Sophia

:happy2:

gateau :love:

8)

is it still alive?

Onedin it was an error between the keyboard and the seat

:bounce:

Orly

I have a jar of water on the window sill, starting some green water to feed my daphnia - it started as conditioned water with some lettuce pieces and over a week or so slowly went brownish tea colour. On Sunday I topped the jar up with fish tank water and moved it to a sunnier window, now it's more brownish colour. Is this the first part of turning into green water or shall I start again with just fish tank water? :dunno:

you're addicted to the floofies! :love:

very nice is that where my crypt went?

Zev, I was but a fish egg when Clarence was around .... I can't vouch for you though This is my ex-furboy who didn't like city life so went to live with my friend on a farm - check out his teeth, he was a rescue kitten that was found covered in road tar after wandering onto the road, we presume his mouth got burnt or hurt in the process as he always had these gummy chops, always seemed to be smiling.

nudey fluff birds

thumbs up P44 8)

all great photos Simon and Joe, thanks for sharing. I especially like the sparrows and little finches

Staghorn had this effect on me too :evil:

Thanks, that's good news for me, my kit is API and the results look much more flattering through the side of the tube With the kH test - on the 3rd drop it goes yellow and then straight back to blue, do I count that one or the next one where it goes a sort of grubby yellow/blueish? This is partly why I didn't want stem plants, in both of my tanks they have either grown too fast or unhappily and that's why I went for the retrospiralis crypt so I had a long leafed skinny something in the back ground. What I need is some long twisted val so I can swap out some ambulia... or a balansae crypt, though I believe it needs more light than I have to give it. How would you suggest to increase nitrate safely and slowly? There is not great circulation, the only plants that sway are the ones in front of the filter. I still have flourish comp and some florapride. Could also drop the water change off as I mentioned earlier.

Get (to the beach 8) )

This I've been doing since you recommended it in the fishkeepers thread. I dose flourish maybe once a fortnight and have been taking 4 litres out of 32 for a water change weekly. Lights are on 5-6 hours and the tank is very dim at other times, there is very little natural light in the room. I haven't seen any abatement in the brown wooly thread algae, but I notice that it only appears on the ambulia and the oldest strands of moss and dwarf chain sword. The crypts, val and lotus all have root fertilisers but I gather the other 3 must take their nutrients from the water column and maybe aren't getting enough so are therefore weaker so get the algae?? It hasn't abated but it also hasn't gotten worse. Water parameters for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate seem the same, maybe slightly less nitrate. I will get the phospates tested next. I'm not keen to increase the lighting until I've seen how this low tech way pans out over a longer term. I think it's been long enough that I can change something else now, do you think less water change amount, ie 2 litres, or 4 litres only every fortnight? And another question - where do you measure the colour of the test tube? In one book it said to look straight down the tube from top to bottom, other info suggests comparing the colour of the tube long ways to the colour on the card is right. If it's the latter then the nitrate has never been over 10ppm, the other way is slightly more intense red.

ithaca

how long was that for ? Did you change it back as you didn't like the result?

is there anyone with experience doing this with a low tech tank yet? I'm keen to try it but I don't want my tank to be a guinea pig

drive back home again?

seed

looks natural, I wouldn't change it