whetu

And when your mates have had a few beers and start dancing, that's when you really find out what your house is made of! Thank goodness the punky pogo stage has passed us by... :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

More thoughts about filter noise: If you have a cannister filter in a cupboard under your tank, there are probably several ways of minimising any noise in the room. Think about putting a piece of polystyrene under the filter, or lining the cupboard with some kind of insulation material. Also make sure the whole stand has a gap between it and the wall, and if you have hard floors put a bit of carpet under the legs of the stand. Basically use a variety of techniques to make sure there is no vibration transferring between the filter and any other part of your home. Also make sure you don't set up some kind of inadvertent amphitheatre effect by having the noise from the filter bounce off a flat wall and into the room. A piece of carpet underfelt behind the filter will solve this if it's a problem.

My theory is always go for the best filter you can afford. That way if you upgrade your tank you can still use the same filter. I have two eheim pro 2026 filters on my 200 litre tank. They cost me a fortune several years ago but I have never regretted getting them, and I know I have a lot of room to move - if something was to go a bit wrong in the tank hopefully the filters could deal with it and I might not have such a drastic effect on my lovely fishies! As for noise, one of the filters made an annoying humming noise at the last place I lived, and I never found out what caused it despite lots of taking it apart and putting it back together. But where I live now both filters seem totally silent, as they have at the previous three houses I lived in. If you're serious about fish keeping and intend to have tanks for the long term, a really good filter is a great investment.

If the brown algae really bothers you, just rub it off the leaves with your fingers. It should come off easily. Anubias is a low-light plant anyway so I'm sure the algae isn't hampering its growth.

I agree with Supasi's analysis that a) The plants that get most of their nutrients from the water column are growing fast b) the plants that get most of their nutrients from their roots are growing more slowly c) the growth patterns are entirely consistent with what you would expect in a tank that has only been established for a few weeks. Plants like anubias are known to be slow growers. They will sprout new leaves when they are good & ready, and not before! They will benefit from consistent long-term care and you won't see quick results from dosing with liquid ferts. The thing to watch with them is when other algae (such as hair algae or bush algae) get established on their leaves. With the faster growing plants you can just chop off the leaves and chuck them out, but with anubias you can't do that - so keep an eye on them and make sure it doesn't get established. The brown algae won't be a problem for anubias because they have tough leaves and the bristlenose will be able to keep them clean without damaging the leaves.

Hello Pink_Fish and welcome to the world of fish-keeping... it's one big worry after another! :lol: I think your tank should be absolutely fine where you've got it. Assuming your floor doesn't have any major structural problems such as rot or borer (which your boyfriend will have noticed), then a wooden floor (especially a state house wooden floor) will hold a lot more than a three-foot tank before you have any problems. As your boyfriend said, having the load spread over a large area will also help, assuming the stand is nice and solid. OK so now you can stop worying about the weight and start worrying about the next thing. Here are some things to worry about: - will my fish be compatible with each other? - why is the water murky? - have I chosen the right background? - is that fish meant to be swimming that way? - why is there algae growing on the glass? - yesterday I had five fish and today I can only find four. Has one jumped out?! :lol: :lol:

Yes, leave it alone. Wait until the plants are really well established and everything has reached a nice balance before changing anything. Chances are the brown algae will disappear and be replaced by something else - I bet in four more weeks you'll be back with a question about a different kind of algae! :lol: I think we've all been through it. Patience, grasshopper.

Ambulia is good. Fine fluffy leaves for fry to hide in, easy to grow and tolerant of all kinds of temps and light conditions. Also once the top of the plant reaches the water surface it will start growing lots of fine roots, which help make places for fry to hide.

I second David's suggestion that you change all of the gravel. I once tried to 'cover' my multi-coloured gravel with dark gravel, but the result was still a mix. Unfortunately the darker coloured gravel was slightly finer, so all the larger light-coloured pebbles worked their way back up to the surface. I ended up doing a total gravel change a few months later and wished I had done it that way to start with. If you're going to focus on plants, I would suggest taking all the fish and gravel out (including the large sword) and starting with a layer of something like Dalton's aquatic mix under the gravel with some slow-release fert tabs in places where you intend to have large plants. Then put your new dark gravel on top. When re-planting your sword you will find that you can trim the roots quite hard. Sit the trimmed plant on top of the Dalton's then cover the roots with gravel and maybe a larger stone or two until it gets re-established. The possibility of an ammonia spike will depend on the bioload in your tank, your feeding habits and the health of your filter. [PS did you know David R has some dark gravel for sale?]

