Tank Gadget

More Skimz Marine News

Marc — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:17:11 +0000

Starting in July Skimz Marine will be a Canada Only retail outlet of Skimz Skimmers and equipment.

SkimzMarine says:

The change is to better place the shop in line with the competition and offer the customer the best deal possible. Dealing to the US is difficult due to the shipping cost from Canada.

There you have it. We will be offering Skimz to Canada! (Yes, I am Skimz Marine).

Skimzmarine.com is now open!

Marc — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:17:21 +0000

http://skimzmarine.com/

Skimz Marine is the first online retailer selling Skimz equipment online to the US market.

Currently in stock as part of it’s first shipment include 5 different skimmers, the 2500 Overflow box and the much-admired, iBox! A cute and cuddly nano aquarium with built in skimmer, return pump, light and it just oozes CUTE

Head over to Skimz Marine now!

Coming Soon! SKIMZ Skimmers US dedicated online retailer

Marc — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:56:45 +0000

Skimz Marine

This new shop is due to open in the coming weeks and promises to offer the great lineup of Skimz products including the Nano Tank and the amazing lineup of skimmers to meet almost any budget!

From the About page

Skimz Marine looks forward to bringing you the best products from Skimz Sg. The product line has some of the best quality components and workmanship we have seen. We believe in it so much we named our site after it! Skimz Marine will do what we can to provied to you the best service possible and if you ever have any questions feel free to ask.

We look forward to seeing more from this company!

New Pet Classified site for Canadian visitors!

Marc — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:59:21 +0000

OK, a little self-promotion here.

Rex and Fritz'z stuff

This is a new Canadian Pet classified site freshly opened. http://rexandfritz.com

We are offering some great deals to get professionals to host a page of thier services (like a mini-web site) and also to post ads.

A great deal that is offered is if you post an ad at another site, then cross-post it on Rexandfritz.com you will get your ad set up as a featured ad for free!

Hop on over to Rex and Fritz’z Stuff and also spread the word! Make this THE place to sell and buy pet stuff in Canada (and maybe later, THE WORLD!)

No related posts.

Ecoxotic LED lights = WOW

Marc — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:20:44 +0000

Ecoxotic has got to have one of the coolest and actually pretty nicely priced bank of lights I’ve seen.

They come in two widths, 17.5 and 23.5 inches.

I like these specs:

Cooling Fans 0
dB Noise Level 0
Heat transfer to aquarium 0

The coral planning map they provide says that you can, as with any high lite setup, grow any type of coral/invert.

The pricing on the smaller one is over $600, but considering what you would pay for a high quality T5HO setup with 6-8 banks of lights, and considering the extended life of an LED and not having to change bulbs, PLUS these other benefits how could you NOT buy 2 of these? I WANT!

Water resistant LED Modules
Modular Design – customizable, replaceable parts
Actinic Feature is modular and customizable
Internal reflector concentrates light into aquarium
Super-clean, hinged, all-aluminum design allows better access
Sleek stand mount included

One thing it does not come with is a dimmer/timer. THAT would be awesome. I wonder if it would work with something like the GHL Profilux or another dimmer?

Fauna Marin Star Fire T5 HO lights

EchoTech Marine adds new controller to VorTech line.

Marc — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:58:42 +0000

EcoTech is adding the new EcoSmart Driver to all VorTech pumps beginning this spring. If you have an old controller you can get an upgrade kit.

According to EcoTech, the kit helps you decide on pump placement, choose a mode of operation and the controller does the rest to give you optimal flow.

• Convert any MP10 and MP40 to an EcoSmart driver, and to wireless

• Increased master-slave pump relationship functionality

• Easily auto-tune and program customized waves

• New modes including tidal swell and nutrient transport for an even more realistic reef experience

• Time and speed adjustable for feed and night modes

• Sleek LED interface with on/off switch
• Auto-dim automatically turns the LED’s off after a user-set amount of time

• Adjustable battery backup speed and remaining power indicator

Algae Scrubber. That’s me.

Marc — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:37:36 +0000

Well, further to the previous article, I am now an algae scrubber. No not the kind that sits in your sump.

The kind that pulls the rock out of your tank and takes a scrub brush to them.

Here are a few pics of a pile of scrubbed rocks next to some yet-to-be scrubbed.

Left is scrubbed. Right is covered in algae.

