suphew

Ditto, I found my tank was fine for about 1.5-2 years before I started getting shortages of some nutrients, I found potasium was usually the first to go, shown up by brown spots on the leaves. All I added was about 50/50 mix of dyltons aquadic clay and gravel, then 3-4cm of gravel on top to stop the clay leaching out.

For the sake of the rest of use that dont have degree's in Marinebiology and biochemistry etc, could you guys just let us know what qualifications and lab experience you have to back the bold statements you are making so we have a better idea who to believe? Obversely you can't both be right so if whichever one of you actually has the qualifications and has done the research to back up the claims that you're making as your own could just hold up your hand now then we would know that the other is just passing on dubious secondhand un-substantiated dribble, myth and folk law. Of course I'm assuming that one of you is qualified????

Personally I would consider using convection currents (wether using UGF or heater cables etc) to drag nutirants to the root system should only be used as a bandaid to not having put the nutriants in the substrate to begin with. To me logic say's to keep as much of the nutriants out of the water as possible, for two reasons, because you can run higher nutriant levels with out algae having access to it, and secondly cause its heaps cheaper to add some clay etc to the gravel when you setup the tank than having to constantly add expensive chemicals later on. Anyway, is your heating cable on a thermostat? If your heaters arn't coming on then its pretty much got to be whats causing the problem (unless you have powerful lights??), the heat from it has to go somewhere, if you increase the depth of your substrate to reduce the heat getting into the tank wouldn't it also reduce the amount of water flow, defeating the reason for having it?

Think they are 2000-2500LPH check out there website, they are the same as a 1260. I used one on my smaller setup (350 odd liters). You might get away with going to a smaller pump but the head height the smaller pumps handle seems to drop off quickly plus you go going to need at least 10x the tank volume in water movement your return should provide you a good chunk of this saving you from having to add as many extra ugly pumps into the tank. Crackers overflow is basically a pipe with a tap on it to limit the flow, it is silent because it is under water and therefore doesn't suck any air, the down side is he has had to add a second over flow pipe in case the first gets anything blocking or even slowing it down. Which means twice the plumbing, extra hole(s) in the tank , and I'm not sure how he has adjusted it, i.e. turn the tap off a little to much and the tank slowly fills, a little to little and the tank slowly drains?? SteveA uses a different system again, he basically has two large pipes going out the side (near the top) of his tank so the water just runs out them as it get pumped in, this systems start off noisey but once the algae etc builds up in the pipes it goes quite (or so Steve tells me!). But as I said when it comes down to it most people use Durso stand pipes cause they are safe and they work, and dont loose sight of the fact that your overflow is just one thing that is going to make noise, add the noise from pumps, lights, skimmer, etc and you wont be able to hear the silent overflow over the noise from everthing else. Go the remote sump!

The light colour is far to yellow, and yes they get too hot.

Go with an ehiem 1060, heaps of them about secondhand, will cost you $100-$120 Crackers school of submarine plumbing, . LB go with what 99% of reefers do and put in a durso.

Plastic hose is a very poor conductor of heat, so yes wouldnt be efficient. I'm not sure why it would be much cheaper than tropical reef? I guess you save money on lights, calcium requirments, live stock, and maybe lower flow rates? But you are still going to need every thing else, skimmer, either live rock, or large constant water changes to keep nitrates down, carbon and all the other stuff to keep algae in control, gear to keep it all stable (top up, test kits etc), plus chiller. Other than light and live stock I can't really see huge savings, am I missing something? Of course I'm talking about a long term sustainable setup, I had cold water marine tank 20 years ago (does that make me one of the first marine keepers in NZ????) when I was a young falla, from memory it took about 6 months before every thing died.

Oh yeah no one's bagging him........

I cant see why people keep bagging Reef for making (or not making) a profit. 1) Supply and demand, reef could if he wanted charge what he likes but he doesn't. His only real competition is the internet and plenty of us are happy to not have to commit a couple of thousand $ over the internet. 2) Do you know what normal retail markups are like?? You do understand that when shops have 50% sales they aren't making a huge lose? Normal retails markups start at 100%, some things like cloths get marked up 200-300%, compare what your LFS charges for fluro tubes compared to electrical wholesalers. From what I have seen of Reefs prices he might be adding 20-30% 3) How many of you would be willing to spend the amount of time that Reef does for us? If I was doing some thing for some one else that was consuming 5, 10 , 20 hours a week of my time you can be damn sure I would want to be paid for it. 4) If you dont like it stop complaining and go somewhere else.

To get it started, try taking the outlet pipe out of the tank and putting it into a bucket (if possible below the filter), suck on it to get the siphon going you should get a little water flowing even with the motor off. Turn the motor on to clear out any air etc, turn off tap thing and put hose back in tank. How long was it since you last cleaned them? It seems really strange to me that they would both fail at the same time, is it possible you did some thing to both of them when you cleaned them that has caused the failure? Did you clean the seals and put them back in wrong? Reconnect the hoses correctly? Speaking of hose do you clean yours? I have a little bottle brush on a wire that I push down mine every six months or so to clean them out.

Yep have to agree, my tank has never looked better. lol But truthfully I was very impressed, I considered my water clarity was pretty good till I added the tunze zeolite. I had to remove it a while back, it only took a day or two for the water to go back to what it was, then turned it back on, clear as the next day. Reef, do you have any idea how long it lasts or how often it needs to be replaced??

Jaycar sell a unit that plugs into the wall for about $30 powers up to 8 LEDs, they also sell water proof LEDs in different colours , I thing they are $15 each.

I have used it in cannister filters and it seemed to work fine, however I would use it as a last resort, i.e. if finances just dont allow you to buy proper media. There are two reason for this, 1) proper media IS better, it is made/designed specifically for the job. 2) when natural rock like this is formed (includes pumice to) it can (often?) have other stuff mixed in with it, metals, other types of possibly reactive rock etc. This can be seen clearly in pumice by the different coloured lumps if you saw a piece in half.

Feelers, it is done, SteveA run a couple of tanks in commercial buildings that are doing it. But there are two problems, first some fish (like tangs) will eat it, which makes it pretty much impossible to keep if you have these fish. Second, if you dont have fish that eat it, it takes over your tank so you are forever in the tank pulling it out, it is bad for the other corals to have you hands in the tank. It's very difficult to have middle ground.

I rekcon you need to decide what your priority is going to be, large fish stocking levels, or extreme plants! If you want to go plants I would dump the sump, this will save you having CO2 issues and you wont have to fertilize twice as much water etc. If you want mega fish turn your sump into a trickel filter. NB: either option excludes the other it just how extreme or go each way.

Have you guys researched the QT setups?? Is there any point doing it if your not going to do it right? I'm not saying I know better than you, but reading on Reefcentral "Careful thought must be put into the tank decorations. Calcareous materials should be avoided as calcium carbonate absorbs copper. This causes two problems if treatment with copper is necessary: 1. It will be difficult to maintain the correct level of copper as the absorption by the calcium carbonate will take the copper out of solution. 2. A drop in pH can cause the copper to be released back into solution potentially causing lethal doses of copper. " This pretty much rules out using your refuge as a QT and having LR in there. "The fish should be left in the quarantine tank for at least four weeks. Six weeks gives more time for observation" I've actually also read 2 months before as well.

If you do have a phostphate problem, it could be caused by, the food you are using, frozen will release loads, and over feeding will cause problems to. Or maybe your water supply has high phos. Could be your plant fertiliser, it shouldn't have any in it but some do. To help get rid of it, decrease feeding (esp frozen), increase water changes (assuming your supply is good), and lastly you can buy phosphate absorbing resins (like phos-ban, phos-sorb) will cost you about $30 for a container, just add it to your filter if you have room, or (they often come with a bag) hang it in the tank in a high water flow area.

Still sounds like an algae bloom, just means the source of it is still there, have you checked behind the wood etc to make sure there isn't a dead fish or rotting food etc. It should just go after a while, but you could try doing more water changes (i.e. to the same amount of water but do two a week).

Ops was a little slow with that last posting! pulling plants to move them is one of those things you sometimes have to do, maybe next time don't do a big clean at the same time. I normally do a water change just after removing plants and try to remove some of crap floating round and anything that has settled on the gravel.

My 'guess' is that between giving your tank too good a clean (and killing some of the good bacteria) and disturbing the gravel too much releasing all that waste back into the water you have caused an algael bloom. Or in other words your tank is doing a cycle again. I suggest you don't pull out the plants (they like having muck round their roots), vacuuming the gravel is good but you don't need to go over board with it. BTW what ever you do dont clean you sponges out (I'm guessing you already did this anyway when you cleaned your tank?) if it is an bloom caused as above you need as much good bacteria as possible to correct and limit the impact on your fish.

The submersed leaves will be thinner, larger, and a different colour. Plants only grow if they are happy, the happier the faster, since yours is growing it is fine, just let it do its thing.

have PM'ed you, but for the sake of the others there is a little thingie that screws into the reg to push the release button on the sodastream bottle. When fitting the reg BOC etc will often remove these if you dont need them. When I got mine the guy removed it but gave it to me incase I needed it later. They should be cheap and easy enough to get. Just one thing to remember with sodastream bottles and regs, because there isn't a tap to turn off the bottle you cant remove it until it is empty. It you do there is a high pressure release of gas, and it will at least scare the bejesus out of you, at worst.....

Sorry about the bad news, but yet another good reason not to use yeast CO2 reactors. Go and get yourself a soda stream bottle (free or very cheap) , the tread is the same as a proper CO2 cyclinder so you can use a standard regulator ($100-$150), needle valve ($25). I'm guessing you lost that much in fish??

Are you talking about cycling (which is something you do once per setup) or water turn over (which is a number of times per hour)??

Since your tubes are so new save your money, they dont need to be replaced. Generally you should replace the tubes every 9-12 months cause they loose around 30% of there output after this. When you pleace them just do one at a time, and leave a week before doing the next one, this saves shocking the plants too much. Get you new tube from an electrical wholesaler, they will be HEAPS cheaper, if you can get the size you need. You should get 6500k (often known as "daylight" tube) or higher, as the Kelvin rating gets higher the light will look bluer, also as the K goes up the intensity go down