Recent content by NATO

I'd personally recommend a Visi-Therm 100W heater - They're adjustable with a visible scale, they have a 5 year warranty and a lot of positive reviews out there for performance and reliability.

If you think about it though, the pump is mechanically designed to operate at a particular speed with no restriction on its output, if you clamp or restrict it in any way you are forcing it to work against this which will hurt it in the long term. The manual I found online for a Hagen pump...

I wouldn't kink the airline, you'll put pressure on the pump diaphragm which could seriously shorten its lifespan. If you need to control the airflow rate, get a little splitter which splits in two (controlled usually by little screw down caps to allow you to open/close each output (Algarde...

The API Freshwater Master Test Kit? Yeah, I trust the results of these - have you encountered anything to give you reason not to trust it?

That's what I thought was strange, when I sit and watch the tiger barbs in the evening they're actually quite peaceful! They very rarely squabble and certainly only ever seemed to bicker among themselves. Saying that, I only get to watch them for a few hours a day, who knows what they're up to...

I agree, I think my tank is at the upper limit of where buckets/watering cans are feasible, I couldn't imagine doing that with a 50Gal, it would be so time consuming. Fortunately it's only once a week now, it was a pain when cycling

I think the mystery is solved, I've had a really close look at the remaining three harlequins and one of them has barely got a tail left, so the Tiger Barbs are the guilty party. It's possible they're torturing them to death and eating them. The harlequins are really tiny, do you think they'd...

I use 12Litre buckets with a Juwel Aqua Cleaner to take water out of the tank and replace water using a 6.5Litre watering can (far easier not to disturb the gravel/plants by aiming it at the side glass). It takes roughly 25 minutes from start to finish to do a 50% change of a 125Litre tank (33...

It's a 120Litre Juwel Lido 120. There are also two small Ellioti Ciclids in the tank but they are very peaceful and tend to stay at the bottom, whereas the Harlequins stay at the top. It's the Tiger Barbs who tend to roam everywhere. It's definitely a mystery, I see no aggression towards the...

Just a quick question about a tank with about 13 Tiger Barbs (various sizes from about 1 to 3inches) and very small harlequin Raspboras (about 0.75in) Since the harlequins were added they've started disappearing - 2 per day for the last 2 days. I can't seem to find them anywhere so I can only...

I've currently got a 125L tank with 10 Tiger Barbs and 3 Green Tiger Barbs. All the fish have appeared healthy although a few days after adding the Green Tigers one of them seemed to be staying apart from the school and breathing fairly rapidly. He also stayed a really dark green colour...

I adore Cardinal Tetras. There are few people who don't appreciate a large school of them

I only realised today that you can use a syphon tube to suck out fine gravel if you're changing substrate (I took off the wide nozzle and used a narrow one the same diameter of the tube). It certainly takes a lot if the hassle out of it!

Another update - My tank is cycled! I actually look out the lower basket from my Juwel Rio 125 and replaced one of the fine sponges with an additional cirax basket (putting the replaced sponge in the top to keep the bacteria to help seed it). In addition I took out the carbon sponge from the...

I tinkered with the filter a little, I now have the following setup: (Top to bottom) White Poly Nitrax Green Coarse Blue Citrax --------------- Citrax Citrax Fine Blue Does this look like a good setup to maximise the surface area for beneficial bacteria?