Sophia

can also get clear perspex from glass merchants - or you could last time I asked anyway

how big are the swordtails? If they are less than 4 or 5cm the girls might turn into boys once their tails start growing! Have a few trick me that way

So... the staghorn saga continues! For those who have been giving me advice over the last few months, where I'm up to now is that over a 3 or 4 week period I had the phosphates tested twice and the colour reading went from 0.5-1ish down to 0.5. This I attribute to the fertiliser schedule started at the beginning of that time that was designed to boost the plants into sucking up phosphate. Over the last couple of weeks-ish there have grown maybe 10-20 small branches of staghorn present in the area where I had it last time, where the sunlight hits (an hour or 2). More this week than last but maybe just because now they are big enough to see! I have cut off these leaves. The questions is, if I go to the trouble and expense of buying a phosphate kit and some phosphate remover, do you think the staghorn will still grow? I could buy some algae rid and dose the tank with that (or dose the plants outside the tank) but we know that just kills the symptoms and that is still a last resort. I really want to try and conquer it without going that far if possible. Trying to pinpoint the real source of the imbalance is starting to feel like not fun, I find it hard to believe just a little sunlight could cause this after seeing other people's tanks sitting in the window and just suffering a bit of green water! Other things I've done different .. This week - Reduced the time the light is on to noon to 9pm instead of 10am till 9pm. Changed algae wafers from Aquarian brand which are thin and break up to JBL which I discovered do not disperse and sit there forever (probably making more phosphate, even though the label says it's OK to have them sitting around! Have only had one of those mistakes so now feeding half a chip. Since a week or so ago - reduced daily dose of flourish excel from daily mini recommended dose to small dose weekly at water change, even that causes cloudiness though so it's likely I will give that up altogether. Dosage for flourish comp. is Mon/Wed/Fri normal dose + normal dose at water change on Sat. Since Sat noticed the beard algae has regrown on the log - is that normal for wood anyway? I notice most of the nice tanks on display don't have algae covered logs! Amm/Nitrate/Nitrite all as low as usual. Fish are all as happy and active as usual. Tonight they are grumbling because I am starving them in an attempt to lose some phosphate after discovering that chip on in the gravel. They said they were saving it for a midnight feast... :roll:

I have an Eheim pickup 2010 it's rated for a much bigger tank but I have it on it's lowest setting so it doesn't turn the tank into a whirlpool.

it's growing time that I jump on the bandwagon.... I too would like a non-annual for my community tank. Have I misunderstood that killies like less current? My tank has good current so I won't get any if it's not ideal. In my 60cmx30x33 tank there are 7 cardinals, 7 peppered cories, 2 oto... so 2 or 3 killies at most. what I need is a clown killie crossed with a loach to eat my snails 8)

thanks for the info, nice to know I was on the right track after all

when I started the post I was going to say that I filed the shopkeeper's advice in my brain under 'dubious advice from salespeople'.. :evil: hehe Yes, often a pinch of salt is required :roll:

When I bought my filter (Eheim pickup 2010) the shop girl told me to buy a new sponge medium every (few?) months. I catalogued her advice in the back of my brain for a rainy day. Rainy day has been and gone and now some months down the track I think that I shouldn't change the filter sponge at all, that would be saying goodbye to my precious filter bacteria. Have seen on a random thread in another forum other people telling someone they don't need to change the sponge itself, just rinse it in tank water removed during cleaning, which I do every few weeks. Now just wondering what others do .... thanks

mostly laid off the flourish excel since last post and the cloudiness has gone when I was doing the overdosing I noticed that the impellor in the filter and the inside of the filter box got a bit white gunky - I presume this is a side effect of using the product, that it is somehow cumulative, which could explain why using it a little a day for a few weeks brought about same cloudiness as when overdosing??

right then, need another plant! :bounce:

i thought I might encourage the back to sprout and at the same time get 2 plants

Here's mine It's quite small as it has been through being chopped back to one leaf after being smothered in staghorn. Now it's growing again and I am wondering this: can I cut the front of the plant and some roots away from the back and will that make the back root mass sprout? front view back view

When mine are hungry they will eat raw courgette - otherwise they seem to leave it alone. They do love algae wafers more though - they guard them from the cories.

I really want my peppered cories to have some babies. I have 7 but 4 of them are maybe only around 7 months old, the others a few months older again. They have had a growth spurt recently and are now coming up to the size of the big ones so maybe soon there will be some fishy business after lights out!

was that the dude who was hiding from me? Your pride and joy?

Formalin stopped my fish from flashing from unknown greeblies when the water quality was good, and I used Panacur for parasitic worms that came from the inside and made their way out of the fish bodies through the tissue. It's the same as Droncit/Drontal (the fish safe one) but was easier for me to get. I'd give you some but you're a little far away.

and how is the Angry Angel these days?

The idea of the thicker substrate is just a proportion thing - because it's a big tank and the wood is all going upwards, it makes the substrate seem smaller in proportion to the rest. If you lay the wood down so that all the directional items are going longways like >>>> or <<<<<<<<<< then you might be happier with it already without having to spend all your money. Obviously it's nice wood and you don't want to get rid of it completely so why not fiddle with that first and see what you think. Once the wood is flatter and there is more visible longways empty tank space you could get a handful of new fish - same or different - and that would give a more full look than at present.

mine stay closed by way of a magnet type catch on the inside

aren't they cool little guys! I read that stuff about otos being sensitive and it nearly put me off getting them but the algae ruled my decision in the end! The only time they have been more sensitive than my other fish is when they lived (with everyone else) in a chilly bin for a couple of days while i swapped out the substrate, one of them stayed pale for a few days. Mine have different markings on the tail so I can tell them apart - Sharky 1 and 2 - Sharky 1 definitely the crazy hungry one, Sharky 2 more sensitive and composed

bit late for me to join in but my tank has the same dimensions as yours and this is what my husband made out of some heavy as particle board we found at the emporium. we had 3 pieces of it and there is a hole in the back for the wiring to be contained inside the cupboard the lid is not attached

have done a water change and the water isn't perfectly clear but I'm waiting and seeing for the time being i also sieved all the sand to remove snails and that stirred it up too the thing i noticed about the water last week was the dried droplets of water on the lid were green/dark green instead of the usual whitey colour - maybe another clue for you fish detectives

at this rate I will have more than enough and may even have enough to put a few bits n pieces on TM to pay for some of my hobby this is getting very dangerous indeed haha

my experiment worked! in the end I had some sagittaria and val pieces anchored in sand by pebbles in a dark blue bucket. I covered them in water and had a glad wrap roof tied down on top. I put them on the back patio and first of all they got too much light and went fadey. Moved to another location and now nearly a month later they all have new growth and the sagittaria has lots of green baby runners. I didn't actually need them in the end as the algae so far hasn't taken off like I thought it was going to but I'm happy with how that turned out.

I have 2 oto and they do like to hang out together a lot of time. I don't rely on them as fish to 'watch' like the cories and the tetras as they are often stationary stuck to the glass or a leaf or sometimes hiding. Sometimes they get a rocket up their tails and zip around like crazy and that's fun to watch but I do keep them for their algae cleaning qualities rather than anything else. They like algae wafers and will glue themselves to one so the cories can't get to it, that's also pretty funny. Cardinals or ember tetra would look great against your dark gravel. It's been said before but if you go that way get cardinals over neons because they are generally hardier and of course have more colour.