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I am not sure that's the best strategy to remineralize water. Ca(NO₃)₂ will add more nitrate than Calcium (3 times more in fact) and I would assume that the nitrate is already being taken care by the main fertilizer/macro side. It is an option though if no other compounds are available but it...

If you want to maintain a more stable Ca content in your water then using CaSO4 is probably your best friend as it will not absorb as much water as CaCl2.

I suppose that eventually it will reach a state of equilibrium where no more water will be absorbed. You could treated it as an hexahydrate if you are not so anxious about how many Ca ppm go into your tank. One thing is for sure though, if you have dosed the same amount for months/years in your...

As Happy said, keep those compounds separate. Even if keeping them together under some specific condition is possible, I would advise against it. You will note that no liquid fertilizer manufacturer keep these compounds in their commercial macro mix. My opinion is that since you are preparing...

Although possible, I wouldn't. As Micheal and Darrel said, CaCl is highly hydroscopic. You would end up measuring erroneous amounts of both salts with time. In fact my CaCl would probably need a reheating because as of now, half the weight (and probably more) is water. If you have a hermetically...

That exactly. I should have started with that one which was probably more than enough. Got carried away with a novel.

Plants can grow more than satisfactorely with half (and even less) the dose of full EI. Remember these numbers are mere guidelines and I don't know many people, if anyone in fact, using full EI nowadays. These full EI dosing levels are reminicent from the early days of when Tom Barr popularized...

1. Do you have a compelling reason to use Full EI? Unless you are ready to do regular (weekly or even bi-weekly) and heavy WCs (+80%) it might not be the best idea. Maybe go for something less extreme, unless your plant mass is so large that you really want to avoid any deficiencies. I'll be...

I am seing some very strange artefacts in your screenshot. That drop down arrow shouldn't be showing in the middle of the cell but rather at the right end of the cell. I can also see some cells that are supposed to be hidden but are not. This ain't right. What version of Excel and Windows/MAC...

To add some background to what @Zeus. said, this is entirely up to you. Could be 1ml, 10ml, 27ml, 63.5ml, 138ml. That figure is up to you to decide. What you do need to keep in mind though is that the lower the value (and the lower the dosing frequency) the more concentrated your solution will...

Likewise from Thailand with love.

I personally take the middle road approach where I cut in half the soil volume to be closer to the actual water volume, but as Zeus said, you can't really know for sure how much water is being displaced since aquasoil is not exactly dense like rock and all soils have a different density, size...

I did discover a bug though which is not related to the above, so I have to thank @_Maq_ for making me look at the guts of the calculator again. For those who are curious, and for my personal log, the bug presents itself as following: But we get 0L WC in the Calculators: Additional to that...

@MMonis You might also want to use 4 instead of 0,4 in the glass thickness. The unit is millimeters not cm.

Unless you do a 100% TAP water change, values you see in the calculators will be calculated in proportion to the amount of TAP water you added vs your tank volume. For instance you have 35ppm NO3 in the Water report. If you do, let’s say, a 50% water change then you will end up in your tank with...

Actually I just checked now. I don't see any issues with what you mentionned. Perhaps if you could be more specific that would help. Just in case you are not seeing the same numbers between section "2. YOUR AREA WATER REPORT" in "Core Settings" and section 4 "CLONE WEEKLY TARGET" in "Target...

I will have a look at this tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

This is a cosmetic thing for Excel. As long as Excel is configured to accept comas as decimal separators it will work, else Excel will refuse. Same thing the other way around. If comas are already working for you then it means Excel is set to have comas as decimal separator and not as thousand...

Good luck but I am confident of the outcome. Also note that the manufacturers of these devices don’t claim point blank that the devices elliminate algae but rather that they inhibit their proliferation, which is vague IMO. Yes hydrolisis has desinfecting properties but IMO not under the...

I looked at the tests I did in the past. TDS values between the IFC Calculator and the actual value I obtained from my TDS pen where pretty much the same (830ppm calculated vs 835ppm measured) for CaCl₂ (Calcium Chloride Anhydrous). This is after I heated up the CaCl₂∙2H₂O (Calcium Chloride...

TDS values in the IFC calculator are theoretically correct as far as I am aware. We get the same results as with the Lenntech website. TDS and Electrical Conductivity - Lenntech I think the issue stems from our TDS meters and the convertion factors of our pens. Better put, some ions differ as...

