OP
OP
seangee
Fish Connoisseur
Have to agree on the appearance of anacharis. Water sprite is still fairly new to me (this time around) and my surface coverage is probably only 15-20%. Have used it before and it does do well. Will take pics once I have a bit more, but I'm sure other members will chip in. It will require regular thinning once properly established, as does any floating plant. For the last few years I have been using frogbit almost exclusively. You can see the roots of that in my signature pic. This is what it looks like from above (which is out of sight). Most don't let it get as thick as mine but in this pic it is physically constrained to 50% of the tank so there is plenty of open water.I'm learning a lot of avant garde techniques from this thread
Is the main section of the skimmer transparent by design, probably so you can keep an eye on the waste levels? I understand that nitrifying bacteria are inhibited by light, however I'm not certain how bright the light would need to be.. so whether its even a cause for concern here, if that is now the dedicated biofilter?
May I ask how the water sprite fairs as a floating plant. Is it completely floating so not rooted and growing up and across the surface? Whilst anacharis does float.. it looks.. messy IMO
It is worth mentioning that I rely on the plants for ammonia reduction and have very little (if any) BB in my filter media. This is partly because the plants use all the ammonia before it gets to the filter so the BB starves, but also because the pH in both of these tanks is well below 6. BB struggles to grow or thrive in those conditions. So having the plants is a really good idea in my case. But it does mean I can afford to be quite cavalier about things like swapping out or removing filters as (in my case) they are primarily there to circulate the water and perform mechanical filtration.
These are the skimmers I used. The only negative, which is reflected in the reviews, is the thick black (fairly inflexible) cable that comes out of the bottom of the unit so it can be tricky to conceal.
so my tanks don't all look exactly the same - in fact every plant is different to what I have in the others. H202 is hydrogen peroxide. This tank is new and had an outbreak of cyanobacteria (blue/green algae). Fortunately I picked this up early and I believe the conditions that caused it no longer exist. I would not put this in my tank so I have been removing the plants and leaving them to float in a very diluted solution for and hour, before rinsing them and putting them back in the tank. The hope is that that will kill any BGA that remains on the roots or leaves. TBA my bottle of H202 is in all likelihood a bottle of plain old H2O as it has been sat in my garage for over a year - but a good rinse in water will hopefully wash any unwanted muck off 
