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Often CO2, happens when they get tall and get nearer to the light.

There's a range of options with fertiliser. Overall it depends on demand. Plants like stability so regular dosing is good, but a lot of manufacturers suggest weekly, partly for practicality, partly because the levels will drop at water change so need replacing.   If you're just dosing simple...

Indeed, black beard algae would be a common culprit. Very difficult to scrub off, on plants often removing the affected leaf is the only way, but responds to increased CO2 levels if that's an option. Can also be blown away with local overdoses of liquid carbon or peroxide if done carefully.

Now then, lets stay on topic and not dissolve down into a debate about the scientific merit of bits of advice. There's the scientific section for things like that. I see nothing wrong with passing on collected wisdom, nor with challenging collected wisdom, but play nice.   We need to hear from...

The question on tap water pH is important. What you're starting with makes a big difference. Then you can look at what's changing it. Substrate can be an issue occasionally if it's heavily limestone based, as the surface area is huge, which is why it's used to buffer tanks to get the pH up in...

He's healing up nicely isn't he. Lovely fish.

They do that occasionally. Swords sulk and anubius do random growth spurts.

Slightly confused with the terminology. The name of the actual filter may help, or photos of that or the media. Some balls are indeed designed as submerged media.   To try to clear up from what I can grasp, if you run both filters then they should be able to handle whatever bioload they were...

Indeed, our tanks tend to run as a closed system, unless the substrate is fairly deep and has very poor flow it will tend to gradually equalise with the water column over time, so the nutrient rich substrates will always only allow a period of time of benefit without the water column being...

A single T8 isn't all that much light, but do be aware that some of your plants are probable melting because they're new and certain plants, particularly things like swords, are grown out of water commercially as it means that they don't need to supplement CO2. The end result is they need to...

I ran an old eheim 2213 on my 30l planted shimp tank until the impeller went the other day. It's currently running with a small internal to keep it ticking over. I like having the filter outside the tank on these small volume tanks as it leaves plenty of room and provides some extra water volume...

  I've only recently got rid of one of those. It was leaking just a bit too much and it lost another panel after a bit of clumsiness.

The three spot group come in a variety of colour morphs. Blue and golden are much the same. It's similar to angelfish having a variety of colour and pattern types available.   Can't help you much on price, I haven't bought any gouramis for years.

To me it looks like a golden gourami, but essentially it's a variant of some kind of the Trichogaster trichopterus or three spot gourami.

Indeed, I've not seen a problem with adult shrimp or snails with gluteraldehyde. I do get less shrimplets from my cherries in my treated tank than in my low tech, but there are a number of possible contributing features to that. I've heard anecdotal reports of people noting the same with less...

HC does indeed require a fair amount of light. It's essentially designed as a marginal plant in the real world so it doesn't usually get too much light loss from water depth, meaning that you need light to punch down through whatever depth of water you have to get it to grow, and that's it's not...

  Hence my suggesting the option of brown.   There's also grey.

Indeed, welcome. How long have you been away? Gaps have an annoying tendency to render our wisdom obsolete, but also making you the guru of the real way to do some old school stuff. Looking forward to seeing what you have planned.

Very few of them are actually that accurate on their setting. There are some odd ones like the Jagers that can be home calibrated but generally it's a bit of set it and tweak.   The one thing to test is that it actually does go off if you turn the temperature down, occasionally they'll stick on...

Black.   If you can't have black. Then go brown.

Simply put, the amount of fertiliser requirement and CO2 requirement is based hugely on the amount of light you provide. Cut the light and the need goes down. We have many people who go for crazy light levels and then wonder why they struggle to keep a tank balanced on a knife edge of the right...

Need to get a few more pics up of this one. Settling in nicely, although the stream still insists on leaking somewhere along it's length that I can't quite trace.   Livestock is in the main pond, just 12 goldies and 6 orfe for the moment, but the natural fauna are doing nicely, with some smooth...

Not quite managed to set up anything brackish yet, but have read a lot. The most useful resource I've seen has been Neale Monk's site. With his links on planting here and Archers here.

Ignore the nitrate levels, if you're dosing for plants and water changing appropriately then it's not really likely to be an issue.

No worries Mamashack, it's sometimes easier if you turn off the visual editor with the toggle switch at the top left, but do remember to turn it back on again if you want the previous display back.   You're in the real of where I like my dry salts. You know exactly what you're giving. A lot of...

  Although, to be fair, his dosing doesn't seem to be that high.

You can also get away with liquid carbon with the less fragile shrimp, but you will see a drop in numbers of shrimplets surviving.

osmocote (they're small yellowish slow release fertiliser balls) from the garden centre, put in ice cube tray with a small amount of tank water, freeze and then push into the substrate, you get a few minutes before the ice melts. The cheap form of root tab.

Indeed, go smaller, the bigger magnets have, well, bigger magnets. So they tend to grip a little too much and judder across the glass on smaller, thinner walled tanks, rather than smoothly clean due to a combination of increased drag and more magnetic power.

Yes, it works that way, unless the flow is insane.

That sounds more like an oil build up, and no, for clearing light scale I just let the level drop. Natural vinegar in tiny quantities is unlikely to cause any harm.

Ahh yes, well spotted folks.

Working fine from here. Any local java setting issues?

Scale build up is a curse of hard water tanks. I wipe it off with a cloth with vinegar in it regularly, before it gets a chance to build up, when I'm doing a water change on my hard water tanks.

Couple of suggestions to get rid of it, which start with the simple layer of kitchen roll draped across the tank and then remove and moves onto a surface skimmer on a timer so it clears the top for a few minutes every so often (watch them on all the time as they occasionally suck in things you...

I might try to move the peat and carbon, you have them very early in the filter and they work better if they don't clog up with mechanical debris.

Correct.

What's wrong with the name of blue green algae?

Sting ray.

Indeed. One thing about the APS filters is that the flow rate quoted is somewhat generous. I have a 2000 on a 20 gallon and it's not overkill on there. They are a bit beastly on power consumption and they're huge. Plenty of media space though.