It is actually quite easy to differentiate amanos from other shrimps. Their spots and dashes are unique to them. Maybe because I live in a country where they have one of the biggest wholesale and retail markets of ornamental fish in the region and perhaps in the world, and I go there quite...

Difficult to say from that picture.

Not amanos for sure.

Osmocote products release more or less fast their content as per design of the coating. There is a range of products with each product having a designed release speed. Yes in water they will definitely release their payload faster. How fast you ask? That's a guess, but I have had osmocote in my...

As many of the products in this hobby the manufacturers often obfuscate the composition of their product or simply do not provide it at all, probably because legislation does not force them to. This said after some research, some forums and websites seem to agree that SERA Silicate Remover is...

While preparing the last update to the IFC Calculator I looked into Yara Ireland products. I didn't go into each individual product but those that I looked at closely were not suitable as they contained certain compounds that I think were not appropriate for tank use, such as high amounts of...

2hr Aquarist APT, Tropica Specialized Nutrition, Masterline product line etc etc. They are all good.

@Ronoh and everyone. I have integrated a fail safe error message in the next release to prevent this from happening to other people in the future. Although some things can be obvious for us, they might not be for everyone. Thank you @Ronoh for having brought this to our attention. Note: if...

You probably forgot to add TAP water change volume.

It does. What version of the file are you using and what platform are you on?

I would suggest you have a read of the Guide sheet followed by the CoreSettings sheet where you can input your water report data.

Earth is an enclosed ecosystem in the grand scheme of the universe but it got some air. Your ecoshpere was deprived of any ;). Perhaps not filling the sphere all the way up and leaving an air gap could have worked?

Since you are using slow growing and low demanding plants you will want to tame your light. This will be the first and foremost reason why you will start getting algae, specially because you also have some wood pieces in there and those will also release organics in the water which in turn will...

After trial and error I finally fixed the mobile version of the IFC Aquarium Fertilizer Calculator website page. https://www.paullefevre.com/ifc/

Guy is ignorant on the subject. All amano shrimps are pretty much wild. To my knowledge there is no small, medium or large commercial amano breeders due to the complexity (and cost) of breeding them. If there is any I will gladly be corrected. Only breeders in existence are hobbyists. That is...

Never heard of anyone using ozone generators in freshwater tanks. I would even venture to say that it might be detrimental. What people usually use though are these electrochemical devices made by either Chihiros or Twinstar which supposedly "sterilize" your water, inhibits algae spores and...

Here is what I see. 1. Your tank is virtually planted with 100% slow growing plants which does not justify the use EI dosing. 2. All these algae and specially BBA you are seeing is only going to get worse if you don't up your game in terms of maintenance. I see quite a lot of dust on the...

First thing I'll ask is for a picture. Sometimes pictures say a thousand words. This is not required. Plants do not require CO2 when lights are off. I would simply open CO2 1-2 hours before lights go on and turn off CO2 1 hours prior lights go off making sure you have a stable CO2 concentration...

I mentionned this for people who already have a CO2 tank like myself. Soda water would be the obvious choice without the equipment. Only problem would be that using a standard diffuser all CO2 would out gas anyway as bubbles would simply go straight to the surface. One way would be to heavily...

I wonder how well this could work by injecting high amounts of pressurized CO2 in a bucket instead. One would probably need to add a small pump to recirculate water.

I recommend reading this. Seems reasonable and effective: https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/24465-reverse-respiration/

I haven't used it as main substrate layer but I know people who use crushed lava rock as a substrate, specially for growing epiphytes like Bucephalandra or for Sulawesi Shrimp tanks. It should not raise GH or KH as lava rock is normally inert. This brand seems to add trace minerals to the lava rock.

IFC calculator has been updated with new AIO dry fert feature. https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/ifc-aquarium-fertilizer-calculator.63045/

Calculator has been updated. I have dropped the 'b' in the versioning. I think we are far past the beta versions. Download link and change log are in the OP (v1.3). This update brings a brand new feature which enables you to use AIO dry fertilizers. Since no one manifested itself for additional...

My tank was basically like this for 5 years. It bothered me once in a while but got used to it eventually. I didn't have adjustable feet so I also didn't have much options. Or you could screw the left side instead ;). You just need to do it when you do a large 80% WC to lower the weight.

Same like any of those earth worms like white worms, grindal worms, micro worms etc or in fact any of those dried food granules composed of a plethora of animal remains which we often give to fish.

