suphew

I used to have a lee's skimmer that looks similar to this. If it is the same you have the water level too high, there should be a mark on the peice around where the upper air input goes. If you cant get the water level low enough because of the length of the skimmer, they are easy to take apart and cut a bit off the tube. If you run the water level too high you get wet foam, and clearish skimmate. The skimmate should look a bit like coke.

Yep, but assumes your seals are all good and that you put the lid on tight every time. Buckets aren't designed to have this much pressure on their seal, look at any canister filter, they all have 'O' rings and locking clips to keep the seal. Proberly it would work fine 99% of the time, but I wouldn't want to risk being the 1%..........

Prefilters are good. But this setup looks really big and ugly, plus if you have it outside your tank whats to stop it from syphoning the tank. Why not buy some dacron (sp?) from spotlight or any sewing shop, it is the same as filter wool, but far far cheaper, then use a rubberband to attach it to your filter intake. Just don't forget to replace every week or two. (Yes this does still look ugly in your tank). The next option is to buy a inline pool filter from bunnings etc, they are basically a sealed cannister with a replaceable pleated filter, it would be simple to put this somewhere in the filter intake hose.

As I understand it white bait aren't a type of fish but the young of a number of different types, therefore size would depend on what type you got. I was told that there are 4 that are most common, I can only remember two, which are Inanga and trout.

Got home last night to find my clowns had laid egg's, was watching them on Monday cleaning the rock, so had been hopeing. Once Pies gets his clown breeding setup going I'll think about having a go myself. FYI my clown's are Amphiprion Melanopus or fire/black clown. Similar to Tomato Clown but with black ventral fins rather than red/yellow. Also noticed one of my cleaner shrimp's carrying eggs, it's a pity they are so hard to raise, if anyone know an easy way let me know! Otherwise I guess the corals will get a good feed.

I assume your $ is about the same as the US? If so this is about the same as we would pay at a petshop here (give or take), as I said you would expect to pay a lot less buying the tank direct from the glass shop, which is that same place the petshop will be getting them. If you do get a tank made I suggest you get it made a little longer than the standard size for a fluro light, i.e. 4 foot is a standard size for lights so get the tank made a couple of inches longer this allows you to add a hood and still be able to fit the light fitting inside.

90 liters aye? As long as your goldfish isn't large I think your load is okay. Just be aware the goldfish will get large, they are very messy, and might eat your other fish once they will fit into its mouth.

I would suggest that you don't run the CO2 for only a few days (or couple of weeks) a month, but leave it going. The CO2 will change the PH, this isn't a bad thing (can be a good thing depending on the type of fish) as long as it isn't exstream, which it is unlikely to be using the yeast method. But if you make the PH swing by adding then removing the CO2 often this is a bad thing, the key to fish keeping is stability, fish will happily adjust to different conditions but don't like constantly changing conditions. Few things to watch when using the yeast method, 1) if you keep the yeast bottle below the tank level it is possible it will start to syphon the tank when the yeast runs out so keep it on top of the tank, on the light is a really good place cause the heat during the day make the yeast work harder while the light are on, which is when you want it. 2) some time the yeast goes crazy and you can end up with the yeast mixture filling the bottle and going into the tank, there are plans somewhere here to add another bottle to the system to prevent this, basically the CO2 goes out of the main bottle, then into a second empty bottle, feeds out of here to the tank. 3) there can be a surprising amount of pressure generated by the yeast, I have read a few stories about people getting a blockage in there feed tube and the bottle exploding, spraying yeast mixture everywhere. So only use plastic bottles (not glass) and do as Warren (?) suggested and just push the feed tube so it can come out if the pressure gets to great. Please dont get worried about this, it isn't common and is just messy not dangerous. 4) it can take a couple of days for the mixture to start working, so to limit the swing in PH you should start a new bottle going before the old one runs out and swap them before they stop.

It's always a good idea to do weekly 10% or so water changes anyway. Neons can be difficult to keep, they should be easy but poor breeding over the last few years has led to weak stock, not sure if you have the same problem there but seems to be wide spread here in NZ. Unless you start to lose other fish I wouldn't worry about it, there are lots of reasons a fish will die that have nothing to do with your setup, it may have been damaged in the pet shop, might have been old when you got it and just died of old age, maybe just a weak fish etc etc

In one of your other posts you talked about a possible leck in your tank, and getting a glassier to fix it. If you decide to get another talk go and visit your local glass shops, one of them is bouond to make fish tanks, it should be alot cheaper than going to a pet shop plus you can get it made to what ever size and shape you like. The down side is that it wont come with a stand or built in light hood etc.

A few people make tanks (I have done it), but unless you are making a few, you are generally better of buying one. It's really messy, and a bit fiddly to do, plus buy the time you buy the glass, glue, glass cutter, break glass and buy some more it works out the same or better to get a tank made. Pet shop prices are tipically high cause they have high overheadsetc, have you tried going direct to the glass shop and asking them to make one for you? Otherwise try here for local secondhand tanks, or trademe, there are always tanks for sale, usually with filters gravel etc.