The process of scrubbing half a tank of rocks took about an hour. I only scrubbed bare rocks (no corals on them) or easy to manage rocks that only had a few corals on them. No corals were harmed in the making of this picture.

I siphoned out 15 gallons of water from the tank to use in the cleaning process. In one container I had 5 gallons of scrubbing water and in another container I had the receiving water. where the rocks sat until I was ready to put them back in the tank.

I will wait till next weekend before I tackle the other side. For some reason working with this algae gives me a terrible allergic reaction and I now feel like I am full swing in the middle of a nasty cold.

Lets hope this cleansing lasts.
As you can see, i need to do the walls too. Sigh.

More on algae removal

Marc — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:31:41 +0000

My quest to erradicate hair algae isn’t going well.
After testing out Hair and Sludge, which seemed to help a bit by slowing the growth, it did not get rid of it entirely as I had prayed it would. I guess my genie in the bottle didn’t appear.
I have decided to do something drastic. If you read anything wrong with this plan please post a comment.
A trip to the fish store to top up my cleaning crew to start my day.
1 a water change. I plan to remove aproxomately 15 gallons of water to be used later.
2 one rock at a time I will transfer to a bucket and manually scrub, with new brushes, off as much algae as I can. This may require a seperate tank where I will need to transplant corals that I remove before I scrub.
3 shake off any detritus. A really good shake. I don’t want any dead matter back in the tank.
4 place rock in a bucket of SW
5 repeat with half the tank.
6 replace rocks to tank
7 repeat steps with other half.

The reason i am going to split this is I see this as being a big job in a 75 gallon tank. Part is to give me a break and also to allow me to rebuild after removing half the rocks.

After I will replace any phosban and start my skimmer from fresh. I will also need to scrape off the glass and syphon out any crud left on the substrate. I am hoping that the drastic removal will remove any sources of phosphate that may be feeding it.

That’s all for now. I’ll reort back, possibly with some progress pics.

BWI RO-DI unit- Followup

Marc — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:10:56 +0000

I totally forgot to post the specs. so here

Membrane – watts
5 stage RO/DI
Stage 1- 1 Micron Sediment NSF® certified
Stage 2- Catalytic Carbon for Hydrogen Sulfide and Chloramines Removal 12 x 40 mesh size
Stage 3-0.5 Carbon Block Cartridge for Long Life and High Chlorine Reduction 20,000Gal Capacity NSF® certified
Stage 4- 100 GPD Membrane TFC 96%-99.5% rejection rates max PSI 125
Stage 5- Nuclear Grade Mixed Bed DI Resin Cartridge for Demineralization flow 1GPM

Oh and for a decent pic of the install (My pictures are terrible), have a look at this by Michael of Aqua Digital. He is embarking on a show tank for his home and business.

First peice to come in was his RO-DI unit just like mine. View his thread at RC here.

BWI Plumbing SR-1 5 Stage RO-DI unit

Hair and Sludge algae removal.

Marc — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:13:43 +0000

I finally got my free sample of Hair and Sludge from Ultralife. Following you will see my progression of using the product. As of me writing this I don’t know what to expect! Exciting!

January 28th
Following the instructions I plucked out as much algae as I could by hand and did a 20% water change.

I used half of the contents of the 3 packets that come in the bag. 2 packages look like standard media you would put in your Phosphate reactor. the 3rd bag looks like little Styrofoam balls the size of a small ball-bearing. After rinsing out all the bags they were placed into filter bags. and the bags were placed in the sump at the first stage (where water flow is the fastest). thsi was allwoed to sit for about 24 hours. After 24 hoursI put the rest of the media in the sump along with a little pouch labeled ’A’. That went directly into the tank. Now I wait.

Feb 5th
Slow going after first week. The algae seems to be growing normally, if maybe a little slower. So I emailed Ultralife -
” It varies. The product removes the nutrients feeding the hair, so it will possibly take a little while. You should start to see it slow then actually recede. From testing it takes anywhere from a few days to several weeks.”

So there you have it. I’ll pump up the skimmer and the Phosphate reactor. The skimmer seems to be producing more skimmate. I assume its due to the process.

This is where we sit at this point. I just replaced the media in my Phosban reactor and bought a new pump for it.

BE GONE FOUL ALGAE!

Stay tuned for an update around the 11th.