suphew

But this only holds true if the skimmer is already working at maximum capacity, either in the amount of water it can process or the concentration of waste it can remove. If you have a skimmer able to handle 1000l but is in a 500l system, increasing the volume to 600l is not going suddenly give you a nutirant build up, it just means the skimmer is going to be running at 60% capacity instead of 50%. The amount of waste the skimmer pulls out is proportional to the volume of waste in the system, not the concentration. The concentration might affect the efficiency, but this only matters when your talking about extremes

If the skimmer is running at 50% capacity (because it is over rated for the tank) to remove 100% of the waste, and you then increase the load by 5% the skimmer is going to run at 55% to remove 100% of the waste with the new load, there is only a nutirant build up if the skimmer was running at 100% capacity to start with. Actually the 55% prob isn't quite right due to some complicated mathematics, the law of diminishing returns, and FBT tax, but you get the idea.

I'm not sure if you would call it running "Zeovit" but I use zeolite stones in my cannister filter (tunze product from reef). I found them excellent, the water became far clearer. I removed them for a couple of days and noticed the water lost it's clearness quickly but came back within a couple of days of turning it back on. I have never had measurable no2/no3 so don't know if it helps with this (this is the funtion it is suppost to perform). Product is cheap, from memory around $30 for my 800l tank

So go for that rank muddy road side ditch look, lol. But joking aside the biggest healthiest eel's I've even seen was watching a farmer clear out his drainage ditches, the water prob sat at 25-30 degrees most of summer and was full cow muck and slime. How about either getting a tall tank and/or running the water level at half full? This would help to stop it from being able to get out and let you glow plants out of the water so you wont have as many problems balancing low light for the eel and enough light so you can grow decent plants.

The assumption that Layton is making is that the skimmer is working at 100% therefore the added load (volume or bio) doesn't get removed. This is complete crap, just about all of us have skimmers that are rated for far more water than our tank sizes. The added load (if there is even any, which I'm not sure there even is) would just mean ours skimmers are working at say 60% instead of 55%.

20l jerry can's seem to be the best, the 25l ones are just a bit too heavy.

you can cut a coke bottle in half and push the top half upside down into the bottom making a fish trap. Put some gravel in to weight it down and food of course. Leave it over night as they tend to come out more in the dark. The other method I have used is to leave the net in the tank as you will know as soon as you start trying to catch them they disappear, if you put in the net and walk away for 5 minutes then slowly go back to the tank and very slowly move the net to trap them they dont panic and hide. If possible you should try not to move the baby B/N's until they are about 1-1.5cm long they don't transfer well when smaller than this so often end up dieing

Opening a big can of ugly here, suggest the mods delete this post now before it gets out of hand.....again. :lol:

I have live rock in my sump wth a ton of live on it, does this count?? no sand or micro algae.

Water doesn't really contain many bacteria compared to surfaces in the tank (gravel, filter meda etc) It wont hurt to add the water but it wont help the cycle very much if at all, sorry. You would be far beter to take a few cups fulls of gravel and grunk from a setup tank and dump it in the new one. Or even better run the new filter in the old tank for a couple of weeks.

You wont see nitrites if your not adding something to the tank (either via fish or by manually adding some form of food) to feed the bacteria. How long has the tank been setup? If it has been less than a couple of weeks I wouldn't consider adding any thing other than 1 or 2 hardy fish to feed the cycle. If you have a mature filter running on the tank you might have completely missed the cycle?

Wherein wlg ae you? theres bound to be someone near by that can look in on them. But they will be fine for at least a week without being fed.

Running a pump inline can be a problem to prime unless you drill the tank and if you lose power you somehow have to get it started again. Pump in tank will add heat which may or may not be a problem, maintainance can be a little higher cause the pump will get covered in crap. On the plus side they are usually quieter in the tank, and far easier to setup (eg no drilling, priming issues)

I'm glad this came up, I've had a cyno problem for a while now, checked my reactor CO2 feed and found I had a leak. Fingers crossed my problem will go away now. Had tried vodka, extra flow, have just started biodigest, was running out of options!

The soft water is good, just leave it alone. As for the PO4 to control it you need to work out where it is coming from, my guess would be that you are feeding frozen food to your discus, this is one of the problems with discus and why owners do such large water changes. I used to do about 50% weekly as well as running two fluval 204 filters on my 4 foot tank, breeders will often do 50% every day or two because they feed heavily to get fish in condishion. Also brown algae can indicate lack of light (as well as the nutriants to feed the algae). Adding some more light will help the higher plants grow and use up some of the nutriants that the algae is currently using.

doing a road trip to wetpets in palmy north is your best bet if your looking for fish out of the ordinary.

I used to keep my goldfish in an old concrete wash tub, also knew a breeder years ago that that used them as well. biggest problem was moving that damn things they are so heavy. oh and plugging the drain holes.

Not sure I agree, even adding up all my lights pumps etc I don't get close to 2kw, my jug uses the same, and most heaters are atleast that much, HW I tested a while ago and I seem to remember it was 1.5kw but could be wrong. Of course the tank is drawing power for a long period during the day, but how many people are there that have 1 or 2 heaters going all evening.

Don't know if this is true or not but I would be supprised if my pond ever got that warm and they breed fine, what they do need to spawn is a dose of cold water, i.e. quick temp drop, this is because in their natural environment they breed when it rains.

My minnows winter over in my pond in Wlg so think they be okay in Akl. I know other down here also leave them out year round. they breed fine in my pond as well. A UV filter will keep you water clear. but I just have heaps of plants in mine and it okay most of the time. I have no pumps etc in there. And the only water change I do is when it rains.

They wont get sick from the temp dropping over night but just let the water heat up slowly, it is the fast changes that cause problems. However in saying that I used to ad 30-40% cold water to my discus tank and never had any problems. As far as heaters go, check out the temp controllers that Jetskisteve is selling in the commercial section, it's a big outlay to start with ($89) but will soon pay for itself in saved fish and heaters. I replace countlesss heaters because of the thermostat failure. I used to use fluval tronic heaters because they were the cheapest most reliable ones I found, but the problem I had with them in the end was that once the temp had been set for a while if you tried to adjust it the unit would stop working.

When I used a sodastream bottle it had a push valve thing on it, most regulators come with the pin thing that pushes this in when they are new but because most CO2 bottles have taps the little pin thing is normally removed. When I got my full sized bottle (with tap) the guy removed it for me but gave it to me incase I needed it. The joint should only be hand tight, if you are having to do it tighter it will be because your washer needs replacing, there are two types, one that must be replaced evey refill and one that costs a little more but will last a few refills if your carefull with it. BTW I'm no expert on this just relating what I was told by the guy that set up my system and does the refills testing etc.

do you have any sponges like on your pump inputs? filter wood, bio balls, cannister filters? etc

Cut right back on your feeding, just keep an eye on all the fish to make sure they don't start getting skinny. And start doing more water changes, if they hasn't been setup long you should try and aim for 20% or more a week, till it settles down. Caulerpa wont help much and unless you have a sump and can keep it seperate from your display you will never be able to get it out again.

If you have a diffuser you dont need to muck round with the extrnal filter, I just did this to save getting a difffuser. The diffuser you have goes into your tank. You dont HAVE to a bubble counter but unless you can see the bubbles going into the diffuser you will have no way of controlling (seeing) the amount of CO2 going in