Luke134

Hydrogen peroxide just disintegrates into oxygen and water, so should be fine

Glycophosphate itself it pretty non-toxic, its one of the only weedkillers approved for use around wetlands/waterways, what normally makes the difference is the surfactant used to get it to dissolve into the plant tissue. The surfactants are the dangerous component as far as fish go. If you wash it out with some detergent and then lots and lots of water, even soak it a couple of times, you should be fine. If you want to be extra sure, once you are ready to add fish you can add some activated carbon to the filter to grab any remaining toxins

It's a little more pricey, but I have a ATI Sunpower Dimmable 4x54W T5HO on my 4x2x2 and the light that comes out of that thing is amazing. A lot can be said from having high quality individual reflectors on each bulb. I've even managed to get glosso to carpet at 2 feet of depth with no co2

Second the drum line (just no hook so the poor shark doesn't get hurt)

From your post I'm guessing that you are thinking of doing this on a bigger than normal scale, so it would be worthwhile considering your project from an aquaculture point of view.

As far as fish nutrition, reliability, affordability, simplicity and practicality, using a high quality, pellet based food is the best thing you can do. Using a high quality processed food ensures that you have met the nutritional needs of your fish, and you are giving them everything they need and nothing that they don't. A downside to using live/fresh food is that you don't know exactly what is in the food as far as nutrients or things like potential parasites/pathogens etc. As a staple/everyday/maintenance food, a pellet is the best option.

The main reasons you would alter this approach is when;
A) the processed food does not come in an appropriate format, eg, a pellet is not suitable for young fry.
B ) altering the nutritional content/type of food will result in a desirable physiological change, eg upping the fat/protein content of a food to stimulate breeding behaviour.
C) as an intermediate food source for fussy/WC fish.
You will really only be worried about the first two. Considering the substantial time and effort that goes into setting up a live food production system, it's a good idea to consider any alternatives. For example, freeze dried black worms have about +60% protein, and are an excellent conditioning food for fussy fish, or to stimulate breeding activities. The numerous options of frozen food are great for this as well, and defiantly don't require as much effort.

Secondly, not all live foods are created equal. One thing that was drummed into me in my aquaculture systems lectures was that 'live foods aren't themselves the food, it's what inside them that's desirable'. A good example of this is with brine shrimp. Being rather simple organisms, they do not have the ability to manufacture complex biological molecules like we do, and so instead rely on other organisms that they filter out of the water to do it for them. This is a brine shrimps best asset, and what aquaculture facilities use them for. The quality of the brine shrimp will depend on the quality of the food that you feed them. Aquaculture facilities will feed their brine shrimp colonies a blend of single cellular algae that have been specifically harvested for their nutritional content. One of the most important factors is the level of Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (HUFA for short), this includes things like Omega 3s. These are often the limiting factors when it comes to fish health, development and growth rate. [As a side note, a couple of manufacturers, Continuum is an example, make a HUFA supplement. You can use this to soak flake and pellet food in to improve fish vitality etc.] at the other end of the spectrum, you can use yeast as a maintenance food for a brine shrimp colony that will keep it going, but the downside is that you have undermined the nutritional benefits of a live food and may as well have stuck with manufactured foods.

In short, are live foods completely necessary? Can you get away with using pre-made options like frozen or freeze dried? Is going through the hassle of rearing live foods going to result in a noticeable benefit to fish health, growth, development, etc? Can you ensure quality and consistency within and between batches of food? At the end of the day, it's up to you depending on how much time and effort you want to spend on this, and how many batches of fry etc you want to raise a month.

I mixed up my tsp and tbsp, ended up adding 3 tablespoons of flourish instead of 3 teaspoons before I went on a study tour with uni. You would not believe how fast the algae grew, I came back 2 weeks later to find hair algae stretching from one end of the tank (5ft) to the other!

