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taking some media from an established tank or using a bacterial supplement such as stability to accelerate the cycling process if your tank is new and not cycled you should read up on cycling so you understand the process you need to go through before stocking your tank with a significant load...

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great looking fish!

I considered using a bilge pump from a boating store. They are designed to pump water with a decent head pressure and would do the job nicely, you would need a 12 volt plugpack of sufficient current rating to power it but being low voltage it would be quite safe. Otherwise your option is a...

I've used the Aqua one silk plants, which are nice as they have a solid base with some weight to it and you just push it into the substrate and it stays put. They're not as good as real plants but they do look much better than plastic.

heater thermostat markings are horribly inaccurate in my experience. At best they are only good for a relative reading ie if you raise the thermostat temp by 2C then your tank goes up by about 2C (you need to wait several hours to let it settle at the new reading). One of my heaters is set at...

if you can't cut the media up to seed the new filter, run the old filter in the new tank for a month or two to give the bacteria a chance to populate the new biowheel. i would also dose the biowheel directly with a bacterial supplement to help it along eg stability.

How are you testing? My API master kit (liquid test kit) consistently shows 0.25ppm ammonia when I know I have none. I just ignore it now, if it says 0.25 then I don't worry. Any higher, then worry! API master kits doing this is a known problem in certain batches, which is unfortunate as...

yes no food for a day or two beforehand, you can also cover the tank to reduce temperature loss and keep the fish asleep, this will minimise their activity, oxygen requirements and ammonia output. the filter should survive if it has ample capacity.

It could happen! :shout: this man speaks the truth. sand >>> gravel I've seen gas pockets in my sand, but I've not smelled sulfur when moving plants and releasing bubbles. Maybe the anaerobic bacteria are *gasp* turning nitrates into nitrogen gas like they're supposed to!! Probably also...

I have heard that the best thing to catch fish is to do it at night. When all the lights are off they go to sleep, sneak in there with a head torch and just scoop them out :) Or for the less night ninja inclined.. just throw a blanket over the tank to make it dark for an hour. then lift a...

no matter how much you have you always want more. doesn't just apply to fish tanks :)

having a healty bacteria colony will do this for you, costs $0, and takes no extra maintenance besides doing your regular filter clean. if your current filter is inadequate or not cycled you should address the problem rather than adding an ammonia satchel.

cheap LCD thermometers can develop faults with moisture ingress and go off. alcohol thermometers are sealed units, less likely to go bad, cost about $2 and are plenty accurate unless you have uber sensitive fish and in that case you should get one of the premium "high accuracy" ones. changing...

I was a bit worried that sand would be anoxic but after trying to uproot one of my amazon swords to move it, the root system was proof enough that the sword was loving it!!

this. To find out which foods are most nurtritionally complete you need to feed an exclusive diet for a few months. Do this for every type of food and judge which one made your fish look the healthiest. I vary the diet between flake, micropellet and algae wafer because *I* like the variety of...

nitrate is only one parameter that is easily measured by the fishkeeper, it's the canary in the coal mine if you like. High nitrates mean the water is stale and has a lot of other organic wastes in it, depleted trace elements etc. All of that stuff we DON'T measure for!!

^^ a fishless cycle is the very beginning of your tank's ecosystem. for the first few months the smell may vary until everything reaches equilibrium and various processes settle down. the main thing is that an established tank never smells of ammonia :P

I have fine sand that NOTHING sinks through (so it's not that helpful to you sorry :P) but I take a pinch of hikari micro pellets and release them under the waterline and they sink straight away. my bronze corys go on a mad hunt to find the tasty morsels on the substrate :good: switch to...

if you feel bad about brine shrimp you should also feel bad for animals bred for meat. and about cows and chickens kept for milk and eggs as they are not free either. and you might as well feel bad for grass when you step on it because you're damaging a living thing by doing so. kind of ironic...

guesswork, but near enough is good enough

One was here, although on second reading they said freeze-drying http://www.bioconlabs.com/autoheterobac.html It is the drying component that kills them, they may survive ordinary freezing but would need to be tested. The bacteria don't form spores though, which makes it interesting in regard...

i made a homemade python for a few bucks using some garden hose and a 3 way adapter. so much better than buckets even on a 90L tank! that's laziness for you :hyper:

looks fine to me - it will send more roots down into the substrate as it grows.

I was doing some more reading yesterday and common references seemed to suggest that freezing the bacteria that lives in aquariums will kill them.

I quite like the seamless front of the Aqua One series - I have an AR620. The top filter is very easy to maintain as well.

tank should just smell mildly earthy. if it has a pong about it then something's wrong, maybe the filter is overdue for cleaning or the water is stale and needs changing.

as above for the most part they don't. Seachem claim that their stability product contains spores, not live bacteria, and if that's the case then their product is quite plausible. Spores can survive for ages until living conditions are right.

any media you leave out of the tank is useless in an emergency because there is no bacterial colony on it, it would take too long to establish one in the case of a filter failure. Honestly your best bet is just to not worry about it. Buy a spare impeller for your current filter as that's the...

Don't give up :) add some fish!

I don't think your cycles are stalling, fact is you are dosing with ammonia and it's being converted to nitrates. pH is fine, soft water doesn't really matter, and your temperature is good. The only thing that's possibly a problem is that the conversion rate is low, but if you are using sponge...

Slim, tank looks great!! I spy a GBR in there too, my favourite :) Andy I was a bit harsh saying "useless" as although the green spike is rejected by the plants there's enough other wavelength light to keep the plants going. Should have said the green component is useless for growth. It is...

The other parameter that is crucial and often overlooked is the light spectrum. The colour temperature in Kelvin tells you absolutely nothing about the overall spectrum, I keep seeing references to 20,000K lights. 20,000K out of a black body radiator would be violet in colour!! The lights are...

bloody hell.. i thought the LFS would be safe to buy proper aquatics from! thanks that explains why they're shedding like it's going out of fashion (silly me, bought a few). thanks for the tip, time to go shopping again :)

oh snap (pardon the pun) that's a kick in the pants. get on the phone and demand an immediate replacement. when you do start cycling consider trying seachem stability to see if it helps your cycle along. it's worth a shot, it certainly won't hurt just buy the smallest bottle they have and...

ok here's some pics.. first up my oldest crypt, the leaves are a bit brown although I've heard crypts sometimes do this. It's growing, which is a good sign: my two amazon swords (I planted them a bit close!!) are also growing.. gee I looked up some photos of when I bought them in May and...