cullymoto

That's a hell of a deal. 5 fish for 275 to Edmonton and a free 50 dollar credit at the end. Hell of a deal! I will be passing unfortunately, no room in my system. Best of luck Rick

Yeah man. I told a house builder I wanted a 300gal aquarium on the main floor of the house. He took that to his engineering team and they had to do an extra set of footings under the foundation, an extra engineered beam in the main floor and an extra set of jack posts between... Do not place a (literal) ton of weight on a floor that isn't built to hold it. Insurance won't help you

In search of a source for either: A good supplier of Aquavitro kh carbonate for plants, preferably online. I find it occasionally at big Al's in Edmonton but... They suck. They're usually out of stock. To add to that they're online store doesn't even have it listed for purchase. Or. A liquid additive that I can use to boost my kh on a freshwater setup. One that I can find on a regular basis. I use 900ml of the Aquavitro per month. It's a good product and is exactly what I want to use, but I can't find it. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Still thinking about this, sorry I'm long winded... So you've got ten tanks, and need them to be semi autonomous while your away for 3 out of 4 weeks. Keeping that in mind, here's what I would do. (Water temp has to be the same between the tanks, if tank x needs diff temp than y, your boned) Keep your idea of a rack that are all plumbed together, all ten tanks MUST be at the same elevation. A lower tank will overflow. Drill the tanks, plumb them together with either huge pipe or two lines between each tank. This way you only need one VERY large canister for your water moving, canister pickup line in tank ten and split your return line one into tank one, one into tank 5 or 6. - helps with the equalization problem, and the problem that tank ten would have dirtiest water due to design. For the drip system, you need a large water storage container. A good option is a large used aquarium, can be had fairly cheap. When your home you fill this tank, do your dechlor for that tank. This tank MUST be higher than the ten tank rack, Gravity is more reliable than pumps and siphons. This tank should have an air bubbler in it, will help to reduce bacteria growth. This is your clean water for the drip change system. Drill one hole nice and low in this tank and run a line, with a valve (gate valve would be best, just like a garden hose tap. These have a great degree of controll over how open or closed they are) to the tank you want the drip to fall into, probably number 1, this tank also needs an overflow to the drain (power failure means tank 1 could overflow due to drip before the water can equalize) The valve is so that you can reduce or increase the flow out of this tank. Your overflow to a drain would be in tank ten, and secured to the drain. Would be a big mess if it ever came away from your drain. While away the large tank slowly drains "fresh" dechlorinated water via drip line into the rack, your canister provides both flow and filtration, and the overflow in tank ten handles excess (hopefully) polluted water. While overflow in one is only for flood prevention. Setup this way you will see different water levels, 1 - 10, highest to lowest. Larger plumbing between each tank will minimize this though. You will need to invest serious time playing with drip flow, and overflow height to make it work. Sounds like a lot, is a lot. Not overly technical as it needs to just work. .. Even my computer setup has failed and flooded my fish room before. Would appreciate other builders thoughts here also.

I think I should chime in. In no way can I see syphon or individual pumps in each tank working. Drill and plumb the tanks if this is the way you want to go. Pumps fail, and Siphons, like pumps, if one is faster than the rest your in trouble. I've done my aquarium and sump similarly to how you've described your rack, where gravity keeps the water equal between the tanks. I do not do drip water change... In my opinion drip is .. No Bueno, but that's me. everything is plumbed with 1 inch PVC, the aquarium is drilled to drain on the bottom, the sump is drilled to fill from the side and there is a pump in the sump pushing filtered water back into the aquarium. A surprise was that the water took a lot of time to equalize, I had to add a second pump to the system to pull water from the aquarium, pushing it into the sump. Both pumps are variable, I couldn't turn the sump pump down enough at first. It was threatening to overflow the aquarium. Now with the two pumps, controlled by a Neptune apex and float switches I can keep a specific water level and have sufficient gph for filtration. Love my tank, was a lot of work and cost to get it running properly. Some things I've discovered; 1. Double your plumbing. Not in size, but number. If one line plugs your in serious trouble and are going to flood. With 2 lines between tanks one can plug and your not doomed. 2. Water takes quite some time to equalize / flow from your filtration system. Your 1st tank in line will be threatening to overflow while the last tank is half full. Jvision hit a problem as well, without a constant dose of de-Chlor a drip system will stress everything. R/o will remove chlorimine but it also removes everything else. ... Back to my above thought of drip sucks...

I hope everything works out. A lot of fish color change... full color = happy fish, dull or dark = not happy. The aquarium hobby will never stop teaching you. Your illnes sounds like heptemic septecemia, a bacterial infection if I remember corectly. With luck it's all gone in your tank. Always use caution when introducing new life into an established aquarium, you'd be amazed at what can live on a plant, or on the side of a new fish... Personally I fear Marimo moss balls. Never again. Take care.

I've done a little googling, but not finding anything that really fits the bill. Never hurts to ask here, Anyone know of a way / place to get clear pvc? Or a way to make a sight glass into lets say a 6" od PVC pipe at about 6 foot tall? I love purigen, hate hate hate the bag, screens, handling the stuff. I'm looking to build a reactor but I need one on the large side, like the aforementioned 4 - 6" by 6' tall kind of thing. I could use regular pvc, but I wouldn't be able to monitor flow, purigen color, problems etc until there was purigen everywhere... That's never fun to clean up. Any thoughts?

I use purigen as a moving sand bed filter in my sump. Got plastic screen at 250 micron hole size, cut it larger than the sump and used silicone to secure it in place. Used two pieces of PVC pipe to hold it up. Added three by pass ports in case the mesh blocks up. Used rigid air line and poked holes in it to make a bubbler. When it needs recharged I just siphon the loose purigen into a "nut milk bag" and soak it in bleach etc. The picture is kind of crappy.

I would like to add to my above post. Don't bother with any other tap water conditioner, you've started with literally the best quality conditioner there is. Except, use seachem safe. It's prime minus water, more bang for the buck. Follow the directions on the label, safe / prime and you can't go wrong. Get used to the false positive ammonia test.

Your not having a problem. Relax. Breathe. You say your using prime to remove chloromine from your water. Prime + cloromine = false positive on cheap ammonia tests. Do some research on prime. Great product, I highly recommend it and use it myself, have for years. You will ALWAYS see ammonia on a test strip when using prime.

I think it should be said, usually LFS keep their tanks in appalling conditions. Local bred, or imported wild don't last long in MOST fish stores.

Another note to add... Have a look at the ingredient list of the food your using. A lot of foods actually add phosphate as a preservative. Stay on top of water changes, this is your best tool to keep organic waste accumulation down. Of coarse organic waste accumulation is algea food.

Purigen. Put it in your filter, in a 200 micron sock. Follow the instructions. Another suggestion weeks be a UV filter. Won't remove phosphates etc, but kills any life that passes by the UV, hence reducing the accumulation you do get. Hope that helps.

This is the unit I have. Couldn't be happier with it. http://www.reefsupplies.ca/online-store/AquaUV-Classic-Series-UV-Sterilizer-with-Wiper.html

I swear by UV on freshwater. I use a 25watt unit on my 300gal setup, overkill! I used to have a canister filter, with a 9w turbo twist UV unit on the filter discharge. I was sold on UV before discovering this but, the hoses into the filter and between filter and UV would become choked with biofilm quickly. Between UV and aquarium... They never needed to be cleaned out. Other effects I saw immediately: Clearer water. Even on new setups, you won't get that bacteria bloom -Grey water thing. Better appetite from livestock. Simple, effective, inexpensive. Why wouldn't you?