Recycling water is a brilliant idea, not only is it much cheaper than desalination, it is also much more environmentally friendly than more dams/tapping into groundwater. Think about it, most of the wastewater generated by an average household is from things like the washing machine, dishwasher, shower etc, the amount of water coming from the toilet is miniscule. Even then, it is relatively easy to remove solid wastes like poo and toilet paper through filtration and fermentation. We already do this to sewage before pumping it into the ocean, to get it up to drinking water standard isn't much more complicated. The relatively clean wastewater is passed through another round of micro-filtration to remove sediments, blasted with super intense UV and then passed through an reverse osmosis system before being blasted with UV again and then pumped into the ground water. From there it has to pass through a few KILOMETRES of DENSE limestone, before being drawn up through the normal groundwater wells. It then has to be treated like normal ground water, filtered, buffered and nuked with chlorine before being delivered to your home.

 

As far as safeguards go this is over-engineered to the extreme:

1. If RO membranes are fine enough to strip single ions (Na & Cl) from the water, then it is sure as hell fine enough to remove complex molecules like hormones (hundreds of atoms long) and household chemicals, and definitely fine enough to remove bacteria and other pathogens (made of millions of atoms).
2. The UV light before and after the RO is so strong that it can oxidise organic molecules like hormones and obliterate pathogens to their base atoms (mainly carbon, oxygen and hydrogen)
3. Most of Perth's (Northern suburbs anyway) water comes from ground water like the Leederville and Gnangara aquifers, with the Gnangara mound mainly situated underneath agricultural and conservation land. If the treatment of this groundwater can effectively remove pathogens from rotting animals in the bush, chemicals from agriculture and wastes from housing estates, then it cope with some clean water coming from a treatment plant.
4. Singapore over the past few years has started to massively increase its efforts to be self-sustainable in water and not need to import it from Malaysia. Part of this effort has been focused on recycling waste water from residential and commercial areas. Ironically, the recycled water is actually cleaner than 'fresh' water from surface or groundwater source, thanks to the extra step of microfiltration, RO and UV.

 

As far as the Yarragadee plan goes, that was largely shelved. It is true that water from the Yarragadee is removed to be added into the south-west interconnected network, but most of this goes to towns and agriculture in the south-west. Numerous environmental studies showed that already threatened rivers, like the Blackwood River, are predominately groundwater fed, and any removals from this system would directly lower water levels in the river. The EPA refused to back the plan because of the huge effects this would have on the river and the surrounding region. Increasing extraction from the Yarragadee to 150GL per year was abandoned in favour of building a new desal plant at Binninup with a 100GL per year capacity and increasing the capacity at the Kwinana desal. In addition, the WaterCorp now buy water from the Harvey/Bunbury Irrigation scheme to top up the dams in Perth during low rainfall.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I probably should have said that I was planning on having the tank drilled so that I can hide all the plumbing, I will also be having one of the outlet pipes set at the 25% water change mark so all I have to do is connect a hose and it will empty itself. I also have no issue with DIYing filter components if they don't/won't fit. 

 

 

Nautilus 2700 + your old 1400 running at the same time.

Unless you like cleaning filters and hoses constantly forget the classics and jump to the pro 3.

Personally id be going fluval fx5/6 if your thinking Africans, flow and huge mechanical filtering capability, simple to clean and will pump out the water for you when you do a water change.

For that particular application (Africans) the type of filtration you need I think the fluval fx5/6 is better than a 2180, but that's just me.

If your talking community planted, 2180 all the way.

The fluval is also in your price range, a 2180 is not.

I would also take eheims tank size ratings with a grain of salt. Divide by 2.

Juls

 

Thanks for the tip on the Eheims, I have never used one but everyone seems to rave about them. My only concern with the fx-5 is that for every person that has one and loves it, it seems there is another who has had issues with it. In regards to the Aquaone recommendation at the top, is that for 1 Nautalis 2700 & 1 Nautalis 1400, or 2 Nautalis 2700 & 1 Nautalis 1400? I plan on selling my old 5 foot aquarium as there is nothing wrong with the glass, there was just a plumbing issue that saw my tank half empty itself all over the lounge room, so I would probably sell the current filter (its only 2 years old) with it.