scholesy

I second that. Peter is the man for building tanks!

I put a Durso on my tank. A little bit of thought spent on making sure I made it right, a couple of weeks' wait for it to quieten down - it's real quiet. I made a perspex runway that hangs thru the slits on the overflow and this reduces the remaining noise even further. I can control the flow via my AquaMedic 3600l/h pump if I want to (but I like having it at full whack).

the name of the place is Filtercorp International, in Beach Haven Ackland. Email: akld "curly at symbol" filtercorp dot co dot nz. I dealt with a helpful guy called Miles. Minimum length to buy is a metre from memory which will last a while. I've used 1 and 5 micron for over a year and from that experience I recommend it.

helpful hint: tie 2 knots if you don't get a stocking end with the toe bit.

Ive got around 5000 lph going through my 380l set-up... a little more wouldn't go amiss. I have 32mm piping on the closed loop, so I could always swap the 2400lph pump with a 3500lph for some extra kick....!

Be a man and use your wife's stockings LOL

sorry got busy last night - sick child. Puking up everywhere. Made a note of it and will dig out the name this weekend. p.s. why are people getting banned...and for what?!?!

There's a crowd in Ak that will sell by the metre, filter felt in varying filter capacities from 1micrometre to about 50. I use 1 and 5 occasionally for 1/2 a day to brighten the water - works great - and then discard the felt. You don't need much, and it's very cheap. I'll try to dig out the name of the place this evening.

if u get a pH meter, make sure you calibrate it regularly (every couple of months) - they do get out of whack over time. Plus the probes are rated for a life of 18mths when run continuously.

Yeah jump in the car and head south to sunny Wellington. There're heaps of people here living not far apart, you could do something of a tank crawl.

replace your blue lights with red lights and put a speaker playing Barry White next to the tank. Set up a table with a red-white checked tablecloth, a couple of candles, and feed the fish oysters. Voila!

nice!! MIght be a bit cheaper than a pre-made one and a bit more fun too I guess

You can do some simple mods on a SeaClown skimmer that make them ok skimmers (not great) for small tanks, up to 100l I reckon. Uprade the pump to 1200 or 1500lph, dremel off the innermost acrylic tube, put a wooden airstone down the centre of the skimmer. THe original design wasn't great, and these mods won't make it as good as a $500 skimmer, but it might ok for your setup. Good luck with whatever you go with.

will have a hawkfish too soon

I second that. Irfanview is the mutt's nuts.

Send that weed on the next train to wellie (the green polyps, that is). LOL. I have a soft coral, still in the process of identifying it, that will eventually force back maroon mushrooms. Galaxea and Hydno like to "have their space" in my tank ha ha

I wondered about that but then thought about how I want them to fit as close as possible to my light hood. Still wondering about the UV light that manages to bounce around inside the hood and get out though. Hard to guess how much it will be....

Looking at about $55 per 22x26cm piece but should be enough to block the heat nicely, and catch UV from the sides and one end of the bulb. Not cheap these tanks

Did some temp measuring out of interest, thought I'd post the results if anyone else was interested. 5cm below bulb: 70 deg C 5cm under bulb end-fitting: 55 5cm out from that: 40 9cm below bulb: 60 deg C 5cm down, and 4cm to one side of bulb: 67 Whichever way you look at it: they're hot! Anyone know what's the max temp ordinary glass can handle?

After much toing, froing, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and generally not getting anywhere.... I've decided that each bulb will have a boro-silicate heat resistant glass shield mounted approx 5cm from the bulb, extending approx 5cm from the bulb at the ends, and approx 7cm from the bulb out the sides. A little UV may still escape between the extremes of the glass and the inside of the light shade, but nothing's perfect. thanks for your thoughts everyone, appreciated.

hey Steve I can see Dori the tang's reflection in the glass. SHe seems to be doing really good in there. Awesome crusting on the glass!!

shielding my eyes will be fine - the hood is closed on the sides, top, and ends. I guess my best bet is to make the glass fit as well as possible within the hood to ensure minimum leakage into the tank. Maybe people out there could post the distance their UV glass is located from their bulbs? Last thing I want is shattered UV but not heat-proof glass filling the tank. cheers

After some opinions from people out there with d/ended MHs, that aren't in fancy fixtures - i.e. they've mounted them in a hood themselves. Of course, DEs unshielded can apparently cook certain things in the tank, despite corals etc being exposed to UV in their day-to-day lives. I'm getting some heat-resistant glass to mount about 5cm below the bulb. The rectangle of glass will extend about 5cm from the bulb on all edges (about 15 x 25 cm). Apparently the glass'main benefit is the heat resistance - 165 deg apparently. Now I don't know how much if any UV is going to be blocked by it. I'm debating whether to get a piece of specialist UV (95% reduction) glass and mount it a few cm under the heat resistant glass. This piece of glass would be a bit bigger than the heat glass - say 20 x 30 cm - but it wouldn't encapsulate the bulb and some UV could still get out / bounce around the light shade. Questions: 1. Is the heat glass enough to stop the majority of UV? 2. Is 5cm a good distance away from the bulb? 3. Is the 2nd piece of glass necessary? 4. Is say 3cm for the UV glass from the heat glass ok? (too close / far) 5. Is the fact that the UV glass doesn't completely seal in the bulb going to be a problem? (the ends of the light hood will be sealed) Opinions, advice, theories... all considered with appreciation.

We should probably ask how "small" his tank is. I didn't see a litre / gln figure in the post, might have missed it. What some aquarists call small is quite big to others. How many litres are we talking here?

Those prickly bits are setae, like glass. They come off nice and easy like a porcupine's quills.... ouch!