suphew

Stainless steal tube is very strong as long at the welds are good it will be fine. I have a friend that works in a stainless steal mill and he makes up a lot of stands and things for me. If you don't believe me put a 1 inch dia piece of tube into a vice and try and bend it! But what I would do however is bolt or screw the stand to the floor and also make sure that the skirt round the tank is connected to the stand so the tank can't move.

3 females in there now, the last female was added at the same time (last Friday) as the male and came from the same LFS tank. I think it probably is the water, and keep asking her to bring some in so I can give it a decent test. I have never kept platties myself so was really just wondering if there was a known problem with the males, i.e. if they are generally weaker or if the females are know to chase them, maybe adding 3-4 males at once would help, devider in the tank, etc

32mm=1 inch?? Time for you to go back to school! lol

Haha already two opposite points of view, and both of us from an area with no marine shops anyway!

Don't you have a 14 day right of return always anyway? But besides that I think it would be a pretty stupid shop that wouldn't take a fish back so long as it was still healthy, would be a little bit different if say it got white spot in your tank and was on it's last legs. The shop has got to know that you're likely to spend more in the future, but have choices about where you spend it.

Might be worth a look, but they are often tinted plus you can't cut the glass so would only work if was the right size already.

I have a friend at work who has a 60 liter tank that has been running for a 2-3 months now, only has a few platties in it (3-4) every time she tries to add a male it turns up dead a day or two later? I have checked all the obvious thing's, shes doing correct water changes, cycled, feedings ok. Any ideas?? I haven't tested her water yet cause she needs to bring some into work for me, but I would be surprised if it wasn't ok, since she has a very load bio load, seems to be doing every thing right, and the females are fine.

Why would you suggest that dartzman overstocks his tank? African (Rift lake) Cichlid's require hard water, acheived using crushed shell or Dolomit for substrate or in the filter. This will increase the KH and in turn buffer the PH. If you allow the hardness to drop so far that PH buffering became a problem and the small amount of CO2 from the fish started to cause the PH to drop you would have bigger problems to worry about. Buffering using Cichlid salt's is often also required. The end of the cycle process is not like flicking a switch, unless something bad happens like the heater gets stuck on, bacteria don't just suddenly all die and pollute the tank. As the food supply starts to lessen, the bacteria that are dieing off provide food to remaining bacteria. This happens anyway in any setup with any filtration, and can be seen by the ammonia, then nitrite, then nitrate, spikes. i.e. once the ammonia spike has passed all the 'extra' bacteria that were processing the excess ammonia start moving down to the correct ballanced level. Point taken regards Discus/cichlids, in future I will spell it out for you (as I have done above), however it was just an example picked at random to make a point, and I did think it was pretty clear what 'Cichlids' were being discussed.

This is the beginners area, and I didn't want to confuse things, as far as most beginners are concerned discus are discus and cichlids malawi's, africans etc, because of talking to a beginner I was using generalizations. Rubbishing my whole statement because of insignicant details is stupid and confusing for new fish keepers. Finally your completely incorrect statments regards too much filtration, providing enough food for extra bacteria, and dead bacteria making the tank toxic, show you have a complete lack of understanding of the cycle process. I suggest you do some research yourself. And dartzman, you can ignore the posting about excess CO2 and using an airstone, it is complete rubbish, I have no idea where all this excess CO2 is suppost to come from, fish panting from having to swim hard against all the excessive flow I guess. Even if it was there the water movement from your filters would be plently to drive it out.

Damn that sucks, with any luck they might join this site and you might be able to ID your rock and nail them!

I have wondered that as well, my skimmer is on a bit of a lean because of the bracing in the sump being in the way. But I'm having to empty it twice a week and its putting out good dark chunky crap so I've assumed its not too big a problem.

No you cant have too much filtration, you will only get as much bacteria as there is food for therefore if you have more filters they will just be spread thinner and there are lots of benefits to multiple filters, redundancy, less impact on tank when cleaning a filter, longer between filter cleans, etc. The only problem you could run into would be too much water movement for the type of fish, i.e. Discus don't enjoy too much current. Cichlids are fine with heaps of current.

$160-$200 total for the month

Good advise from B&K, but I would also have a good look at your water supply to, isn't CHC water pumped up from the ground? This could make the water very hard which the fish wont like, plus with all the rain lately and farmers fertilizing, spraying, etc over summer there could be all sorts in the water. Running some carbon wouldn't be a bad idea, and you could try doing a couple of water changes using either rain water which is very soft (if theres not too much smog down there at the moment) or supermarket filtered water (don't use mineral water as this will be hard to).

I have almost been converted to a BB believer, when I moved tanks I didn't move any sand because I'm planning on replacing it with new better sized sand, I have been blown away by the amount of crud that has come out of my rocks. It has started to slow now, so I might just wait another couple of months then put in a very thin layer of sand. It's just a shame that (IMHO of course) BB tank look SO ugly.

I read a thing on reefcentral about it, basically says there is no sientific proof that it works. Some labs have tried testing it with no success. But there are a lot of people that use it and believe it works. Marine white stop almost always seems to be stress related, maybe when people notice the white spot and start using garlic they also start keeping a closer eye on the tank and correct whatever is causing the stress??

I can't speak for the 404's but I can't agree based on the 204's I have. Very fine product, quite and have never had any issues with them after years of running.

Thats pretty much the logic I was using, but taking my power bill into consideration. There must be some info about this online? Think I'll check out reefcentral

Check out the FNZAS mag for this month, there are 4-5 pages about building tower/trickel filters.

I have also read that once you start using them it can be a problem to stop, because the water is so sterile fish loose there immunity after while, so if you then stop using it or don't replace the bulb you can have problems.

Mine keeps moving, I placed it on a rock to start with, in high light med flow, but it moved itself off the rock onto the bottom, and has been turning round on the spot since

I dont think any standard type filters will remove copper, not sure if even an RO/DI filter would do it with-out having some sort of copper absorbing resin. HAve you considered collecting rain water? It is very soft so would depend on what type of fish you have have but might be ok.

12 hours, 1st comes on at 10, 2nd at 11, 3rd at 12, then off each hour starting at 8

Glad to see the picture of your clam, I have one the same which I got at the same time, I have been worried about mine because the shell is growing so fast (more than doubled in size) but the mantel isn't as extended anywhere near as far as other I have seen. Now I see yours is the same I guess it is just the type.

Are you still feeding shrimp or pawn to your anemome? Your nitrate is pretty high, and you probably got high PO4 as well, why don't you cut back on your feeding for a few weeks and see if your parameters/corals improve