This is the kind of dream I have had for years (ever since I was a kid). Either the tank was leaking and he fish were going to die, or I had syphoned the water out thinking there were no fish in there, only do discover their poor little dried up bodies later. I also have dreams where I suddenly remember I have a fish tank after 'forgetting' it for weeks & weeks, then I rush to have a look and the fish are dead or dying either from hunger or nasty dirty water. I only recall one dream where there were fish but not in my tank. I had set a net to catch some snapper then forgotten about it. Weeks later I remembered to check the net and it had caught lots of snapper but some of them were tangled in the net and still alive. The net had grown into their skin and as I tried to untangle them I was pulling bits of flesh off these live fish. It was awful. My sister-in-law recently confided in me that she was worried about my brother because he often had nightmares about fish. When she described them they were just like mine! This is funny because my Bro and I have never discussed our dreams. Now my sis-in-law is worried about the whole family :lol:

Yes, that would be my thinking. Either wait until there are some larger ones in the shops or buy one privately from an established tank. By 'larger' I don't mean you should pay a lot for a real biggie - just maybe 5 - 6 cm long rather than the little 3 cm ones that seem to be around at the moment.

Personally if I was using potting mix I would make sure it didn't have any additives like ferts or fungicides. When I had my froggies I used a patch of mossy turf from the lawn. There was a very damp, compacted area under a tree so I just cut out a square of it the same size as the tank and put it in. Then I planted some ferns (also collected from outside), threw in some bits of bark and leaf litter, and voila! A nice froggy landscape. If you're using moss, ferns, etc you will need to keep a spray bottle of water near the tank, and mist the moss every time you think of it to keep it moist and lush. If I was doing it again (and had a big enough tank) I would start with a layer of pebbles, gravel etc so I could flood the turf with water occasionally, and then let it drain through the base layer.

Office blocks... fish tanks... battery hen farms... all the same really. (Can you tell I'm having a bad day at the office?)

Just be aware that some of the clown loaches for sale in the pet shops are really really tiny, and much harder to keep alive than the larger ones. Not an issue of incompatibility with your larger loaches - just that if you can afford to buy a larger one it might have a better chance of survival than the really little ones. I have five clown loaches that I've had for between four and seven years. I recently added #6 which was really small when I bought it. Poor little guy didn't thrive, no matter how I tried to feed him up and eventually died. He looked healthy when I got him but ended up emaciated - an awful thing to see.

A room that is "well lit" to the human eye will not be bright enough to grow most aquatic plants. Is the tank in direct sunlight? As you will not be able to provide enough "natural" light (unless you keep your tank outside), you will need to use additional "unnatural" light to compensate. Don't get caught up on the words "natural" and "unnatural." The whole thing about keeping a fish tank inside a room is that it's unnatural! Therefore you have to do a whole lot of things to compensate for this unnatural situation. Whoever advised you that 2-3 hours of light would be enough to grow plants was incorrect. It's as simple as that. And green water can be caused by a lot of things other than too much light. You don't need to leave your lights on all night. It has been suggested that your plants would like about 12 hours of light, not 24 hours. How about leaving them on all day instead? Still more information required: To identify what kind of lights you have, look at any printing on the tube and post it here. There are codes on the tube that will tell us what the wattage, spectrum, etc are and that will help people to tell you whether the light is suitable. It is vital to know what kinds of plants you are trying to grow as they all have different requirements. Can you ask the person you got the plants from? Can you look through pictures of plants in a book or online? Can you post photos of your plants for others to identify?

