tineng

i stuff a sponge at the pipe leading to the inlet of the filter to pre-filter out the large debitres......then the focus is to clean that pre-filter sponge regularly...

bro, take the sponge out of all your filters....with number number of LR in your tank and a protien skimmer, nitrate should drop significant....I had a Juwel 60, and remove all the wool + sponges in the internal filter box and the canisater filter and it drasicatlly reduces the nirtate level in less then a week....

yeap....think your nitrate problem is with the fish load.... I had a nirtate hovering around 80 until i cut down my fish load from 6 to 4....its now around 5pmm (hopefully it will hold at that level) I don't have a slump, or DSB, but i also did the following.... - Remove all mechanical filters and use them entirely as chemial filter - Add a pre-filter sponge to the input of my canister - Added a lot of clams (heard they process nirtate) - cut down on feeding...some of my fishes will feed on algae anyway. hope it helps....

Hi Chanbi, wouldn't it be more accurate if we could calculate the cost vs absoption using price that these products can be brought at locally??? basing on your calcuation, BioPhos might be cheaper....but the truth is that these products are brought in by distributers via different means, so the actual cost in the local context might be totally different....

must agreed with you that the 36wPL seems brighter then a 30w T5.....but i suspect its because 36w PL has higher penatration. can any bro confirm this?

I switch to PL because a 55w PL is still shorted then a 24w T5.... the PL-T4 tube also means that i can put almost as much tubes as T5...so able to get very bright lights into my 2 footer, but then cannot use fan, have to use chiller.... now thinking of using MH....

didn't work for me either....have a 2 foot about 60L....used the whole bottle, didn't help much....

bulbs must be at least 6500k...ideally 10,000k.....and of course not too old....heard that they should be changed very 6 months...

went to Pasir Ris today and visited a few of the shops.... At one of the shop, saw a 'official' looking guy tabulating the corals in the shop on a clip board.... in another shop, saw 2 offical looking guys talking to a shop owner essentially drilling him about when his shipment come in, records of shipments and over heard something about the law.. I notice that even the small LFS near my house has a hidden room to house his corals... Is AVA coming down hard on LFS??? hopefully none of the LFS will take the oportunty to jack up the price of their coral, I have already encounter a shop rasing the price of his clams by S$2 even though 2 weeks ago he was happliy selling them for less

After weeks of being drag into a project, I'm finally free to start my DIY project...anyway, any Bro out there has any MH parts to sell? specifically I'm looking for: - the bulb holder - Ballast (150w) - MH Bulb (150w) - refector Alternatively, i dun mind getting a old set (bulb not needed) that I can take apart.... please PM me....

try cash converter....saw some of these tank every now and then....they are dirt cheap for the second hand one

Yes, i do think t5 runs cooler then PL in terms of watt for watt and 24w T5 much brighter then a similar PL....however, a 24W t5 is nearly 2 ft long, whereas a 55wPL is even shorter then a 24wT5!!! With the new 55W PL-T4 the width is slightly more then a T5 and quite likely, pack more brightness then a similar length T5. Therefore you are able to pack more lights into the same amount of space...thus with a chiller, I would rather go for PL then T5 (assuming that 55wPL is brighter then a 24wT5)....

just a small update.....after yesterday night incident, one of the inflicted clam has detacted from its rock....unfortunately, a big chuck of it's underside seems to have been seperated and is stuck to the rock... seems to be opening and closing normally and reacting to shadow...pray hard that it will pull through....

originally using dynamx t5, but found them not bright enought. Now use 3 set of those 55w t4 PL and place them VERY near the surface, chiller working over time!..... Had the clams for 2 months....looks ok except for the the attack by slugs recently... If they don't pull through, I might give up on clams until i can get a bigger tank.... think we have to continue discussion in other thread....

what do they look like when they are dead? are they suffering from the fate as my clams? see this posting

Last 2 weeks reported the sudden death of my Maxi and suspected it to be high temp because the pipe to the chiller was twisted. The clam was found dead with gasping and can see a hole right through to the sand bed.... Today, came back home and found 2 of my newly purchase clams in the same position . Found a slug on one of them...was so angry that took it out and tear it to pieces!!! so not DC photos to show... Anyway unlike the other time, the hole seems to be smaller and the 2 clams seems to be closing properly...although one of them seems to keep blowing bubbles.... Anyway, have any bro encounter this type of problem before?(many bro seems to report problem with their clams) is the slug the cause of my clams problem? I'm afraid there might be more of these clam eating slugs around...any bro got any idea how to 'clean' out all these slug?

personally, i think its a matter of space....my blue tang use to nip at my clams until i moved the clams from the same bed to the rocks....then my tang start to nip at the send bed..... I also notice that my tank (2 footer) is a bit too small to house a tang,clown,firefish and 6 clams.....they seems to get into each other way...so will be upgrading to a bigger tank to give them more space...

I think a lot of lfs has it...but have not seen a 2x55 for 2ft lights, so you might need to ask around. For me because tis cheap enough, i just buy 2. because the t4 are thin, i think it will be possible for stuff them into a fat 2 feet caseing..... Any, i brought my for 27...although can probably get it for 24....

The Teco Micro also works on the same principle...this sort of system needs extermely good vendilation and low heat low in the tank...putting more then 40w of lights will probably raise the temp back up.... btw, it does has a fan on top of the heat sink

the new PL 55w T4 are very slim and cheap at 24-28 dollars....can probably stick 4 of those on top of a 2 footer.... if you have a 2 ft cube, it think can stick 6!!!

CL300 not much different from CL280...1/10 HP. why not try CL450, at least 1/6HP? Tot I pass you the shop name for CL280? why don't you call them? saw them carrying the CL300 before...

brough mine from a LFS with very bad condition also, full of ich....but manage to nurse it back to health after 3 months....so you might need to be patient.... I place it in the main tank directly as I read from somewhere they don't seems to do well when they are put in a quarrentie tank... anyway, during the first 2-3 month, ich comes on and off, i suspect that ich will aways be there but only show up when they are stress, initally ich alway come back when I change water....!!! Don't worry too much, as long as your water conditions are ok and there are no agressive fish in there, your tang will slowly get use to the envirorment and come out...

I'm a newbie, so please pardon me if i'm wrong...but isn't any traceable level of Ammonia unhealth????

me using on 2 feet tank....any chiller will do...

dunno....i'm still using the old model....can be quite nosiy...but heck, I don't sleep in the hall.....8) anyway brought my CL-280 for S$299...so can't complaint