IanJ

Sorry, should read bulbs, not bulds For the past 5 years i have used 10000K BLV 250W bulbs. Over the past months i have switched to Phoenix 14000K and Hamilton 14000K I have previously commented on the differences in appearance between these bulbs and how they differ in different pendents. Yesterday i switched 2 of the bulbs back to 10000k I like the colour of the 14000K bulbs but they clearly in my tank have a negative effect on colour in certain corals. Some turquoise colour corals turned dark green and after several months fail to recover, corals below half way down in the tank, loose colour. I believe this is due to the reduced intensity. The options were to lower the lights which means more heat, move all corals to just below the surface, which i did not, or change back, which i did. I will report later if these corals regain the colour and if others regain colour intensity. Please note this is just my experience, it may differ in your tanks

Just for info, my Iwaki MD55(?) has been running non stop day in day out for 10 years now. Its in the cupboard, no airflow for cooling, runs too hot to touch. Never missed a beat, pretty impressive and value for money in my opinion.

So the 5000 baby is over priced here i think. UK price is about £400, which includes 17.5% VAT which equates to a price around $1000 this includes the shops margin(they are cheaper in mainland Europe). Allowing for an additional freight cost, $1800 sounds a little steep. For that money in the Uk you can get the 5000 Twin. From the prices listed its easy to see which gives the "biggest bang for the buck"

Dr Evil Thanks for the info, i will check out the electrics tonight. The unit in question was bought in the UK from STM (www.s-t-m.co.uk) its their own unit that they make and sell. Its very bright. When they fire up, a very loud noise comes from the remote ballast box. This may be due to the casing vibrating, but its a whole different experience to my aqualight. The noise seems to be reduced with higher K bulbs, louder with 10k bulbs. I guess that there are differneces between this and the aqualight ballast which can be seen by the differences in the blueness and brightness of the Phoenix bulb when used in each. In the long run a commercial timer/s may be a solution, where would i find them?

Sorry, my comments were aimed towards Dr Evil, nothing wrong with Deltec. In UK Deltec and Aquamedic tend to go head to head. Each have fans. I bought the Aquamedic 5000 baby rather than the 850 purely on the recommendation of the shop that runs both skimmers on their systems. However i believe more people in the UK use the 850 than the 5000 In the UK the prices work out about the same for both, i dont know the actual prices here but i heard that the 5000 sells for about$1800, which i think is well overpriced, $1200 would be more realistic. In some respects the 850 does have advantages and no question you have bought a great skimmer, just suprised its taken singaporeans so long to figure this out.

I now have had 3 The Ben timers fail to switch off at the set times. Having taken them apart, it can only be that the contacts stick or burn closed. Once the timer is open, the contacts are open and the timer switches on and off again. Now this is 5 timers in as many days.

Of course you could always consider Aquamedic for needle wheel skimmers. Advantage is that they need no tuning, the water level is self levelling. Buy, fit, and clean. Just not sure how they stand pricewise, maybe overpriced.

Mini AAN cycle - no idea Made up fresh salt water in the tank, added the rocks whilst it was filling up and salt still dissolving. The corals and about an hour after, the fish were then added. Rock out of water about 8 hours. LPS moved in box dry covered with damp newspaper and out of water about 9 hours, sps placed in plastic bags with tank water about 9 hours. Fish in a bucket with air pump about 10 hours. No acclimatisation, not ideal, i knowl, but due to limited time thats how it was done. I believe the big skimmer is responsible for the early stability. Sometimes i am amazed at just how robust our corals and berlin filter systems are. losses - 2 sps small aquacultured colonies

Teohb I do use seperate timers for each MH Where do i find the AVA brand timer so i can take a look? Thanks

Sounds like just the problem that i have on my old and 2 new units. How do other people manage? are there better timers available?

i think they are the ones i got from the marine shop, i have used them before and have lasted a few years. Both the recent purchases have failed to switch off after one or two days use. On one even if you turn the thumbwheel manually, it remained switched on. Last night i stripped it down and could not see what the problem was, no burning/fusing couold be seen. It now seems to be working again. The other failed to switch off, but did switch off when i turned the wheel manually. I will see if this works tonight.

Although i have used timers for my 250W MH's for many years, recently one needed to be replaced. I have now purchased 3 different timers(1x cold storage, 1 x NTUC and 2 x Jireh marine) All bar one failed within 48 hours, the other shows signs of failure after just over 48 hours(failed to turn off last night) Can anyone suggest suitable timers, where to get? or do they need to be constructed/DIY?

