GrahamC

You could do a 90% water change since the bacteria you are growing are not free floating but in your filter media and on stones etc. There's no need to do small water changes unless you have fish in the tank.

Is that from experience? :slfg: But I've read that people have used used tea bags, eg 1 used tea bag per 20 L of water. Of course there are different types of tea and some such as Darjeeling are said to be high in tannins. And of course you get to drink the caffeine containing brew which would be toxic to the fish. Where do you purchase Indian Almond leaves from? I've heard that they can be used to induce spawning.

I think you can also use tea leaves if you want more tannins

Yeah, slightly acidic tannin rich water characterizes the biotope of the wild angelfish which is why I added the driftwood. The breeder I got them from though had large numbers of bare bottom tanks with hundreds of angels in them.

Yes. The driftwood also helps to stabilize the pH against sudden changes. Edit: my driftwood is still leaching tannins after several months but the angelfish I have don't seem to mind. And if they're happy so am I.

It can take several months to stop discolouring the water. Some fish like tannins. But if you want to use the driftwood now, and don't like the colour change, you can add some activated charcoal to your filter to remove the tannins.

A 170L tank should have cycled at 8 weeks. A higher temperature would cause the cycling to occur a little faster, that's all. The fact you had an algal bloom suggests to me you did have a nitrate surge as algae need nitrates, and your plants are also surviving, and they also use nitrates. I suspect your tank is already nearly cycled. I would do a 90% water change, and see what happens to the ammonia levels. If you can drop the ammonia to 0 with water changes, perhaps add a fish or two and monitor the parameters after that.

BTW, to save people having to use calculators, you can put this into the google search field 90cm x 35cm x 15cm and it will return the result in liters for you. It's currently a bit too much to ask them to return litres! You can use * instead of x, but the important thing the parser needs is to have a space around the multiplication operator.

Any chance of putting another pH specific scale on a right vertical axis? The current range on the y-axis doesn't really show the important pH values.

I'd better start working on the experiment design and protocols for submission to the ethics committee of the local MAF branch.

And my experiment has ended .... my wife found my two buckets and flushed both of them with the garden hose

And now zeebee you know why some of your troughs had larvae, and others did not!

I think you mean "you are". But let's see what people might think infusoria is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infusoria If you wish to use the term in a sense other than that commonly associated with aquariums it behoves you to make that distinction.

Have a look under your deck, or, if you don't have one, someone else's. See if you can spot any thing growing there that is photosynthesizing. Shaded does not mean pitch black but we do understand you have a problem with english. Yes, biased towards the thesis. Shallow -yep, only a few cms of water. 1 trail - I suspect you mean trial. I roughly detailed my methods to allow anyone to repeat the experiment but I doubt anyone will for reasons so obvious. You clearly missed my statement which said "My provisional conclusion" indicating that I was waiting for someone else to replicate the experiment. And your conclusion has an error in logic.

Does anyone use free online software to track each fish and tank? I found one place called reefiris, but the domain has lapsed. I found some for an iphone but looking for web based software. If not, I'll likely write my own.

Let us know when you've learned how to do some research on your own, understand some basic rules of english grammar, and have publications in peer reviewed scientific journals, and then perhaps we might attach some weight to your point of view.

Presumably if the impeller is causing the noise, then it will not be balanced, or broken somewhere. If it is not, then need to look elsewhere.

I biased the experiment towards the water with rafts as I used a dark coloured bucket for that water, and mosquitos are attracted to dark colours. Styrofoam is not a naturally occurring substance at least where I live. I used what occurs in nature. Are you seriously saying that styrofoam rafts will attract mozzies over algae rich water?

I don't think I need to. The thesis posited was that you needed a place on the water surface to land for the mozzies to lay their egg rafts; bits of styrofoam was given as one example. My experiment, easily replicated by anyone with two buckets, shows this to not be a major determinant. As Alan implies, mozzies prefer water with material suitable for larvae to feed on. I have quite a few other buckets of tap water outside degassing with duck weed on top (it gets everywhere), and have never noticed any rafts which would also support this idea.

I did a small experiment to test the assertion raised before. I took 2 buckets of the same size ( one white, one red ), and half filled both with tank water. I put a bunch of grass clippings in both, but the red one had half the amount as the white. I put some duckweed in the red one for the mozzies to land on. Both buckets are under my deck in the shade, and right next to each other. Some weeks later, the one with more grass has water of a deeper colour. Both have larvae in them but the white one with no floating surface material has 7 egg rafts, and the one with the duck weed has none. ( I took some rafts from the white one and put them into the red one in case the presence of existing larvae might help. ) My provisional conclusion is that the major determinant of where the mozzies lay their eggs, is the water quality. The more organic material for the larvae to eat is where you will find the mozzies laying their eggs, which makes biological sense.

Heaters are built to withstand full submersion but it is said to be preferable to leave the top out of the water.

You need to either run both filters together now until your new filter is populated with nitrifying bacteria, or, you can put the sponge from the old filter into the new one. Just hope you haven't taken out the old filter and let the bacteria die! Water testing is a tedious business. I now run the seachem ammonia meter which sticks on the inside of one of my tanks. I move it around from tank to tank at times. Good for a year. Still got the kits to test for nitrates and pH. No point in testing nitrites if ammonia is nil in an established tank.

Hopefully no one is throwing spark plugs and other ceramics inside the house though who can predict what happens in a major quake.

EQC declined cover???