SteveA

According to my calcs it comes out at $115 for 30 days, and that was without extrapolating the 3.85 out from a 20 to a 24 hour period. Also note that the 4 hours it was off before I took the reading was a period when all the lights would normally have been on. Steve

Since when I got home last night the power was off to the entire area, and had been since about 13:30 (finally came back on just after midnight) I was only able to get an idea of how much power the tank used in the 20ish hours between strarting on the new circuits and the power going off. Even this makes sobering reading as it was 24 units, or $3.85. My next power bill will be interesting, as it will cover the first full month with the tank in operation. Steve

Precisely the reason I installed one. Steve

I definitely expect depressing. Steve

Meter cost about $150 I think (haven't got the bill yet). It is a wall mounted meter in its own small enclosure and has a rotating number wheel KWh readout just like the normal domestic supply meter. Don't know answer to 2nd question yet, as it all only went live last night about 18:00. I guess I will get my first idea when I get home tonight. Luckily the electrician who did the install job was my sisters partner, so I only have to pay for the parts. Steve

After about a month running off one, then two, seperate household circuits and without anything much on the safety side, I now have my tank running of its new, dedicated, power supply. We ran a 6mm cable from the upstairs meterboard though a 30Amp circuit breaker (both fuse and cable capable of powering a domestic oven) then through a check meter and down to a sub board just outside the room with the tank. This board has three 20Amp RCDs with circuits terminating just below the board. So I now have safety, increased redundency and will be able to tell exactly how much power the tank is consuming. Luckily, the only power issues I have had prior to this was the tank cutting out for a few hours, caused by some MHs coming on, when I initially had everything on just one household circuit. The next step is to line the wall, with ply since the sump will eventually go against it, then move most of the control and lighting equipment out from round the tank. Steve

I suppose I do get a lot of trace element addition from water changes, since I now use salt mix after deciding I was getting too much nutrient from the NSW of Wellington's south coast. No idea what my parameters are as I haven't tested in well over 6 months. I tend to let the corals tell me if they need something. Steve

Very interesting. I went thru a phase of adding all sorts of crap to my tank but the only thing I now add, apart from food, is whatever comes out of my CA reactor and what goes in with a water change. Perhaps my corals could be more colourful, grow faster, be bigger, sing dixie, but they seem to be quite happy ignorantly getting on with their additive deprived lives. Steve

Woudn't have a clue how many tanks. I have one reef (1500L) and look after two other tanks, one reef (2000L) and one fish only (800L). About 50 fish in total and maybe about 80 hard corals plus various other inverts. When I started reefing (sometime prior to '94), I was basically just 'man alone' in Wellington and haven't really paid a lot of attention to how things have developed here since then. Steve

Yes but would it not be more effective done through FNZAS since that is a bigger organisation with, presumably, more clout (not that I actually belong to it myself). Steve

It was not that simple. It took an environmental impact assessment report (or something like that - can't remember the exact name). This took about 6 months to produce (and then another year to go thru the system - and it was a lot easier to do back then than it is now) and had to show the normal range for each animal (using a range map for each coral genus), demonstrate that this range did not include any waters that had temperatures that were found around the NZ coast (also taking season into account). It also had to include a list of each species within the genus (several hundred species in total), references to research material, biological descriptions that would allow the animal to be identified at the border, coverage of safety issues (for instance there is one species of acro still not allowed in as some literature referred to it as being poisonous and there was no other literature specifically countering this) and so on. The reason that so few soft corals were included at that time was the lack of biological descriptive material on the different species available back then. How do I know this? Because I wrote the bloody thing (with a little help from Rolf Jansen - who supplied some reference material and some general constructive editorial criticism from a guy in MAF). If MAF get pissed at people bringing stuff in thru the quarantine stations that should not be here they have the ability to make bringing anything in so administratively and logistically difficult that it will just stop happening. Sure, a bit of smuggling might take place but overall it would kill the hobby for new entrants and over time it would descend back into the dark ages it was in when I first started back in ’94. Steve

