Kermit

Nice fish dude, is that one of redwoods lastest releases? Hmmm Tank, nice size dude. Yeah glass costs.

or if you are going to remove the excess sand and don't want it i'll bye it .

Hmmm, my understanding of what Layton said in the forum i posted is that the display tank sand bed is to be about 1" thick with course sand to prevent debrae/gas build up and have a seperate tank with a 3-4" thick bed of fine gran sand so it can be isolated if anything was to go wrong. I assume this is to isolate the harmful gasses that might occur, and get disturbed. Is this rite Layton? If so you could probably put your excess sand in your refrigium that you've got.

Thanks for your replies guys. I have about a dozen corals two anemones two feather dusters(worms) and a 1" thick layer of sand in the display tank. I've got 2000L/hr going through the sump and 2 x 2000L/hr power heads in the tank blowing over the rock thats a 24 x turnover. The snails did create a lot of waste, yanked all but four of them out so between them and the fish the algae's kept under control. I tried seachem phosguard peletes and it did nothing at all, PO4 still says 0.0. Yeah i know i'm close to the limit of fish hence why big tank gonna happen. Skimmer pulls out about 30mL of crap a day. Fish are healthy nice and fat most of them feed off whats in the rocks except the clowns i feel i'm feeding clowns realy. Have thought of putting another holding tank in the sump to give me another 50L capacity. I think i'll put a thick sand bed in it now. cheers Layton

Dudes, i'l tell you's a little story. I've got a 4ft L x 1ft,6 H x 1ft,8 W tank, totaling 250L including sump. Great starter as after a month of strating it up i had text book levels 8.2-8.4 Ph 0.0 Ammonia 0.0 Nitrite 0.0 Nitrate 0.0 Phos 380-440 Calcium Even tho i had no traceable Phos, i've always had some green hair algae probably the test kit. everything was happy in this kingdom for seven to eight months, then i put some snails in to eat the lushis ugly algae oops lets say about to many of them obviously since then my ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates sky rocketed, the first to byte the dust was the two frog sporn corals so a major water change was done and since then my levels have stayed up high except for the ounce were it dropped back for a week. i'm constantly doing a 20% water change a week to try and keep ontop of it. I'm going to get some more rock and sand to cycle in a seperate system and introduce it to help with nitrification and give more area for bacteria to grow. But till that happens has anyone got any ideas???? i now have two polymous clowns, one purple tang, one banna wrasse, one bicolour blenny and a long nose butterfly fish in which i've started to feed every second day, instead of every day.

Yeah Tunze hmmmm tunze, but you seen the price for those fans (as thats all they are) yeah i know the amount i'm spending as it is, as if i'd miss a couple of thou on them, i'll use the wifes makeup budget a really tho i just refuse to spend that kind of money on something thats cheaper to make then your standard pump (rip off) oops i'l get some rep for that. Who's brand were they? I'm using the Osram electronic ballast on my tank as it is and they're good, actually the selling point of these are they are easier on lamps and prevent lamps exploding when at end of life, mind you i'm running 10000k lamps so whites, white. but interesting on the 14000k's. interferance can be stopped with some inline supressors if problems occur not ya cheap appliance plugin crap either they're only good for spikes and even then its to late, i'm talking cap/resistor type maybe even more. Electronic's has so many advantges like less heat a lot less, smaller, lite weight. But then there's down side i suppose a little more exspensive ($10 more for the 150watts) interference if cheap make (you get what you bye, oops thats the tunze repeating itself).

Who needs a budget just don't tell the wife . I'm pretty patient so i'm happy to stock it over a period of time, just like your moto chimera nothing happens fast.....

Whats the deal with these pictures man??? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

ok hope this works. The image is of my plans for the tank and sump. The top image is the main tank and the bottom the sump/refrigium. Sump being 6ft x 1.5ft x 1.5ft refrigium being 4ft x 1.5ft x 1.5 ft. Sorry pies no pic's yet as still in the planning stages, very simular to yours yes even to the extent of steel frame stand with rimu cladding, which i decided ages ago before seeing yours. Will be running 6 x 150watt MH (electronic ballasts, so small and lite weight compared to choke ballasts and not that much more) 6 x 4ft Actinics, at least two closed loop systems about 6k+ L/hr each, sump pumping at least 6k+ L/hr, live rock filter, calcium reactor, Protein skimmer, bluh bluh bluh and wait there's more if you call now i'll through in a Ginsu knife. (just for you chimera ) reason for two tanks in bottom is to try and spread the weight evenly as there will be a beam in the center. Why so many lights? well as its a wide tank i feel three lamps down the center wont cut the mustard and don't wont to use Fluro's. Hmmmm have i covered everything? hmmm i guess i'll have to wait and find out. TM must catch up and talk. Kermit