Your BNs are teething! Don't you have any rusks for them? :lol:

With a highly stocked tank with large fish and an 'ok' filter, in my opinion you need to do water changes much more often. just to be clear: I am not suggesting cleaning the tank more often, simply syphoning some of the water out and replacing it with fresh, dechlorinated water. Generally things tend to go wrong from over-cleaning - for example if you clean out the filter, scrub the décor and do a major water change all at once. If you just change some of the water, you will be absolutely fine. It is impossible to tell just from looking at the tank whether it is 'clean'. You said your bristlenoses keep it clean - by that I assume you mean they eat the algae off the glass etc. That's great (they really do a very good job) but all they do is make the glass look clean, they do not clean the water. One way to tell if your water is clean is to do some tests. You have done an ammonia test and the bad news is your water is not as 'clean' as it looks! I believe a nice regular water change is the answer.

hear hear

Yay for you and congrats on your decision! Hope you love your new FX5. Personally I have two Eheim 2026 filters running on my 200 litre tank and I absolutely love them. They are quiet, reliable, effective and very low maintenance. I'm all in favour of running two smaller filters on a tank so if you choose to, you can do a really thorough clean of one of them without worrying about crashing the bio-filtration. It also makes it much easier when moving house or setting up another tank, because you already have a pre-cycled filter handy. And because I have two separate intakes and two spray bars, I can choose to direct the current in whatever direction I want. As a result I hardly ever need to do a gravel vac because there are no areas of dead water in the tank allowing detritus to accumulate on the gravel.

I'm going to dress as the Stig off Top Gear. Nice and simple - white paper overall (a protective suit from a hardware store) and a white helmet with tinted visor. Recently I went to a Seven Deadly Sins party dressed as an angel. It was great fun being in character and being shocked at everyone else's costumes. I kept saying "oh dear! I think I'm at the wrong party!"

I planted my carrots in an old recycling bin (the ones that Auckland City has phased out now we've gone to the big wheelie bins). I planted old carrot seeds and didn't expect them to germinate so successfully - I now have about a million carrots growing and have to thin them weekly. I think when the foliage is growing in the tank, it is probably using stored nutrients out of the root rather than absorbing more nutrient from the water. Like when you grow a carrot top in a saucer of water on the windowsill. So if you can leave the carrots growing in the soil for as long as possible they are likely to contain more nutrients for your lizards than if you grow them in your tank. But it's still fun to grow them in your tank

They all look like cheeky fish! I love how they are looking out at us - I bet they are asking to be fed! "What are you doing holding that funny lens in my face - I thought you were going to give me food!"

You have my sympathy, paekakboyz. My eheim filter did the same about a year ago - I had had it for a couple of years and was pleased with how QUIET it was after some of the noisy filters I used to have. Then one day after I cleaned it, it started rattling. I tried EVERYTHING to make it stop - but still it rattled. It just about drove me crazy. Anyway about six months ago we moved house and of course moved the tank & filter. No more rattle. I have no explanation for it. Sorry I can't offer any advice - just sympathy!

Effectively the tiles are just unglazed ceramic (similar to the ceramic noodles or balls you can buy as commercial filter media). Terracotta tiles/broken pots work in a similar way. I would suggest layering the media so you have a wide variety of surface textures to support your biological helpers. Some are likely to prefer one kind of surface, and some will prefer others. Biodiversity FTW! So maybe some pot scrubbers, some pumice, some ceramic surfaces, some scoria...

Ok I've been experimenting on my fish again :oops: Recently I was thinning the carrots from my garden, and ended up with a lot of fresh green carrot tops. I bundled a few of them together, weighed them down and put them in my tank to see if the fish would nibble at the leaves. As usual, the fish came over to investigate what I had done and took a token nibble, then ignored them. The interesting thing was that the carrot tops kept on growing while they were in the tank. I took them out today (about a week later) and they were still quite fresh - no sign of deterioration at all. So if you're looking for a cheap way of adding temporary landscaping to your tank, give carrot tops a go. They are bright green, fresh and fluffy-looking and would make an excellent temporary background plant as they grow quite tall. They also seem to take a long time to start decomposing - I think they would probably be fine for several weeks underwater. So if you're looking for a temporary filler while you wait for your 'proper' plants to grow (or you have a gap after removing a plant) carrots may be your answer! :lol: