WEKA

Hey dont spit the dummy Stompa I think a few of us thought it was too good to be true!! I am in the process of setting up a hood with provision for up to 6 x T8 I would be interested to know what you have done for your reflector. I was going to line the inside of my hood with the reflector sheeting they use for hydroponics.

Did you have a light hood with a good reflector with the T8s or are you not comparing apples with apples. Also how old were the "old" tubes.

If the stand is strong you could put a car jack under the end to allow you to put in some packers.

I would keep a close eye on the top of the cabinet that the tank is on. If it starts to droop in the middle you may have some draws full of fish

I bumped the edge of a 15mm sheet the other day with another piece of glass !!!!!! yezzzz sounded like a shotgun going off

Thanks everyone for your comments. If I go glass what thickness would you recommend for the 600mm span and how many sections for the 1500mm lenght.

I am about to make up covers for the top of my cold marine 1500 x 600. I will have a number of T8 full lenght tubes for lighting and a fan ventilated light hood. Should not be any "spray" in the tank as all "life support" systems are outside of the tank. My question is : which is best to use glass or acrylic. I thought acrylic may be safer to use when feeding etc and will probably reduce any heat from the lights entering the tank due to its thermal insulating properties. Can anyone out there give me the benefit of their experience on this please.

Put the sensor in one of those screw top jam jars with a cable gland mounted thru the lid for the LCD assuming it has a round cable

Did it lite up full lenght but brighter at the ends, if so leave it for a while and it should even up. Give it 15mins and see what happens.

Be interested to know how you find the new Laguna. Is it quiet ? I am looking at changing one of my pumps for something a bit quieter on my marine. Cheers WEKA

Have a look in the DIY there are some threads running there at the moment which should help

I suggest you do what I did and sit outside in the breeze. Even with my temperature controlled system there were still enough fumes to do your lungs some serious harm - not worth the risk of trying to do it in a space without good ventilation WEKA

Hi Ira My piece of wire is not much more than 6 inches. I have full control on the heat and set it so it cuts fast without too many fumes. I use the 1.25mm dia wire to give it strenght so it does not bend when in use. Cheers WEKA

Hi Ira The blanket transformer would probably be too small. My 120 watt transformer started to get fairly hot after a while. I think the blanket one would only be about half the size. I used a hot air gun to try a bit of sculpting and it worked quite well. Cheers WEKA

That was a great site Fishy I liked the large rock style the guy used - makes me want to start again. I have gone for more the sharp broken rock look. The hot wire is the way to go if you can, there is no mess at all. I am an electrician so it was not a big deal. I got some nichrome wire from an element manufacturer. It is about 200mm long and 1.25mm dia. I connected it to a 12volt 120va transformer - but the transformer needs to be controlled on the input. In my case I used what is called a variac tranformer which allows me to control the input voltage to the transformer otherwise the wire would quickly overheat and burn out. I mounted the hot wire onto a couple of bolts thru one end of a short piece of broom handle and connected the 12v wires on. You can shape the hot wire to suit ie pointed or rounded etc Hope you can make sense of all this - good luck with your project. Maybe we can get some pics later on. WEKA

Hi Fishy I am doing the same thing at the moment for my 550litre cold marine. I plan on keeping some crayfish in the tank so have carved out a couple of caves and a swim thru in the middle. I have made mine out of two 100mm sheets of polystyrene using a hot wire to shape the face and caves. I held the two sheets together with kebab skewers to start with as it helped to be able to separate the two sheets to make the caves and swimthru. I have cut large volumes off the face but it is good to have the depth in places. My plan is to coat the face with a strong cement based product of some kind and then to melt most of the poly out of the back with a hot air gun and then coat the back as well. This will get rid of the buoyancy problem and will create a large cavity in the back were I plan on bringing my return from the sump (approx 5000l/hr) I will make some screened holes in various places for the return water to exit thru the wall. Have done some testing of this method and it is looking good. Hope this helps WEKA

Great tank Do you not have to have some places for the seahorses to roost

Where do you buy this wonder drug and how much does it cost

Anodizing the aluminium parts will stop corrosion even with saltwater. It changes the surface composition of the aluminium and makes it very hard. It is not expensive to have done.

That would be a lot of paper mache stompa for my tank. I was thinking of sticking two sheets of 100mm together to get a good depth to be able to make caves and crevasses for my crayfish and things to hide in. There must be a resin available like they make the shipwrecks and things out of for tanks.

Thanks Lyndyloo I had a look but could only see an article about concrete. The search program does not seem to be available at the moment. Cheers

Hi I am looking at building a resin background for my 1500x600 saltwater. I had thought about sculpturing it out of polystyrene and coating it with resin. The idea was to then disolve out the polystyrene afterwards to get rid of the buoyancy. Has anyone tried anything like this and what sort of resin is available for this sort of application. I would really appreciate any help you can give me with this. I have access to large sheets of 100mm poly.

Thanks Kim & Dan and Lindyloo Sorry about the terminology but I thought thats what you called the box thingy you have in the corner of the tank where the water runs over the top of and into the sump. It maintains the level in your tank. I am new to this (as you have probably figured) but I was sure someone at the LFS called it that. As it happens I have put it in this morning. I left about 1.5mm between the pieces of glass for the silicon, just enought so they don't touch. Hope you can understand all of this. Cheers WEKA

Thanks freshwest

What are the microns on your pleated filter freshwest