dreams

I've got 6 ottos, haven't covered my tank in the last 6 months or so, luckily I've only had 1 neon jump so far

Like the way you think Skippy lol

Would be fine in your setup, can't remember how much they cost, but I would personally get as much as I can afford Love those guys, very active and awesome at eating algae. Note that they do need to be acclimatised properly though or you risk losing them. Once they're established, I'd say they're one of the toughest fish I've had

How old are your current lights? Are they T5HO lights? If they're about 2 feet long and at 24watts each then I imagine they are. Power glos are at 10,000k I believe, while lifeglo is at 6500k. With three tubes 24watts each, you should have enough light to grow almost all plants. You'll always have algae, I just usually find you'll either have brown or green depending on how much light you have. So apart from brown algae, is there any green?

I'd also be really interested to see how long they last as well, please post when someone runs out of CO2 : thanks

I do believe that you will need at least a few guppies to start cycling it

Dunno if you'd find this interesting, but I saw heaps of clown knife fish fillets for sale in a vietnam food market As well as various species of gouramis etc. didn't get a picture of the clowns though Its so strange to see fish we keep in the aquarium to be in markets IMO but my parents seem to buy these pacu looking fish sometimes... >.>

Put the gravel into a bucket and stick a hose into it, turn the water on and leave it till the water in the bucket is clear. Don't turn the water up so high that it washes away large particles though, you just want to get rid of the dust. Could be good to wash it over a garden patch, save some of those expensive nutrients Definitely don't wash it in a sink though, the dust/sand will get stuck in the piping.

Can't be sure aye, up to you if you want to try...otherwise becareful of it spreading to other neons

Your tetra has Columnaris/cotton mouth disease, treat it with Furan2 which can easily be obtained in most petshops. Its not a very nice disease, eventually it will affect the gills of the fish, rendering it unable to breath and die as a result... so treat asap if you want it to get better. feeding smaller bits of food may help it eat better btw

I think its looking really good in terms of composition. Distracting piece for me atm is the straight piece coming out on the 2nd quarter from the left. While I do think you need something there, I think it could do with a better piece, see if you can find another more naturally shaped one at the beach? And possibly some smaller pieces coming back down towards the ground, simulating roots just my 2 cents :bounce:

you can have the tube run into a powerhead on a timer, letting the impeller break up the CO2 instead. That way you wont have overdose of Co2 at night..works for me

sorry to hijack, but does daltons propagating sand have fertilisers in it as well? thanks

Two days?! Is his name Sméagol by any chance? "My Precious! O my Precious!"

Awesome! love your photos of the fish

Digging a hole or Weight lifting? :lol:

If they're straight from the wild, I personally would acclimatise them slowly. I only put my ones in relatively quick because there was only about 1-2 degree increase. It would be quite hard for them to adapt to a change from our cold waters to the high temps of tropical tanks, and I don't see any major difficulty in spending a week to slowly increase temps. It would definitely keep them in better health/condition than a straight dump into what would be Hot water for them

Yeap definitely, I had an adult gold ram in there before, but he started hunting and eating my shrimps after a few days, so moved him out I've got 2 baby blue rams in there now, hopefully they'll grow up familiar with the shrimps and leave them alone

I got the shrimps off members on here who had them at 24 - 25 degrees. The first batch I took home I acclimatized them like fish, i.e. added water from my tank real slowly. The second batch came with 2 berried females, so I kept the lot in a separate empty tank at 24 for about a week and found that I was losing them slowly including the 2 berried females (fed them tetra colour bits, but may have be lack of algae or detrius), so I put them into the current tank where they've been doing well so far

Personally I would make the compartments a bit bigger..but thats just me When you put in the spray bar, you may need some taps to control the water flow if the powerhead is too strong, otherwise, nice job

Tank is at 26.3 degrees atm. shrimps have been in there for over a month now :bounce:

Nice!

Thought this was quite interesting! Was doing a water change today, causing the shrimps to get a bit frightened or something. In the middle of it a few of them started climb up the glass, where the spray bars were showering the glass with water, creating a waterfall effect. quite strong little guys! They were grabbing hold onto the algae on the glass.

+1 you need tweezers...or sprinkle sand on top if thats what you have

I vote push looks neater if you do that