suphew

Any chance of a clearer pic or drawing? I have a couple of berlins as well, have you played with the venturi yet?

I got a cold cathode blacklight the other day, was about to turn it on to use as a night moon light for my tank when I realised it is a UV light. Does anyone know if is the bad UV? and therefore not reef safe? The wattage is pretty low (10-20 watts)???? I put it on for a minute and it looks pretty cool, all the fluro corals glowing in the dark!

Gezz I had to read that subject line twice....

I got some from Raymus at the pethouse in pram, he had it in on trial so don't know if he is stocking it. I'm sure he will order it in for you.

Are you sure you have a pair, it's not the size that shows the sex (as in a lot of fish) but lack of bristles on the female. They wont start breading till they are both about 1.5 inches long. Also you MUST have a piece of wood in the tank, the BN scrape the surface and there is something in it they need (but can't remember what it is). Having said that I saw a pair breeding in Animates in CHC in a completely bare tank with just a rock in the middle for the eggs, but I did wonder if the rock and BN had been moved into the tank just as they breed so they could display them.

No New Zealand rock is coral rock so isn't suitable for live rock. The only options are to buy imported live rock or make some as per feelers. Seahorses don't like much current and are also very slow feeder which makes having fish etc in the tank as well a problem. If you are able to collect water and store some for those bad weekends you can get away with out live rock, you would just have to do large weekly water changesand have a very low bioload

Yeah isn't plumbing fun! Couple of things, firstly dont want to comment on if you should or shouldnt have a bio filter, but if you going to why not put a wet/dry trickle filter tower in the return section? It would be a lot less hassle. basically all you do it glass off a corner with an outlet at the bottom fill it with bio balls and dump your return water into the top. Means you can also add carbon or filter wool easily if you want to. The other thing is do you have a tap at the start of all the return plumbing? i.e. so you can turn one tap and stop all return flow before it hits all this other plumbing? If you do why do you need the tap on the bottom of laguna 7 section? surely all water that isn't going to your skimmer or refuge is going here so I'm not sure why you would ever restrict it? (just trying to save you the cost of a tap!)

Go with the largest plumbing you can, its never a problem putting a small amount of water through a big hole, but impossible to put a large amount of water through a small. Its alway a good idea to go atleast 1 size larger than the output of the pump anyway, creates less resistance. I did all my plumbing with 32mm so I (hopefully) wont ever need to worry about it again when I upgrade pumps.

cause you cant buy 4 stroke chainsaws I decided years ago to only buy 2 stroke machines, makes life so much easier. But would be interested to know if running a 2 stroke geni for hours on end would cause a problem, maybe with heat or plugs getting oiled?? Anybody know? The last power cut I had was all night long, but luckily I had a UPS running at the time (dead now) and a small tank so it was ok, I have alot of big trees have been waiting for one to fall onto my power lines, the last big storm the houses on either side of me lost power and phone for a couple of days because of trees coming down. I actualy have a tree fallen over my walking bridge at the moment which I will have to remove when I get back to NZ.

GMC=Bunnings, they are round $100.

There are plenty of choices, an ehiem 1060 would be ok, and there are plenty second hand for round $120. I use a king 4 on my skimmer, got it when I started because it was cheap and am only just getting round to replacing it. So its worked for 1 1/2 years, they do have metal on the impella so they rust after a while, plus it leaks out the back so can't be used inline as stated on the box. Basically you get what you pay for, a cheap pump will be fine for a year or two, but will need cleaning and might fail at the worst possible time. I know of people who have ehiem pumps that have been in their tanks for 5 or more years that have never even been removed for cleaning.

I think the Bunnings ones are cheaper and have higher output. I'm thinking about getting one, but might get a UPS from work instead. UPS would be free and I wouldn't need to do anything, like be there when the power cuts out, but a geni would be last a lot longer and be far more useful for other things. Hmmm maybe I will get both..

Fluval filters are pretty good too, and alot cheaper, some people have had success with the even cheaper brands but you take your chances I guess. Some of them really are rubbish. If you can afford it a really suggest you get two filters (I prefer both external) as snowman suggested.

Update your profile so we know where you are.

I have never understood that 'large pump' argument against venturi skimmers. I mean I have 600w of lights going, who cares if I have to use a 100w pump to drive my skimmer instead of a 50w pump. And as the tank grows the proportion would stay the same, like pies tank has some 3000w of light, would 200-300w extra to drive a skimmer really make that much difference?

For a normal person, yes, but Chim REALLY likes doing complicated plumbing. Why do it the easy way, when if you try you can spend twice as much time and money doing it the hard way!

Yep dump the UGF, your plants will do far better, have a look into adding something under your gravel, clay is a good choice. This gives the plants nutients etc and save you having to add it to the water where algae can use it. PLants dont like having strong flows of water over their roots plus they will cause dead spots in the UGF which can cause problems.

I would go one step further and say don't clean any of your filter, you should only need to rinse it in tank water once a month at most. You only need to rinse it when it becomes clogged and the flow is significantly reduced. If this is happening in less than a month your filter is too small or something is clogging it that shouldn't be, i.e. plants coming apart, over feeding, etc.

Interesting, I always throught it was seaweed. I tried a little bit in the tank, the fish ate it but them I had a look in the skimmer and found most of it in there. Don't think I will bother again.

JUst found a bag of organic spirulina powder that the ex left behind, since it is powdered seaweed I was wondering if I can feed it into the tank, for the tangs and corals etc?

The air hole is what lets the air in (duh, that even sounds stupid as I typed it), stops the pipe turning into a syphon, because of this some air goes down with the water, ending up as the bubbles at the bottom. If you have a syphon, you get the loud sucking sound.

If your ging to run an extra pump why have the cannister in line as well, it's not going to be of benefit and will add hassles when you need to clean it etc. I would run the cannister on its own and set up the chiller with its own pump. Also cannister filter pump aren't designed to have any pressure on them (basically they run as closed loops), you might find that the pump will get noisy or fail if you do it to long,

kwl I need to get some up to, just gota get off my butt and set up a site

I'm willing to bet money he doesnt have as many as I do! lol I have about 7000lph (pump is rated at 8000 at zero head) going through a standard 4 foot tank, stand pipe is 50mm top and 40mm bottom. with only 100-150 liters in sump it will empty in less than a minute if the overflow blocks!

I do the same as chim (bubbles from over flow). For my kalk top up I use a peristolic (sp?) pump on a timer feeding from a 50 liter barral, the pump does 9 liter an hour, I think I currently have it set 5 x 15min through the night