suphew

1) secondhand rate seems to be around $50 at the moment. They come up here quite often, and there was someone selling them new, but I can't remember who. I search should be able to find it for you. 2) They do reduce flow, but not by half, through I guess it would be half if you were using a very small pump. When I used one a had an 1060 driving it, it had 1.5m head from my sump as well as the SCWD and it worked ok.

Plant shops often sell them, I have seen them at twiglands between Jvil and tawa

IMO filter is optional really, typically the fish loads in ponds id very low, and plant growth very high, due to the sun. I don't even do water changes in my pond, the rain takes care of that. In the hight of summer I might put the hose in for a while to top up the water and change a bit but thats all. If however you want cystal clear water and not many plants you might want to look at a UV filter and pond filter.

Feel like I have added a ton of the stuff now, but my Mg is up from 1020 to 1200ppm, another dose tonight should get me pretty close. I have been dosing MgCl instead of my usual kalk topup over night, I wasn't sure how much water I would need to mix it with and I could proberly have used a lot less. Once I get the Mg where I want it, I'm going to have to wait a couple of days for my params to stablise since theres been no kalk going in. No signs of diatoms or algae yet (well no more than I had already!)

I have a yellow banded shrimp, it is still quite small and my tank 1700 long but it has never cause any problems for my other shrimp or fish. Pies has two very large banded shrimp, I'm pretty sure hes never had problems.

There must be a building standard for how this should be done. Your local councial should be able to tell you.

There must be a building standard for how this should be done. Your local councial should be able to tell you.

NSW 10-15% depends on weather, usually 2-4 weeks between

Yeah am planning to keep a close eye on it, Pies is wanting to use it as well, but is using my tank as a test lol. I'm hoping the worst that can happen is an algae outbreak, it can't be too unsafe or they wouyldn't be able to feed it to the cows. BTW its used to treat 'grass staggers' I reackon they should just stop drinking so much.

Instead what about using pumice in the mix. I know they use this for the light weight fake stone cladding on houses.

I have seen this critter a couple of times, looks like a nudi, found it crawling over the glass late one night. And with my finger to give you an idea of size Anenome shrimp, very difficult to get a shot of, normally only comes out late at night, I was lucky to see his hidding spot during the day. A couple of growth pic's, I'm not sure of the time frame but will be 2-3 months. Couple of shots from on top with the pumps off. Random coral picture And the same coral a couple of months ago, you can see the colour difference and growth, its possible I didn't have all my halids on for this shot.

Came from Farmlands in carterton, yep sold lots of useful stuff.... if your a farmer :lol: They can also order in foodgrade cal cl at about $30 for 25kg bag but don't normally stock it, and it depends if any of there shops have any, to get if from the supplier they have to order it by the ton, and they didn't seem that keen

Yeah would also be interested to know what else is in it, the bag says it is 98% mag cl but nothing about the other 2%, reading online they talk about the extra % being water, so I hope this is what it mostly is.

Got a 25kg bag of Mag cl today for $12, food grade not lab, dosed about a kg over 2-3 hours, will do test and then dose again tomorrow, then in a couple of days test my Ca and see whats happening. I also lowered the bubble rate in my reactor, my Kh was just getting too high.

You can get 12volt pumps for ponds this would be a far safer and maybe cheaper option, plant shops usually have them. I saw some plans for a 'spider' filter for a pond, basically it was a bunch of pvc pipes connected together in a star shape, all with lots of holes drilled, pump sucks out the centre of the star, the pvc is covered with gravel. The idea is that it works the same as an under gravel fiilter like you would have in a fish tank. This gives you a huge biofilter.

The cheapest option is a deep sand bed (DSB) all you have to buy is the coral sand and dump it in, but have a bit of a read up before you do it, there are a few thing you need to know and it needs to be setup right, i.e. has to be deep enough, about the right size sand etc. You will still need a protein skimmer, there isn't really anyway around this unless you have no fish :lol: or want to do very large regular water changes.

