I've got tentative permission to setup a marine tank

[Caryl]

Pegasus we actually coiled plastic piping up in it, as much as would fit, and ran the water through that. There was a good reason for not filling it with water directly but I can't remember what it was.

[Pies]

Alan: Lion Fish are charted for Poor Knigts (Ultra Rare), 3 Kings (Rare) & The Kermedec Islands (Uncommon).

IRA. I've posted this before but i'll repeat myself. The HAGEN test kits are complete shit for saltwater. I have slowly replaced all my kits with Salifert kits, simply because you get a consistant accurate reading with them. If I had know you were going to buy a HAGEN test kit, I would have sold you mine. None have been used more than 2 or 3 times, going cheap.

Ohhhhh and using 3 or 4 bottles is common for most test kits in saltwater. Droppers, syringes, spoons etc. Magnesium is the worst for me so far.

Which reminds me, must go test my water.

[Ira]

If I'd known it was so crappy I wouldn't have bothered, I wouldn't care if it was only generally accurate, but I wouldn't even call it that. Noone sells salifert test kits that I've seen though, where do you get yours?

I just tried my other ammonia test kit assuming it works ok it looks like it's about .5ppm. But, I dunno if it does because the drops just congeal in the test tube immediately.

[Pies]

I get mine from Auckland. I will have some stuff being sent to me in the next few weeks, and can organise your test kits and supliments there. I can provide them for whatever it cots me + your share in the postage (if we have to pay for it, sometime it works out free). Let me know what kits you want and i'll get them for you. Please don't ask me how much they are cause I won't know until I recieve the invoice.

Those Hagen test kits a shockers.

Pies

[reef]

IRA, hows your triple fin. Has it survived the ammonia cycle.

[Ira]

He's still alive, hasn't been eating for the last couple days. I'm not sure if it's because the temperature is too high for him or not, but he was eating well when the temperature was staying around 24-25°. It's now around 26°-27° But, I also realized just a few hours ago that the hydrometer was hitting the top glass of the tank and being held down a little so I thought the SG was lower than it was. It was actually about 1.28 so i've been adding freshwater to bring that down. It was originally about 1.24. Whether that makes a difference or not, I don't know.

I need to get an ammonia test kit too. But at least the color on the useless Hagen kit doesn't seem to have changed any over the last week. Only casualties seem to be a couple snails, I'm not sure if they're dead or just have sealed themselves up in their shells.

[Pies]

1.028 not 1.28 for SG. Here is a tip, don't leave they hydrometer in the tank, unless you want to covered in algae. And we are talking about marine alage, it doen't just wipe off...

Don't change the SG more than .0005 a day, it can stress any animals present and can cause die off of bacterria.

28 degrees seams VERY hot for a tank with no heater. I can only assume that you have added one. Most people keep their tanks between 24-26 degrees, and are unhappy when it reaches 28+. If your tank is reaching 28+ buy a chiller.

I feel VERY sorry for that fish, and any other animal you have added to the tank. Taken from the wild, introduced into a tank that had been setup that day, temprature is then raised to be twice as high as it should be, specific gravity is fluctuated. I assume it is also going to be fighting overfeeding, amonia, nitrite and nitrates all in high concentrations.

Ira, you said you were going to run it as a coldwater tank to cycle for many months and now your running your tank 4 degrees warmer than my tank!

Turn down the heater.

I did offer to get you a Salifert test kit for Amonia.

Take that fish back to the wild, it can't survive the tank conditions you are providing it, what you are doing to it is cruel. Just because you didn't pay for it, does't give you the right to torture it.

Remember if your adding tap water (in fact any non filtered water) you are adding nutrients and phosphates into the water. These will fuel alage blooms and cause more instability to your water paramaters.

Mark

[reef]

IRA i must agree with pies.

28c is very hot for a cold water tank. if you are going to keep new zealand marines then you will need to get the temp down to 17c, for tropicals it is about 25c, so i think you will need a chiller.

Its very hard to keep the temp down on a small tank without a chiller.

i quess you are using a cheap hydrometer as well, so the salinity could be anything as most hydrometers are calibrated at 25C

As they say, YOU CANT DO MARINES ON A SMALL BUDGET AS IT GET VERY EXPENSIVE IN THE END, AND IF YOU DONT LISTEN TO ADVICE ,YOU WILL FAIL.

[Ira]

oops, yeah, 1.028.

Yeah, I've got a heater in there, but it's turned way down, right now it's set at 21°C because I wanted to make sure it WASN'T turning on. I'd intended to run it cool(not cold) to begin with, but I didn't realize the tank would run hotter now than it did as FW. It hasn't actually gotten into the 28s anyway, only up to about 27.3. I've taken off the glass tops and if it doesn't settle around 25° or lower I'll look into setting up some computer fans or something to blow across the water. If I'm going to have to get a chiller then I'm going to have to call the whole thing off.

I'm reasonably sure I'm not overfeeding the tank. I'm only putting in a tiny pinch of freeze dried plankton or about 1/4 cube of frozen brine shrimp every other day.

As far as not listening to advice, I'm doing the best I can to fit the advice into what I can do. If I fail then I fail, but I'd rather have at least given it a try.

[jetskisteve]

eheim 1262 as new used for about 3 weeks $260 delivered!