GrahamC

Fish have 100% water changes every second in a river .. so the more the merrier. But can you keep it up? Wunder tonic is a general antifungal agent that is used when you diagnose fungus. It doesn't have an antibiotic in it so although recommended for fin rot, you might also need Furan 2.

Wunder tonic. Test kits Backup heater Backup battery powered air pump and airstone

They are supposed to last for years. If you want to "clean" you slap them against a parallel surface. Squeezing can damage the cell structure.

Well, it is said you can never have too much filtration but perhaps adding bioballs etc might be just over the top! KISS works here. If you are going to use a powerhead to pull the water thru the mat, it doesn't mean you can't drop back to a battery powered airlift if there is a power failure. Also too much curvature in the mat can compress the cells reducing flow. I used the simplest design where I cut the mat to just a little more than the width of the tank, and squeezed it in. But I started with a tank already full of water. If I had to do it again, I might silicone in some glass rails to hold it in place but that would mean emptying the tank out.

See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=58840&p=633580&hilit=Poret+foam#p633580 and pm Likoma for details. As long as you see bubbles it should work. I turn mine down as much as possible but you're not going to get too rapid a flow even if you leave it on full.

Sure ... and undergravel filters are noiseless but high maintenance and require a gravel substrate. The sponge filter I was talking about specifically was the one I referenced in an image above. You can get other sponge filters that stick on the side of the tank and the air lift rises above the water but the sponges seem to be much smaller.

I have a Hamburg filter that I purchased from Likoma here in my tank. Made from Poret foam. I also bought the airlift with it. Keeps my tank cycled and is very low noise. You do have a large blue sponge in your display tank, but I'm told it gradually turns brown as it is colonized by microbes. I've also used standard sponge filters before that and found them to be quite effective but just a bit noisy. If you already use an air stone in your tank, this still disrupts the surface for oxygen exchange, and possibly loses less CO2. Mine doubles as a tank divider to keep incompatible fish separated. Other advantages ... low power, little maintenance, and in the event of a power failure, you can keep the water filtered using a battery powered air pump.

No, you don't use a powerhead, you use an air driven uplift tube. The flow across the sponge ( and not just any old sponge ) has to be slow enough to allow the microbes to do their work. Too fast and then you get bypass channels and insufficient nitrification.

Actually there is a significant difference besides the size. A sponge filter if left to bubble to the top can be quite noisy, but with the Hamburg filter, and an uplift tube, you don't hear much at all.

Do you have a gravel substrate? Since you don't have any rooted plants you might have lots of waste amongst the gravel causing the pH to drop all the time. Your pH shouldn't vary from 6.3 to 7 with daily water changes; it should be close to the same as the tap water. I would think driftwood takes a long time to change pH if it's been in the tank for a long time. And that might also cause the elevated ammonia you're seeing.

They do that to sell more product!

boxturtle on TM is one guy selling sunsun products, and he claims to carry spares. Otherwise one could attach a power head to the inlet in the tank to use it. I would guess it doesn't make that much difference where the pump is along the path.

Presumably the pump died .. that's the only part that could really fail. And did they get the pump replaced under warranty?

To make it easier to manage you can purchase little mesh bags to hold the media. I would think your local LFS sells them.

http://www.janrigter.nl/mattenfilter/ This is a bit more expensive than the $9 filter I pointed to before. Likoma on here sells the foam to create the filter. At $50 it's a lot cheaper than buying another canister filter, and will last for years without maintenance. Keep your existing classic filter for mechanical filtration. And if you want, you can put some plants behind it to create a refugium where the fishes can't get at it.

It depends on the waste being generated. I've got a 160L tropical tank with a couple of angels and I only use a sponge filter, and an air driven DIY Kaldnes filter. For the cold water gold fish tank, I was running at 10x filtration per hour. If your tank spikes after cleaning your filter ( in tank water one assumes ), then the surfaces provided by the rest of the tank are providing insufficient filtration and you will need a second filter. Some filters have trays and you just clean one tray at a time, and not all of them at the same time which is like having multiple filters. Is that an option with yours?

Something like this one http://www.sella.co.nz/general/pets-ani ... rs/d2vgm5/ They are weighted so won't float around. Although the Fluval would also help, the sponge filters act as biological filtration and are likely to have more biological surface than the Fluval. No, they can't cause cycling in the way I think you mean because cycling is caused by an excess of organic material over the nitrifying capacity. Here you are just adding more capacity ( well, eventually some microbes will colonise it from various surfaces inside your tank ).

I would suggest you're cleaning it way too frequently. You're trying to establish a microbial colony in the filter, and the only time you need to clean it is when the flow drops off. So, once every 3-6 months. The other time I would clean is if your nitrates go too high, while you also have zero ammonia and nitrite despite regular PWCs. High nitrates would suggest too much organic waste is then trapped in the canister which is then becoming a nitrate factory. Many filters also exaggerate their capacity. And since it seems that your filtration is insufficient based on the ammonia issues before, and nitrite now, I'd be inclined to add another filter ... such as a sponge filter driven by an air pump if you have one.

If you have any nitrites then your tank's filter is not cycled fully, which in the context of a long established tank suggests a new cycle is occurring. Until you get the nitrites back to 0, salt can help alleviate the toxicity with chloride ions displacing nitrite. With nitrite of 0.5 ppm, you'd need a chloride concentrate of 2.5 ppm. I'm surprised that you don't see ammonia as well as ammonia appears first, and is more toxic. I presume that you've repeated the test a few times? Nitrite forms from ammonia so if your nitrite increased after the water change, there must have been some ammonia around for this to happen. What filtration are you running?

Wireless works best with a direct line of sight between the client and the wireless router. I doubt your father has an internal brick wall, so if it's an external wall it shouldn't make any difference. But check the signal strength where he is sitting, and do a speedtest at different times of the day in case it's a capacity issue. If his router has QOS, he might be able to prioritize video and voice traffic if anyone else is sharing the wireless.

Doesn't look very black! More silverish. Wonder if you can get them the same deep black as those black moors you see. But then again I doubt I'd buy another oranda .. mine seems to like sleeping upside down in a corner of the tank

Gold fish are really meant to be kept in a pond ... but probably too cold for the fancy ones unless you've got a deep pond. The stunting is thought to be a result of growth inhibiting hormones released which won't matter in a large body of water but do in a small tank. So, you have to do more frequent partial water changes if you want them to grow. Other fish don't seem to have this hormone inhibition issue.

http://www.hollywoodfishfarm.co.nz/deta ... ml/m/1786/

Check to make sure a neighbour isn't nicking your power! :slfg: You really need to get one of those meters to measure the power consumption of each device, or measure total energy being used. I can't see one water cylinder using $500 a month. Do you have energy saving lighting? Is this $500 every month or just in winter?

@henward, perhaps leave the aro in the garage, and bring goldfish into the house instead