MMinehan

Cylinder testing service based in Grey Lynn (AKL) sell modified fire extinguishers. Come tested with valve and fitting. I got mine for about $200. And cheap to fill (~$15). You will have to look up yellow pages or white pages to find them. Can't quite remember the company's name. The guy is a good bloke.

I made a mistake of testing my tropical freshwater tank for calcium levels. I know this is not really an issue for freshwater tanks. Anyway, it was undetecable. Having read somewhere that some Ca is supoosued to be good I added some (CaCl that I can get from work). Anyway....BIG MISTAKE!! We went away for 5 days and when I got back the tank had exploded with green hair algae. It's all over the plants, wood, fittings etc. After some reasearch on algae I discovered that this algae thrives in water that is rich in Ca. Aparently it utilises the Ca much more effectively than any plants. So now it's going to be weeks of water changes and some investments in SAEs to solve the problem. Thought this might be useful info for those having similar problems.

Where exactly would one find wild glosso?

Yes, that has started a bit. Especially upper regions of the two pieces of drift wood and the upper part of the glass. But I'll just be patient and see what happens. Neon, thanks for the compliment. Red pine, is that a wrong name?

Thank you whetu and everyone for the encouragement and advice. I am no expert by any stretch, but have learnt a bit from these forums. Things are going well other thank cloudy water which I think is partly due to algae. I am hoping as the plants grow the water will become clearer. I might consider getting a UV steriliser if I can source one cheap on ebay or the like. Most of the setup I have sourced from wholesalers (eg solenoid $18 from the US, regulator from welding shop, electronic dual tube T5 ballasts from local wholesaler at ~$20 each, pH and temp controller for 1/3 the local cost from Hong Kong). So it has cost me a lost less than getting everything from LFS. Thanks again.

Thanks. It's still very new ~4 weeks. So still needs some work (background plants etc).

My community tank.

Thank you all for comments and encouragement. I'm no expert, just done a bit of reading on great sites like this. I'm almost convinced all is good regarding the browning. The only other thing I should have mentioned was that the swords are growing but the leaves appear 'tissue paper' like, and the new leaves are growing almost twisted and not flat and lush. See the photos. I understand that old leaves will die off and the BNs will 'shave away' at them making them thinner. But the new leaves are not flat and thick like they were on the young plant when I bought it. Note the 'twisted' medium sized leaves. And again on this sword. And yes, I was thinking of getting a few discus. There are some small discus on TM at the moment. So was thinking about getting 3 or 4. I guess I just have to be patient and let the tank settle down and the plants establish themselves. But I just want to ward off problems before they start. Thanks again. And thanks to everyone that makes sites like this such a great resource.

The new setup (freshly planted) and 3 weeks later. Added some red pine. The sword on the right is just sprouting red/brown leaves. Cucumber (far right) for BN's. Also changed filter from my old noisy Fluval 304 to a new JBL Aquapris 500. Transferred half the old media over to the new filter. Water is still a bit cloudy, but slowly clearing with time and water changes. I think the cloudiness may have come from the JBL substrate.

Ok...well I guess that is ok. Just can't say I have ever seen ambulia going brown.

Here are some pics: New tank set up. A few weeks later. Tall but 'bending down'. Browning of the leaves, note veins still green. Even the top of the ambulia is going brown. Hope this helps.

Aside from issues with algae, what are some problems seen with too much light? The reason I ask is that I have a 360L tank (1200x500x600) with 6 x T5s (54W each) with reflectors. Four of them are "daylights 6500k" and 2 are Hagen Life Glo 6700k. About 12 hrs / day on a stepped timer (so as not to freak out the fish when they come on and off). Some of the plants are growing reddish/brown (not algae). And one of the taller ones is bending back down. The tank is only 4 weeks old and has a moderate fish population slowly introduced in the last 2 weeks. The all seem to be growing making oxygen. And I have CO2 (on controller), JBL substrate, substrate heater (picked it up cheap), and use Flourish and Iron supplements. Tested PO4, NO2, and Fe all being with in normal ranges according to test kit. ph 6.8 and temp 25C. Am I missing something or doing something wrong? Thanks in advance.

Got one off them a few weeks ago. Nice guy who runs the place. And total cost $200 filled. And he said he'd throw in some free refills when the time comes.

I just picked a JBL CP500 up today to replace my old and noisy Fluval 304. I couldn't be sure where it was made either. The only reference was the companies name and address and reg on the box. But the packing, and assembly were something that you would expect from Germany (neat and tidy) and not flimsy like most stuff from China. And he manual did not have any grammatical or spelling errors. None of "please you be put water box before start" kind of manuals that seems to accompany most stuff from Asia these days. I'll let you know how it all goes once up and running.

They look good. Made in Germany (JBL) and not cheap Chinese junk. And JBL have a great website with lots of useful info (disease diagnosis, an online water analysis system, and great literature to download). It make me feel a little better knowing that a company has such a great website to support their products. So many companies just have JPGs of the product and nothing else. Take a look at www.jbl.de