suphew

The cost of the tank is going to be one of the smallest part of the whole, and can be easierly sold, also marine tanks don't work that well in standard tank sizes, you want a tank that has plenty of room front to back and often deeper too, to give you an idea, I have a fresh wtaer standard 4 foot which holds about 200l my marine is only 3 foot but holds about 300l. Anyway back to my point, go with however big you are comfitable with (and I would be thinking terms of liters not feet of tank), but plan on buying all the big ticket items (skimmer, circulation pumps, lights, maybe calc reactor, etc) for as big a tank as you are likely to get that way later on you only have to upgrade your tank. If I was starting out again I would buy to suit about 1000-1500l, this is as big as I would be comfitable going to before thinking I needed to start doing difficult stuff like adding beams under the tank, special drains etc etc.

I recon you should tell you husband the tank needs to be replaced, and at the same time make it a bigger one! If you have a lot of scratches it will take hours and hours to polish them out. Tell him it was his fault for leaving the grinder out in the first place :lol:

The colour?

So do I

Yep if you find both types and compare it is very easy to tell them apart, the shells look the same. Anywhere with rock pools is good, I like plimmerton cause there are miles of pools. Tell you what if you ask me nicely I can give you a couple of types of 'proper' tropical snails, I have lots and can spare a few. If you have a huge algae problem you could still look at getting a ton of cats eye's as well, but I would be concerned that you end up with a short term win and a bigger problem in the long run. That being that they will die (some sooner some later) and unless you are careful to keep cleaning them out they will rot on the tank and add to the algae problems.

I was told that there are two type's a good and a bad, the picture on the bottom shows the bad (can tell by the jade like green covering thing), The bad type eat coraline algae. The good type look that same other than the cover thing over the hole which look like a cats eye. As I said this is just something I was told, can't even remeber by whom, so am happy to be corrected if this is incorrect. But if no one knows for sure I would suggest being safe and just collecting the 'safe' type.

I normally set mine to about 12 hours then adjust depending on how the plants are doing. Remember that most plants etc in tank come from tropical cuntries that have longer light periods year round. Having them on longer also makes it easier to time it so the light are on in the evening when you are home to look at the tank to.

Thats the same return pump I'm using, works fine, but I would have no issue with going to a bigger pump. If you do I would have a good think about how you put the water back into the tank, mine is just coming out a 15mm bulkhead and is a bit of a jet, a seaswearl would be nice.

Dont bother trying to match it, go as big as you can, you cant really have too much light (not with those little things anyway!).

Good luck trying to keep them "out of the way"!, Damn things spread like wide fire. kill kill killl!

Yep fluro's are better, more light, cheaper to run, less heat. There are a number of type's, T8, T5, PC, etc. I wont describe each cause it gets complicated, but the all work just fine, just make sure you find out prices for replacement tubes before you buy cause you should replace them every 12 months or less and the costs can add up.

Theres a few good treads here that you should have a look through and if you ask I'm sure some of the locals will be happy to show off their tanks and explain what all the bits do. Theres a lot of things you can buy that are really good, some just make life easier others you might need depending on what you want to keep. Again you really need to decide what you want to do, and go from there. For example fluro lights are ok if you want to keep fish and soft corals, but if you want to keep hard corals and anenomies etc you really want to look at metal halide lights which can cost alot more and will really push up your power bill.

Wet/dry is just another type of bio filter that will create nitrates. As much as you can you should avoid any thing in the tank (besides the live rock) that has a large surface area, sponges, etc. With regards the trademe skimmer, you really need to decide what you want to do in the future, most newbies (myself included) fall into the trap of thinking they will buy cheaper gear now and see how they go, what usually happens is in a few of months time they want to upgrade and end up having wasted $ on gear that needs upgrading. Remember it is going to cost a lot of money there isn't a cheap way round it, in the long run you are better to buy good gear now. Your gona need to spend $400-$500 on live rock, 50-100 on each coral, 50+ on each fish, so why risk that investment by using cheap gear?

The live "rock" does this, it is the gray and red/pink looking rock in all the pictures. For a tank your size I'm guessing (at about 0.5kg/gal) your going to need 20-30+ kg factor in $10-$15 per kg.

