amtiskaw

Found this post, which confirms I'm barking up the right tree >> Dr. Morin, could you please comment on this? You stated at one point I >> believe that Flourite was a naturally mined material. Is it subjected to >> high heat (fired) during processing (to increase internal pore space I would >> assume) or is it just cleaned, crushed and bagged? >Well, I can't say too much without getting in trouble ;-) >All I can say is, the material has experienced high levels of heat. >It is naturally mined. And the order actually would be crushed, >cleaned, and bagged ;-) >Hope that helps, but I can't really say much more without giving away >a little bit of the "secret". >- -Greg Morin >Gregory Morin, Ph.D. ~~~~~~~Research Director~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >Seachem Laboratories, Inc. http://www.seachem.com 888-SEACHEM

Hmm, you might be right. I read a post saying you can bake clay at oven temps to set it enough for aquarium use, but to get what Seachem call "stable fracted" you need 1100 C. That's when it becomes a calcined clay, i.e it expands and gets lots of pores formed. Bonsai growers used calcined clay, and you can buy it fairly cheaply (really cheaply compared to Flourite, lol) but I don't know the composition of the clay they use - if it's iron rich. Still googling around. I wonder what it'd cost to rent some kiln time from a pottery outfit?

I've been thinking about trying to produce some home made flourite. Get some iron-rich laterite clay Mix in some micro ferts Force through a mesh, scraping off the extruded clay every 5mm Bake in an oven for a bit Lush plants! Am I missing something here? I've done a bit of googling, and found a couple of vague references to a few people doing it. I'd like to use flourite when I re-do my 450 l tank, but it's bloody expensive stuff.

I don't think it's algae cos I get it in opaque tubing as well as transparent. Nitrifying bacteria maybe?

Yeah, that's why I was wondering if the Auck rates dropped when they introduced water charges. I think Aucks is the only city in NZ that has metered domestic water supplies?

Did your rates drop when they started making you pay for water in Auckland?

I had a silver shark named Bruce, after the mechanical shark in Jaws :nilly: My favourite so far :slfg:

I read his blog "... in these tanks as small non-use or co2 or filtration, just a few drops of fertilizer in each water change (every 3 days), and small snails to keep clean. As light a lamp 3 w " I think he meant non-use of co2 or filtration. So just a 3 W lamp basically 8)

The tricky bit is balancing your ferts, I find. Nitrate seems to be the limiting factor in my tank. I've almost got rid of visible algae, but I'm finding if I let the nitrate level go too low I get more algae - which seems counter-intuitive to me :roll: I had a massive cyano outbreak at one point when I ramped up the ferts too quickly, but a 4 day blackout cured that. Too much phosphate caused it, I think. I really want to strip my tank and re-scape now I've leaned a bit and seen some of the awesome scapes on the web, but I'm enjoying my tank too much ATM, even if it's a bit amateurish in it's layout. Still hunting for that ultimate bit of driftwood to base the scape around, too. And the right stone. And deciding on substrate. And plant availability... :slfg:

Yeah, it's amazing how much oxygen they pump out 8)

I've gone high tech with CO2 injection and upped my lights to T5 and LED. I've just about got my ferts sussed out, and now my plants are pearling from about 2 PM till lights out at 8 PM. I've noticed my crypts don't pearl as such - they just emit a stream of bubbles from one or two points. Is this standard for crypts?

I'm convinced that fish can sense cameras. Every time I get a good shot lined up and focused, they move just before I press the button :facepalm:

I had around 35 Bolivian Rams in a 450 l community tank (they wouldn't stop breeding!) with Dwarf Chain Loaches, Torpedo Barbs, Emerald Eye Rasboras, Golden Gourami and Ottos. They were peaceful, and only ever got territorial when guarding wrigglers and fry. I've still got 5 of 'em - great fish for community tanks IMHO

I'd spray all the fittings with soapy water and look for bubbles indicating a leak.

Lot's of good info here

The wind must have changed direction :slfg:

Yeah, try traceroute. In a command window, type tracert fishpond.co.nz [enter] This will show all the hops (different routers it has to pass thru to get to the web server) and might show why your pings went nowhere. If it only gets to the first hop, that'll mean your ADSL router is the problem, or possibly windows firewall or similar

Nope, it resolves to the same IP for me, and the site loads fine here. :dunno: edit: no point in doing this - just saw your ping test failed. Try the tracert below :roll: If you are running IE try installing Firefox, or if you're running Firefox install Chrome. Just to see if the browser is the problem or not.

Most of the water exits the RO unit as waste. The RO water output is only a trickle. So no, you couldn't run it as a filter.

Go start - run and type cmd [enter] A black command window will pop up. In this windows, type ping fishpond.co.nz [enter] What does it show for the ip address? It'll say pinging fishpond.co.nz [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] Does the IP address show 184.72.224.41 ?

Welcome to the world of RC helis :slfg:

Is it on-board memory or does it come with a micro SD card? Avoid the low res ones with built in memory - they drop frames because the memory isn't fast enough to keep up with the video stream. There's heaps of info on the low res ones here. You want the #3 version - most of the other ones are rubbish

Haha, step away from the keyboard! I got mine on Ebay, the seller was eletoponline365 http://cgi.ebay.com/Keyfob-cam-DV-LENS-Camera-DVR-video-camera-808HD-11-/150647610965?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23134c1e55

I've never kept Discus, and every time I see them in the LFS they just seem to be doing as little as possible. They are pretty fish, but do they have lots of character?

So what's Mars like? Seems like you're from there? :slfg: