chris_kerryn

My tank has hit upto 31.5 deg and is now hovering at 29-30 now that I have opened the hood and raised the main lighting hood above the tank. with about a 1cm gap all the way around. I brought a couple of small computer fans yesterday, but thats about all I know how to do at present. I was thinking of wiring it up to the light wiring ??? Also I have basically 2 options. 1. install it in the side of the hood aiming at the lights. there is a cover between lights and water so this would not put wind on the water. 2. install it in the front flap of the hood and aim it down on the water. Which sounds better? any ideas on the wiring of the fan?

My tang died after 1-2 days of noticing it and then 1 week later my clown got it and died after 1 week? I did nothing too apart from add garlic to its food. for the clown I added stop parasites to the tank for about 1 week as I noticed it quicker. I was getting ready to give the clown a freshwater dip, the next morning and then it was dead by that morning. bummer! I saw some tangsin the new shipments at LFS which had white spot from the shipping I guess. It was very minor compared to what mine ended up having. Still dont really know what the problem was. It all started a week after I brought a new torch coral? My shrimp is doing ok and so are all the corals, so not sure if water quality had anything to do with it? Problem now is trying to keep tempreture below 29-30 deg!! (This is after fish had died however) heater is turned off, and I only have flouro lights. Might have to try installing a fan, but no real room in my small hood. How long do you need to leave it before you can add fish again

My brother has a set up, in a 5 ft tank, basically a rock pool in a tank, has everything except mussels, which die off for some reason. he made his own chiller for bugger all. Should get him to tell you how he made it. He has his in a sun room and is not having much problems.

I am aware of that. I am not concerned about air getting in, I am concerned about the water syphoning out of the weir. In my test in the bath I had the hose lying down on the bottom of the bath about 1ft below the weir. as there was no air in it, it was acting as a syphon and as I turned the tap off for the flow through the weir, The syphon in the weir drained until the water went below the priming weir which means the syphon effect it lost. Really, this bleeder hose should have static flow and only allow air to excape and not water. I am tempted to have the hose raised above the tank by 100mm or so (enough that it doesnt suck the water out) then attach it to the venturi inlet hose for my skimmer with a tee junction. this would always act to suck air out if it is there. I cant see how you would stop the syphon effect from the powerhead once the power goes off unless you have it raised enough that the water only heads up a bit in the tube, like I have said above. Is this what you have done?

Ok now I'm worried, my last fish (tomato clown) looks like he has the spots now. I know this is serious as the last fish died of this. He looks stressed as he is hiding a bit as the blue tang did. Garlic didnt do much for the tang although it may have been too late. Does that salifert stuff really work?

I was testing mine in the bath yesterday. I have installed the bleeder nipple and tube, but found that it basically kept draining through the hose and when I stopped the inlet flow the bleeder hose kept going until the syphon was lost. So if you have it hooked up at a powerhead like Melev indicated, how do you stop the flow once the powerhead stops? Essentially it will be sucking a low flow of water continueously unless I'm missing something How did you hook yours up to the venturi? After my test yesterday I'm not keen on running the hose below the weir with any suction.

Look down the page a bit. I started a string, how do you set up sump for existing tank. Reef posted it all on there. I have just built one of these weirs today basically from this design. have just tested it for leaks and will look to possibly install it tomorrow. Have run some water through it and it looks to be working ok. Just need to install the air outlet hose on the top, which will have a thin hose running down to a powerhead inlet for suction and the bulkhead for the outlet, which I will do today. Was very easy to make and I got all the acrylic cut to the sizes I wanted plus some glue for $20 I will let you know how it goes and possibly put up some photos when I learn how. I am only doing this method because my tank is already set up and I dont want to drill hole in it. Chris

reef gave me a good link a little while ago. it is just a wide syphon with weirs to keep the syphon primed. it looks like it would work ok. Not sure if my return pump is big enough though. I have an 800l/hr pump that will probably do 500-600lph once it is headed up. would this be enough? I'm not keen on getting yet another pump. I am probably going to have a go at making one once I have some acrylic

I'm in the same spot as you almost. I managed to find a 30l rubbish bin that is about the biggest container, I can fit in my cabinet. This would give me enough room to put my skimmer, return pump and heater and also a few kg of rock. Only problem is I cant get the water out of the tank safety to run it. Make sure you decide if you are going to do a sump before you do anything. My tank is already set up and am now finding out the benefits I could have if I could have set one up. My other half wont let me drill the tank inside full of water so that idea is now out the window. Only other option is a syphon which can be risky, but am still looking at doing once I can find some acrylic to make it from. If you have polished floors (tongue and groove) rather than drill big holes through it you could cut a piece out between the joists and put a temporary piece in with the holes drilled. then when you move you can replace the piece of good timber.

Take it from me. I set up my 75 litre tank 3-4 months ago and am having problems with it. I have had 2 out of 4 fish die. I am a few months ahead of you and dont know much, but from what I have learned, I advise you to go bigger too. Don't buy a readymade tank with the lights and filter on either as you will soon throw all that away. I am already planning a bigger tank. you are really limited to what you can put in a small tank. All the nice things you see in the shops, you can probably choose from about 1 quarter of them for your tank which sucks. I collect my seawater by St Helliers, as long as the weather is calm. I dont think it is responsible for the problems I've had, but who knows. Others get theirs from Takapuna which is just as clean or polluted and they have no problems.