Using cannister filters (as a bio filter) for salt water is old school, MAYBE ok if you are only keeping fish but anythink else will cause issues. The problem is that cannister filters will break amonia etc down to nitrate. This is really bad news for corals. Now days the most common method is to use a protein skimmer which removes a great deal of the protein, amonia, organics etc, beofre they start breaking down to nitrates. The little that the skimmer doesn't get is converted to nitrogen gas by the live rock. This is known as the Berlin method. By the way you can hold-on to and use the cannister but use it for running phosphate removing resins, ziolites, etc, not as a bio filter.

Are there any good shops hear the CBD in Sydney, I'm over for a couple of days next week for work but will be taxi bound!

Why not put an under gravel filter plate right across the bottom of the tank and sit the divider on top of this? as long as your gravel isn't too thick the water should flow between the two with no problems.

Acrylic will go white after a while as well. Any of the stong type of glass would work but also cost heaps. Is there anyway you can mount a fan (like a small computer fan) near the end of the light fitting to get rid of some of the heat? You could also try glueing a small piece of plastic to the bottom of the reflector at each end, just to lift it a few mm of the glass. Are you sure it is the heat thats breaking the glass? I have 500w of MH light on my tank and have never had problems with the glass, through I dont have a top, just glass braceing about 50mm round all the edges.

You can still get white spot at 28 (or higher temps), this is a common misconception. The temp has to get to mid 30's before the white spot dies, of course you fish would proberly be dead by then too! The white spot will have always been in the tank (if fact most tanks have it in there) when the power went off and the temp dropped, filter went off etc etc, this would have caused the fish to stress, stressed fish are of course more prone to catching things. Now the misconception is caused because white spot treatments say to turn the temperature up, when you do this it actually makes the white spot life cycle speed up (so they are actually breeding faster!). The reason you do this is becuase the treatments only work during one stage of the life cycle, normal life cycle is 5-7 days, treatment normally 7 days, so to make sure get all the white spot you have to either treat for longer or speed up the life cycle. No marketing man wants to say that you have to use their product longer they other products, so they tell you to turn up the temp instead.

Gets my vote to. Spend the money now, save the headache, and having to buy one later when you give up on trying to get the DIY to work! :lol: :lol: Plus peristolic pump is one of the few pieces of equipment that you can buy to fit a small tank that will work just as well when you go to a 1000liter setup!

I have looked into it, even got (aquired!) some large pipe for it. Came to the conclusion that by the time you buy pumps (recon I would need 3-4 needle wheel) and all the plumbing fittings I just wouldn't have saved that much $. I have seen plans for large skimmers that use air pumps and stones to make the bubbles but they require a huge air pump and 6-10 of the biggest wooden (lees style) air 'stones' which have to be replaced every month or so. Other air stones don't give fine enough bubbles. Biggest thing I think people under-estimate is the cost off all the plumbing, esp when your talking about large diameter. The tube I have is over 300mm across just an end cap for it was going to be round $100

Sorry I'm confused, when you say you raised it from 1m to 2.5, do you mean you lowered the cannister from 1m below tank to 2.5m below the tank? You also talk about the cannister only about 1m above the tank???? If your running you cannister above the level of the tank all bets are off! The whole balancing, zero head think works if you are going from an open container DOWN through a sealed one, going from an sealed down to an open wont work.

Haha nice BK, used car sales, insurance sales, fish tank equipment sales..... :lol: :lol: nickyboy, regarding the air build up in your filter, this shouldn't be happening (atleast not enough that you would ever notice it). First thing to check is that your inlet isn't sucking in air. It might only do it every once in a while when the currents are just right in the tank etc, easist fix is to put it lower into the tank. (if your using one of the surface skimmer attachment things its bound to be the problem). If your intake is already well below the surface you need to check all the seals and joints, this isn't an easy task because the leak might be big enough to let air in when the filter is running, but too small to let much water out when its not. Good luck

Oh and by the way I use rain water with kalk for my top off. I was collecting to for my discus and still have the gutter running into a barrel. I don't know if this is any better or worse than tap water and will one day proberly get round to buying a RO/DI filter.

Yeah mine has been going for about 9 months to, and as I said I have a small problem with hair algae. I didn't think I was going to have to go through the cycle as all the rock/sand came from either my last tank or out of Steves 'curing' tank. It's been nowhere near as bad as my first tank but I guess every rock is going to have different flow/light etc so stuff on it is going to die off and other stuff need to grow. Do you use phos-stop or similar? It doesn't cost to much and might help.