suphew

Pies and I fill up 3 x 60 liter drums and around 15 x 20liter and 25 liter gerry cans. all goes in the back of the ute. we just got a bilge pump, went halfs, was $30 each, best money I've spent in a long time. Now my new tank is up and running we will have to fill the above twice to do water changes! so am looking into a 500-1000 liter container for the ute. As for collecting we use an old disused boat ramp, try for no rain for 3 days and incoming tide, but doesnt always work out like that

Read the durso web site, he talks about bubbles, they are normal. I have been playing round with cutting slots on the top of my outlet pipe just below the water line, it doesnt stop the bubbles but makes them exit the water a lot faster and cuts down on the noise from them.

Heaps cheaper than the prof drills which are about $300. One of the locals down here bought a couple of full sets of these (5 or six drill bits in each ) from E-bay for usd$10 plus shipping! They looked ok for hobbie stuff but I think would only last for a few holes.

There's a guy that does a run transporting animals between Auckland and Wellington a couple of time's a week, stopping of in towns on the way as required. He delivers door to door, and I'm sure would take fish, Pies partener used him to transport a rabbit, they should still know who he is. Otherwise check out local vets and pet shops they move animals etc all the time.

It is more difficult and most glaziers wont do it because if they break the glass they then feel that have to fix it which is a pain for them even through they will charge you for it. So they would rather take the tank apart before they drill. Also their drills are normally mounted on a table to so they can't get a whole tank in. If you can find some one with a diamond tipped hole drill of the right size it's not hard to do, I had a tiler do mine, we made a jig, which was basically a couple of pieces of wood screwed togeather to make a corner, with the right sized hole in the right place. This was to keep the drill bit in place, drill really slowly and keep the drill bit wet. I have also hread of people using wood hole drills and running the backwards with grinding paste, also drimals being used, both ways work but are slow, i.e. and hour to make a hole.

Been a while for me too, but I'm pretty sure you can just reduce the voltage to dim them, the standard old style LED's run at 7.2v if you ran two of them in series they should be half as bright. Or maybe my memory is crap and this wont work! lol

Bar haha flushed another one out...... Nah it's a pretty common misconception,, you would be supprise at the people that have believed it for years.

Dont wanta burst your bubble, but there is no such thing as cycled water, most (99%) of the bacteria in your tank are on the surfaces, stones gravel, filter, etc. It is difficult keeping bacteria on this stuff alive because they need the oxygen from the moving water. If you dont have the water/oxygen keeping your filter bacteria alive they wil die and just add to the problems when you plug it all back in. Taking some water is still a good idea but only because it will have the same parameters etc so will cause the fish less stress when you put them back into it.

10k+ prob lots more, dont wanta think about it.....

There a few places all on the same street in Petone, Sydney or sinclare st I think?? Anyway let your fingers do the walking. Mine cost me about $50 for 4mm blue, 600mm by 600mm cut in half and bent. Came from a whole sheet not an off cut so cost me more. I cut my own teeth with a drimal (sp.)

For me the top half of my over flow is removable which would be difficult with glass (I will still silicon it in but because the silicon doesn't stick well to the perspex it can be pulled out). The teeth would also be a problem but you can buy plastic ones that sit on top, or just use some plastic mesh.

Theres a rule of thumb to use, something like minimum 4 foot tank and 50Kg LR, this provides a big enough area for the pod population to maintain itself and provide food for 1 mandarin. Oh and the tank needs to be a certain age. NB: dont used the above numbers I'm not sure they are right, but you get the idea.

If they aren't already in your tank siphon some sand from some one elses tank, you only need 1/2 a cup to get it started.

I wouldn't advise buying any test kits. Tipically you only use them a couple of times then never need them again until you have a problem which might not be for years. and the test kits expire after a year or two. If you want to check your water either take a sample to wetpets they should only charge a couple of bucks to do the tests for you, or ask around locally, there sure to be some one else with a full set of test kits that has only used them twice as well!

I dont think transporting the fish will be a big problem. Will you have a cycled tank for them to go into once you get down here? This could be the hard part, you might have to do two trips, one to get a tank setup and running and another to move the fish. Another option would be to send a cannister filter to some one in Wlg and get them to run it on their tank for a few weeks before you move, then you can put it into a new tank and it will be instantly cycled (well pretty much!).

Casey, you can usually smell the chorline, I really notice it because my house has a header tank (low pressure) but my outside taps are on mains. If you let the water sit over night (or a couple of days if your really worried) in a bucket, it will be fine, it helps if you put an air stone in to move the water round. The copper wont hurt most fish. Out of interest do wetpets charge for the water, if so how much??

First part is a bit of a stange statement and what about corals? Regarding the second, sure you are going to remove some, but not all and this is only 1 stage of the WS live cycle so I'm not really sure how this would help. However I think this could still cause stress in the tank making the problem worse I agree, but I think this would be some what difficult to do in the real world, PH for example is measured on a log scale so just 1 point of difference is a 10x change in PH. Yeah but this is in effect the same as doing constant 80% changes, i.e. it is the same water, if you took a couple of waves from NZ and dumped them in Fiji, even warmed up I don't imagin they would do the reef much good. I almost agree with you, however a few months ago Pies and I both did water changes, I did my normal weekly/ two monthly 15% change, Pies did a large one having not done it for a while (maybe 30%), there was something in the water, we still dont no what but because of my smaller change I was affected far less and lost no corals, (althrough they showed signes of stress) Mark lost all his Xenia, clover, and almost lost 5-6 large acros. I admit this was an unusual and extream case, but it proves a point.

If the water was the same there would be no point changing it?? Therefore it must be different, one of the keys to low fish stress (therefore low likelyhood of WS problems) and general reefing is water stability, doing 80% changes is not going to give you this. I accept there are exceptions, like doing flatworm exit, or if you were doing constant 80% changes (which basically means your water will be the same as the changed water), but in general....

Reubs, as you can see you will always get alot of conficting advise when asking about WS, myself, I have always followed the advise of reefers that have been keeping fish for a long time and not paniced. My fish get WS when ever they are stressed, new fish change in the tank etc, but I just leave them alone once the stress has gone so does the WS. I also have cleaner shrimp they remove the WS pretty quickly, it's never there more than a few days.

I use a standard low output reg, purchaced from the same guy the certifiied my bottle. cost me $100, plus $25 for the needle value. The max output is about 12-15 psi, but I dont have it running this high, the tap lets you set it to whatever you like so I dont really see any problem using a standard pressure reg.

TG have a chat to Pies he had a whole bunch of cyclpeeze, will be fine for your tank.

As long as you add the nutrients to the substrate instead of trying to add fertilizer to the water algae shouldn'e be a problem in a planted tank, infact will be less of a problem than in a lightly planted tank. The key is have your light/CO2/nutrients in balance after that the hardest thing is pulling out all the plants each week.

HAve you done plently of research on setting up a planted tank. I strongly suggest you do, if you do things right now at setup it will save you heaps later on in chemical fertisers etc. The most important thing is to get your substrate and lights right, the lights I guess you can upgrade later but if you dont get the substrate right it is impossible to fix. I used Dultons Aquadic Clay mixed in with my gravel and also a few handfuls of peat but this was because I was keeping discus.

No not worth fixing now, but hold onto it. UV is used to kill bugs and algae etc, but most ppl dont run them. Just keep it incase you have a problem.

I dont know anything about the water at the mount, but if I had a choice of harbour or open sea water I would pick the open sea EVERY time. There must be a boat ramp on the open sea side.