skaffen

Which one?

Going A123 are you? I'm just converting my trex to 4 cell LiPo, morrrre powerrrrr!

Name: Simon. My nick here is a fav character from an Iain M Banks book... Age: 40 Job: IT Security Colour: Blue Music Electronica (house and electro mostly) alt rock and Radiohead Interests: Mountain biking, RC helicopters (and you thought fish keeping was expensive!) tramping, puters, reading science fiction, movies, quirky humor, live music, long walks on the beach - oops, wrong site :-)

Wow, what an awesome fish! I saw one at the LFS recently and was amazed at how much character it had, one smart fish. To me, the gills look like mutant ears, giving it a weird floating head look - I mean that in the nicest possible way

Antibiotics will clear that right up

Check this out, there's some mind blowing cuttlefish and other stuff... http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/206 I'm spamming the TED site at people at the moment, some truly amazing presentations and ideas...

Dear Strongbad Today, when I was following Charleeeeeee to candy mountain, I saw TROGDOR! burninating villages. Me and the Cheat were like, "Woah!" Oh god, I've wasted so much of my life online

Come to candy mountain Charleeeeeeeee!!!

Yeah, I saw a puffer and suddenly found myself looking at new tanks. I had to leave the shop quickly :-) How old is yours, they live quite a long time I understand?

Sorry, it's the only term I remember from school biology, so I drag it out whenever I can I like my siamese algae eaters, they seem like happy fish and it's funny watching them ride the aponogetons in the current, like little fish rodeo riders. And I like the attitude of my bolivian butterflies. One of them has a go at my bala shark (who must be ten times his size) when there's algae wafers at stake. He's lucky the bala is easy going, he kind of grudgingly moves on after a few nibbles. I know what you mean about gouramis. My golden slides up beside other fish and checks them out with his feelers, it's kinda a sideways glance with a "How you doin?" Hmm, might name him Joey

Hiya. At the risk of anthropomorphizing, what's your favorite fish for character? I was at World of Water a week or two ago, and they have an amazing puffer fish. I can't remember the exact species, but it was like a small dog wagging everything at once when it was being hand fed meal worms. Oops, just realised that's a salt water fish - stupid flu has made me stupid!

My bala is called Bruce, named after the shark in Jaws :-)

I have an AquaEl Unimax 500 that has inbuilt UV. The UV diverts some of the flow internally as it returns from the media baskets, so it has correct volume passing through it for sterilization. It has a separate power supply too, so you don't have to run it all the time. The filter has dual impellers as well... I added the UV after I got the filter (nice modular design) and the water clarity improved noticeably. -Si

Cheers Warren. I can figure out the math as to how much I'm adding (6th form chemistry flashback - eek!) What I was really asking was how much nitrate is enough, which you already answered above - sorry, I missed it first time around... It's funny, being a n00b I thought I'd learned a bit, but all I've learned is how much more I have to learn

Hi Warren Can you recommend dosing levels, grams per Liter for example? -Si

Thanks JK, it's always good to hear firsthand from someone who's been there and done that

Hiya I heard an interesting show on National Radio about DOC using electric fields to catch trout for monitoring. There's some interesting general info on trout too. You can download it as an MP3 here: http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ocw/ocw-20 ... ng-048.mp3 -Si

I'm talking degrees. Ham water comes out the tap reading 0 dH

Is that the actual HRV brand? Been thinking about getting one the last few winters...

Yeah, that lets the moisture out. Unfortunately it lets the scumbags in when I'm at work...

Yeah, I've heard mixed reports on DVS systems. I think it's dependent on your aspect, roof pitch and volume, etc. It's gonna be cold again tonight so it'll be interesting to see how it goes with the hood closed...

I think it's probably a combination of a fair amount of wood, and the acidic and soft Ham water lowering the gH and pH over time due to water changes. I'll give the coral a go. Thanks for the info, and sorry for spamming the forum with questions

Heh, make sense I never considered it when I was getting into this...

Hiya I left the hood on my 440 L tank partially open last night, and there was lots of condensation on the lounge windows this morning (man it was cold last night). How do people with open tanks get on, do your get increased condensation in your homes in winter? -Si

Sorry, I just found this article, and I'm mixing up kH and gH: http://www.drhelm.com/aquarium/chemistry.html My pH is not swinging daily, despite the kH being so low, but Hamilton water is soft and acidic, so having low kH means my pH drops over time with several water changes. I've been keeping records and have observed this. I've been looking at filshprofiles.com, and each fish has a recommended gH range (expressed in units of dH just to confuse noobs like me), e.g http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/profiles/321.htm This fits in with my observations - I've noticed my tiger barbs and siamese algae eaters start flashing a bit when the gH is below 4 dH. I add Sera mineral salt to get it back up to around 7 dH and the fish stop flashing. So I'm looking for a way to keep my gH at the recommended levels without having to buy the Sera product, which I'm sure is hugely marked up. If I could find the ingredients and ratios, I could make a poor man's mineral salt simian & tHE cONCH, since the plants are consuming the minerals, surely they need them and have an optimal level as well? Suphew, I have a couple of large bits of wood in the tank. How do they soften water, do they absorb the minerals? If so, hopefully they'll get saturated eventually? purplecatfish, sorry but I think you're confusing ferts with minerals, I'm only asking about kH, pH and dH, oops, I mean gH Or does PMDD control gH as well?