DiverJohn

PM'd John

Are you sure on that?? :-? Wont the PH go thru the roof???

Need a bit more info Mat. But IMO: If Metal Halide Bulb then probably too low. If Flouro tube then almost certainly too low. And it will be worse if the tubes are more than 6 months old Its not so much that plants wont grow, but if you have an imbalance in nutrients (too much) then you may find the algae grows a bit better! HTH John

Thanks BK.... Once you get things established you shoudl be dosing florish at a rate that you plants use all the fertilizer, you do a water change and then top up ferts again till the next week.

In my opinion I would be inclined to stop all together on the flourish until your tank is cycled & ammonia is nil. Flourish wont be adding any ammonia or nitrites, which are the two "bad" nitrogen compounds in your tank at the moment. Your fish will stress if ammomia or nitrites get to high so you need to do regular water changes until ammonia is nil, and if you are doing regular water changes you are effectivly tipping your floursh down the drain. HTH John

do you want them FW or Marine?

Dont throw the plants out!! Plants die back, especially if they are grown in 1 environment and are then dropped into another. If they start to look manky just cut them back a bit ( maybe alot??). I reackon 'odds on' they will grow back. Probably 80% of the plants i have bought from LFS die back but then they grow back as good as new... it just takes time, and is definatly frustrating cos your tank probably looks great then goes down hill Unfortunatly the LFS dont sell patience by the 5l bottle!! :lol: :lol:

Dubbie, is the 'prefilter' pumping or is unplugged and impellor removed? Are you soley relying on the syphon to draw water through the fluval, with the ehiem pumping the water back to the tank??

I was going to say "You coudl try asking us"

have you read this??? Basically pictures arent uploaded to this site. And you dont attach photo's like you do when you write an email. 1st: You must sign up to a site like www.photobucket.com. You upload your pics to photobucket for "storage" 2nd: When you type your post you insert a link to your picture that is hosted (stored) on www.photobucket.com. When you message is displayed instead of showing the link, your browser will download the pic from the 3rd party storage location. Hope that helps a bit. Dont forget to read this John

Whetu, you forgot the tank :lol:

There are several options. Metal Halide. Is one of them Something like this would do nicely i think. There are also numerous variants of the "T5 power compact" available...round ( circular) tubes, U shapes T5's, with wattages up to 60W that you could fit within the 350mm square. HTH John

Haha PJ that woudl be awsome wouldnt it!!! No. mine is all stainless, put some water in it last night, the stainless is quite flexible so i guess a glass from would have to be fairly well braced to stop it twisting

Thanks Blue... Yeah and getting some fish that apparently are easy to breed and I havent seen them in the LFS so might give them a go too. John

Actually measured it last night, its 1.35x.48x.48

I have just aquired a stainless steel tank 1.5x.5x.5 meters Any issues i should be aware of before putting fish or plants in it? (Yes i KNOW you can see through it :lol: :lol: ) John

Janey.... qik question as i am thinking i might do the same on my tank with my 2228's Did you put 2outlet + 2 inlets ? Or 1x inlet + 1x outlet and some kind of inlet / outlet manifold?? Cheers John

Or put a bigger pipe as the outlet or bigger holes in the spraybar. The overall volume put through isnt the problem its more the....... "squirtyness" ( :-? is that a word??? )

No worries peanuts, look forward to seeing the finished results Think i might drill the holes for my 5 footer sounds like a good idea!

HI Peanuts, just something to watch out for.... 1500 is not 5Foot, 5 Foot is about 1540. I have got a 5ft tank and almost bought a stand from the LFS. The stand was described as "5 Foot" but it was actually 1500. So if you have a stand already or have got one in mind, double check they are the same dimension.

Hi spot, Lyndy is right, most people double dose Florish excel to "knock back " Black beard algae. However you need to take a few more steps to make it really effective. When i did it I also cut my lighting right back, to 8hours, and i may have even turned 1 pair completely off ( i run 3xtwin tubes). Other steps i took included checking Phosphate level ( it was hi) and adding a phosphate remover (JBL PhosEx) I also removed some plants and soaked them in a "Alum" solution -aluminium sulphate available from garden centers about $7 per 500g. 2-3 table spoons in 10l of water and soak for about 2 hours. Rinse atleast twice in fresh water then finally in a bucket of tank water before putting back in the tank. Finally 2x SAE's. HTH

Try this... Nu-Klear horticultural products

Something you didnt mention in your post was the fish in question was an albino. So can i offer this explaination... ( & i might be COMPLETELY wrong) Its been a while since I was at uni, and i ll try and explain it easily. I recall that albinoism is often a recessive trait, requiring the same recessive gene from both mother and father. If you were to cross a "pure gold" male with an albino female, you would never get an albino, as the father will ALWAYS contribute 1 gold gene which will show out because it is dominant over the recessive (albino) gene. The only way you get albino's is by having an albino gene from both male and female. clear so far??? I am guessing that the albino was breed and then rebred, rebred etc to keep the recessive, or weak, "line" pure. Unfortunatly, down side is that constant in-breeding leads to genetic weakness, increase chance of abnormalities, cancer etc... Which points to Carlys answer that it it is something "specific" to one fish and not treatable by using additives in the tank. But fishboi could be right, someone else might have another idea, but atleast your getting some opinions. Sorry that none of them are good news tho Hope that helps some John

Well Zev Alan and HFF have pretty much hit the nail on the head. The logic i use is that [for example] if you were upgrading from a 250l -> 500l and you can re-use 200l of old water, I think thats about the same as doing a 60% water change. So long as you dont go and double the amount of fish you have in the tank (at the same time as you upgrade!) then the filters should cope no problems. Your water parameters - the 'extra chemicals' Hff mentions - shouldnt be sooo diferent that the fish get stressed. And even tho its tempting... dont go and wash the stones under a hose till the water is clear there aer alot of bacteria in there to ( i am guessing more than in the water)

Put as much of the old water in as you can, in addition to the seeded filter and you should have no problems. John