Cheers for the input pies some good statements regarding second hand glass. My tank is going to be an island peice so you will veiw all sides but will look into the second hand glass for the base as your wright in saying it's a lot of money's for something your not going to see. Also i have a six and half year old son, as most people know it's the main ingrediant for a desaster so i think i'm best to be safe then sorry in the thickness. As for the water i calculated 1430L in main tank and 490L in the sump a nice total of 1920L, scary even talking about it. regards Kermit

Well i priced the glass today. I priced the tank originally for 10mm with 12mm base about a month ago, came to total of $1260 incl, pollished edges. Today's price for 12mm and 15mm base total cost $2250 incl, pollished edges, that's a $990 increase for an extra 2mm of glass, o'well gotta be done. I also looked into the low iron glass and they can only go uptop 10mm aswell, didn't bother with the price as i wont be using it. Pies, your tank must have cost a simular price a? Kermit

Looking awsome dude, you've inspired me to hurry up my next investment. can't wait to see it all going and stocked.

Cheers guy's. I think i'll go with the 12mm if not to pricy. Yip sure will be a reef tank, only had my 4ft for 9 months and totally addicted, wife gives me a hard time but she enjoy's sitting down and watching the fish and corals move. cheers again. Kermit

Well I've been looking into seting up a new system 7-8ft long 4ft wide 2ft deep. Now i went onto the www.garf.org site and used there site to calculate the glass thickness, and they suggest glass 3/8 thick (10mm). Hmmm seems on the lite side to me, so i spoke to a guy that had a 3m long by 800mm wide/deep tank and he said it was made of 10mm tuthened glass and had no brob's. Ok sounds like Garf were right, or are they?, as a guy i spoke to today said don't invite me around to sit infront of it, as it might explode. So what do the people on this site think as there's obveously a differing opinions on what thickness of glass that should be used. Kermit

If your in Christchurch i'm sure i've seem them in Critter Kingdom and Redwood Aquatics. kermit

Hmmm interesting comments. Just brought some 3ft T5's for my small tank 6500k, they had them on the shelf. Just one thing to remember is VHO's are almost draw twice the wattage so don't try running them on a standard ballast. In saying that there are ballasts out there how ever that cover a small different wattage rating (i.e 20w - 32w) which will allow different size lamps to be run from it. I've found Rexel to hold a good stock of all different things, and they have a lighting department that'll get the right lamp over night if not in stock. Don't know what retail prices are like though.

Hi guy's, just thought i'd put some other ideas across ya's that might help with cooling. I engineer and program BMS (Building Management Systems) and with this i control commercial chillers, cooling towers. Cooling tower is a simple unit, very much what your discussing above. A tub that has water circulated from the bottom basin through a water full entering it and a fan to draw air over it to increase evaporation, beleive it our not this use to be a common cheap form of cooling in some buildings but most have been replaced with a chiller as bacterias love to breed in these conditions. So if you want to increase evaporation then this may do, (you may want to put a ballcock filler in to keep water in the tub as when summer hits man its going to go through water). Also a nother thing to think of is if the air temperature is high (lets say 30deg c) it might actually heat the tank then cool it. running a huge coil through the ground is another good way to cool as the ground temperature stay's reasnobly constant. becoming more common these days too, just don't dig it up when doing the gardening.

Oops, i know what ya mean. I was sifyning water of through a air tube (dont know why) and went shopping oops only lost about ten litres on the floor but man what a hassel cleaning it a, thank god for the rug doctor vacumme.

Gee's that big a. Every book i've looked at doesn't show them, but mind you can't say i've looked through that many books. Cheers Dude

Cheers for that Brian.

Polymous Clown (black with white strips) Have photo just got to attach it.

Tanks guys. Typical a, everythings twice as hard in NZ due to our aquaculture laws . I'll drop pm to Brinanemone, Cheers Wasp. Robert

Hi is there anyone out there that can shuve me in the right direction????? I've got a couple of Polymuos Clowns that i want to start breeding next year and have been doing some studies on reering setups. So ok i'm pritty confident in how it all goes, but my biggest problem is locating some rotifers to start a culture. Please "O" please let there be someone out there that can help me..........