Recent content by fprintf

Full tank pics here

Funny, I haven't used carbon since I started my tank a few months ago (could it be 8 months already?). And any coloration quickly goes away with a few water changes. I'd say don't bother buying any more carbon and use the stuff you have sparingly just in case you need a batch to remove some meds...

Danio jumped to his death last night Well, one of my danios wanted to commit suicide, apparently. It must have jumped out when I was feeding him last night cause he was only a little dried out this morning and there is no way out of the tank except when the cover is open for feeding. First...

Don't I know it! My tank has been greenless for several months since the introduction of some SAEs. Unfortunately most everything now has some black all over it including my nice lake rock.

My vac must have too much suction because when I put the vac near the sand it starts sucking up sand. I probably lose just a little each water change into the bucket and then down the sink. Regardless, I *love* my sandy bottom. It is so easy to clean. The only problem now seems to be that the...

Yep, just regular playsand found in the outdoor section of Home Depot. I am not sure how it differs but I can tell you it is really really fine sand.

Ok, so a few weeks ago when it was still warm I had taken a fairly large bag of playground sand (like $5 at Home Depot, talk about cheap!) and put it in a 5 gallon bucket. I spent about 1/2 an hour swishing water through it, swirling the sand and really driving water into it, until the water was...

First the pictures First I am going to attach the pictures, then I'll tell the story how I did it.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but this weekend I put sand over the top of my gravel substrate. It looks really nice and has given me a nice medium for the plants (Wisteria, Hornwort, Javamoss) in the tank. Everyone seems to really like it and it really brightens up the tank. The Cichlids...

It'll never go away unless your water level is really high... like almost to the tippy top of the tank (you know, when you get a meniscus near the corners from the water touching the edge ridges). I find when I lose just a 1/4 inch of water that it starts to splash -- and this is after several...

Thanks all for the confidence boost. Since I added the two little Malawis and the cat there has been little to suck up from the gravel. So I am assuming someone is doing a great job cleaning up. I must say, these Ocellifer cats are just beautiful to watch. I do not think it will be long before...

I have a new Synodontis Ocellifer catfish. The first few days it would come out and scrounge around for food, occasionally stopping its search, I suppose, when it found something interesting. Now it has found a nice dark place, the inside of my ornamental castle and hardly comes out. Since...

I use Prime by SeaChem. So far it has worked flawlessly and while the bottle is somewhat expensive, it only takes the tiniest drop per gallon to remove all chloramines and ammonia.

This happened to me last week. So for $18 plus shipping from BigAls the piece of mind was worth getting a new AquaClear 50 for my tank (20 gal long) rather than purchasing a new impeller or worrying that one day my Penguin 170 would just quit on me. The filter bumped along noisily for the week...

Trying this one for the tail.