suphew

I have a reasonable sized lobophytum pauciflorum, I wouldn't concider it hard to keep. But according to Borneman toxic to sps. Sorry about the poor quality pic, camera is crap, this is an old pic as well.

I got mine from my mum and dad, it was in a very old fan heater, to get the proper one the fire box people supplied was a couple of hundred. It doesnt matter if the charger provides more current than you need , the motor will only use what it needs. The problem would be if the charger didn't provide enough, the motor would over load it.

They are $100 and max load is I think 750w, they are two stroke so you would have to have some petrol mix ready, I normally have heaps about cause I have a couple of bikes, lawn mower, weed eater, chainsaws, etc.

Theres an thing on reef central about Ca Kh Ph etc, I'm about half way through, it seems to be a good simplified explaination http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-06/rhf/index.php

Mite be easier to insulate the room really well (which you would prob wanta do anyway) and just heat the whole room up. I have seen a couple of setups like this, they just used a fan heater with a thermostat wired in.

I think I know what you mean, I have a similar fan runnning to blow air round my fire, looks like one of those wheel things that rats run round on (well sort of). A car battery charger should give you enough juice to run the fan. plus are pretty cheap to buy now. There will be a current rating on the charger so you can check before you buy it. Good luck sounds like a fun project.

My tank is on a UPS which will run the main pump and temperature controller for a day or so. If it loked like the power was going to be out much longer this I would nip down to bunnings and pick up a geni. Living in the city I would be very surprised if the power was out in enough areas for long enough for many people to buy geni's before I got there

Buy shares in your power company???

I just use cable ties, mine is against the side and has rock hanging off the front of it so isn't really holding much weight. if you want to make like a platform use lengths of plastic piping, drill a few holes into so you dont have dead spots inside the pipes and use cable ties to hold it all together

The air bubble things or air driven filters make almost no difference to the O2 in the water, to do this you need surface water movement. Often bubblers seem to work but this is because they are making the water surface move. Did you have any water flow in the breeding trap?also how warm do you keep the room? If the tank is warmer because you have the heating cranked up this will lower the O2 in the water as well. Anyway theres not really any way to know if O2 was the problem, I have found that BN babies don't usually survive moving tanks, so I assume can't handle any changes in water parameters, it could be something like your using a gas heater which is putting CO2 into the air which is getting into the tank changing the PH, maybe with the rain the water company has added extra chloride to the tap water?? could be lots of things..

The rain water would be better, soft water gives you alot more options for fish. Although gold fish are pretty hardy and would probably be ok in either. My gold fish are outside in a pond that is only ever had rain water in it. If you wanted to keep other fish you could use both rain and bore water mixed, the iron in the water would be really good for a planted tank, iron is often a limiting factor for plant growth.

You wont need to age it,, but bore water is oftem very hard so you might want to consider this when picking what type of fish you want to keep. Also are you on or near a farm? If so you might have problem with fertizer in the water which will cause algae.

Reefers use light diffuser, I have used plastic filing trays that I got from work because I couldn't find any difffuser

Nup, I have a rather large UPS running the return pump and temp controller. I'm guessing it would run it for a good day or so.

Thats interesting cause I have managed to kill I few of them, I don't know if it was the relay or some other part. I also used elto power boards at work round 170 of them, they were all crap, the plug either wouldn't go in the holes or would go in but fall out. IMHO cheap and nasty.

Its always a good idea to treat fish like you have just brought them home from the LFS when moving them from tank to tank. Put it in a bag and float in new tank, adjust water as you normally would, i.e. add a bit at a time till you have replaced most of the water in the bag.

I always put new corals on the bottom of my tank when adding them, and move them up over a week or two. Don't know it it helps, but havn't lost an SPS frag yet

I have only seen the elto ones at bunnings, I have killed 2-3 of these and wouldn't touch them again. I have used a couple of DSE branded timers that work ok, but it can be a bit hit and miss, I have killed a couple as well. If you do get the DSE ones make sure you get theres because they also sell the crap Elto ones.

1cm poly should be thick enough, its only there to take out the little bumps, if it broke just sitting there, ie you didnt drop something on the bottom, it more likely the stand that has a bend or twist in it, no amount of poly will fix this. If you waht a good solid piece of would for the base, I have used old work desk tops, you can sometimes pick them up far cheaper than buying wood or ply. or an old kitch beach work be the same. Check out your local building recyclers, or if your out poirua way trash palace on brpken hill road usually has old desks

I have seen an 'accidental' propagation of a fungia, half of it was buried under sand for a while till it mostly died off, when it was cleared a whole bunch of babies grow from the died area. Last time I looked there were 6 or more about the size of 20cent. I have also heard of people buying almost dead fungia from LFS and them doing the same thing. I used to use aquakneedit for my hard corals but have just started using superglue, is heaps easier but will have to wait a couple of weeks to see the results.

dont forget to put taps close to the tank so you can turn off the water and remove hoses for cleaning, servicing etc.

Cheers Slappers, I tried a couple of local pleaces in Wlg and was quoted $700 and $1000. But this included DI which adds $100+. I was going to get 1 off ebay. Spinedoc got his from there. It only cost him $200-300 landed but the RO only lasted 6 months so he has had to replace it and the DI etc. He thinks it was faulty or a second and thats why it was cheap. Cyberfin, any RO/DI with 4 stages or more is heaps for reef tanks, there is nothing different with the 'reef' ones. The extra stage either make the expensive parts of the filter last longer (prefilters) or take out more stuff (DI resin). So go for as many stages as you can afford. You can also get TDS meters for under $100 these will tell how well your filter is working and when it needs replacing.

I have 3 250w Mh on timers, the pudney electronic ones seem to be the best, Pies uses these on his 400w Mh as well. They are usually round $40. My electrical wholesaler recommended HPM heavy dudy timers they are built for spa pool pumps which draw a lot of power, but they were out of stock when I was looking last so haven't tried them. The hard core option is to use relays that fit into your mains board (but could be DIY'ed) but they cost round $100 each plus need a timer added. The last option would be to build a DIY relay box and use cheap timers, not hard to do but too much mucking round IMO when the pudney ones work fine.

Nah its the 14k, as the K gets higher the intensity goes down, I did read why but all geek speak to me.

What sort of corals are you keeping/wanting to keep? Your tanks not very deep so you might not need to much light. I dont think many (if any) people run 6500K even though they are best for growth. I'm running 10,000K would like 'whiter' light, but found the 14,000k's lost to much grunt. I also run a couple of bllue T5's