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Wow, holey thread resurrection Batman! As for the idea, no I never gave it a go... I only had a small tank at the time and never really thought it worth doing. However as luck wouht have it I got involved with a yeast + algae research project at uni earlier this year, this involved amongst...

Cool! How old are they? Have they gone full SW yet or are you still brackish? Is that some sort of Celtic symbol on the background?!?

Very true. I may end up par-boiling anything I scavenge, that'd at least help kill any parasites it may be carrying... GSPs were my first puffer love! But as soon as I realised how much room they needed I knew it was out of the question for the time being... A pair of fat bellied F8s will be...

Plan to give them snails from our guppy tank (we have a live in population of ramshorns), as well as shelled shrimp, freshwater clams, bloodworms and other meaty food, maybe some freshly harvested shellfish from the rockpools etc down on the beach, I'd quite like to try collecting them some...

I absolutely love there little puppy dog faces! Cute little things!

A pair of Figure Eight puffers.. We've got them on order with our LFS... The tanks been sat empty, cycling with ammonia since December.. It's been ready since January (partially seeded), but we've not been sure on stocking etc.. Then we absolutely fell in love with a MBU puffer at the shop...

Thanks for the reply! Yea I agree with you, having had a think about it and after checking out the local water cleanliness scores, I went ahead and ordered a box of marine salt... Problem solved!

Currently our empty 29g is completely fresh, we want to go brackish (to around SG=1.005 - 1.010). We live in a sea side town, with access to a fishing boat. To cut the cost of buying in marine salt, we're thinking about doing PWCs using sea water mixed with tap to achieve the desired salt...

That was my first revision of the design! I just crammed a load of biorings in the bottom and squeezed the sponge on top. This worked but wasn't ideal. The biorings lifted the sponge above the bottom openings in the sides of the filter, exposing the biorings to the water straight away. I...

Hi! Sorry I've not been on line for a few months so haven't seen your post until just now.. I've had the exact same problem with the U1. I found regular removal and squeezing out of the sponge works.. For me it was a build up of crud within the sponge causing the issue. So when I did my...

Hey all, I've got a funny one to run past you all... I was away for a long weekend last, and decided to leave the fish to themselves for a few days as I have done many times before. They were gonna go unfed Sunday and Monday then get a little snack Tuesday night or Wednesday morning (depending...

Yea I'll stick with pellets for the moment.. We're away for the weekend so the gupps will go hungry and hopefully the snails will take a big hit! Anyone ever seen guppies eat ramshorns? I've seen mine have a 'peck' at them every now and then, but never actually seen then pluck one up and eat...

That's pretty much what's in my mind now... Have the sump set up with a decent wet/dry stack at one end, return pump and other such equipment in the middle chamber and a refugium in the end chamber with a high wall holding back a deep bed... Perhaps overkill for the sub 10g tank I have...

I'm pretty sparse with my feeding of the guppies, once in the morning and it's all gone in minutes.... Maybe I'll cut it down to every other day and up my cleaning routine.. Like I said the population explosion happened when we accidentally left a lump of courgette in for about 48 hours..

So in short, a nitrate factory is the result of poor maintenance? How about wet/dry running in combination with deep sand/mud beds? Surely then you can reap the benefits of both.. Large biocapability of the wet/dry set up combined with the nitrate reducing bed... Even if the bed isn't big...

As I understood it all biomedia was just material with a high surface area to volume ratio, since the good bacteria anchor themselves on surfaces the more surface you can pack into the filter the better... I wouldn't have thought there would be sort of build up of nitrates within the bioballs...

Well I've been baiting them with iceburg lettuce overnight for the last few days, I think they're smart to it... When I get to the tank in the morning the lettuce has been nibbled but at most there are 3 snails on it... and about 30 sat on my driftwood laughing at me.... Gonna stop feeding...

What toxic gasses?? I'm guessing an unwanted anaerobic bacteria would be responsible but what do these bad bacteria digest to produce these toxic gasses? I still don't see how having a massive wet/dry surface area in a sump will produce more nitrates than a regular filter. A certain stock of...

Ah ok.. Granted I'd completely forgotten about anaerobic bacteria ;) But the anaerobic bacteria that live in the deep mud/sand beds still require the presence of Nitrates in the water column for them to digest them into nitrogen. So the Ammonia -> nitrite -> nitrate step must still occur at...

Throttling a pump (with ball valve) really depends on the type of pump you have. Centrifugal pumps (almost all pond pumps and powerheads are centrifugal) are fine to have the outlet throttled, just make sure you don't restrict the intake! Running them dry should be avoided at all costs...

Hang on... My basic understanding of bio-filtration is as follows: Ammonia -> Nitrites -> Nitrates In all circumstances... Surely all biological filters are "nitrate factories"? That's the point of them?

Sweet, I hope it works out for you both the electronic fish and marriage. ^very strange sentence^ There are literally hundreds of variations of that sort of thing on eBay, searching "fan controller temperature" gave me most of the ones I linked to... This is the start, then it's electronic...

Salt will raise the osmotic pressure within the DW forcing the tannins out quicker.. I've no idea how much it speeds the process up, you may find you need a huge salinity to effect a discernible difference in the time it takes. It should be fine for FW however, just make sure you change the...

An overpowered heater shouldn't overheat the water... Heaters are either "on" or "off", higher powered heaters just have more power when they're on IE they can heat a larger tank, or a smaller tank quicker. But higher power heaters are still on/off controlled by a thermostat, it should turn...

I had never even thought to put DW in a dishwasher... Brilliant! I left mine in a bucket in the bathroom for about 2 months while my tank cycled, changed the water for fresh hot water twice a day. Got rid of most of the tannins and water logged it... Was a PITA though...