reef

come in green, purple,blue. dont come in much as they eat fish like skippys mushroom

did not see that so deleted it.

your returm pump is too small . with 6 outlets you will not get much flow,especially with the head height and bends reducing the flow. better to look at two outlets. If you get a Deltec turbo skimmer you can just put it in the sump with no plumbing required or any extra pump. One overflow should be more than enough for the tank as you are also taking tank space away by have two overflows.

photo would help

Reduce the light hours . The damage has been done. water quality sounds like it is fine so big additional water changes wont help much , also NSW contains too much bacteria which cold cause more problems with weak corals. Councils are testing water each week on auckland beaches due to high bacteria count from storm water and sewage. Maybe just change 10% to add back some lost minerals etc. The corals will need less light so they can utilise energy on repairing themselves. Add amino acids to aid healing

Time does fly but problems have been happening slowly and building. The over use of carbon would have also stripped all the minerals from the tank and allowing light to penetrate deeper thus shocking the coral. Problems were starting as per this thread http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/1-vt15441.html?postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 This is covered in the articles and i have seen this happen on many tanks with too much light .Corals cant utilise all the light so they start to die to to lack of food. Covered many times by cookie as he has a book that states this.

One for layton, i got lost reading it, however main point was. These results present a case for dynamic photoinhibition within the zooxanthellae of this captive coral, and suggest over-lighting is indeed a possibility in artificial conditions, even if a small-polyped stony coral is photoacclimated to high light intensity. http://www.livingreefs.com/forums/saltwater-aquarium-articles/408-what-its-worth.html

Basically drifty summed it up. The corals have been fried with the extra light and further problems caused by the overuse of carbon which would have let the light penatrate deeper and thus cause uv burn. Corals would have also basically starved as the extra light would have made them use more energy so they would not have been able to build a protective uv coat. The other factor is that you are using sodium ballast which overruns the bulbs causing even more light. Doing a big water change is going to make it worse. My advice would be to reduce the lighting hours and add amino acids. Here a small article Effects of Too Much Light more info http://www2.hawaii.edu/~delbeek/reefaq4.html

I don’t think it is a good idea to add corals with nitrite that high. Especially sps corals. sps corals should only be added after maybe 6 months when the tank has matured and the water quality is good. Your tank will still be very high in organics which will make the sps corals go brown. Nothing wrong with 3 months to cycle a tank. With marines you need patients as so many people have failed as they get to eager to add stock. Once the tank has done the cycle then a big water change is needed to remove the nitrates and organics. Not good for coral if you have added them to soon. You will get so much conflicting information from hobbyist who are at varies stages of experience, so that is why it is a good idea to invest in a quality book that has factual information.

i would test weekly. as once you have a tank full of corals the calcium/kh/mag will drop quick as they are used by many corals, but this depends what type of corals you have. get a small note book and record weekly.

main test kits used are nitrate phostphate calcium kh magnesium

So lovely when love is in the air

I suspect the nudis are always on leather and montipora, you don’t see them when the coral is healthy. Maybe They only take control when the coral is dying or in bad shape.

Had this thing cruising the tanks for months, removed it as it was eating the leathers.

The more feedback the better as getting stock is not the problem.

Will gladly pass your message on., but have you thought of doing that as they might take the feedback on board.

I will pass your message on and advise that your perception is that the stock is poor and the tanks are never full.

Try Hollywoods in albany or Jansens as they have plenty of stock

"EDIT" You only always get half the story . I understand the chickens are coming home to Roust. breakup time What makes you think it is poor?? Have you asked Hollywoods? Maybe it is more to do with the limited number of sales. No use having full tanks if you cant sell them. Well Krama what stock cant you get?

Had time today to visit Hollywoods to see the new setup. Looks nice and tidy. hopefully new stock in two weeks. Look out for the opening specials in 3-4 weeks. reef tank Fish Tank only Sump

I have a few Pottasium kits to trial out. They will be pretty much the same as yours. Pottasium is so hard to test that is why the hanna meter only goes to 50mg/l

have you seen these wasp. http://www.hannainst.co.uk/acatalog/HI-93750_Potassium_Meter.html Might be better than having a random test kit. Pottasium must be very hard to read due to no quality test kits available, i dont think even lamottee or hatch do regent test kits for pottasium. the reagents might be very unstable

hope all goes well, should be ok. corals dont need much water , just make sure they are covered with water. just put the fish in a bucket.

it was an educated guess. I had a load of the purple type in quarantine a few months ago and they were fine for a week, then they started to pick on one after another. I would take the one that was hammered out and then they would start on another. These were the purple ones. I found the red fire fish are a bit friendlier with each other. also the firefish can jump out of your tank. they are great for nano tanks . If you want schooling fish I found Apogon leptacanthus to be great fish.

From my limited knowledge of reef keeping you cant keep them in shoals as they start to pair up and kill of the others.