suphew

Had mine for a year, its on a timer turning on and off ever 15 minutes 24/7, only problem I ever have is the sucker things coming loose from the glass and it blowing my sand round the tank.

I have WCMM outside in my pond all year round (i"m in Wlg) and they seem fine, be through a couple of winters now. However my pond is 1.5 foot deep and in the ground so I guess the temp wouldn't change as much.

Don't forget that timers often take up the space of two plugs, and you may well end up using two timers so you can have lights coming on at different times. So make sure you at least have room to add a second power board later. If you can stand it use an oil based paint, if not at least use a water proof bathroom paint and a good sealer. Have a good think about the bottom of the stand, all that weight (and the odd water spill) will leave indents and marks in carpet, a completely flat bottom will spread the weight out and help a bit. If you add a lip around the top front and sides it will hid the gravel etc in the bottom of the tank and help stop the tank from falling off the stand if there is an earthquake.

Are you talking about a UV light over the tank (i.e. to make the fluro colours of the fish come out) or a UV in the tube that you run the water through to kill algae etc?? If its the latter just leave it running 24/7

Yep snails do produce waste and therefore ammonia, they will be cycling the tank. Trade-me has a aqua-minder on there at the moment bid was at $29 when I looked yesterday. I you are going to spend money on electric's I stongly suggest that you put in an RCD (if your house doesn't already have them in the mains board) before worrying about getting a seecond circuit added (althrough doing both would be best). I tripped out my RCD twice last weekend both times I was under the tank sitting in the same water that had just flooded out of my tank on the power boxes.

I just plonk a rock on top of the coral with the end sticking out and leave it for a week or two before turning it over

1) size of the holes depend on the size of the plumbing i.e. 25mm plumbing = 30mm hole. You need to decide where you want to put them, commonly you would have one in a back corner for your over flow (unless you want to put the over flow in the middle and/or want to have two over flow holes as a backup. Other holes would be for closed loops, only you can decide if/where you want these. I have put all of mine in the bottom of the tank so I can hide them under rock work, when finished I wont be able to see any plumbing in the tank. 2) I used 32mm pressure plumbing, this was proberly over kill but I wanted to make sure I never ended up with plumbing to small (its easy to reduce a fitting to fit a smaller pump, but impossible to make your plumbing bigger). I used 40mm for my over flow but I have huge return pump. I did look at 25mm plumbing which is the next size down but it just looked too small. 3) The size of the sump depends on how much water you are planning to put through it and how much equipment you have. Tanks are cheap (compared to the price of setting up a marine tank) so if you happy that a 3 foot will hold the flow/equipment then go for it, but make sure you have the room to put in a bigger sump later. FYI my tank is just a little smaller than yours (about 100mm or so) and I have a 4 foot sump, it is too small because I don't have room you get rid of the micro bubbles from the return, but my return is pumping 6000-7000lph so.... 4) Any engineering firm can make you a stand

It should be ok but just do a water test before you add any fish, if you don't have a test kit ask your LSF to test the water for you.

You might not have much luck using fish to keep your plants down, they will tend to pick on their favourate plant and ignore the others till it is gone, or will just destroy the whole lot. Are you using CO2 and/or fertilsers? I was for a long time before I realized I was adding stuff to make the plants grow and then having to pull them all out, I don't know why I took me so long to figure it out but was a big doh moment when I did!

Those 404's are a bargin, I would put in 2 of them if I had the $. Don't keep Discus and Angels together, The Angels are carriers of parasites etc that don't harm them but will kill Discus.

Tropical marine, just moving from a 300+L 3 foot setup to a 800L 5.5 foot setup, actually moved the first fish over on the weekend. Yeah I collect NSW water from Titahi bay from by the boat shed, there a couple of us that do.

Hi ya, nice to see another salty in Wlg. How big is your tank, what are you keeping??

Do you have a fan or two running over the tank? This will drop the temp by a couple of degrees

Sorry dont know the details for your type of tank but since they are pretty common someone here will help you out I'm sure. With regards your filter, normally you would want some sludge in it because there is bacteria in it that cleans the water but not so much that it leaks out! However because you have just set up the tank you should wait 2-3 weeks before cleaning it if you can, the reason for this is that tank needs to cycle (get a population of bacteria) so that it can clean up the fish waste, leaving the dirty filter in will speed this process up quite a bit. The only acception to this would be if you left the filter dry for a long period of time (i.e. longer than 4-5 hours) if you have dont this then the bacteria in the filter will be dead and will add to the waste in the water. If this is the case then clean the filter now. To clean the filter just rinse the worst of the sludge off using water you have removed from the tank (assume you know you need to change 10% or more of the water each week??), you should rinse both the noodles and the sponge but don't rinse them both at the same time (leave a week or so between) and the noddles shouldn't need cleaning anywhere near as often as the sponge. You should update your location so we know where you are,..

