reef

nice set up, cant see pics, you cant keep cerianthus with small fish, they will kill them. very high tank, will be a good leather tank.

i cant be calcium build up, why would there be calcium in the pipe? you should be able to take the pipe off the skimmer and check, maybe something is blocking it.

Which model are you using?? If it is the in sump model, like a turbo. The most likely problem is that the air pipe is stuck or something is touching it.

i think you need 8x250w , the tank is wider than my tank.. i can only keep acros under the halides, the sides of my tank is quite dark without t5, so i run t5s. i would design two hoods with 4 halides in each , same as your drawings. and run them next to each other. thats 2000w. yahoo. you will get much better coverage.

They are about as accurate as picking the winning teams in the super 12 every week. Ph probes in general are not accurate especially ones without temperature compensation. And should be used as a guide and not gospel. Pies your ph probe might be saying 8.29, but with allowing for temperature the ph might be 8.20 or 8.40 When calibrating the probes . the calibration solutions needs to be heated up to 25C or what ever the solution says. otherwise the meter will not be calibrated correctly. To get very accurate readings, a very good quality ph meters would be in the thousands, Spoke to a chemist friend, who advised me that the ph readings are only as good as the probe. and advised me to get lab grade probes. also you have to check that the probe matches the meter voltage. Still these ph meters made for the aquarium trade are still useful for the hobby as do we really have to worry if the ph is 8.10 or 8.30.etc , I think not.

Interesting subject. I give up worrying about my ph as I have found that if you don’t calibrate you ph meter weekly then you aren’t getting a accurate reading as the probe gets dirty and calcium builds up. Also most ph meters aren’t that accurate as they don’t have a temperature meter attached as you have to read both together to get a correct reading as temperature will affect ph.. A good ph probe cost over $300 and they only last 12 months. My tank is about 7.80 in the morning and 8.10 during the day. I have never been able to get my ph above 8.30 . I have seen people claim that there ph is 8.40 and higher. This may be correct or there is something wrong with there probe etc. The other thing that affects the ph reading when using probes is other electrical devises as when I had VHO lighting every time I turned them off the ph would go up. So the questions is, How accurate are all these readings on ph. Best to use the ph as a guide .

Generally fish get white spot if they are stressed or if your water quality is not correct. I would check salinity, ph. nitrates. Nice clean tanks that are well skimmed tend to help to keep white spot under control. It fish are eating well and don’t have too much white spot it will go away. You have to been careful if the white spot does not go away as fish will get secondary bacteria problems, it is not the white spot that will kill them, but the bacteria infection will kill them. Feeding them garlic or soaking your food in garlic does help sometimes. If it gets bad, you could try a freshwater dip., but this need to be done 3 days in a row and the ph & temp have to be the same. Baths are for 15-20mins. Fresh water dips are only good for healthy fish as fish that are not looking very well or on their last legs will die as the stress will be too much.

Looks good, Would be nice if you would use the previous post on Jans tanks as doing a new post every time will clog up the site

I agree with Layton, the more even the light across the tank the better. It also depends what you are keeping, blasting the tank with lots of light wont help torch corals/euphyllias/ trachs etc as they need moderate light. I have found that that the 250w de are as good as 400w se. otherwise I would be using 400w if they were better. Why don’t you do a plan of your tank and work out were you are going to put your coral, and then you will be able to plan the lights. There is no advantage of disadvantage using t5, floros normally give your fish better colours as metal halide tends to fade the colour of coral and fish when you are looking at them, especially the 6500k/10k. Electronics metal halide ballast would be a nice addition. 250w bulbs are generally cheaper than 400w. A nice mix of bulbs would look good; say 10k and 15/20k. The higher Kelvin will offset the 10k effect that you get. And, save up for the power bill.

thats a nice tank IRA, your cichilds will love it.

Found a German article which discusses the vodka method to reduce nitrates and phosphates, I will translate when I get time as it is huge. Will see if nick wants to place in the NZ marine flyer.

well ira when you get a reef tank one day you will see it is not easy to build anything else but a wall of rock as space is limited.

I am sick of MR ZEOVIT trying to advertise in all his post how great zeovit is, when all it is a nitrate remover. The post was about propagation not a nitarte remover product. Zeowhat.

i noticed both systems are using the protein skimmer system,

ira, if you get it from airport to airport it is about $80.

just quality water and low stocking tanks

What a nice reef tank, certainly should inspire most hobbyist. Combination of 2x250w metal halides and t5 lighting. http://www.korallenriff.de/beckum_wohnzimmer.html

http://www.korallenriff.de/beckum_nachzucht.html

photos?????????

i thought that was cheap. marines are not cheap as they need very good water quality. Wait until to see the price of the fish/coral. as that is the expensive part. i say if you can afford a budget of $4000, then the hobby is not for you. I have seen so many people try to spend less and when you see there tank you have to feel sorry for the livestock, I think my tanks owes me $40,000.

i would go for second hand if you can get them at a good price. the most important equipment which you cant skimp on is Skimmer cost about $500-700 lights, metal halides or t5s $400-700 refractometer cost $120 good power heads like, tunze stream or iks wave pumps. i think thats about it.

I replaced my metal halide bulbs about 5 days , which were blv and aquaconnect. The new bulbs are from the USA, coralvue, i thought i would try them as they are getting great reviews on reef central. So far they are fantastic, my acropora are starting to colour up very well. I am using 12K,15k,20K. I as wondering what everyone else is using?

lucky i did not buy the grotech reactor. Mine is getting built with the outlet on the side and quick release nuts so i can take the top off. going to run salifert phostphate remover and carbon in it

dogmatix, I said minimum not maximum. It depends what you are keeping in the reef tank. Also 2x tunze stream does not equate to 24000L/H as they turn on and off from 100% to 30% every second or so. you might be looking at 10000 L/H.

You can put the power heads anywhere, but the most important part is to get about min 10 times turnover of water movement in the tank if you have hard and soft corals. So for a 400l tank you will need about 4000L of water movement in the tank