You need to do water changes regardless of testing, most people normally try and do 20% each week. Once you are past the cyce stage your water parameters should stay much the same, and you would only need to test if you see a problem, for example have an algae outbreak. And even then the answer to 99% of water problems is to do more bigger water changes. My advise to you would be to do a 20-30% water change asap cause you will be starting to get water issues by adding that many fish so soon, and even if you aren't it wont do any harm. Then take a water sample to your LFS and see if they will test it for you, they usually will but charge a dollar or two, still heaps cheaper than buying the kits yourself. If you do decide to buy one just get a nitrate one, this measures the end product of the nitrogen cycle and is the chemical that you do the water changes to remove.

You need to decide what you are trying to do, in pure terms a refugium is for growing pods etc away from where the fish can get at them, in which case all you need is some cover for them, maybe a little bit of sand and/or live rock. If your actually trying to control nutirants there are other (better) ways, a decent skimmer, DSB, Zeovit, etc

You dont need to use either for it to fuction as a refugium. But if your wanting to get nutirant export this way macroalgae is the way to go. Mangroves just grow to slowly and cause to many problems with light requirements etc. However there are a lots of problems using algae for nutirant export, not least of which is it getting out of control in your refugium and also getting into your display.

an interesting link http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/oct2003/chem.htm Sounds like Mg is my problem.

lol true, I forget poeple aren't running 7000+lph through there overflows like I do.

Yeah drifty that want I'm trying to confirm. Has anyone used epson salts to raise their Mg? If so was it easy to get, expensive etc?? According to the calculater I'm looking at 2071 grams(!) to move my Mg from 1020 to 1300

I don't know how confident I would be running a setup like that, you would wont to make sure you used really big pipe so you didn't get any back pressure and have a one way valve on the syphon hole so if the water did backup it wont flow out the hole. You could look at either removing the over flow so you can get access to put in a stand pipe, if could do this without having to empty that tank. You empty the over flow, replace the bulkhead (if you need to), cut out the overflow, put in the plumbing, glue back the over flow. Silicon will set under water and I have used wet silicon in my tanks many times without affecting the fish. You could also change the overflow to either be bigger to have a removable comb on top to you can access it in the future. The other option would be to drill the back of the tank in the over flow at the level you want and run your drain pipe from there instead of the bottom.

I pretty much understand that, but I have read online that if your Mg is low it pulls your Ca down, or vie-versa so my main question really is if I correct one will the other come into line. My problem is getting the chemicals down here, the only place I have found that can do them has to order them in, will only do 25kg bags and I have talked to their supplier and they can't/wont tell me how pure etc they are.

I have been having some problems getting my levels of the above right. I wasn't too worried about because my cal reator was a bit small for my tank, and then I replaced it with a koralin so was expecting it to take a while to settle down. New reactor has been running for 1-1.5 months now. When I first put the reactor in my levels were Ca 320, KH 7, Mg 1020, it was stable at these levels for a couple of weeks (and at these levels with the old reactor) so I cranked up the bubble and output rates. I adjust both so the output remains at a PH of round 6.2 (pinpoint). Now the reactor is working a bit harder my levels are Ca 370, Kh 11.5, Mg 1020. I also run about 5-10% Mg chips in my reactor. What I want to know is how do I get them into ballance, is my Ca low because of my low Mg or the other way round? Will adjusting one correct the other? Is it possible my reactor isn't adjusted right? I can't see how it would be possible to adjust the reactor to output more calcium and not raise the KH further. And lastly rather than dosing Ca and/or Mg is there anyway to lower just the Kh? I could then just bump up the reactor output. All tests done using salifert, Ca was tested using two different test kits, PH is 8.3 pinpoint during the evening. Haven't checked salinity for a couple of weeks but its pretty stable on 1.025, all other param are 0 (No3, Po4 etc)