ally07

Henward, consider this my RSVP for your eventual house-warming (after you've set up the tank) lol... :thup:

Next time you drop by an Animates store, try to see if they've left the back door of their fish department open lol. I've sneaked a peek before (without trespassing inside the restricted area) and it seems like they just have piping from multiple tanks into massive bins of filter wool which are then pumped through some other tubs of media and back into the tanks. Looks relatively inexpensive to set up and it would be the easiest way to filter massive amounts of water with minimal maintenance.

I love how natural it looks with all the rocks! The rocks do look a smidgen precarious but I'm sure that it's secure but the angle of the photo makes it look dangerous. Well done! :thup:

+1 - the last time I took photos, I did it at night with no lighting in the room except the tank lights. Much better results.

A tripod and remote trigger is not necessary for fish photography because often you need to take the photos on an angle so that you don't get the reflection in the glass. Definitely get a fixed-focal lens (aka prime lens) because that allows you to take very crisp photos with the arty fuzzy background effect and it will work best in low-light conditions. Don't use flash because you will only scare the fish and get a very bad reflection off the glass. Turn on your aquarium lights and get your F-stop as wide as you can.

Bio balls are good for disrupting the water and getting lots of oxygen in for the beneficial bacteria, but their surface area will always lose out to ceramic/ sintered noodles. The downside of ceramic/ sintered noodles is the weight - my sump has bioballs in the tower which works fine, but if I swapped them for ceramic noodles, the glass support would just give way.

Carbon is not meant to be a long-term filter media, although many people use it thus. As GrahamC has mentioned, it is used to remove toxins and medication after treatment then thrown away. If you use carbon for an extended period of time, it will eventually reach its maximum filtering capacity and start purging the toxins back into the water. Research on hole-in-the-head disease in cichlids have shown that it can be caused by extended use of carbon. So, carbon is only necessary for certain situations and even then only a few days is required.

Sorry to hear man, he was one of the coolest fish in your tank (besides Brutus lol).. If post-mortem didn't show any cause of death, maybe it was just his time. :dunno:

lol, if the kids get good grades, they get to go into that tank. If they get bad grades, they go into the oscar tank! :slfg:

The FX-5 may not seem to hold a lot of bio-media, but once you fill up all the trays, it actually is quite a bit. I filled my trays with AquaOne Ceramisub and there's quite a bit in there, so I'm OK with the capacity. What I like BEST about the FX-5 is the turnover. It churns water like nothing I've ever seen. Not only is this good from a mechanical perspective, but more turnover means that more water is being passed through the bio-media more often, which is a good thing. As per Henward's advice, I put some fine filter wool on the top tray and I replace that every week during WC because it's ALWAYS clogged - so it does a really good job of keeping the water clear. In comparison, the filter wool in my sump only gets as dirty every 3-4 weeks, possibly more. Bottom line, it is a slight investment at first, but so far I'm very impressed by the FX-5. All the parts are very sturdy and it's POWERFUL.

Do also keep in mind that most pond filters (to my knowledge), use a pump inside the tank to push the water to the filter box. This is fine, but if there is a lot of waste/ uneaten food, it will get clogged in the pump's prefilter before actually making it to the filter box. This is not only unsightly but makes your filter box's mech filters a bit moot. In my experience, canister intakes have more gaps than pumps, so the food/ waste gets trapped for a little while but it does break down and get sucked into the filter. On the other hand, pumps clog very easily because of the filter sponge behind the gaps, protecting the motor blades from small stones, etc.

I always thought that beardies had the basic instinct to move away when it's too hot. At least, I know mine does lol. He basks under the heat lamp for about 95% of the day but when the light goes out, he instinctively knows to seek shelter on the cool side of the tank to go to sleep. I still leave the heat lamp on a timer during the night so that the temperature doesn't drop too low for him (just in case), but he's never slept directly under the heat lamp - I always figured that he knew he would overheat and burn so he slept in a shaded spot.

Yeah, I suppose you could just run the UV bulb until it stops working haha.. The water would still flow through fine, it's just that you'd have a white elephant in the filter.

Also, do consider if you actually need UV sterilisation. From what I've heard/ read, UV bulbs need to be replaced after a certain time to maintain their effectiveness (can someone confirm/ deny this?). As Spoon mentioned, using more than what you need would work out to be false economy.

Henward, you're in luck! I just happen to have a freshwater beaver for sale (very rare in NZ) - PM me if interested. :lol:

I became a first-time beardie owner earlier this year as well and I've found that googling 'bearded dragon care' and reading lots and lots of different sources has been the most helpful. Most sources tend to disagree on things such as staple diet and lighting, but reading through this forum has helped to sift through the murky information. The bearded dragon manual is a good resource but there's nothing there that you can't read on google.

:rotf: But seriously, an airstone hooked up to an air pump will work out to be cheaper than a powerhead. Air pumps generally use less power and cause less water current for the fish than powerheads.

You could probably also use small food processors, they aren't very expensive. Bench-mounted hand-cranked meat grinders for sausages, etc are really, really expensive in the shops. If you monitor your progress with a food processor, you can get large or fine mince.

I reckon that there isn't much that coarse sponge won't catch that the initial filter intake won't catch anyway, so it's moot. The uneaten food will either get stuck at the filter intake till you clear it, or it will eventually break into smaller particles and get caught by the fine filter wool.

:nfs: Both look awesome! Nice catch.. :thup:

If the heat bulb ends up heating up the tank too much, the simple/ best solution is to get a socket timer. When I first installed my bulb, the basking spot reached about 50 deg C within about 5 minutes. Henward saved me a lot of trouble by recommending the socket timer set to 15min intervals. So I have it on 15 minutes on/ 15 minutes off and that keeps him very happy.

Don't worry, I wasn't pushing it - simply responded to Smidey's post.. Relax! :cofn:

Depending on the breed, but most agree that a 4x2x2 is the barest minimum for anything but silver arowanas. I reckon a 5 foot tank would be fine for a single jardini or a green - but of course bigger is always better.

Arowana!! Then your cichlids can become feeders haha. :nfs:

I once had a female siamese fighter jump out of the tank while I was out. Came back a few hours later, found her in a corner of the room, dried up, no movement. I thought, what the hey, I've got nothing to lose. Dropped her in the tank - CAME ALIVE after 2 minutes!! Freaked me out to be honest hahaha. Unfortunately, she died the next day. But, yeah, never underestimate the survival power of fish!