suphew

Male B/N have bristles the females don't. Their babies look just like the parents so are black not white. It is normal for a pair to ignore each other. If they had laid one of them the male from memory, (haven't breed them for a year or so) will disappear and look after the eggs until they hatch.

Are you running MH at the moment? Anemones almost all need a lot of light, would pay to keep a close eye on the new one, if it was cheap it might be because it has had a hard time and lack of light wont help. If it dies and you don't see and remove it quickly it could cause big problems. Also they need really good clean water, and your parameters aren't that good yet. I know it is hard to resist but maybe you should do a bit more research, before you spend. I have a "phone a friend" policy now because I have done similar in the past. If I can't get the advise I need I go away a hit the net. $50 is only cheap if it lives. Do you know what type it is? If you do some one might be able to tell you if your water parameters and light are going to be a problem.

The bulkheads will be a lot safer if you put silicon on the same place as the seals. Put a bead of silicon round the center and as you tighten them it will works its way out giving you a 100% seal. You only need to do the nuts up hand tight if you do it this way. It's up to you if you leave the rubber gaskets in, I took mine out, couldn't see any point leaving them in, but others leave them in. The risk if you don't silicon them is that if you move the plumbing eg removing a pump, you might move the bullkhead by accident and break the seal. I have attached plumbing to my bulkheads using a pipe wrench with no problems with movement.

The silicon has discoloured which is a sign that it is very old and could indicate that it is starting to lift off the glass. Also there is no braceing on the top which means the sides could bow and break plus it will be a pain to put lids on with out something for them to sit on. If it was me I would pass on this one. If your thinking about just a plain tank, i.e. not a full setup with stand etc. I suggest you buy a new tank, but get it from a tank maker. There will be one down there. The going rate in Wlg is about $1 liter from our local tank maker. The other option would be to go along to your local club, someone will proberally either give you a small tank or sell it very cheap, most of us have small spare tanks because we have upgraded and don't use them any more. Also you asked about lids, you don't have to use them but there a many good reasons to, they slow down evaperation, stop cats eating your fish, stop fish jumping out of tank, help stop other stuff like dust etc getting into tank. About the only good reason for not using a lid is if you tank over heats for some reason, during sumer, or because you have strong lighting. You can blow a fan over the top of the water, this make the water evaperate really fast, but also takes energy out of the water cooling it down.

Some bulbs esp cheaper ones dont last as long, the 9-10 month thing is just a guide line. Also with only having 1 light it will be on longer each day, I have 3 Mh bulbs so they come on in stages one hour after each other and the same going off.

Are you planning on having a sump? I strongly suggest you do. It's a bit hard to make sugestions without knowing more, like how much space you are planning to have behind the tank, is it going to be in a corner or viewable from both ends, maybe even viewable from both sides?? how do you want to get your water movement, from closed loops or have pumps/steams in the tank. Once you have decided on what you want, ie sump, closed loops etc. The place to start is with the type of rock/coral layout you are trying for. For example if you want to have a wall of rock along the back and more free space in the front for fish then plumbing thru the back might be the way to go. Or if you want to have an island of rock work in the middle you could drill the bottom and put in closed loops under it all.

I would have also put the closed loop taps as close to the tank as possible, that was if you change you pump later it is easier to rework the plumbing. But very nice setup, how much water does it hold? light?? etc.

I did it using black irigation hose, was the right size to fit over the both the SCWD and 20mm pressure pipe. It stayed on fine but had to have hose clamps to stop salt creep out of it.

haha bet you to it wasp!

There are so many areas you need to know about it's best if you just read read read for a while then ask specific questions for the stuff you don't understand. The first thing you will need to decide is what you are planning to keep. The options are basically, fish only, fish and soft corals, fish and hard corals, or all three, (and no fish I guess). Just about everythink you need in terms of setup changes depending on what you plan on having. As an example if you only keep fish then lighting doesnt really matter other than to be able to see the fish, if you plan on keeping hard corals then you will likely need metal halide lights which can run to big $$$. Most normally recommend a 4 foot or larger tank to start with, it is important that water parameters are very stable to be successful and this is hard to do in a smaller tank. A basic setup will have live rock which is actually dead coral with bacteria living in it, this acts as a filter, converting nitrates to nitogen gas, and some other things. A skimmer. and the usual lights, heaters, pumps, etc.

yeah I think it will make a lot of difference, concrete and bricks, hold a lot of energy I can't see why rock wouldnt be the same and with the water movement in tanks this would quickly go back into the cooler water.

A good quick calulation but doesn't take into account the heat in the rocks, glass etc which will reduce the change even more.

Mine goes in cold, but I do put it in the sump with the return pump off for a few minutes so the heaters can take the edge of it.

You can work out if it set correctly by testing the PH of the output. From memory it needs to be 6.4 but I really can't remember, there are plently of places on the net with the info.

I saw the other day that you can now buy hotwater heaters that use a heat pump. They reckon they cost 75% less to run. I'm guess the down side is the cost to buy. On a similar subject a friend in Melbourne just got a 17kw ducted heat pump for his house! Think it will go from the coldest house in the street to the warmest. But glad I'm no paying the power bill for it.

Shouldn't the needle valve be on the output side? Mine is on the the input side but is designed this way, most I have seen have the valve on the output. Are you sure it is air? maybe you are putting in to much CO2 and it is that sitting at the top instead of mixing with the water

I'm going to be in Melborne next month (10 July) to visit a friend, am happy to bring stuff back if anyone wants to arrange for it to be delivered to his place. But don't really want to have to carry 10 skimmers through customs, so sensible please.! PM me if you want to do it.

Are you testing at the same time of day? If your water is very soft there wont be any buffer for the PH so it will swing a lot during the day. Althrough it stilll seems like a big swing.

mine is about $220 a month. Most heaters use around 2000w or more, if you do a quick add up of your lights and pumps it will give you an idea of how muh power you tank uses. I wouldn't count heaters because mine almost never come on even at this time of year because of the lights.

That seems alot of frozen food to me (infact a lot of any food) I only feed once a day and frozen every week or so. I adjust the amount of food so that the fish stay healthy looking but still pick at the algae etc. Corals get light every day :lol: cyclops-eeze when I remember, the juice and fine stuff from frozen food, and whatever comes in with my NSW changes. Do you have problems with algae, high phosates or nitrates?

Aren't daitomes come from silicates not phosates? I'm from the lazy school of feed the corals at the same time, I just chuck the frozen food in as is, usually watch to make sure it doesn't get stuck on the overflow. IMO there are plently of critters, anemonies, and corals that are happy to get the food to fine for the fish and the skimmer takes out any they miss.

3x250W DE aqualine 10k but planning on 2x400w SE with those flashe reflectors when the bulbs need to be replaced next.

Tap water PH can change, particualry with all the rain we have had lately so I would check it again. Also are you sure you are putting in filter pads? It is possible to buy carbon pads now that look just like filters pads, but they are usually black, carbon shouldn't really change PH, but there might be other pads around now that could affect it.

Think Billl misread this. You are completely correct this will work, just don't let the fish breed (or atleast dont expect them to survive) until you swap the filters over in a couple of weeks.

If you dont have a matured/cycled sponge filter, run it in your old tank for at least a week, but a couple of weeks would be better, this will cycle the filter far faster than putting it into a new tank. But by far the best option is to put media from your old filter into the new tank filter, but this isn't always possible. It's a good idea to use water from the old tank, but only because this will give you the same water parameters as the old tank making the parents adjust a lot faster. There is very little bacteria in the water compared to what is on the filter, gravel, glass, etc. It doesn't really make very much difference to the speed of cycling the tank. Also dont be fooled by products that claim to speed up the cycle, they don't help much eiher.