suphew

Not much good to him (?) in Wellington! Petworld in coastlands used to sell cheap little powerheads.

I reckon the trick is to make sure the glass is really clean before you paint. I used isopro on mine and enamel spray paint, it stuck really well, I had to clean off some over spray and had to use a sharp paint scraper to move it. I tried just cleaning it off with spray and wipe etc and it wouldn't move.

I would tend to wait a while before adding an anemone, they are a little more difficult to keep and must have clean stable water. If it died in the tank it could pollute the water and cause big problems.

Clowns are pretty hardy, would be a fish option that can stay in the tank. I wouldn't worry too much about the cycle restarting/stopping, there will be enough crud in your rocks etc to keep it going. Also if your rock came out of another tank, i.e. was live when you got it there should be heaps of critters in it, pod's, worms, shrimps, etc that will help keep a cycle

Duno, SteveA told me, he found out that hollwoods (?) had some when he ordered some rock, so he took all that they had.

Few years ago there was a brief period when it was possible to import proper live rock, also corals come in on live rock, often with crabs, starfish etc.

IMO the volume of a tank big enough to be 700-800mm deep would be far to much for a HOB filter, plus as the other have said you would mostly only be filtering the top couple of hundred mm

Flow rating's are with no media and more importantly zero head on the pump, so you will never get the stated flow rates. As to the size, either get the biggest you afford or will fit behind your tank, or do what I do and work out the best priced smaller filter and put two of them in. It isn't possible to over filter a tank the only risk you take is creating too much current and this can normally be corrected by directing the filter out puts at the glass or by using spray bars.

Layton, I'm supprised your still pushing this. I'm not saying the theory is incorrect, I dont anything about it to say one way or the other, but there is a serious flaw in the logic of your last few posts.

Bumma, I have plently of Xenia and a couple of different leathers if you want some replacements.

I run an aquamedic too, a 400 I think, it is well under sized for my new tank but seems to be holding it's own at the moment, I'm pretty happy with it but it was one of the cheaper one's and you do get what you pay for. IMHO you dont really need a PH probe, to set it up you just messure the PH coming out of the beast a standard test kit is fine for this. The PH probe does give you the option of using a shutoff for the CO2, but to me the huge added expense is justified. There are two "pumps" involved one is a closed loop in the reactor, this pump should come with the reactor, the other is the feed to/from the reactor. It is only a small amount of water (just a slowish drip), I (and pies) use gravity for this pump, run a line out of the display into the reactor, with a tap to regulate the flow, so no need for dosing pump. I was told by the certifier only CO2 bottles can really be used other wise the process of converting isn't with the cost. for mine I picked up an old CO2 fire extinguisher from a metal recycler for $10, the old steel ones are best if you can get them because they are more likely to pass cert due to the ali one's cracking round the neck. It was a while a while ago now but the bottle cost me about $145 including $25 fill, new value and cert.

Thats interesting, maybe your's is a different brand? I only know of three people with the same brand as mine but all of them are spot on all the time.

Cheers chim I gota ask, your tank is looking sad, your KH is low, your reactor is out of CO2, am I missing something here? Wouldn't it be far easier to get your CO2 filled? :lol:

So how does the baking procedure go? temp, time etc.

I was looking at a switched on gardener catalog yesterday and see they sell light moving rails, motors, controllers, etc. Currently I have three lights each running for 6-7 hours starting at one end of the tank and switch on/off as they go. Seeing the moving light got me thinking, is there any reason I couldnt just use 1 light and have it move across the tank, I figure each coral would get a similar amount of light hours I just wouldn't have the whole tank lit at once, and I would save 2/3 power and replacement bulbs etc, this would soon pay for the $600 odd to set up the moving light?? Even if I upgraded the light from 250w to 400w it would still be far less power than the 750w (3x250) I currently use.

I use a temperture contoller, they cost around $120. basically it has a probe that goes in the water, and two normal plugs (power points) that come out of the box, one turns on the heaters, the other a fan or chiller

I had similar problems when I first setup my durso, I tried playing round with restricting the flow by turning down the tap, etc but had problems with the tank level creeping up. I had pretty much given up, then I added a 45 and some extra length of pipe to the return which added a little resistants and it all started working. I agree that it is almost impossible to have a silent durso, however they can be very quite if setup correctly, and the point of the durso is to make it quite AND safe. There are very few non-durso setups I have seen that I could comfitably sleep at night with (the only one that comes to mind is SteveA's setup) I don't believe using taps to contol the flow is a safe long term option even with added redundancy of extra over flow. But thats just my opinion. I also wont use push on fittings, or power without an RCD in line, where as some people are happy to do so.

Will be fine, biggest hassle is maintinance since it difficult to get a syphon going to drain water etc with it being so low.

meths works for me, just need to rinse the tank well when your finished. have also used iso-pro but its a bit harder to get. As long as you can no longer smell the meths it should be fine.

7000K is fine, normal day light tubes are 6200k (or something close to that). I would go for at least 2 if you are planning of growing plants, I have used a single 2 foot on a tank and it was pretty dark. If your planning on using CO2 I would even go with 2 doubles, or at least make sure I allowed for adding another double fitting in the light hood.

I third that, majic software, does batch conversion's to.

I'm hoping you can explain how the 'cycle' side of this works? I can understand in the sea where storms etc happen and all the PO4 etc in the sand bed gets disturbed, ends up in the water then works it way back into the sand bed, but this doesn't happen in a tank. I can only think of it like a glass of water where the glass is the DSB and the water PO4, water goes in, then the glass gets full and the water over flows, but the water in the glass says there it just wont take any more, the water doesn't suddenly leap out of the glass so it can stop over flowing and start filling again?? Is a DSB the same, does it fill up over time, then once full just stops absorbing more, why would the absorbtion reverse and start flowing back out of the DSB? Why would the PO4 start getting higher than the extra that is being added to the tank via feeding etc? Surly if it is the case that it just fills up and is therefore just full, why is this such a "time bomb", why can't the sand just be removed and replaced, or vacuumed, start using PO4 resun, etc?

Computers generate a lot of heat, most draw at least 100w, most power supplies are 2-300w or more, most of this power ends up as heat, if you like come and visit me at work one day and I'll turn the aircon off for 5 minutes! Damn the room heats up fast

Yeah B&K I was wondering that too, could look cool in a fresh water tank but would screw with the hardness and PH, might be good in a Rift Cichlid tank?

Sorry she has gone home for the day so can't ask any questions, I know she has had at least 2 males. As I said I checked all the obvious things like how she was aclimatizing, feeding (once a day), water changes, filter etc. I do know all the fish have come from the same shop, but she has brought females at the same time from the same tank and they have been fine. Maybe the importer has them seperated to stop them breeding and they are getting damaged before they get to the shop?