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acros needs nutrient starved waters to thrive and color up. Mine is not coloring up very well because of high nutrients..... Go for H&S or order a skimmer from the US. I spend 500 bucks for an RSB the last time but compared to my DIY beckett its pitiful. I tested the two of them by running them together and the result is that while the RSB has stopped pulling things out of the water. The beckett is continuing to foam and throwing up a very dark colored skimmate .

yup, second the motion to ban UGF fro reeftanks. Probably bioballs too if you have enough LR and a DSB. Bioballs will also become clogged with detritus and dead bacteria after some time and will become a nutrient cesspool. You did start right by buying a good skimmer. H&S is the best skimmer you can buy in Singapore so far. All the others sold here cannot perform as well as the H&S with its large foam pipe.

Phang, To keep SPS such as acros you need to have at least MH lighting as a minimum for a 4 ft tank at least 3 x 150 watts can support acros on the upper half of the tank. 250 watts will enable you to place them lower in the tank. My tank is only 20 inches high and i'm keeping around 7 species of acros, 2 plating montipora capricornis one brown and one orange, a montipora digitata, seriatopora hystrix, 2 species of pocillopora (verecosa and damicornis), a porites and a pavona decussata. SO far I have around 25 frags all over the tank most of it growing and branching. Probably I'll run out of space in a year or two's time. Light 2 x 150, 1 x 250 planning to add another 250 w. Calcium reactor is a must, chiller to remove heat from the lighting. Oversize your chiller as lights and pumps will heat up your water very fast. I use a 1 hp for my 90 gallon tank. A strong skimmer not those RSB Tunzes or Turboflotor but those similar to H&S . US folks rate their skimmers according to the amount of output water from the skimmer not the pump. They advise 5 times your tank volume per hour for a full blown SPS tank. Probably you can make do with 2-3 turnover per hour quite nicely

AT, I'm also using an MD55FX rated at around 65 litre/hr, max head ~7 meters. If you want high turn over on your tank especially for skimming then you need an Iwaki or equivalent. Eheim 1060 is rated at 2200 li/hr but if used as a return pump it probably only pumps at around 60-70% of the rating. Same thing will happen witht he new Eheim 3400 actual flow rate will probably around 2000 l/hr or less if your head is more than 1 metre. Check the pump curve usually non pressure rated pump has full flow at 0 head and 0 flow at maximum head.

Know how to make the Eido chiller work better? Blow the air conditioning towards the air cooling intake ! Need to buy a portable aircon unit though..... or a split unit.

Hi Sten, MH ballast w/ ignitor and capacitor is around $40 from lighting shops. Look for Chan Huat along Balestier road near Balestier Point. YOu need to change the holder to an E27 though. E27 base holder is around $4.

AT, Nope no plans for a Nilsen reactor as my evap rate is too low. Cannot add much freshwater or kalwasser. NIlsen reactor will require a ph controller to contol CO2 injection for managing the tanks ph. I prefer not to rely on controllers. Rrrbot cannot wait to start his tank.... he he My DIY skimmer skims almost half a cup of foul smelling dark gunk daily and it costed me around $100 to make w/out the pump and it performed much much better than my old RSB. Whereas the RSB barely skims anything out of the water after a while my DIY is foaming all day long. Beckett skimmers are the way to go for high capacity skimming!

AT, swing check valves has a very high likelihood of not seating properly actually than ball valves. The swivel joint is one potential problem spot also. Mechanical linkages tend to get stuck as well. You probably need a monthly or bi monthly cleaning for that especially if you have a good growth of small tubeworms in your sump.

EIDO chillers uses Peltier technology and is not very efficient in waarm countries as it depends on ambient temperature for its operation. It requires a cooler ambient temperature as it depends on the fan to carry away heat from the heat sink surface. The refrigeration efficiency is lower than conventional gas refrigerant method in short it uses more power to cool down your tank versus a conventional chiller.

I recognized those acros, the plate and pink acro is from Reefworld and the purple seems from Pacific Marine from the batch they brought in from Fiji. Hey Spiff take god care of those acros and frag them once they are growing. One day we can start bartering frags around. Recently I have a bad bout of RTN and lost the original head but I managed to frag 3 small pieces. So far they are recovering. That acro plate costs more than US$200 in the states! It is considered rare in the hobby and they pay that much! Hopefully I can grow my frags to become a round plate again.

You need to inject the CO2 right near the pump's suction so that it can be broken down into microbubbles and dissolved in the water. Is the pump in the cover? If yes you need to modify it to enable the CO2 suction directly otherwise it won't be effective. Alternatively you can install another pump for recirculation.

its probably a form of power factor correction device as well as provide a smoothing effect on inrush current. It is designed for use with motors or electrical devices with coils thus the savings in electric bills. May be useful for chillers and Iwaki pumps. A few years ago there was this device they were selling for industrial use mainly for plants having big motors. It was effective but only if the motor reaches beyond certain level of load otherwise no effect.