The second fitting arrived at my place last night. going to be a long process I think, each one takes 5-6 hours to make, must be 50+ rivets in each plus all the cutting bending and drilling

Theres a couple of posts round about making 'weirs' sound like one of these would solve you problems. Just look here or google it. They arn't had to make.

I did mine the same as Pies, i.e. no rubber gaskets, I don't know that it makes any difference but the logic I used was that with the gaskets in there where 4 surfaces that could leak (either side of each gasket), maybe from movement or a bad seal etc, where as with just silicon there are only two. I don't see how adding the gasket adds any factor of safety when silicon is used in its place. To do it I put a bead of silicon round the edge of both sides of the hole, around the inside edge of the bulkhead where it touches the edge of the hole, and round the inside egde of the nut. When you screw it together the silicon will be forced to the outside edge creating a perfect seal every time. You can see that the seal is good because you will get silicon coming out from the bulkhead right round the whole edge. I did the nut up as tight as I was able to by hand.

I assume these work like other brands and have a syphon system? if so you run the risk that you lose the syphon (i.e. if you have a power cut) then the return pump comes back on and floods your tank. Also they have a pretty limited flow of water through them since they are designed for cannister filters so would be little use for a sump unless it was very small.

lokks like a queen turbo, I had a play with one (didn't I give it to you??) but couldn't get it to work, maybe with a bigger pump it would have been ok? I think there are a couple of people here that use them?

I use a fluval for Phos-sorb and ziolite

Think I must have still been recovering from my holiday in Melbourne when I decided to have a play with the tank. I wanted to see how many if any bubbles my skimmer was adding to the water so I turned my return tap off, and stuck my head under the tank to watch, next thing I have water flooding down my back as the tank over flows. So no problem cleaned it all up, turned the return pump back on, looking under the tank thinking, 'gez the sumps getting low I didn't think I lost that much water' when I get another flood down my back, yep forgot to turn the tap back on again. This time filling my power box and timers with water. But my flat mate really started laughing when I bent over to start cleaning up again a ripped the bum out of my pants. And just to complete a bad run (fingers crossed!) I got home last night and found the glass on my light had shattered putting a nice layer of tiny glass chunks all over the rock work. :evil:

You can always change the kevin when you replace your bulb when it wears out, like a lot of things its a really difficult question to answer because it depends on so many factors, tank size, corals your keeping, what you like the look of. etc. I had a 14000k for a while but replaced it was far to blue and that side of the tank looked dim with the 10000k on the other side. But in saying that if I turn off my blue fluros the tank looks too yellow with just the 10000k

1) yes, cost is not much more and you can always use reducers to attach to smaller pumps but you can't make the pipes larger, I used 32mm pressure plumbing I wouldn't suggest going any larger. The next size down is 25mm which is a lot smaller. 2) yes, go pressure piping, I never have problems sleeping at night. 3) yes.

lol, both mine are secondhand, I think people use pumps that are to small and don't think they work. I have compared my output to pies and %skimmate vs water volume I reckon they output about the same amount. not that this really means much but is interesting. I clean mine in vinager every 9 months or so, and a good clean every few months (just to clear the build up from the air inlet and check the venturi isn't getting blocked). I haven't tried using an air pump yet, I don't really have problems with the amount of air, I have put air valves on the air in takes and have to turn the air down some times. I hadn't really considered running the two inline, it would be a pain to set up cause of the way the output comes out the same side as the input, I would have to put 300mm of plumbing on the output to get it into another chamber plus would have to run two pumps. I was going to build a manifold and try running both skimmers of the same pump, if the pump has enough grunt. That post is a monster, do they talk about berlin mods etc at all? I only read a couple of pages.

Oh and how many litres is your tank? I have 1 running on a system a little under 400l, and one in my new 800l system, was thinking about running them both in the new system. Have a 7000lph pump running the one in the 800l system now was going to have a go at connecting both to the same pump. The other currently has a 3500lph pump but its getting a bit tired.