suphew

Sorry I was unclear with this the water WILL sit at the same level in both pipes. i.e. in balance, i.e. zero head. Once you turn the filter on and the water starts flowing the water level in the inlet will be at about the level of the water in the tank (ok and inch or so higher because of pipe going over the top of the tank). The water outlet pipe will also be at the same height cause the pipe is also going over the top of the tank to the same body of water. So both pipes, same height=zero head. You are correct, but it just gets slowed down, I never said it would be instant, I would be surprised if it took more than a few second to balance/level, but it will happen.

Ummm yes it does, are you trying to tell me that if you have a piece of hose, put water in it, hold up each end, that the water wont be at the same level in each end of the hose. A cannister filter is just a hose with some stuff in the middle, the LAWS OF PHYSICS don't change because it happens to be a filter. My point is that there is a huge difference in wattage. I think you need to check you facts, I would put $ on the pump in your example being a power head. which are made to work at zero head, same as your cannister filter, therefore same wattage range. Go and find out how many watts needs to be to pump 1300lph AT 3 feet of head. (hint have a look at the graphs that come with most pumps).

How long your tank been going now raeh1? It's normal to have algae out breaks for 9 months or more after a tank has been setup. Theres not to much you can do about this, do you have any tangs and/or blennies in there. I have two tangs and a bi-color blenny (and lots of snails) between them they keep most of my algae under control (accept for the tuffs of that damn hair algae)

Great example misnoma, I'm sorry brad you are still wrong. To simplify your experiment to something every one could try. Take a length of hose, and a mouthful of water. put one end of the hose in your mouth and hold the other end straight up and try to blow the water in your mouth up it, hard work yeah? now hold the hose straight out, easy work yeah? Now hold the hose so it droops down but the out let end of the hose is still at the same level as your mouth, surprise, still just as easy. The physics concept is a bit hard to get your head around, but the logic is simple. Unlike gases, liquids DO NOT COMPRESS, therefore if you push down (gravity) on a liquid, only 2 things can happen. 1) if it cant go anywhere it pushes back with an equal and opposite force, i.e. for a glass of water, gravity pushes on water, water pushes on glass, glass pushes on desk, each of these pushes back, desk push back on glass, glass pushes back on water... otherwise the water would fall through the glass, the glass through the desk.. etc 2) if it can go somewhere it will go there until another force balances it. So in your cannister filter the water runs down the inlet hose (gavity is pushing it down right?), It fills up the canister, now if the out let hose of the wasn't in place (or was below the level of the tank) the water would run out, right? (This is negitive head, and you wouldn't need to pump water to make it move because gravity is doing the work for you.) If the out let hose is at the same level as the top of the tank the water keeps draining down the inlet hose until it fill up the outlet hose to the same level as the tank, yeah? So it is balanced, still with me? same force is pushing down on the inlet and out let hoses. Ok this is zero head! Now if the out let hose is above the level of the inlet, the water in the hoses is going to stay the same (as each other, i.e. still balanced) to get the water to go up the hose you have to add more force (positive head!). Therefore if you inlet and outlets are at the same level the force is balanced, therefore it takes very little force to move the water! Think about how much energy a cannister pump uses, like 7watts or something? To pump water from my sump (3 foot) to my tank and get around 700lph I'm using a 50watt pump. If I was using a 7 watt pump I would be lucky to get a dribble of water at 1/2 a foot.

You need to be careful doing water changes to lower the tempature, the fast change can kill them. Are you normally putting the ice cube directly into the tank? There could be risks doing this as well, I would suggest that if you need to use ice that you freeze it in a bottle and float the bottle in the tank. Have you tried getting a small desk fan and directing this so it blows over the top of the tank/water? Also remove the glass off the top, you can easierly drop the temp by a few degrees doing this. It works by increasing the evaperation from the tank, which removes energy (i.e. heat) from the water, same as a fan makes your skin feel cooler. Even through the air it is blowing is the same temp, the air movement makes the sweat evaperate off your skin cooling you down. It is very common practice for marine fish keepers to do this as we have huge problems keeping tanks cool due to the strong lighting we use (I have over 500w of lights on my 3foot marine tank).

Just to clear up one small thing, if the input and output of your cannister filter are in the same tank (i.e. at the same height) there will be no head height loss of LPH. Gravity is pushing the water down the input hose at the same rate as it is resisting the water coming up the output hose so it all equals out. The loss of LPH is caused by the resistance of the media, hoses, taps, bends etc.

My fire clowns lived in my Xenia until I added an LTA, however they do seem far happier in the LTA, look healther, have started breeding...

I would invest in a second, they don't really cost very much and there are benefits to running two, redundancy if one fails, better spread of heat (less chance of cold spots). As an aside heaters ALWAYS fail sooner or later and you should always have a spare on hand (ideally already in the tank and running).

I'm gona be up in akl on Sun (4th) thru till Tues, will be free Sunday afternoon if anyone wants to catchup, but I wont have wheels. Arrive 3pm, stop off at Jensens, then check into Hyatt. Pies might as well bring the book back if he has room and has his hands on it already, incase I don't see Steve. Just have to make sure he doesn't try swapping his worn old soft cover version for my shiney new hard cover!!

I do and wish I didn't, my sump is all in one, so if I move anything it disturbs the sand which atleast makes the tank cloudy for a day. I had a big move around in my sump a couple of weeks ago to move my skimmer pump so the intake gets water directly from the over flow. To do this I had to move a lot of sand around since doing this I have had an out break of hair algae and cyno bact, which I have put down releasing all the stuff in the sand.