The difference between gravel and sand is the size of the grain. Gravel is coarser than sand. But at 1-1.5mm, IMO it should be called sand (perhaps coarse sand), not gravel. For more information there is wiki: Gravel - Wikipedia

Film and precipitation are two very different things. What you show on the picture is mold, not precipitation which would be very odd considering you are only adding Fe DTPA in there. Precipitation will most of the time settle at the bottom of the bottle as dust since the precipitate is denser...

The higher the bacterial load the more a bacteria colony has a chance of propagating faster. That is true in the outside environment as well as our bodies. This does not necessarily mean that your other 3 tanks did not have the bacteria. BGA just didn't get a strong hold in those tanks as...

It's already in the current public release and has been for some time I think actually as well as Solufeed TEC-Sodium Free-SF (now called Solufeed TEC-Sodium Free Soft Fruit). The one we added in the soon to be released version is the Solufeed Sodium Free Coir TEC

What has been said above is a good way to at least reduce the bacterial load but I don't even bother doing that because at the end of the day you can't really eradicate it. Throwing it away will only dig a deeper hole in your bank account though without the warranty you will not have BGA in your...

This is a call to all those who wanted to see AIO NPK dry ferts in the IFC calculator and of course to everyone in general. We are making the last polishing edits to the calculator so now would be a good time to tell us. We are looking for known brands that are widely available if possible so...

I already added that to the calculator last week or so. It will be in the next release. What we are looking for though is NPK AIO dry ferts.

I finally gathered some strength to pull those fingers out... This has been a long overdue mod. All the background calculations were done by @Zeus. I simply integrated all of it in the master file and did some clean up and minor corrections. Hopefully this will simplify things when using those...

What problems? Week Aqua used to ship their lights with V2 BT modules which didn't do a good job with sunrise/sunset. They have however release a new BT module V3 that fixes that. You need to ask the reseller if the V3 module is already incorporated in the light or you need to buy the new...

One thing is for sure, I got 3 wrong tanks.

Cheaper yet equally good in terms of color rendering, if not better.

My opinion is I honestly see no difference whatsoever between the two when you have the lights on other than the edges turning green instead of blue. I would need a spectrometer in place of the eyes to see the actual difference. The tint difference is indeed perceptible to the naked eye if the...

This is now my third tank that I will be returning. Maybe the gods are telling me I should not get a tank?

So after a few years of dedicated and loyal service, I sold my 90cm tank over a month ago. It had some nasty cratches that were really annoying me and the left panel was shorter by ~2-3mm than the rest of the panels. So I was on the market to find a new one. I wanted to stay with normal glass...

The P900 has 2 fans. I can't hear them.

Exactly why jubilee clips are not meant for aquarium use IMO. People use them because they are so common, but that’s not their intended use.

No one is perfect in life and we might sometimes forget to tighten things up properly. This said, when both hose and barb fittings are properly sized, they become quite difficult to separate, in some instance virtually impossible and they need to be cut. In fact, being an open system, there...

Yes and no. In a well designed configuration where flow and reactor are properly matched, you should have some CO2 build up but nothing major. If your water flow is too high or CO2 injection is too high in relation to the reactor size, then you can have a significant amount of CO2 build up (or...

Good decision!

That is VERY expensive. I am not sure you need reagent grade for what you intend to do. Food grade (which often times can actually be the same purity as reagent grade) would be far cheaper for those compounds available for food use. I have personally used technical or agricultural grade for all...

Are you not planning to have fish? They will eat those in no time. Else as stated by Tam you would need to create some water movement and disturb the surface.

You can use lava rock as well. Serves the same purpose. No need to crush it though. You can buy it directly since lava rock is sold in different sizes. That is in fact what I have planned for my next scape. I just got myself 10kg of 0.5-1mm lava rock a month ago and will be using it to raise...

That's really up to you during the cycling. You can do it freestyle and test let's say once a week or even once every 2 weeks. No hard rules here, at least not for me. I would say it's not necessary and in fact can even be detrimental depending the type of scape your are doing. For example on a...

All I see here is that a Diana was forcefully brought up to the ring for an attempted MMA fight but that didn't go as planned. Ok I am out.

Yes overall that's the approach most people take. This is to reduce the excess ammonia, dissolve organics and the tinting of the water caused by the soil and wood leaching tannins. Which additives are you referring to? Introduce when your ammonia and nitrite read 0. Shrimps are usually the...

