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I feed my daphnia culture on waste water from the EI tank. It was seeded with a mess of green algae that grew in a tank when I went away and it sits on the windowsill with nothing at all powering it. Seems to work for me, but I may just have the right window balance, it's fairly sheltered there...

Depends what he wants it to do really. If he's after a pretty bubble effect then go for something that has good reviews for being quiet, as they all tend to be noisy beasts. Ideally go for something that has enough power to push air down to that depth and along enough pipe work to be in a...

anubius tend to the slow growing (although they can get some serious growth going once they get established), and that lends itself to getting algae all over their leaves.   Floating plants can also help in this situation. I was struggling with a low tech with a stock light on it until the...

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Then it may well simply be the reflectors, or the photoperiod. I run 6 hours with two T5's on a similar sized tank, without reflectors.

Oh it's not just livebearers. One of my congo tetras went for a white knuckle ride down the overflow yesterday. Found him in the sump.

Unlikely to be the tubes. I tend to use standard daylight tubes, they're far cheaper. If you're getting bba it's either too much lighting power, too long a photoperiod, or the CO2 distribution isn't as good as you thought it was.

I can indeed. I used a simple daphnia test for toxicity. Largely involved sticking daphnia in the water and making sure that they don't die. If they do, test the water to see if there's an obvious cause.   http://ei.cornell.edu/toxicology/bioassays/daphnia/environmnt.html   Some introduction to...

I'm guessing you'll miss this reply. I'm a bit slow about picking up topics as things are crazy at work and I'm setting up a new computer.   There are two real options, as you've had pointed out you can go low tech. Personally I'd just turn the lights off.   The other option is to run the high...

Indeed, I've grown it before in that format, often because it's fairly edible so the fish eat the stalks. Can be almost too good, as it can block the light fairly easily.

When flow slows, so almost never. Floss though, ranges from weekly to monthly depending on the tank. Again it's the low tech shrimp tank that doesn't need much, but the filter isn't all that strong in there so it doesn't pull much debris into the media. I suspect your oscar tank has some good...

Indeed. I'd not be happy at all to trust that the stuff in the bags is entirely just what it's supposed to be. Plus it tends to be far finer ground, to make a quick cuppa, and you don't really want that. I've never used roobios as I have more tannins from the wood I've gathered than I really...

Baths are usually for only brief periods of time, sometimes only 15 minutes. Do you have an air pump? If so you can knock together a filter with a simple box very quickly, although with only one fish in a container you may not need one.   I'd agree to quarantine, if only so the others leave it...

Peat doesn't really soften water, it acidifies it.   Generally it's placed in a filter bag and inserted into the filter. It doesn't last forever, how long depends a lot on the filter and the tank size. Generally, you don't clean it.   Some SA fish can tolerate the harder water, a lot of what's...

I use it, with caution. I won't repeat what TTA has said, it's all good.   I will report that it was excellent at removing tannins, and that replenishing it has proved to be a problem for some, which a few people have put down to the water being used, as those using RO or distilled water had no...

I have filter media that's about 20 years old, it's working fine.

Certainly, it's a typo, should read obligate. Or possibly the door to an old jedi's house.

Depends partly on what they are. Some will be better in a damp area as they'll have arrived from emersed growing and you really only want them to adapt once, don't do that with obigate aquatic plants like vallis though.

It is BBA, not diatoms. Very common when plant growth is exceeded by light available and the curse of low tech set ups. As said, cut the lighting timings down slightly and feeding micro fertilisers (the basic weekly stuff is all you need, none of the fancy high tech things). I suspect that a lot...

OK, lighting.   Watts per gallon rules were written back in the day when tanks were all pretty much uniform depths and the tubes were all T12's, which are fine but don't put out as much light per Watt as the modern tubes do, plus there are issues with tube diameter and lighting direction...

How powerful are the lights and how deep is the tank?   Also, are you getting good CO2 levels on drop checker or pH and is the flow around the whole tank good?   I suspect that the algae is being limited by a lack of nutrients, hence exploding when they're available, but you need to out compete...

Algae scrubbers I've only ever really seen on marine or predator systems, in the hope of reducing the need for water changes by doing nutrient export. The problem with them is that they'll rob the system of nutrients that the plants need. Given a balance, and enough plant biomass overdosing...

Welcome Tess, I used to work in Swindon, albeit briefly. An underrated part of the country.

Most of the inappropriate aquarium plants sold in the aquarium trade are a byproduct of the growing techniques for most of what we use. Apart from a few true aquatics such as vallis most of our plants are grown emmersed. That way CO2 is readily available from the air and the stems tend to be...

urrrm, yes, I did indeed, was linking to this.   http://www.banggood.com/buy/UP-Aquarium-Light.html

Hi and welcome.   To start with, have a read of this, some great advice from TTA there on fish in cycling.   Personally, I'd be keen to go back a step and rehome your stock. Clown loaches and bala sharks are both 12 inch long shoaling species, they're great in big tanks, but grow rapidly to...

  Depends on the metal hood. I suspect you mean the old classic consort hoods, they're a pain, but I've crammed double T5's into them before with a bit of simple drilling. Worth noting that it was far from low tech, becoming an algae fest at the touch of a button, the 2W per gallon was for old...

Depends a whole lot on what you're going for. 3W per gallon was regarded as a fair amount of light with T12's when the Watts per gallon rule was created. T5's are more energy efficient, so you get more light than you're expecting, so 4W would be a fine balance for CO2 and ferts to keep it from...

Then if initial outlay is the issue, you want a standard daylight T5, you can buy them online for about £4.

I put a few hints on substrates here some time ago. They're basically still valid points.   As for lighting, it really depends what you planned to spend. There are some reasonably priced LED rigs out there, and I've seen some DIY sets work with floodlight sets. You'll struggle to beat T5's on...

OK, Angelfish, as I said, they're really 1, a pair or a shoal. However placid they may look smoothly floating around the tank they're ambush predators and have a dark side. You won't have room for a shoal, so you could aim for a pair (although breeding would create havoc) or go for a good...

Working down your list, and trying not to be too negative, you have some lovely fish that have caught your eye.   Silver sharks, actually need bigger tanks than silver dollars, they're big  (12 inches + grown) and fast. They're also shoaling fish, so need company of their own kind to thrive...

  Agreed, particularly with an unexplained death, I've not seen it all that often, but have seen it occasionally, and I probably number in the thousands for keeping angelfish in my time, which may explain why I've seen a rarer trait. They're not generally all that troubled by the couple bond...

For the extra 15 dollars can you stretch to a 65 gallon at 36x18x24? Even better if you can do the 48", although at that size you're pretty much up to your 100 gallon.

  They do occasionally, generally they'll get over it after a few days, but moving the decor around so that they thing they're in a new place can help a bit, much as you would if you were introducing a new fish and wanted to reduce the aggression from the established occupants.

There are ways to do it, but it's fairly complicated for the hobbyist. There have been successful batches of amanos in the hobby though.

That might do it.

Most sensible LED commercial sets are their own rig in a sealed unit. The issue with LED's is the quality of the electronics and current controllers really, if you want the longevity that they advertise, so a dedicated unit is a good idea.

18,000K is very blue, that's a marine rig. 4000-5000K though is quite yellow light. Most aquarium lights tend to be around the 6500K, usually ranging between 5000 and 10,000K for tropical set ups. Personally I prefer the 10,000K end of the lighting spectrum unless I'm after a blackwater type...

Tanks are indeed expensive, but then they've become pieces of furniture. Good old clearseal types remain sensibly priced if you have somewhere you can put them safely.   Otherwise gumtree and e-bay are great sources of tanks for very little.