Recent content by J. Fisher

The "safety bottle" can also double as a bubble counter. I have done this with a 1 litter bottle.

I use a small powerhead to keep a gentle current flowing throughout my tank. This helps from too much detritus settling. My tank is heavily planted and I don't ever have to vacuum the bottom. Some of my fish and shrimps help the cleanup as well.

The ADA checkvalve is a good one. It has outlasted two others I had. Although the only place I have found these are locally here in San Francisco.

I have recently noticed a worm population in two of my three tanks. They are about 1/8" to 1/4" long and flat with a short line running lateral down their back. it seems they come out to feed on the blood worms that I feed my fish. I have never seen these before, does anyone know what these...

My personal experience with a ph controller was disapointing. Now I have just the solenoid plugged into a timer to turn off at night. This works much better for me. I used that same milwaukee controller you are looking at and found it to drift quite a bit. I know that folks have had success with...

Nice! You beat me to it. I can't wait to get set up. I think I might go with three 175w retrofit kits (cheapest I can find is $200 each) This will put me at 4.2 wpg. As Malkore said this will put me in the cautious zone since I will have preasurized co2 for this setup. I was thinking of...

Thanks for the advice, very helpful! My intention was to acheive that shimmer effect you see in reef tanks equiped with MHs. I always thought the rippling light would look great on my plants. I have not purchased the lighting yet so I have some thinking to do. Perhaps the MH / CF combo...

Does anyone here use metal halides for your planted tank? I am setting up a 125g and will be using halides. I was wondering about watage to water volume ratios. Is the ratio more or less the same as CFs? thanks J

To anyone near San Francisco CA, If you haven't already, check out Aqua Forest Aquarium. One block from Japan center on filmore. I went for the first time this last weekend and was very impressed. They are the only ADA distributer that I know of anywhere. They have a very nice plant selction...

I switched from an emperor bio wheel to an eheim 2224. I have noticed a little better water quality since. I also like how they are very quiet and unseen. My emperor was loud and ugly, so it was an improvement for me. There is just a little more involved in cleaning it, but still very easy.

I have used around 6 or 7 bags of eco in various different tanks and have noticed most (not all) of them clowding up quite a bit. I have always found this annoying. After the settling and water changing It hasn't continued to be a problem. I thought it was normal. Luck of the draw I guess.

I did notice as I was removing the dead and dying plants, the roots looked like the healthiest part. The plants seemed to be dying from the top down. I just threw out the decaying root possibility because I have never experianced this before. Since I removed the bad plants the remaining seem to...

My Sagitaria had been growing great covering the bottom of my tank. Once it became rather thick it began quickly dying off from the center outward. The leaves would become transparent and deteriorate away. I removed all of the dead and sickly plants and things seem under control at the moment...

When using an iron rich substrate such as eco complete or fluorite, I would assume that testing the iron levels in the water would be futile. The iron being in the substrate rather than in the water column. Is this true? Assuming that all of my plants draw nutrients from the substrate, should...

Thanks for the replies, I think i just needed a pep talk. I will continue trying to keep nutrients in a proper balance and testing all nutient levels. I do weekly 25% water changes. Perhaps I will increase that to 50%. A little algae doesn't bother me, but as I said , I have a little too...