timer for mine, think its set to 5x15 minute periods at the moment, once things warm up I'll just add another 15 minutes. When I do my weekly skimer clean etc I check the level an add a few liters if I need to. Simple and cheap way to do it IMO

most likely an algae bloom, its not uncommon, how long has the tank been setup, how many fish, what are your water parameters.

Maybe there were snail eggs on the older leaves, they might still be small and not moved far. This would explain why you haven't seen them yet and why it is only those leaves. When the emersed leaves die off they usually go yellow all over and fall or rot off, they dont usually get clean holes like that.

Do you have any drift wood in there? Plec's need it to chew on

I really liked it, but the queue to get in was nasty. The coral was a bit lacking but otherwise really good.

Is that a snail on the rock at the front of the picture?? They look alot like snails holes to me, being in the middle of the leaves and spread out. New plants often lose all their leaves and the new submerged ones grow back a different shape. The easiest way to guess if they have been grown emersed is the lack of any algae on the leaves and how hard the leaves feel. Submersed leaves will be far softer

The t1000 can be run in sump, I am. Agree with Reef the return pump is too small to drive all those outlets, plus you wont have any randomness. Why not go with 1 over flow (it is all you need) and use the space at the other end to drop in some pumps. Another option would be to drill some more holes and put in some closed loops. What size is the tank? You need 20+ times turn over so I'm guessing that pumps wouldn't be enough by itself anyway

Get in line, reckon us salties should get first dibs

If you are going to use them in marine then you definately can't use the copper/brass fittings. All inverts are very sensitive to copper and it will kill them quick smart. Also the PH in a marine tank will make them break down faster then normal fresh water. Have read/heard stories of people dropping brass screws and copper wire into their tanks by accident and killing everything, don't know if this is true but there is no way I would risk it.

Plastic should be cheaper too. The water that is going through the copper plumbing in your house (if you even have much of it besides your taps) isn't in contact with it for very long, where as depending on where you are using it in your tank it could be in contact for long periods, giving it time to leach.

As what JoandWilly said, but wanted to stress a couple of points 1) using meds to treat might work in the short term but you need to find the cause otherwise it will just keep coming back, plus using those meds will often cause other far bigger problems like killing all the bacteria in your filter. 2) Algae problems are always caused by a balance issue, light vs nutirants vs C02. Often the only way to work out what the problem is, is to adjust things and see what works. As others have said a common problem is sunlight on the tank but just as common is not enough light, which causes the plants growth to slow down which in turn means less uptake of nutirants by plants, feeding the algae. By far the easiest way to start addressing algae issues is to do the easy stuff and see what happens, reduce your feeding, increase water changes, and generally make sure your house keeping is on the ball. (gravel vac, filter cleaning etc etc). IT might take a few weeks till you see improvements but just hold in there.

I use teflon tape on all my treaded joints. The only other option I know of is hemp, and thats too, messy and expensive, the plus side is being able to smoke the left overs.

If possible you should try and keep all the water, unless you have salt ready to make up new water you willbe stuck, the weather has been far to bad to collect natural sea water. The rock doesn't need to be underwater when you move it, just so long as it stays damp. You might want to give the sand a good clean while you have the chance but have a good look at the sand before you pull the tank down, (or talk to the owner) if there is stuff living in it (i.e. it is live) then either take a few cup fulls out then clean the rest or just leave it all. If you do leave it make sure you dont stir it up when you move the tank, there will be lots of nasty stuff under the top layer. Treat the fish just like you would moving a fresh water fish. I have plenty of buckets to hold that much water, which you could have borrowed but sorry am away this weekend in Akl. Good to have another salty in Wlg, I'm sure we will catch up sooner or later.