Watch out for check valves as after some time some small creature or growth can prevent it from closing properly. Need to maintain them once evry few months to make sure they close. Ball checks are better than flap check valves but head loss in ball checks are higher.

Best of all make sure you don't suffer from any medical conditions. go for a full med check if you are not sure. Over the last few years a lot of divers got killed all because they never knew their limits or don't bother to check with the locals with regards to the dive site conditions and peculiarities. Remember the Shaw's scion grand daughter and a few days ago another incident in Malaysia. There are many cases of divers going missing because of overconfidence. You need at least 30-40 dives to be called proficient enough. Professionals clocks more than a hundred dives. That's in a year....

For me I installed another 10A circuit breaker and a 30 mA earth leakage breaker prior to all my 13A sockets so that I have 2 layer of protection both against electrocution and fire. I 'm more worried getting electrocuted that the plugs catching fire. I t would be worthwhile to install a secondary earth leakage breaker especially for your pumps as you always get your hands inside the tank. I would not be likely to be the guy who got killed with his hands in the fish tank That will certainly get you front cover in the Newpaper imagine a pic of a dead reefer hanging from the side of his tank......

Why are you using sched 80 pipes you can use the ordinary PVC pipes. Sched 80 are for high pressure use as they can stand over 200 psi of pressure. That means you need to get Spears valves. You can actually buy them also from Eriks if you are looking for them. Eriks distributes Georg fischer as well as Spears.

Yup, it's HQI as well as screw base. Taske a look at this US LFS bulb comparison with the Iwasaki bulb. http://www.coralreefecosystems.com/ltg_bulb_color.htm They used NaH or MH ballast but ignitor voltage is lower I think not 4.2KV but not confirmed yet. I atill have to see the technical specs. IF only they can bring it down some more. I have made enquiries in germany for 10KK, 20KK bulbs and they can sell to me in bulk at only 39 euros each only but minimum order amount is 2000 Euros.

Tiger, Go for a good dive schol in the beginning as diving can be risky sport if you do not have the proper training. When I started diving back in the late 80's I was very gung ho and have even tried diving with an air hose clenched between my teeth all the way down to 90 ft but I became wiser and went for a PADI course. Open water then advance diving course and at one time had a full set of equipment from wetsuit to tank. Try to get a good instructor and no short cuts. Once youre certified go and dive.......and dive and dive.......the best experience you'll ever have!

Phang, You can buy a 4" clear PVC pipe at Hai Cheong Plastics. Get around 20 to 24 inches long and then sela the other end with a 4" PVC pipe cap and the other end glue on a 4" straight PVC coupling. The top end uses a 4" threaded pipe cap so that you can put the calcium carbonate inside. Put a raised plastic platform at the bottom using those plastic aircon grilles. On the bottom part drill a hole around 1" from the base so that you can fit a 16 mm or 13 mm pvc pipe and glue it in. You can also use a 1/2 inch pipe tap and thread it if you prefer a threaded connection. do the same on the upper portion of the 4" pipe around 2 inches below the top. Buy a Eheim 1046 or 1048 pump for the recirculation. Use the upflow approach by connecting the pump outlet to the bottom portion and the upper portion to the return. See the attach pic of my DIY reactor. You need to inject the CO2 near the pump intake. You also need to purchase small valves 1/8 -1/4 "(Gardena from garden supplies)

Hi Ach, Did you tried Hai Cheong Plastic at Kallang they have true union ball valves and they sell them quite cheap probably around $5 for a 1 1/4" size.

Eheim 1060 expensive but very reliable... mine has been running for the last 4 years and I have never changed a single part yet!

Hi Everybody, You can now get Iwasaki 20000K bulbs 150 watts double ended at only $100 at Eye Lighting (S) Pte Ltd, the distributor of Iwasaki lamps! Hurry as they only brought in 24 pieces for trial. Look for Bernard. The 20000K bulbs are both available as double ended HQI model Rx7s or in screw base E27. At long last cheaper MH lamps for reefers!!!! Now lets see Ushio and AB bring down their prices. Its been a long time since they have been exploiting us reefers... Bernard said that if the demand is there they will bring in more bulbs... eventually prices for MH lamps will drop to only $100.... we can also put more lights and change it every 10-12 months

I've been using Theben for the last 4 years and they are still working fine. Used them for MH lighting. They are quite reliable my only problem is that after 4 years the ratchet on the timer turning the switch on and off has worn out but i just set the off time again to another time and it works fine again.

DIY liverock tends to be very heavy and dense. I used portland cement mixed with coral sand and chips. It took almost 2.5 months to cure. Get real live rocks its much better,

E27 & E40 are used to denote the screw thread diameter of the bulb holder. USA uses E26 & E39 while the above mentioned is European standard. I use 2 x 150 and 1x250 6500k bulb on my 52 x 20 x20 tank. growth rates can be very high especially u have a calc reactor. 1/2 to 3/4 inch a month is typical.