suphew

Paint it, check you the marine section most are painted looks far better then anything stick on which almost always ends up with water between the backing and the tank.

I would suggest checking out other brands, I had a fluval surface skimmer and it gave no end of problems, worked alright for about 6 months then it must have gone brittle, bits started breaking, I was forever adjusting the amount of water it pulled in the top otherwise it would suck the floating top down. Have also heard of others with similar probs.

Surely if you tang got the whitespot in the main tank as soon as you put him back he will get infected again? Doesn't it take 2 months of NO fish in a tank to kill whitespot? I'm no expert but wouldn't putting the blue tang in a QT just cause him to be more stressed and therefore more likely to get a worse infestation when you put him back in the tank? I often have a few spots of whitespot in my tank usually when I do something to stress the fish like moving stuff round, adding a new fish, etc, I find my cleaner shrimp keep it under control then when when the stress drops off the whitespot dissappears.

Firstly lets put the durso noise thing to rest, THEY ARE SILENT, that is the whole point of them, silence AND safey. Tuning requires some time, yes more than six hours, because they need to find their balance, once you get close to the balance point it can take days to settle. Now lets put the whole durso thing aside, I agree your system would be quite, it is also very simple, so of all the many tanks in the world why doesn't anyone else do it??? Durso aren't the answer to every thing I have seen other over flow designs (SteveA for one), but they all have 1 thing in common, none of them restrict the water flow and all allow for far more flow than they would ever need.

Maybe I'm not clear on what is being done, but I can't see how you cant see an issue with it, the system is designed for a constant amount of water if this amount changes, either because the amount of water increases (not so likely) or because the flow out is restricted (very likely) then it stops working. Simple. To over come this the over flow has been added, the problem being the over flow suffers from the same rules as the primary. i.e. if the flow increases (now likely because if the primary is blocked the water is going to increase), or the flow is restricted (also quite likely because something has already restricted the primary), then you are in the pooh. A durso on the otherhand is designed with built in backup, this is because you make them to never run anywhere near close to maximum, therefore if your flow increases or the pipe is restricted it doesn't matter because you have a huge safety factor.

Hi ya looks really nice, and quite. But I can help being concerned that you have missed the point (s) of the durso, the first reason is silence, which you seem to have covered but the second and more important is that they are self adjusting. To illustrate this say you go on holiday as soon as you walk out the door some algae, seaweed, what ever, blocks a little bit of your over flow, water starts going down your top backup over flow. I can only see one of two things happening, 1) if your top over flow is plumbed out side slowly you will lose the water in your sump, return pump will burn out, all bad. 2) your top over flow does go back to your sump, all will be good for a while but if the lower over flow keeps getting blocked, top over flow is smaller, maybe gets some of the same crap that is blocking the lower in it, can't keep up, water on the tv.... I also wonder why you have the tap in the over flow, if you had it under the overflow you could adjust without getting wet plus would save the cost of a tap (I assume you have one under as well?)

Yeah it's not really hard to get, painters also use it for stripping (or washing off stripped paint) the problem is the it is also used to make pot oil, so it isn't stocked by so many places anymore, and they know you they look at you funny when you buy it! "Can I have 4 liters of iso to, umm clean some glass please?" hahaha

If you do keep them outside make sure the enclosure is really secure to stop them getting out (they are surprisingly good climers) and stop cats etc getting at them. Also I have heard that DOC/MAF (or whoever) are talking about banning them because so many have gotten out and are killing native ponds, 4 legged koi!

Ops yeah you could be right, so anyone got a 100 meters of itianium tube to give away?

I don't know what the Jebao pumps are like, as you prob know salt water is really hard on pumps so make sure doesn't have ANY metals parts. I wouldn't be worried at all about the flow, you can alway split it into two outlets, or a SCWD, skimmer etc etc etc etc.

Plus I dont really see evap as a big issue, it alllows me to add kalk water, I currently add about 20 liters a week to my 400 odd liter tank, and wouldn't mind if I had to add more.

The problem with doing this Feelers is getting the pipe, all plastic pipe has a very low heat transfer so it doesn't really work, and most metals corrode, this pretty much leaves you with stainless steel as the only option. Which is what is used in marine tank chillers hence the price. I have heard of people using large coils of plastic pipes in underground water tanks but unless you have the tank in already and access to loads of cheap plastic hose it would cost more than the chiller, and proberly cost as much to run cause you would need a pretty decent pump to get over all the friction in the length of pipe required.

Isopro is the best if you can get it , its the same stuff as tape head cleaning kits use. Leaves NO residue, im not convinced meths doesn't otherwise tape cleaners would use it. But either way you would want to give the tank a really good clean with fresh water after anyway so I dont think it matters. Why do you want to use something like this to clean a tank anyway? scraper, and scrubing brush, has always worked fine for me, I would worry about damaging the silicon using something like that.

I couldn't think of any to say that wouldn't get removed, but come on???!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

The guy is selling PH and temp meters to, but the best of all his sales.... Potato gun! range 200+ meters :lol:

I would reccomend getting a 'proper' RCD instead of one of those plug into a socket types, the couple I have had failed after a while. The type I use now replaces the whole outlet and costs about $90. They also protect all the sockets wired down stream of them so if you can find the first outlet the RCD will protect all the other outlets as well. I was able to wire these in myself, but if you have to get a sparky in to do the job for you it might make more sense to get the RCD put on the main board. (FYI I understand it is now a requirment in new houses for all outlets to be on RCD's so the price for main board RCD's should have come down)

Suggest you guys ring first and make sure they actually have it in stock (and if they do let me know!). Most stores have it listed on their books, and will give a price, then ring Mulfords only to find there is none in stock. They then to lose interest very quickly when they find out I only want 1-2 sheets.

Salt water more heavy than fresh (hence the specific gravity is higher) therefore IF there was a difference the water on top would have a lower SG

The well water might have phosphate and other chemicals leaching into it from farm fertilizers etc, they should get the the water tested. They could try collecting rain water or getting water from a town supply. It is possible to use chemicals (chem-sorb phos-sorb etc) but depending on how much is in the water it might not be enough.

For your lights I would reccomend getting 2-4 T5 if you dont want to go straight to MH, that way if you decide you need to upgrade to MH the T5's are still useful for running blue tubes. Also don't discount MH lights, its possible to get setup for about $100 + blub for 400w (aka pies setup), also I use secondhand 250w MH, I got them from work (they were upgrading the office), but I have seen them at second hand dealers a few times.

The other benfit is it stops things getting sucked in. Like what can happen with power heads. Nothing worse than putting an anemome in your tank and having it chopped up by a power head.

Both Pies and I have been looking, no one on Wellies stocks it. Might be time to put an order in to Akl?

Yeah plastic, can be any colour, most of what you see is clear. Update your location so we know where you are, bit hard to tell you where to go to get it if we don't know what part of the world your in

Keep an eye on them if they are in with your Discus, some will suck on to sides of the discus. You will be able to see the marks.

Yeah those numbers look pretty normal, you should slowly see the nitrite drop and the nitrate go up. How many fish do you have in the tank? I assume you know you should only have 1 or 2 while it is cycling? Then slowly add a couple per week. This gives the bacteria a change to catch up with the load from the extra fish.