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Sadly due to moving I shall shortly probably have give up my aquarium. (New house not suitable at present for my tank). I have a number of fish, all of which I have had for at least the last 2 years, some nearer 3 - so I would like to do the best thing for them! (10 Harlequins, 6 Cardinal...

have just got the sp3000 pump, the instruction manual has a diagram with the pump used to dose from a reservoir below the level of the tank, which features a non-return valve. the caption by the diagram mentions that if the pump stops in the 'horizontal' position fluid may leak back and the...

Just been looking at JamesC's remineralising recipe on his site - http://theplantedtank.co.uk/RO.htm A few questions about it if anyone's able to help - 1. presumably when magnesium and calcium sulphate is sold it is usually in the heptahydrate and dihydrate forms? 2. why add chloride, why...

thanks for all the replies - much better advice than my wife's suggestion of a toilet cistern above the tank full of ro water, and the pushing flush to fill the tank after a water change!! have also looked at loft water tanks - these seem a bit cheaper the ro-man tanks, but would work similarly...

i know that there is little benefit to ro water in terms of most plants, but i'm interested in keeping soft water fish and so am contemplating creating a set up using ro water. adding an ro unit under the sink looks fairly straight-forward, and i can see how with a float valve and shut off...

call me sad, but reading about using 12/16 reactors with 16/22 filters got me thinking, what is the actual reduction in flow from going from 16mm tubing to 12mm. i am sure people's practical experience is more valuable, but... if we assume that all the resistance to flow for the filter comes...

i have had my tank set up for about 6 months with a number of stem plants i got as a starter set from an online retailer. i have a juwel rio125 tank, 48w t5 light, fe co2, james' pmdd, juwel int filter with 1000lph powerhead, 25deg, tap water gh15. most of the stems i have are pretty prolific...

i appreciate that tom has had considerable sucess with EI and invested a lot of time into encouraging others to do the same, as has clive. however having seen james' great results too using a leaner regime makes me wonder james, what made you decide to go down the leaner route? clearly from...

thank you all, appreciate your time.

the benefits of EI dosing are well explained elsewhere - but in a nutshell, all nutrients are present in excess so plants won't develop deficiencies, and if co2/lighting/flow/maintainence are all appropriate there shouldn't be a problem with algae. but i know some of you use other dosing...

just for the record, my aquamedic regulator also was slightly too big, removed the rubber o-ring, sanded it down, replaced the o-ring and it works like a treat.

Ed, what sintered glass media did you use? I have been looking at eheim's EHFISUBSTRAT, but as I think it seems to come in a gravel form is not going to string onto any fishing line! sorry to be a bit clueless, are fluval biomax rings sintered glass? is there another sort you'd recommend? Thanks.

yeah i saw that page too, i think it is because my pump is older than the current series. i have the rather unintuitively named 204 pump (rated at 400lph). the new pump series 400/600/1000 (rated at the same lph) might work with the 1000 impeller, per the website.

in case anyone in future is interested, heard back from juwel - cannot use the new impeller with my old powerhead.

thanks, have emailed juwel about just upgrading the impellar.

i have an old juwel rio125 tank, the internal filter has a 204 powerhead, rated at 400lph. i know the ideal might be an external filter, but has anyone upgraded the powerhead in their internal juwel filter? i know the new 600lph and 1000lph powerheads can be attached (with the help of a new...

thanks. am using a mix of warm and cold water so although the water is the same overall temperature as the tank it started out as mostly cold water with more oxygen dissolved in it, makes sense, thank you very much.

i have a 6 week old 125litre setup with about 1.5wpg of light and diy co2 (my drop checker with 4dkh water is consistenly green). am using james' pmdd. following a water change (changing between 25-50%) my plants (and unfortunately the algae too!) seems to pearl for the rest of the day in a way...

just read on another forum that plant extracts in stress coat included in dechlorinators can make algae worse. is there any truth in this? (could this be behind some people's observations that using ro water, and thus perhaps inadvertantly avoiding dechlorinator, reduces algae??)

sounds good to me. if NH3 ammonia is oxidised to NO3 nitrate, then 3 H+ ions are potentially produced, which shift the equilibrium in the CO2 + H20 <=> H2CO3 <=> H+ + HCO3- equation towards the left and thus lower the dKH. so answering my original question, dkH drops with time in a closed...

am looking for a fish that will eat some of my snail infestation. at the moment they seem to come back as fast as i can pull them out of the tank! clown loaches are out, as the tank is only 125l. like some other people on the forum i have noticed that dwarf/chain loaches seem to be really...

My tap water has nitrates of about 30ppm. I am basing my dosing around James' PMDD page (http://theplantedtank.co.uk/PMDD.htm, thanks for the awesome site!). Presumably if my plants use approximately all the nitrate added each day then I should add just as much nitrate as anyone else. In this...

yes, that's the one, thinking of getting a complete set from them. thanks.

can anyone confirm for me that the regulator from the lunapet / Aquarianerversand system on ebay (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Aquarianerversand) will work with a FE once the supplied bottle has run out? has anyone had sucess getting the supplied bottles refilled? has anyone found a cheaper...

my 125 litre tank is 800mm long, but the light tubes are only 550mm long. as a result my plants seem to grow towards the middle of the tank, ignoring the upper corners of the tank. any ideas on how to improve this? even if i changed the lighting seems the next light tube up in size is 850mm so...

may be a bit late now but a further refinement for you: i have a nutrafin cannister and a 2litre bottle connected up to a bubble counter i made with a 500ml bottle. the two tubes from the cannister and the 2 litre bottle both go into the 500ml cap and then end underwater. there is a third hole...

thanks for taking the time to write such a long explanation. i follow well except the last paragraph but one. water changes will help remove ammonia and organic waste matter, agreed, and i can see why removing ammonia and sources of ammonia is important. therefore i can understand that the need...

in a low tech tank very infrequent water changes are recommended on the basis that exchanging water causes fluctuations in co2. i know there is a tom barr piece of work that shows fluctuations in co2 resulting in increased algae growth. (i think this was in a high tech tank experiment??? or is...

thanks for the replies, so in the end vallis lowers both the kh and gh by removing calcium carbonate/bicarbonate from the water! thanks though for clarifying my original post which was not entirely clear. had the gh of the water to hand, but not the kh, which was why it ended up getting...

thanks lisa, that is really encouraging, maybe i should try a few and see how they get on

after feeling a bit disheartened that my hard water (dGH 15.8 according to water company) will not cope with cardinals and rams am now looking for some suitable colourful fish for my 125l planted tank some of the rainbow fish species look good have thought about a pair of kribs any other...

looking on the tropica website: www.tropica.com/article_fullscreen.asp?type=news&id=683 it shows a graph at the bottom of the page showing that in a planted tank dkH drops with time. why does this happen? my local water has a dGH of 15, does this mean i can expect that to fall with time in my...

thanks for the quick reply. if i were to just use the t8 lamps i would be running at 1.1wpg - from what i have read elsewhere that seems a bit on the low side, even for less demanding plants? is that fair?

trying to avoid algae before it starts... i have a juwel rio 125 tank (33 US gallons), 2nd hand, new set up. substrate is tropica plant substrate with fine gravel on top. it is an old style juwel tank with 2x18w t8 tubes, i have bought another starter so now have 2x24w t5 tubes also in the...