nemines

if you let it grow across the surface it can also hinder water flow and you'll end up with some surface film, not good for oxygen exchange or light penetration.

i didn't used to have a skimmer, i used to do 10% water changes every three days but when i went on holiday a lot of my corals died because the nitrates rose. then i got a deltec mce300 for my nano 70L tank couple of months ago. it works wonderfully, its in my bedroom and hasn't caused any problems for studying or sleeping as it's virtually silent. it pulls out about 150mL of gunk a week, and my nitrates are at zero as far as the test can show... id really recommend a Deltec, they're brilliant! i now know that i can go away for a week and my tank will be fine.

¿Coitus interruptus?

the wattage doesn't determine how much light you'll get. the watt per litre rule has become incorrect due to different kinds of lighting. 'lumen' is used to indicate the greatest light strength of all lighting methods. watts are only really important when ligthing methods are being installed, since it shows economy and effectivity. e.g. metal halide lamps tend to have 75 lumen per watt, lumilux fluororescent lamps have 95 lumen per watt. i believe the t5 HO lifegro 36w has approx 76 lumen per watt. another example a normal incandescent light bulb of say 150w. a lot of that wattage is actually converted into heat. therefore clearly it is the lumen which are important. but at the end of the day it all comes down to what plants you wish to grow, researching their requirements and then growing them. if your tank is 700mm then you could try maybe floating plants or plants attached to driftwood like anubias and java fern. most metal halide lamps can be used for tanks up to 100cm deep without any problem. the reason why so many reefers go for tanks 60cm or less it because their corals need extremely high lumen for zooxanthellae to grow and having a shorter tank means that they can keep such specimens, the lighting needs of these corals enormously surpass those of most plants.

the people with halides though, they usually match the plants light needs with lots of nutrients and co2 AND they only have the lights on for about 10 hours! 17 hours a day isnt that natural is it? the founders of the dupla company kaspar horst and horrst e. kipper say that "we should like to recommend 30 to 50 lumen per litre of water in the Optimum Aquarium....the recommended lighting time of 10 to 12 hours SHOULD NOT BE EXCEEDED as it disrupts the natural bio-rhythm of the tank..." and having the lighting on for fewer hours means that they last longer too!

alan, why do you leave your lights on 17 hours a day?

yeah they are... some of them aren't too good in terms of colour though. the female brooding at the moment has a band on one side then almost nothing on the other. my mal equite nice though.. tint of blue in all his fins

i think ive currently got 1 male and 6 females (though only two of the six have held broods so far) awesome pix Tiden!!

one of my females has got another brood and it looks like the big bulge yet!

deal with hair algae ASAP or you may regret it...grows like mad and it's very hard to remove

10000k is what i got on my nano reef - probably not the best for plants...might encourage too much algae growth

with a skimmer though,you'd get much more stability between water changes... i change 50% per week and dont overfeed but with a skimmer i could get nitrate right down from 10ppm to nearly 0ppm

pictures would be great!! may as well keep them on this thread... do any of you guys know if a protein skimmer would work on a tanganyikan tank? i know that they dont work on fresh water but do you reckon, if the water was hard enough with calcium salts etc and not sodium chloride, it could work? or is NaCl required for the ionic precipitation process to work?

i think they must be infertile as they're the same as before ill just recondition her back up and try again.

you could try red sea's flora24 daily fert and leafzone cause, am i right in saying that cabomba mainly absorbs its nutrients from the water column and not the gravel?

i got four eggs, they're not quite hatched but seem to be quite bumpy, some sort of whitish protrusion that isnt fungus. fingers crossed, my temp varies from 25.5-26.5.

ive got the eggs in a seive positioned over an AquaClear so that a gentle flow of fresh water rises up through them and they roll about a bit. hopefully it should work...... :roll:

how long do t. duboisi eggs take to hatch? i have a female thats been holding for about 12 days now. im thinking about stripping her but only if the eggs are in the larval stage... any thoughts?

this was under the cichlid area, but it may be intersting for marines as well. do you reckon it's possible to get it in new zealand? http://www.cichlid-food-canada.com/video.html

how does the red sea cichlid tropigro food stack up against NLS?

from left to right: ambulia, 'blue' hygrophila and then star grass hygrophila polysperma valisineria

http://www.aqua-fish.net/show-aquarium-plants.php this link is excellent, though it seems that you have to load the pix seperately.....

probably any plant, suitable for the water conditions, with either an very large root system (pots could be used) or a plant that grows by a rhizome on wood and rocks etc. anubias is good but it grows very slowly

she spat them out while i was watching!!! :evil: :evil: :evil: there must have been about eight eggs, but the others just swooped and now they're gone. still at least i know ive gt a female ready to breed... the others hav finally just about lost all their spots and my one big definite male has been displaying a lot lately so hopefully ill have some more potential (and hopefully more capable) mothers.

very nice, alan. have you got any of the flowers of heteranthera zosterifolia? ive heard that they're very nice too...