Sophia

is it a flat surface, the back wall? if so, you could scrape it off with a credit card and suck it up through the gravel vac.

can a dead fish be any worse than a toilet load of human poo? and how could a water borne disease not escape being treated by what they do to it at the treatment plant?

He looks like he thinks someone is going to eat him :tears: :nfs:

get a sheep

is there any daylight hitting the tank anywhere?

looks cool

I've had same experience as Sam. Direct sunlight on the tank and excess nutrients got me staghorn. These days in sunny rooms I tend to get hair algae but at the moment it's not bad as I keep the lighted time down to 3 hours and close the curtains in the afternoon. The other thing that tends to decrease the speed at which algae grows is current, at least in a low tech tank anyway. I've had less algae when adding more current.

It's been said that a dilution of 1 part bleach to 20 parts water will kill algae on plants but not the plants so that would probably be ok to use on the ornaments too. If it's been dry for a long time most or all of the aquatic bugs and algae will be dead anyway and a bit of soap and water would be enough. You just have to make sure to rinse it plenty to get all the detergent out or your fish will be blowing bubbles 8)

:nfs:

I don't think it matters too much what you put in there as long as it doesn't impede the water flow. Sometimes it seems as if these things were designed a particular way for physics as well as aesthetics. I have a juwel tank and instead of the propietary various sponges there are 2 smaller ones and I stuffed the leftover space with ceramic noodles. Seems to work ok.

Always beware of the chareto mistake. It stuffs up your tricklings.

In this case there may be difficulties with a small commitment. To illustrate: Think of the tank as the hamster house, and think of all the plants he wants to put in as the hamsters :slfg:

Check out the link in my signature for my tank - it's the same as yours. Mine is full of java fern and affinis crypts.

I feed my fish every day. They get missed maybe once a month. When I had bottom dwellers I'd either fire in enough dried food mixed with water to get to the bottom so everyone had a shot, or would sprinkle stuff on top for the top feeders and chuck in a pellet or tab for the bottom guys. Some people only feed when they remember. I guess it depends what you are trying to achieve, I've still got fish that are not finished growing and there's a big group so I like to think everyone will get a bite to eat a few times a week.

You can do it :spop:

I wasn't suggesting to lower the pH, or the softness/hardness or gH/kH, it is better to work with the natural conditions you have generally. You can adjust the gH/kH by using rainwater instead of tap water if you are on council water supply. You can add wood but that won't do much to the water once it's finished leaching tannins. I was basically suggesting that there aren't much options other than killing the snails (do a search for a range of suggestions), getting a snail eater (dwarf chain loaches would be ok if it's 21/22 degrees), or stripping out the gravel and baking it to kill the trumpet snails.

what sort of snails are they? You could just fish them out or squash the ones you see and let the fish eat them In my experience snails don't do well in softer water, but in harder water they thrive no matter what the feeding situation is.

indeed, there's not much between you and the open sea out there

You can get bristlenoses acclimatised for non heated water, but snails are probably the easiest, or maybe feed a bit less so it all gets eaten.

I have wondered that but I don't know the answer. I found them in troughs where the only water source was tap water. These articles are very good but only refer to them being cultured from an original starter. http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~davidr/discus/ ... phnia.html http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/#what3

naughty shark! whereabouts were you?

My narrow java fern is about 30cm long and still growing. It'll get to the top of the tank eventually.

age means nothing - do men (or even wimmin) ever stop being teenagers? :digH:

Cool, so the internal spray bar is just spraying straight onto the filter wool?

Just wondering - these tanks like the AR620 where the filter is built into the hood, how noisy is the filter? Can you hear it trickling? Is it like the sound of a hang on back filter?