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blue actinic bulbs will not help your live plants.

The standard bulb that comes with the tank is good enugh to create a low light setup with very easy, low light plants. Depending on what came with the unit you may want to upgrade the bulb to a nice 6700k plant oriented one. My 20 gallon long tank has only 18 watts of standard light on it, and...

1.5 wpg is high light for T5 bulbs, they are extremely efficient.

Just remember that EI dosing should be altered based on your own needs - not everyone uses or needs the same amounts, and a lot of people end up with plant growth and/or algae issues by blindly following EI methods posted on the web, larglely because these methods are serious overkill for many...

I would not worry too much, any will do the job. I use the overpriced but functional red sea valve.

Cryptocoryne wendtii is really nce, bushy and makes a great refuge for livestock, slow growing but very easy to keep healthy under low light, unlike stem plants these are maintenance free with no need to be trimmed.

I don't know about "best", but fluorite is easy to use and my plants do fantastic in it. Dirt is great but not for people like me who do a lot of rearranging.

In 25 years of fishkeepng I've never heard of experienced such a thing.

if you are looking for a small bottom dweller other than corys look no further than the chain or zebra loaches- I'm partial to these guys at any rate. So I currently run the AC50 on my own 20 Long and it works fine, but I find the pourback renders part of the tank practically unusable because...

very nice. i have 4 in my 29g and just adore them

But kind of fluorescent? 2 wpg of T8 lighting is on the lower side pf medium,, while 2 wpg of T5 lighting is high light.

His concept is not wrong and I think some of these fish are underestimated by some. My female Ram lost her mate and afterward sulked in the plants for a few months and died within several months - I've heard of other fish over the years showing similar signs of "depression" after losing a...

I would not put two types of territorial fish into such a small aquarium.

The good news is ammonia goes nontoxic at low pH anyway keep the water changes small, the less sudden pH shift, the better for the fish. keep an eye on those levels, if it drops again even with regular water changes You'll need to buffer it.

A tank that small is very difficult to work with. Length is the most defining element of the tank in regards to stocking, more so then volume for small tanks, and 13" Just doesn't cut it for most fish as any sort of long term solution. Judging by the way my pygmy cory group gets around...

I imagine as a column aquarium it is very slim and tall, and that would make it a poor home for any catfish except maybe pygmy corys. If the tank is a similar surface area to a standard 5 gallon tank, the only fish that would really be suitable for it would also be suitable for said 5 gallon.

I had a bad snail outbreak of pond snails in my 29, and already had plenty of trumpet snails which I purposely introduced, I added 2 assassin snails and within a month their was a very noticable difference, and within half a year all traces of snails were gone. Now there is only one snail in...

For the most part you do not need to vacuum a planted tank. the waste build up in the gravel will not cause any problems with ammonia - the worst would be that an excessive build up will lead to faster nitrate production, which long term can lead to the necessity of more water changes to keep...

Without a doubt there is a good chance it needs to adapt to your conditions before it starts to grow out well, but DBT is not an easy plant to grow well. They really need high light and all the rest of the goodies that goes along with it. What kind of lighting do you use? Without stating the...

My water was 8.2 for twenty years and never gave me trouble with all sorts of fish. pH is not worth worrying about, all fish are tolerant of a wide range. of all perameters this is the least important. KH is more important than pH, as this is what defines the buffering, and in turn, the...

it is completely up o you. I will say do it once per week for the simple reason that twice per week on a typically stocked tank is more than you need, and unnecessary work will just turn the hobby into a chore. But as far as it goes you can do 10% every day if you really wanted to.

One is as good as another if all you are doing is making the water safe. I use the cheap bulk house brand stuff and it works fine. Some of the fancier products remove ammonia too, which should not be necessary in a healthy tank. Some claim to help regrow slime coat, but healthy fish can do...

Bacteria grows on all of the surfaces in an aquarium, including all filter media, decorations, gravel, and even the glass if it is not wiped down. The biomedias for filter are highly porous and specialized in performing biological and not mechanical filtration, but if you need to throw it out...

I use brine shrimp, bottom feeder pellets, and cichlid pellets. I don't care much about brand, but avoid the cheap stuff

Cichlids don't care what your lighting is.

If you want to save all the fry than the best thing is to set up the new tank and make it ready and move the female at any time. She may spit in the net, which is no big deal, or she may hold on longer. Either way no worries, put her or her and the fry into the tank. Feed the female a bit and...

Ok, I blew through it and it did not help. Bang it around? First I thought that was dumbest advice yet! So I banged it around a bit and it got one of the two ports working to full capacity :lol: I will settle for that, I only need the one anyway. Lousy equipment. Thanks for the help guys

It is an Elite 802 and the motor is running full speed and and the rubber diaphragms are in perfect shape - by all accounts it should be working fine but there is not one single drop of air coming out of it. I have a feeling this will be another empty question, but if anyone has ideas it would...

Not really, though the regular ones are much nicer.

Even if you use just some of the media, the transfer of bacteria will keep the tank cycled, it means it will take a bit of time for the bacteria to multiply back up to spec. Any bacteria saved will technically keep the tank cycled. It most certainly never hurts to keep a close eye on levels...

Algae is going to happen, it's the byproduct of a healthy tank. Cleaning it off the walls is going to be something you just need to do every two weeks - nobody said there wasn't some work to do. One of the best ways to deal with algae is to change your attitude toward it. Algae exists...

With a live planted tank the best way to do it is just add the fish. Not too many of course, but you can be assured that with live plants in the tank, a small number of fish, and you doing periodic partial water changes, things will be fine. If the filter hasn't been without fish for too long...

The way I do it is I use flakes and bloodworms and brine shrimp for my upper water dwellers. I don't have a science to it, I just mix it up how I feel and they get some of all of it. I feed twice per day when my fish are newer and younger, but I don't let them bloat themselves with food at the...

I've got a planted tank and my sword is really doing well and growing like mad. I use sand substrate with some fertilizer tablets, and supplement the water column with seachem flourish (I've read in various places that if you are short a nutrient, you are likely short more, so it's good to use...

Well, to be honest I'm using a co2 tester. I know they are not 100% but I've also compared it to water straight out of the tap as well as another, non-planted aquarium. I think the results seem pretty good. I have actually found it to be rather stable, though obviously not as consistent as a...

One word - Aquaclear. Cheap, powerful, effective.

I bought myself the entry level Red Sea reactor kit. What it comes down to is that it is way too much money for what you get, but at the same time it's easy, comes with everything you need. Anyway, my tank is 20 gallons (about 75 litres?) and it keeps my co2 levels at 20 - 15. Although they...

For the record I have a 20 gallon long heavily planted tank with a fine sand substrate and my plants are doing well - they include vallisneria, java fern, amazon sword, anubias, and some bushy, weedy stem plant I don't know the name of, but it grows like mad... makes the valls look slow! I've...

On a different note, there is also the Tanganyikan Synodontis Petricola - smaller than the larger type corydoras.

Hello fellow fish keepers. I am not new in any way to fish, but have a problem I have never encountered since I first started keeping fish, poorly (at first), twenty years ago, and it ended up with a ruined tank. Anyway, I have an established 20 gallon Long tank with a new pair of Rams that...