Roidan As far as i know Aquatechnic are only using a high quality float glass, maybe from Japan. I dont notice any distortion when i view at an angle. I cant say i have seen any optical differences to other tanks. I think they can use a thinner glass for tanks of 3-4ft but for 5ft and above, for open top tanks they use 19mm

Ok, got it now. I moved the tank on the Fridayand put everything into the milky water. The next day we moved the furniture in, the tank movers also did this for us. Thats when they took the pic. 24 hours after the spawning it was just starting to clear. Had a bit more time to organise the rock/corals now.

Roidan Where did the pic come from? Who took? cant remember. Its looks only the day after putting throwing everything in and still cloudy from the randy clams Looking a lot different and better today

I dont know the average life span of a tank. Mine was made by Aquatechnic, expensive, but quality/life shows. Its now 10 years old and the tank looks fine.

Some changes made in re-setting up the tank with the main aim to minimise and remove waste asap. 1) fully barebottom 2) Increased flow by addition of Ehiem 1060 at back bottom left side to create flow across base of the tank. 3) Change the skimmer feed from sump(post floss) to direct from tank(pre floss) with Ehiem 1262 4) switch MH bulbs from 3 x 250W 10,000K BLV to 2 Hamilton 14000K and 1 Phoenix 14000K Will see these changes effect the sps growth and colour. One interesting observation is that the Phoenix when used on the Aqualight unit, started quite a white blue with good intensity, when burned in it changed to a very blue colour with much reduced intensity. Switching the Phoenix to my UK purchased units gave a much brighter whiter/blue colouration. I assume this is due to the type of ballast used since the Aqualight unit fires up without a sound and the UK units start with one hell of a bang from the control box. Will see how the corals react over the next months.

I will get some pics up when things have grown out a bit more. I could not move many of the corals that had grown large, so i took as many frags as possible. In the rush(and stress) to be honest a lot of frags could have been passed on to people, but with water gushing out of the broken water pipe etc etc, something had to give and i just did not have the time for people to come and collect.

So far my tank has been moved from one apartment to another in 97, from Spore to UK in 98, back to Spore in 2003 and last week from Bedok to Bukit Timah. Never again. As usual I underestimated the number of bags needed to pack all the acro's, some were too big to get in bags, some were too firmly attached to rocks to do much about. It took 4 hours to empty the tank. A big thank you to Paul from SKBros for moving the tank, being 5ft x 2 1/4 x 2 and 19mm glass it took some moving. The rush to re-start it and to minimise fish and coral loss, lead to the whoops, just drilled straight through the main water pipe when drilling through the wall to install the chiller. In this case my metal detector did not! The tank was slowly filled, salt mixed and the rocks placed as best as possible into the mixture. Corals then placed as and where a place could be found - can always re-scape later. Chiller running, lights connected, Ca reactor running and skimmer foaming it was time to add the fish, they all survived the ordeal. Now where did I put the bucket of clams? That’s when the fun started. The clams had now been out of the tank for some 12-14 hours. Carefully I placed the mixture of maxima's , squasmosa's and croceas on the bottom of the tank. On stepping back to admire the view, the clams started to spawn, not 1 or 2 but 8 of them, all the crocea's and maxima's. It was a mass orgy, never have I seen so much sperm released in one go. The tank turned to milk, the skimmer went into overload mode. For the next 3 hours I spend running from the skimmer to the sink, the foam would not break, it just pushed off the lid and overflowed in a continuous stream for 3 hours. It was sticky, smelly and covered everything, of course the clams continued the orgy like no tomorrow, 3 hours what stamina. At midnight the skimmer was just about under control and I had to return to the old apartment for the night. The next morning the water was still cloudy and the fish and corals barely seen. By the end of the day, the water cleared, the fish survived another ordeal, the acros still alive and the clams obviously happy and smiling. So, as I said, I wont do that again, just too much for 1 person to do in one day. Who knows how many baby clams may have resulted and been skimmed out? Well, one week on the tank is starting to show positive signs, now when is that next shipment of acros coming?

I use an Aquamedic 5000 baby on the same size tank, i drilled out the air in-take to a larger diameter to increase air flow, no complaints.

i used them many times in the past. I cant say that i ever saw an improvement in the tank. Have not used them now for many years. Might be good to remove copper after medication treatment.

I think eAquanature has them.

Then try out the Hamilton 14000K 400W, whiter than the BLV with a touch of blue

I keep mine at 26-27, but no where to vote

I have used 2 1000 skimmers(Multi) over several years. Really find it a good skimmer for its size and very popular in UK. You need to keep the airhole clean and keep the pump as close as possible to the skimmer to max the air intake.