Many (in fact something over 10) years ago they briefly went the other way and for a period of a few months, decided that rock could come in without going through any sort of quarantine. During that time I managed to get 3 boxes (probably over 100kg) of rock that had only been out of the water 36 hours. This had its +s and -s. While 5 of the corals in my tank are actually grown from tiny colonies (2-10mm dia) I found on these rocks I also ended up with a worm that grew to over 1m long and was about as thick as a finger and had a mouth at least as big as that on a full grown clown fish plus a crab that chewed itself a hole to live in by going in through the side of a Tubipora musica and generally made a pest of itself tipping over unattached corals. The worm suffered the fate of a long freshwater swim and the crab ended up in my ‘fuge’ but for some reason only lived about a year in there. I feel a bit guilty about the demise of the crab, as I feel I could have looked after it better and perhaps trained it to be a traffic officer. Steve

Maybe there is just no way to make you look better..

You should be looking into a failsafe RCD. They are supposed to turn back on automatically after a power outage but, of course, not after having been tripped by a short ot earth (like from you getting zapped). Steve

Thanks, needed that to remind me to get my AintoG and replace my filter cartridges (5 micron, carbon & DI) before I either start producing more poluted water than went in or bugger my RO membrane. Steve

You would also probably need to expect the anemones to go into hiding for a bit. They may also indulge in some serious deflation as they seek to expel the old water.

You'll know soon enough

Yes plus various other critters like shrimps, anemones, crabs etc Yes Steve

If the animals are happy and used to those conditions you certainly would not want to do any large water changes. Many animals, previously oblivious to the fact that they have been living in sub optimal conditions, have only discovered this fact as they died from a sudden change (improvement) in those conditions. Steve

Yes they will eventually get on if one doesn't die first. The afformention use of a mirror is the only way I have come across to stop the chasing. I have even had the former chasee come out to do battle with its own reflection and be totally ignored by what were, only minutes before, the chasers, but who were now too busy fighting off more 'threatening' foes. I would expect to need to keep it in front of the tank for up to a week but you take it away to check progress after a day or so. Steve

No it wont. A continuous run of hose from your tank down to the tank then running round inside the tank for a bit then back up to your tank will take only a moderate pump to operate as it will have almost zero head, only internal resistance - in fact the head will be only the difference in height between the two ENDS of the hose. The hose itself though, will need to be able to take the pressure of a 20m head. If you developed a leek in the hose near the bottom it would then act like TWO 20m high siphons and so you would need to ensure it did not pick up or discharge water anywhere near the bottom of your tank, in case this happened. Steve

What temperature is the ground outside your house, say 10cm below the surface? Do you have a water tank outside. What temperature does that sit at? Both these provide opportunity for a basic heat exchange system requiring nothing more than a pump and a lot of tubing. I breifly used something like this on a marine tank but instead of taking a pipe outside I had 25-30m or tubing coiled in a drum through which town supply water slowly trickled. A plumbers nightmare, but it worked well and had I not discovered I could get the same end result by blowing air across between the water and the lights, I would still probably be using it. Steve

Don't have a fire so might have to rely on internal combustion. Never had an outage like that either, just call me paranoid. Steve

It's this bit that worries me about the cheap ones "Operational Capacity (hr): 13 hr Continuous at load" This is somewhat short of being able to run a reef tank for a week, even at subsistence level. My brother, who has a lot more experience in this area, is looking into the options for me, but I suspect I might have to go for a slightly more robust one. Steve

Got home last night to find the whole tank had shut down round lunchtime (2nd set of halides coming on) so its finishing the electrics for me. Adding the extractor fan must have been just one item too many. No damage, no floods, no animal losses, so the robustness of the basic system design seems adequate. Discovered that the two outlets in the room were off one circuit breaker, so the oven grade sub main with 3 RCDs will hopefully go in within the next week or so. Meanwhile, with the aid of a long extension lead, I have split the load between two circuit breakers. One thing on the medium term plan is to get a generator. I would hate to have the tank survive 'the big one' and then watch the animals die due to no heat /circulation. I figure a minimum of 1 weeks running with just heat, main circulation and fluorescents is a useful target to aim at. Steve