Doesnt matter now. I found the fish dead on new years day, basically 1 day after I posted this thread. I suspect it wasnt ich but the other one (Amylooddinium ocellatum) which has a lot more spots. It had probably 50-100 spots. but who knows. It was still eating well the night before. I had added a shrimp also as some people had suggested. The clown still looks ok but does look a bit lonely now. I take it that I should leave the system for a few weeks to try to get rid of it or let it recover?

Lots of different opinions, where do you start? I did another water change this morning, which will help, has brought up the salinity a bit. will bring it up slowly from now. I wasnt keen to do that either but we were panicking last night my partner pressured me into it as the forum was down so we relied on our book which said it should be ok in a short burst. Nothing looks too stressed though. I think they are used to it in my tank. I noticed the tang has been hiding out during the day in the last few days but comes out at night. perhaps he has been stressed. I have got some garlic to mix in with the food today from Hollywoods. will try this for a few days. They did mention the bottle mix to kill parasites but have had different opinions on that too. Seems there is a different opinion no matter what you do. I will start feeding them more. will try twice a day now. Have not been feeding much as I was scared of over feeding. had no ammonia problems so this seems ok to do. All tests seem ok. nitrates always been up a bit. My Nitrates are starting to creep up slowly. now at 20mg/l. have normally been about 10 since setting up. I do water changes every week. Not sure how to remedy this. Could it be the trickle filter? I am tempted to just remove it altogether but am not sure if it is needed. Could the nitrates be building up in the noddles? I have some macro algae which is supposed to help but it isnt doing anything. I have about 10kg of rock in the tank (75l ). and heaps of circulation. only about 3-4 kg was brought as live rock and the rest as dead rock but is growing stuff on it. would this be sufficient to remove the trickle filter? I have a small skimmer too. I want to do the sump still but other half wont let me drill the tank, probably a wise move. I brought an alkalininty test kit today also. Kh = 8.8 and Alk = 3.03. Is this too high? Not keen on removing the fish as I would need to clean out the whole tank again which I just did a couple of weeks ago to catch the damsel before putting these guys in. If the garlic doesnt work or fish gets worse I will try the bottle mix you add to the tank. Never ending problems...... Kids should be easy after this.

My little blue tang has got the white spot itch. I noticed it last night. he has heaps of small white spots and is scratching himself and is sitting in front of the powerhead. He also appears to be breathing quite rapidly. My clown fish appears fine. My book advised that lowering the salinity short term can help to remidy this. I lowered it to about 1.020 last night. Can really tell at the moment if it has improved as he is hiding, but I can still see the parasites on him if thats what they are. I dont have a quaratine tank or anything. I could make up a bath in a 20l bucket for a while, but to get him out I will probably have to pull everything out. If I do get him out and treat him, wont there still be the bugs in the tank? Help.

can you do it with a normal drill and glass cutting bit? can you buy them? dont you need to run water over it while you are drilling? not possible in my case. I know some glaziers but they will all be on holiday. already getting good ideas for a new tank, but this has to be a few months away as I am moving house and dont want to move a big tank as hear its a real drama. will probably start building it gradually soon. want to try to get this one a bit better in the mean time. I may look at trying to build an overflow box. would maybe need to place the pump in the sump right near the surface, that if the syphon breaks, then only a small amount can be drained from the sump. better to stuff a powerhead than anything else. I did want to know how much all the other decent stuff costs on the new tank say for 5 foot before I actually jump into it. Im guessing that my tank and stand will be about $1k decent skimmer lights big enough pumps anything else you need that I dont have. sump sound fairly cheap and easy now. Oh yeah, my leather is looking better. I aimed my small powerhead at it and it is cleaning it up. I found out that they secrete a mucus and it needs to be washed away or it can go bad. Cheers for the help guys

Right, I have started a new string for this so hopefully more people will read this. I want to make a sump for my existing tank. I have existing 75l tank with existing trickle filter and an external hang on tank skimmer which I retrofitted. skimmer discharges into trickle filter, which is backwards I know but can't do much about that. Not happy with the level of treatment, filtration that Im getting. I've got it pretty much sorted how to set it up. I have a 30l container that is about as big as I can get in my cabinet. Biggest problem is getting the water out of the tank in a safe and consistent manner. I know the best way is with an overflow weir with a hole drilled so it only drains as fast as it comes in. Note. The tank is operational so I have been advised constructing an overflow weir with hole in the tank would be very risky. Being an engineer, I am convinced there is a solution short of emptying tank and starting again. Is there? I could probably do something about 100mm down from the top. siliconing something at this level would probably be ok for a day. thats about how far it goes down when I do a water change. A syphon has been mentioned, but this could be as risky having a pump at each end (one in tank and one in sump) also drilling a hole in an existing tank has also been discouraged. Has anyone done it? I could have the water below the level of the hole but still sounds difficult, and how do you do it. I have thought about building an overflow box say 100 x 100x 100 in the corner as I would for a normal overflow, and possibly rig some sort of syphon there. It cannot drain the tank, but if you lose the syphon some how or if the flow rate alters it would be impossible to prevent the tank from flooding as Pies also suggested. 3 months into it and I have already outgrown my poor little tank. I might just start building a new tank. how much would it realistically cost to setup a 4-5 foot tank once you have tank and stand? Put your thinking caps on guys Chris