I assume you know there is cycling the tank, and then there is "cycling" that tank?? The first type is similar to cycling a fresh water tank, ie getting the nitrogen cycle going, the second about 9 or so months long in which you will get all the different algal blooms (brown, green, hair, etc). Good cycled live rock can speed this up.

Yeah oil based spray paint, do it after all your holes etc are drilled, I like blue but some people like black, haven't really seen any other colours. Check out the pictures of chim's tank it shows the blue back ground off well.

Sorry it's a bit difficult asking for a post with "what is needed", its a bit like your trying to tell someone every thing they need to know about fresh water but 10 time worse. I really incourage you to look into it as its very rewarding, but you should do some research (theres plenty of info here and on other sites), and ask to have a look at other peoples tank/setups. I'm in Wlg your welcome to look at mine and ask questions. Regarding the holes, the main reason is because marine tanks require a lot of water movement so it is safer, tider, convenient, etc etc. For setups with sump you almost have to drill an overflow, there are ways around it but really not worth the extra problems. The key to keeping marine fish and corel happy is quality water condistions and STABLE parameters, therefore as a tank gets smaller it gets harder to keep the paramenters etc stable. i.e. adding 1 liter of fresh water to top up a 100 liter tank wont change the parameters much, adding 1 liter to a 10 liter tank...... poor example but you get the idea

Seems like a lot but I think about it this way, if you had 5 largeish guys standing in the corner would you be worried? Of course not, there is a building standards load weighting for house floors, I don't know for sure what this is (so please don't blame me if you use the number and end up with your tank down in the room below!) but seem to remember reading that it is 800kg per square meter. Or another way to look at it, plently of garages are made with the same flooring but you don't ever worry about your 2 ton SUV going through the floor.

The only thing I should add to this is that your PH will change during the day so make sure you measure it at the same time each day.

From http://faq.thekrib.com/plant-co2.html One can buy CO2 test kits that measure the actual level of CO2 in the water, but measuring the pH and counting the bubbles in the CO2 reactor works just about as well. It is best to start off by adding CO2 very slowly (about one to three bubbles per minute) and increasing the rate until a small, but measurable drop in pH is achieved. In my 30-gallon aquarium, I add one bubble of CO2 every three to four seconds to bring the pH from 7 to between 6 and 6.5. How much CO2 one needs to add varies from aquarium to aquarium and can depend on several factors: the size of the aquarium, how fast the plants are growing, the number of fish, how much food is decaying on the bottom, the buffering capacity of the water, the types of rock and gravel, and how well ventilated the surface of the water is. However, anything in the range of one bubble every two to fifteen seconds seems to work pretty well. Bubble size will vary with the diameter of the tubing. I am referring to the sort of bubbles that come out of the end of ordinary, one eighth inch inside diameter aquarium air tubing

plus saltwater test kits/meters, timer, heater, glass cleaner, food, Rowa-phos, carbon, ???, I would add a 2-300$ to Brianemone's total for these and other bit and bobs (of course some of your fresh water gear will do). Smaller/nano tanks tend to be alot harder to keep esp for a first timer, if you go for a tank with just a fish or two and live rock live it is a lot simpler (you can still put in some hardy corals like mushies).

I assume the baby got sucked onto the filter in take hose? If this is the case all external/hang on filters would have the same issue. My suggestion would be to stick with what you have but either put filter wool over the inlet hose (which actually helps the filter anyway acting as a easerly changed pre-filter) or make some sort of guard to stop them getting too close. A bit of PVC tube with lots of small holes drilled in it would do the trick.

Filter wool will restrict the flow a little more than stocking plus catch alot more stuff, but will look ugly if you can see it. You could also buy one of those round sponges with the hole in the middle. What about putting a log or something in front of the output to slow the current down? You could also remove the bendy thing (assuming it has one) off the end off the output so the current goes straight down, this gives the added benifit of blowing the crud off the bottom and into the water so the filter will pick it up. Next best suggestion is to buy/make a spray bar.

It seems a shame to limit the filtering of the unit (s) try pointing the output at the sides of the tank. If you do have to slow it down try putting some filter wool over the inlet, this also acts as a pre-filter so you just have to replace this as it gets blocked and will make the filters last far longer before you need to clean them.

Depends but $40-$60 nzd, how much over there?

Porirua Cylinder testing lab, Elsdon, its in the Yellow pages (would post the number and address but theres been a bit of fuss with people doing this lately). I started off going to BOC and a testing lab in the hutt, they both told me that it wasn't possible to do the conversions any more because they couldn't get the valves, this is complete crap, they were just trying either get me renting or sell me a new bottle for $300+. The guy in Porirua had plenty of them and was ordering more.

Lower is better but unless your trying to breed the Discus they will be fine at PH 7. In fact unless you can get the PH low AND stable you are better off leaving it as is. If you don't live somewhere with too much smog (like Chc or Akl :lol: ) you could collect rain water and use this for you changes (I found about 50/50 mix with tap water worked for me), rain water is soft and will help bring the PH down.

When I got my bottle I picked up an old CO2 fire extingusher from a recycling place for $10, new valve installed for $100, cert and fill $40. If you want to do this try and get an old steel 1, instead of the newer ally 1's (like I did), just because they are more likely to pass the certification.

Hay Ben, what signs do you get when your PH/KH are off? I have a large one in my tank, over night it looked like something had been eating it was all chewed looking on one side at the top. All the other smaller ones were fine. I checked my PH a couple of days later and fine it had dropped quite a bit (I've been playing with my cal reactor), I was blameing a unknown hitchhiker but could it have been my PH?