Miss Wiggle And Big Ian's First Marine Tank!

[Miss Wiggle]

Ah emergencies, how fun . Ok the acro can be fine for up to 3 days with no lighting whatsoever provided temp and flowrate can be maintained (trust me, all 4 of mine survived 3 days when I had no power). My question for you is, how sure are you that the problem is the bulb and not the ballast? How did you "get it back on"? By jiggling the bulb? If so then yeah its probably the bulb.

I'm confused though, you mention a "blue bulb"... Does that mean you have another bulb? If so, what type/wattage? I'd start using that immediately in supplimentation to your perishing halide. If you can keep your halide limping along on say even 2-3 hours a day you'll be in OK shape for about 5-7 days. I'd also try PMing some UK members here who might know like Chac, Matthew, or others that talk about halides a lot. They may know where to get one quick and on the cheap.

think we may have it sorted now.... were not 100% sure it's the bulb but we thought that's the first port of call!

found a trade lighting type place near us and i *think* i have purchased the right bulb for our lamp... for just 8quid too! the bloke was a bit confused by me wanting a metal halide for a fishtank but was really nice and said I can swap it if it's wrong or we can get a whole new unit on the cheap from there if need be.

just waiting for Ian to get home and tell me if it's the right thing or not, I can't even lift the halide lamp off the top of the tank to see it cos my back's buggered

by blue bulb i meant the blue actinic.

good to know that just a few hrs a day will sustain things for a week or so though.

thanks peeps, will let you know what happens!

This page would be what you're looking for since I think you have a double ended 150. You'll probably do best with the 14k model (bottom left of the 4). Decent price, but dunno what their shipping is like.

looks a lot like what i've bought... so i can't be too off, we had the 10,000 k before.... but the bloke didn't know what i meant by kelvin

i said i think it's to do with the colour spectrum, he said there's 2 choices of colour, white or a yellow white... so i got the white one. Ian thinks it's the right one phew!

 

[SkiFletch]

Maybe the right spectrum, at least it was just 8 quid . MOST "white" halide bulbs sold outside the aquarium industry have a K rating of 6700 or 5200. Some are true white 10000k

And just to qualify, I wouldnt run a 6700K bulb longterm (since it promotes algae growth), but for a few weeks until you get a replacement it would be OK. Plus you have an emergency spare now for just 8 quid

 

[BigIan]

Its the lighting rig thats knackerd, the connections are corroded, i`ve cleaned them up a bit, but the whole light is corroded, so going to have a look at the place alice went to to see if we can get a new light unit.
Annd from what i`ve been told he builds things up modularly... so i may werll be able to get a nice big light housing that will be able to disipate the heat much easyer...gotta have a look this friday hopefully
Other than the alge growth (of wich we have LOTS) wil the 6700k bulb cause any other problems in the tank?



Next problem NITRATE still wont go down below 20-30ppm. Any ideas why?

 

[Jaffajoker]

This is a very interesting read, jus finished reading start to finish. lots of very useful info. Looking forward to more.

 

[BigIan]

Glad some one can sift out the usefull info (mostly posted by ski and Mr miaggi) From the inane banter of me and the Mrs

 

[BigIan]

Right were planning our next fish....

Either a coral beauty, OR some pajama cardinals,

Do the cardinals need to be kept in groups? if so how many? the info on the web isn`t very usefull

 

[Matthew5664]

coral beauty! loverly fish!

As for the card's a group of 3 or 5 would be good. Have you thought about the Banggai Cardinalfish over the Pajama Cardinalfish?

 

[BigIan]

If i get my pJ cardinals then The mrs has free range over everything else that goes in the tank.
(other than a mandarin goby when we upgrade the tank.)
do they need to be kept in such large groups or would say a pair do?

 

[robbhp]

great tank mate cant wait to get mine up and running, good read to. please don't take this the wrong way but would it not be better to try to get your NO3 under control or back to say the 10-20ppm range before adding more fish. i would have thought this would have only made the NO3 problem harder for you to get a grip. anyway i could be taking through my . so you are more than welcome to tell me to bugger off LOL.

anyway keep up with the craking thread, and good luck with the DIY MH unit, if you do make one that could be very helpful to lots of people


rob

 

[SkiFletch]

I'd say that the pj's would be fine singly if you dont add any bully type fish to the tank. One of the display tanks at my LFS has a single PJ thats been in the tank for 8 years along with a bunch of wrasses. Just a thought

 

[Miss Wiggle]

we've heard a lot of conflicting info from everyone over the cardinals so we're a bit confused!

as it's a fairly small tank we haven't room for that many fish, if we have to keep more than 2 then i'm gonna say no to getting them, would just use up way too much of the stocking on a fish only one of us likes, if we can keep 1/2 then I can go with that!

our mate at the lfs has got 2 pajama cardinals in and say's he's just gonna hang on to them and get them all fed well and happy, he knows we won't have any money for them for a while, but that should give us long enough to observe them and see if they are ok in a pair, if so then we can get them in the new year.

he's also after a little 3 foot tank..... and conveniently we have a spare in the basement.... his brother works for TMC so he's said whatever we want we can arrange a swap cos he'll get it off his bro at cost. so we're maybe gonna get a really nice coral beauty for that. not bad really considering we couldn't sell the tank for more than a few quid.

we are doing our best to get the nitrates down, just everything we need takes money we just don't have
we're controlling it at the moment with weekly water changes, all the fish, inverts and corals are absolutely thriving so it's not creating a problem. if anyone showed any signs of distress we'd have to re-think things.

after xmas i want a few more bits of LR and some more clean up crew. we're also getting a new skimmer for xmas which will hopefully make a difference as well

we've got a plan for a nice new custom made tank with a sump/fuge included which if the nitrates are still bad in a few months then we'll go ahead with that and hopefully that'll fix it

 

[BigIan]

The nitrates are creeping down slowly. our last problem was that we didn`t flush the membrane often enough or well enough so the TDS crept up, but lesson learnt and the tank is down to roughly 15-25 ppm of nitrates

 

[SkiFletch]

Good to hear that your patience is paying off

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well i'm really pleased today, months ago we bought a mahoosive hermit crab and put him in the tank, he'd dissappeared by the next morning and we hadn't seen him since, so he'd been missing presumed dead for at least 2/3 months.

then last night he turned up from nowhere and was happily foraging for food. i wish i could know where they bloody dissapear to but none the less i'm chuffed he's come back

it's crazy but quite cool how things can dissapear for months then pop up from nowhere

 

[SkiFletch]

Lol, good to hear . Someimes I wonder if my tank has a gateway to another dimension under those rocks