What your LFS told you is not wrong and many people opt to cycle their tank that way. So you can either do a dark start with 0 plants or as @erwin123 suggested, do a normal start with fast growing and hardy plants. Either way works and they are not in contradiction. They are just different...

Well, sheeeeeeeettttt, this is some hardcore geekery. That's pretty much the only contribution you'll get from me as this is beyond my pay grade, but thought I would let that catch phrase from Isiah Whitlock, Jr. resonate in everybody's head. Now, place to the more serious posts.

Those can get old quick. I personally was not able to grow it in my last tank as well. Would continuously stunt and throw side shoots. I didn't insist. Removed it and carried on with life. It's not impossible to grow it in high tech conditions but it probably is much easier to handle it with a...

Pictures posted are not that explicit but from what I see there is no way I would ever put a tank on a glass desk like that even if the frame looks solid. That glass contacting the metal frame....cringe. The problem are the contact points and how parallel those contact points are. The smallest...

Not sure how I managed not to see this thread before in all these years. 😳 Excellent Tim!

Unless your goal is to breed shrimps there is nothing much you need to do. Breeders don't tolerate them as they will compete for food with shrimps and you don't want that in a breeding tank for obvious reasons. It all depends what you are after.

Sweet algae. Which rare sp is that? 😁 Farm tanks using EI require lots of works and I can understand your lack of motivation. It can sometimes be a constant battle to make everything look right. Good thing is that unless the plants melted 100% they can always come back to life with proper care...

Iphone 8. Not the best camera but does the job for casual pictures. If I were to ever compete in some aquascaping contest I would use a proper DSLR, although I am sure modern phone cameras are totally capable of doing the job just as well.

Your tank is very lightly planted with mostly slow growing plants and you have your lights at 100%. That is why IMO you are seeing all that algae. If I was you I would increase the plant mass, slightly decrease the light intensity and see from there. Some of your plants like Alternanthera...

@mrtank50 I think @X3NiTH was asking about the full chemical formula of Rh2PO4. There is something wrong with how you are preparing your solution or maybe with some of the compounds you are using. There is no reason why your solution should precipitate out in 2 days if you properly acidify the...

So there must be something more in that EDTA.

I am no chemist but I think that adding the EDTA to the water prior acidifying it has no incidence. This said, it is good practice to start acidifying the water first before adding any other compound. What bothers me here though, is why are you adding EDTA at all? You are already adding Fe...

You don't need to have all traces chelated. Only the iron would be sufficient. Just get some Fe EDTA to make your life easier. As for how to proceed, the IFC calculator describes the process. First you need to acidify the receiving water no matter what you do. If you are doing an AIO, then start...

Ok. Thank you.

I sent you a PM.

I personally don't bother although that sould be the way of doing it. I simply just take 1 liter (or whatever the amount I am aiming for) of water and add the salts to that. This means my solutions are usually below the target I set since they are more diluted. Only reason I would bother with...

Nothing to complain really now. I do have the hanging kit. Works well. I am using Chihiros stands though but they are virtually the same thing. Reason being that I could find Chihiros stands second hand so they were cheaper.

Unfortunately you just missed the train. We asked last week for people to tell us which ferts they wanted us to add to the calculator. I just released the update 2 days ago, but as Zeus said, you have a work around.

You have too much water for a dry start. Soil should be moist/wet, not under water. Remove as much water as you can then let your dry start continue. Alternatively you could flood your tank now.

I'm looking for a Wordpress coder to fix the mobile version of IFC Calculator website. Looks like crap on mobile at present and I have spent way too much time trying to fix this, which I can't. Anyone with some coding skills should be able to fix this in no time. Anyone?

Calculator has been updated to v1.2b6. Download link and Change Log are in the OP. Comments? Bugs? Let us know. Thanks. Have fun ladies and gentlemen.

I am closing all new ferts demands. We have added 13 new ferts. That's enough work for me 😘

This can't be added to the IFC calculator in the sense that Seachem does not provide any information on how much any given dose raises KH or PH. In fact they simply tell you to keep adding until you get the desired PH. Right. So this looks to me that this is merely Sodium Carbonate or maybe...

I just added it along with Aqua Rebell Makro Spezial - Licht

Brand/product name and link please :)

My master file ;). It has not been released yet. Patience padawan.

Then this product is a no go. Impossible for us to replicate. Should be possible I was able to find the composition and dosing recommendation.

Can't seem to find any information on the composition of this product on the manufacturer's website. Does the packaging or sticker on the bottle mention anything about that? If so can you please post it? Thank you.