suphew

Non-return valuse reduce your water flow, plus are prone to getting stuck open if for example a snail or algae etc gets into it. I didn't want to risk setting up a syphon with my returns, my tank had two holes in the back which were used for returns via a SCWD I drilled the bottem of the tank and used these with a closed loop and ran my return over the top. I think connecting the return to a seaswirl is the best idea I have seen unfortunely I don't have room to mount one. It all really comes down to the "sleep at night" factor, Short of the plumbing coming apart (and it is all glues pressure piping) I KNOW I can turn off any or all of my system and not have a problem.

Dont Yellow tangs come via LA? Theres plenty of them about.

He did sell them (it), I added it to my watch list and received a fixed price offer of $10 which someone accepted.

WCMM's are nice fish, and they breed very easy. They can also be kept in cold water, I have a number (started out with 3) living in my outdoor pond which must only be a few degrees at the moment. They will get to about 2cm and if you want to breed them use cold water when you do the water change. This makes them think it has rained.

Cheers.

From what you describe and I can see in the pic they look like baby white cloud mountain minnows. WCMM would be just the sort of fish that would breed in pet shop tanks to. Thats my guess anyway, will be interesting to see what you end up with. Also, bit off topic but I noticed the plant you have in the picture, someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is a bog plant not an aquadic so will die and rot in your tank after a while.

I have heard this a few time, but how much cheaper are the 400w bulb really??? I think the last 250w DE I got was about $120-$130.

Does any one know if they are reef safe? and how fast they grow, I know I would have to go to a bigger tank at some stage (damn it :lol: ) but would like a year or two before having to worry? Have looked on the net but I couldn't find anywhere that says they aren't reef safe. I also have a purple tang in the tank is this likely to be a problem?

Good points thanks, I new they tended to hang out in caves, rock piles etc which is why I figured they might be ok since my other shrimp tend to stay away from that end of the tank. But think I'll save my $$ for something I might actually get to see!

I currently have 3 cleaner shrimp, doing well carrying eggs etc, all three spend most of their time on the bommy at one end of the tank. Would I be asking for trouble if I added a couple of fire shrimp?

Someone has bid for it to! Notice there are 4 unanswered questions, haha wonder why????

Daniel, Bunnings in Porirua sell polysterene sheets pretty cheap. Also if you haven't already painted the back of your tank you can paint the poly sheets with water based paint so they dont look so bad. I use poly sheets on all sides of my fresher tanks that I'm not looking through to keep the heat in, I have problems keeping my marine tank cool so haven't bothered doing it. It can be difficult to hold the poly sheets to the glass, you could build a wooden box round your sump and line it with poly, or do what I did and use poly on the base and at least two sides of the tank, I used PVA to glue the joints, this held it in shape nicely. The PVA holds the joints but cames apart if you pull on it, I found this useful if I wanted to remove a piece, the proper polystrene glus melts the stuff togeather and you have break it to get it apart.

Definately a cheaper option, the batteries alone for a UPS can run into the hundreds if you buy the quality name brand one's, plus the genie should run forever if you need it to. On the plus side for UPS, its instant so I dont have to try and find torch in the dark or run leads etc. And it filters the power reducing the risk of spikes etc damaging equipment

How long it keeps things running for depends on the size of the batteries and the size of the load (how much power your tank/computer uses). At work we typically work on keeping a computer running for about 20 minutues, this gives us enough time to get into the server room and start shutting things down nicely. I tested mine on my fresh water tank a couple of years ago and it run the whole setup (including 4x4foot fluro, and two cannister filters) for a couple of hours before the beeping drove me nuts and I turned the power back on. Mine is however quite large for a home UPS, I can't remember the rating but it is about 200mm x 500mm x 500mm.

Have just seen the other post regarding monties, and now think I know why my porites (sp?) is getting white patches. Darn cute white wormie thing. Guess what I'm going to be killing tomorrow...

I pulled an 1.5 inch Nudibranch out of my tank last weekend, was lemon yellow, very nice but the hole right through my leather was not so nice. I think I might have another since my tongan yellow is looking a bit munched. Couple of questions... 1) can they breed in a tank? So am I likely to have lots of them? 2) is there an easy way to find/remove/kill them? I only found the one I did because I moved a leather as it looked so poorly after 2-3 month in the same spot and turned the rock to expose the underside, saw the Nudibranch when it started moving for cover.

You could try the old fashion method and suck on the outlet tube until the water starts flowing, suggest you don't do this with the motor running!

why take the heater out???? It will only warm the water to what ever it is set to. If the water is hotter than this it just wont turn on.

I run two Fluval 204's now 2-3 years old, never had a problem with them, happy to reccomend them.

As Wok says you need to be very careful using Erythromycin, it is an antibacterial and will kill your filter, plus you can't buy it so unless you can find a friendly vet or someone with some you would be out of luck. Also because you can't buyy it as a treatment it's a bit hard to know what the correct dosing would be. IMO it will work but doesn't treat the course. Now you know what it is a suggest you do some research and identify the problem and work on fixing that.

If your running a cannister filter feed the CO2 tube into the intake, by the time it comes out it will be well diffused. Once you have tried the feeding test, I would stop using the fertilizer, unless it has it written on it that it has no phosphates, there is a good chance that it does. Also because you light isn't very strong you proberly dont need it, there are ways to tell if you are missing any nutuirents, I posted a chart in the plants sections a few months ago but it is on the net if you look around. Tells you things like, brown spots is lack of..., holes in leaves is lack of... etc FYI I run just under 150w on my 4foot and would put more if I was still serious about growing plants, I have removed the CO2 as well. I got sick of putting so much effort into growing plants and then pulling out a bucket full each week. NOw it gets a tidy each week and a good clean out every month or so. Phos-sorb type stuff is good, I'm surprised more freshwater people dont use it, a lot (most?) of marine tanks keepers do and swear by it.

Your CO2 wont be doing much with out a reactor, which might be a good thing if your light isn't much good. I would replace/increase the tubes asap to help get the nitrates down. You could buy a bag of phos-sorb (about $25) and put it into your filter. But first I would stop feeding for a week (or at least a few days) but dont change anything that you do, i.e. keep doing the water changes etc. Then test to see if the phosphates have dropped, if they do then you are still over feeding (or you have poor quality food), if they dont then you need to look for othr causes. Do you add fertizer to the tank? Some of these have phosphate in them. Did you add anything to the substrate, like peat etc? Maybe it is leaching from that?

No you need to wait a week before adding any more fish, you will have a anomia spike in a day or two from the fish you currently have in there.

Sound like you need to do some runs up to Fiji to pay for the berth, proper Fiji live rock at say $25kg..........

My advise would be to spend a little extra and buy a tried and tesed one, I use a lot of timers (am currently using about 10) and found some brands are no good. The cheap arlac ones are pretty crap, lights draw a lot of current when they start up, some brands have cheap microswitches which fuse on, have also found that some electronic timers 'leak' voltage when they are off making the ends of the fluro tubes glow when they should be off. I haven't had much luck with the HPM one's either. As I said the best/cheapest I have found are the dick smith branded electronic ($16.72), the Pudney ones are also very good, but cost about $40.