Recent content by loneranger

thanks for the feedback, Think I'll probably go with south american dwarfes then. Ad

Afternoon everyone, I've not been on here for some time, been couped up on a reef specific forum. Any way, I'm in the process of breaking down my marine tank and returning to freshwater. I love malawi mbuna and used t get great pleasure from a mbuna set-up a few years back, but my Osaka 155...

High Fin's stay pretty small imo. I had S. nematodes in my 40L with a Randalls pistol and he was fine...well till he went carpet surfing. I'd say though that they're ideal for little tanks as thet stay small at 2" or so and are pretty sedentary. Make sure you have a lid though. Ad

OOps sorry. Thanks for the move!

Hi, On my nano I run a 36w power compact tube, I've just noticed though that the ballast says 18w. Apart from the tube taking 5mins or so to brighten up the light sems to work perfectly well. But just had a thought, it it only putting out 18w of light, or is it running at the full 36w tube...

drummev, your quite right. I was only suggesting the 50% changes while there was ammonia present in the system. I would then do 10-20% weekly or fortnightly, like I said previously. TBH lots of people do 40-50% water changes fortnightly in nano's, I'm always a bit worried about the stress on...

What is your maintenance schedule while the tank is cycling. I did a fish in cycle on my freshwater. I added 5 leopard danios to my 65l. I did nothing to it at all at first apart from test daily for ammonia and nitrite. After 6 days I got ammonia reading, after 15 days I had a complete cycle...

As long as all the levels (pH, temp and sg) are the same as the tank water it should be fine. Once all is stable, 10% weekly or fortnightly would be fine if stocking is low. It might also be worht getting your lfs to check the ammonia levels, sometimes testkits can give false results when...

Worth noting, clowns do behave quite strangely...they are clowns after all. I had one who used to sleep on his side at the top of the tank. I was always having to check he was still alive. Ad

As said, fish don't like ammonia! I'd do a substantial water change, 50% ish to keep it low. Make sure the param's of the new water are the same as the tank water otherwise your gonna stress the fish out even more. Keep an eye on the ammonia then for the next few days and do more water changes...

Forgot to say. Does the tank run a skimmer? addin a skimmer may help reduce organic pollutants and sort things out quicker. The leathers should be fine in the long run. You may find they'll sulk and close up for a while. It takes them a few days to react, then a few days to come round (sometimes...

Hi, I guess the amm and nitrite readings are due to the move. Some of the inhabitants of the live rock will begin to die off after even a brief exposure to the air, sponges in particular. Disturbing the sand bed could also lead to a small cycle. When you say 'replaced the filter pad', what...

I'd go for trops rather than goldies. You could fit a large group of guppies in there, reckon it'd look pretty cool. IME trops are easier (simpler) to care for than goldies also. Goldfish are messy buggers, so your filter would have to be top notch. Keep things simple, and things should be fine...

Hope the links a help. Anyway, most of the issues can be got around, to a certain extent. Surface area is important for gas exchange, you can help this along by buying a powerhead and pointing it upwards at the surface or even an airline with the diffuser just under the surface to cause...

Nice start but do LOTS of research and all will be great. Just a note on the 'nemo' theme. All the characters but nemo himself (clownfish) will be too large for that tank by a reasonable amount. Certainly no porcupine puffer, bannerfish, yellow tang (or any other tang). The cleaner shrimp would...