suphew

If you have one that you think is dead you should remove it as quickly as possible it could polute your whole tank and make it crash. But dont assume it is dead if it is just closed up.

The sponge filter is a mechanical filter not biological so washing it does don't as much harm. It does of course have some bacteria on it but its not its primary function.

They are both low light plants, any light would do, you could prob get away with having no light if the room is light, and you have the room light on in the evening.

Used battern fittings (stand fluro fittings) over fresh water tanks for years with no problems, but I would strongy suggest you use an RCD, but I hink you would be mad not to anyway.

A few coats of oil based paint and cross fingers.

Me for one, ugly nasty stuff.

acrylic scraches and I think discolours as will, plus glass will be cheaper if you have to go out and buy either.

If you use Irfanview (free off the net) you can do batch conversions of pictures, saves a ton of time

But dont you vacuum your gravel evey week when using UGF?? I know I would. It's possible to not do this using other types of filters, so you aren't distrubing plants all the time. Cannisters can go months without cleaning depending on the load and how they are setup.

Astria (sp?) snail?

Best if you can remove as much of the old silicn as you can, but leave the silicon in between the glass joins. if the silicon in there has come loose you are best to remove the whole piece of glass and reglue it all. You can get away with not doing this but it is the best option. You need to get the right type of silicon, there are two, acidic cure is the one you are looking for, often they have 'for aquarium use' written on them. Also make sure you get one that doesn't have mold inhibiter in it. The correct silicon has a very strong smell, and must be used in a well ventlated area.

Cannister filters are deffinately better than internal and would be fine on a tank that size. You would be less likely to have problems and be able to run a higher bioload. But it just depends if you want to spend the extra money, the tank would be okay with an internal, personally I would go with the cannister.

Mico plumbing is good. You need a hansen bulkhead for the hole. Make sure you buy a desent tap as well, the cheaper white ones jam.

The white is a bacterial bloom caused by too many nutriants in the water, the green is algae from the same. Large water changes, vacuum as much crap up as you can, if you can put filter wool over your filter intake this will help trap the algae, change it every couple of days. You can also reduce your feeding to once every 2-3 days for a week or two it wont harm the fish. High phosphate is a sure sign of over feeding.

Sorry I misread, thought you said amino acids, not acetic acid, doh.... But does raise a good point, could I mix amino acids in with my kalk and dose that way?? Would save a ton of stuffing round. Also I did the calculation on that site for how much vinagar to add and it worked out at about 1.5liters a week for my topup! Wasn't that keen on dump that much vinagar in my tank each week.

I have had lots of problems with Sony gear over the years as have some of my friends, I would never buy it again. Plus I think you pay too much extra for the name.

Can you do this?? do you just work out the dosing and chuck it in?? I have only been adding acetic acid for a couple of days and am already sick of having to do it eachh day.

I have the same pump, prob from the same dude :-) works really well, never had a problem with it. I think it does about 9lph, I have it on a timer so it does 5-6 15min runs through the night

I'm not convinced vodka works, I dosed my tank for a couple of months, and built up almost double the reccommended dose before I gave up. Didn't make any difference that I could see.

No usually the opposite, close loop just means the pump input and output go into the same level of water so you have no head hight, therefore the pump runs at full speed (other than friction in pipes, bends etc). Most of the time this is done by drilling two holes in the tank and putting a pump between them. you can do it over the top like a cannister filter works but the problem is priming the pump to get it started.

Dnt confuse this with the drip counter that comes with the reactor which looks very similar but doesn't have a bottom so the output can drip out. Those reactors dont come with a bubble counter.

One other trick is a piece of toilet paper over the flash, this cuts down the reflection a bit, just watch you dont cover the sensors around it as well.

Dont use the ammonia remover, when you are doing the cycle you want this in the tank it is the first stage of food for the bacteria. When doing a fishless cycle people even add liquid ammonia to speed up the process. If you are going to do a fishless cycle you need to add something to the tank to give the bacteria something to eat. Feeding fish food, like you would if there were fish in the tank works, or as I said pure ammonia, piece of mussel etc etc

I assume you are putting the end of th etube in hot water to soften it before you push it over the fitting??

I ran 2x250w de Mh on my last tank that was about that size (and a few T5 fluro's).