No filter system is perfect for all situations, I can understand why in your situation UGF's work will, for me they dont because... I dont like the look of the tubes, bubbles They are noisy They splash a lot of water causing algae on my glass tops They are no good for growing anything other than basic plants They drive the CO2 out of the water They can crash after long periods of time They require lots of careful vacuming so they don't get dead spots It isn't possible to ever completely clean them properly You cant use substrate fertilizers Aquascaping is difficult because of dead spots Regarding what you said about media volume, while it is true you dont mention that filter media is porous (sp.) so by volume is far better for bacteria than gravel/sand, and also that the amount of water flowing in a canister filter is far higher, resulting in more oxygen to media and more water contact with media. So comparing volume for volume isn't really relivent. I not trying to have a go Phill, I can see why in your situation UGF is far better but for average joe setting up a tank or two in his sitting room a canister is a better way to go (IMHO of course)

Yes they are for media, ceramic nodles or similar, If you dont have media in the trays then you have almost no biological media in your filter, the sponges are in there mainly as mechanical filter to stop the bigger chucks of stuff blocking the pores of the biological media. The lact of media could explain your problems.

yep

IMHO you have far to many fish in your tank, I think your filter being so new would have only just been keeping up (and I'm surprised it was), when you gave it the clean pushed it over the top. 8 Discus in a mature 250 liter tank is alot, let alone a new one. They are very messy fish and require good water condishions. Also are you running the temp high for the Discus? They like 28-30 degrees but at this temp the oxygen level in the tank will be lower. You could try directing your filter outlet to toward the surface which will break up the surface putting more oxygen in the water, An air pump will also break up the surface and do the same thing.

All test kits are different and all can be hard to read. Some are read from the side, some the top. Sorry but you will just have to read the instructions carefully and figure it out, make sure you are in good light, once you have done it a few times you will be able to tell the colour without even really looking at the chart. PLus you are really looking more for changes than an exact number, as your tank keeps cycling you will see the colour changing. Nitrate is a funny one really, if you have it, it means your tank has cycled (or is getting towards the end of the cycle) so it is good to know but doesn't really matter because you can tell from the fact that your nitrites have/are dropping. You can use it to judge if your changing enough water because it is the main thing that you are trying to remove when doing the water changes. But unless you have an unusual setup, i.e. very high fish load (test will tell you if your not changing enough), or maybe low fish load and lots of plants (test will tell you if you can ease back on the water changes), just doing standard regular water changes will take care of it (about 10% per week) so why worry.

For my fresh water changes I use 10 Liter plastic watering cans, I do add some hot water but the amount is pretty ramdom, I do around 30% and even with the added hot water the temp swings 4-5 degrees. In my marine I use 3x20 Liter containers (purchase from the warehouse) and just dump it straight in with no warming.

I would still wait a few days or even a week or two before adding new fish, even if you move the water and filter into the new tank. Aged water is good but it is a common misconception that moving old water into a new tank avoids the cycling problem. Water actually has very little bacteria in it (compared to the total in the tank), most of the bacteria is on the surfaces (rocks, gravel, glass, and filter media). Another way to help speed up the process is to move a few handfuls of gravel (unwashed)from the old tank to the new.

The problem is methods have changed so much in the last few years. There are still alot of 'old school' marine keepers out there. When I setup my first tank I was advised by an 'expert' at the LFS to put in UGF and canister filter, little bit of live rock, little bit of dead rock, wait two weeks and add fish. This is old school, it might have worked (in fact I ran this setup for a few months) but was only be able to keep very low numbers of fish, almost no corals, and algae!$%!$&!$& Check out the Berlin method that most people tend to use now, good skimmer and lots of good live rock. Really simple and it works. There are things you can add to this like calcium reactors etc depending on what you want to acheive but the idea is so simple. Get rid of as much waste as you can via the skimmer and let the rock take care of the rest.

As long as you can but I would aim for a couple of weeks, you don't say where you are going to put the media? Best place would be in the old filter, but anywhere that you have good water movement through the media. Or even better why don't you just put the whole new filter on your old tank? You could even swap the two filters over, then your old filter will speed up the cycle of the new tank, and the old tank will cycle the new filter.

Have used with my Discus, as do others. Worms are a common problem with fish, esp new fish.

Deeveus, You keep talking/hinting about filters and filter media? Just wanted to make sure you know that you don't want/need to any biological type filters in your tank (other than live rock which works as a filter), if your not sure why it is because you want to avoid nitrate in your tank as much as possible, read some posts to find out more. If you do try to run only a little live rock and use filters you will only be able to keep fish (no corals other than the odd mushroom) plus will be a slave to large regular water changes to keep the nitrate down.

Ant, that is about the same number of liters as my setup, I have about 30-40kg of live rock. Proberly more than I 'need' but you can't have too much. Plus it can be hard to get good cured rock, if you can find some buy as much as you can afford. Also buy it as soon as you can , the sooner you get it the sooner your tank will cycle. Remember the cycle for salt water takes a lot longer than fresh, can be up to 9 months+ if you rocks not so good before the different Aglae blooms stop. If you don't have the tank ready get the rock anyway and put it anything, like an old tank, or drum, it doesn't need much/any light. Be careful of old/cheap books things change really fast and marine books go out of date quickly. Weka, Yes it works, and is common parctice.

Could be worms, grind up a small piece of of cat or dog worming tablet and mix it with there food

Canister (or biological filter) arn't much use for salt water accept for holding media like phos-sorb etc, I wouldn't woory about making this a consideration when purchasing.