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Cyanobacteria have phycocyanin and some have phycoerythrin. Both are pigments that help to extract energy from green and red (shorter wavelength than chlorophyll red absorption peak) light, so light with a higher colour temperature could give cyanobacteria a competitive edge. But there can be...

Have you considered LED lighting, either commercial or homemade. The latter is much less costly than even T5, can give more output than the T5 HO, and gives more light per watt. You can also tune the light output if you get an adjustable current power supply. The commercial LEDs may be worth the...

It all depends on what you are keeping. My South American tanks with apistogramma and tetras, 10-50 gallon, run mostly with zero flow (that also means no filter). Magnum internal polishing filters running at 290 gallon/hour are used for 80 and 90 gallon community tanks to remove particulates...

The textbook answer is measure ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. If the former are all but undetectable and nitrate starts to form the bacterial filter is working. You can also dose a little shot of ammonia and see if the filter gets rid of it. Slowly build up your stock, ideally starting with some...

Without knowing the size and depth of your tank that could either be a bright or very dim light. Unless the tank is very expensive I expect it won't be a very bright light to start with and 4 hour photoperiod seems awfully short to me. One option is to pick up a decent amount of floating plants...

I initially experimented with different dirted setups: sand over pond soil, sand over ADA soil, sand over peat moss, sand over smelly black pond gunk dug up locally. Apart from the peat moss they all worked about equally well and the peat moss one may have given problems due to being treated for...

Very interesting thread. It's one of the plants I hope to grow successfully some day but so far have not been able to find any for sale. When that happens I now have some more ideas about what to do with them. Thanks.

Trying to maintain a stable pH well below your tap water source is "mopping with the tap still running" (Dutch proverb). Either choose fish that are comfortable in your local tap water or switch to rainwater or RO water. They have very low buffering capacity so won't really affect tank pH during...

I picked up 4 of those eucalyptus root pieces a few months ago. First time I saw them. Good price, interesting shape and texture (mine are hollow in the stem portion) and interesting Malaysian drift wood had been hard to find in Edmonton (Canada). Two of them ended up in 53x60x25cm tanks so a...

Is there any chance it could be light rather than flow. Corners tend to be darker and if there are other plants in front the lower parts of plants in the back are in the shadow. One option is to plant the darker corners with slow growing low-light tolerant species and have fast growing bacopa...

But 'we' also have the saying love goes through the stomach and I like my fish to be in amorous mood. The other thing is that if my fish get food only once every two days during holiday trips I often come back to tanks with plant issues. So I think Diana Walstad was right when she mentioned that...

The shrimp are also useful for those guests, basically all non aqua-geeks, who are less interested in fish (or at least not 20+ tanks worth of fish). Rarely do you find one who doesn't think the amanos and cherries are the neatest thing around. I now also have South American shrimp...

Wow that plant, and the whole tank, looks 'fris and vrolijk'. I like the tip of not removing the first submerged leaves that reach the surface and dry out. I like floating plants because they are very effective nutrient removers, but one or a few big emerged sword plants would be nice for a change.

The scapes didn't have plantlets initially (although some had a stray leaf or two) when they were fully emerged. Now that they are touching the water they are starting to form plantlets with roots, even though still attached to the mother plant. Is there an advantage for cutting them off. In...

Thanks for the links. BigTom's flowers are same as mine with lots of interesting comments on that post. The female flowers hang around for a while while the male flower is short lived and may go undetected. Some pollen fell on a frogbit leaf and I tore it off to 'fertilize' some of the female...

The experiment has been terminated. Conclusion was that bright light is sufficient to get them to grow but you need a good algae eating squadron to keep algae in check. For me the amano shrimp were not much help whereas the Siamese algae eaters lived up to their reputation. However, the SAE were...

Over the last few weeks I have been pleasantly surprised by one plant after the other starting to produce flowers in my indoors aquariums. Right now 5 different plants (water hyacinth, frogbit, water lettuce, Brazilian pennywort and Echinodorus 'Frans Stoffels') have flowers. The frogbit seems...

I tend to harvest floaters if the Limnobium turns yellow to better match the plant biomass to the waste production of the fauna in the tank. Fertilizer would work to green the floaters but I have too many already so I (and my composting worms) am always happy if it time to harvest.

In our hobby there are many things we don't know but that has never slowed down the stream of opinions as to what is going on and how we should respond. We do that in science and call them hypotheses but an important part is to remember that a hypothesis/opinion is not the answer, just one...

I typically fill new tanks with 50-100% water from existing tanks. I might change water more frequently, even if just for peace of mind, were it not that I have my tanks on 100% RO water and I already have too little time to just sit in front of the tanks and watch the show.

A bigger foam on the maxijet would probably slow down the clogging but still more flow then I want in 10-20 gallon tanks. A reader of the blog, Ed Prust, told me the Top Fin internal pumps are sold as Superfish aqua flow pumps in Europe and he has had several running for a long time without...

I am topping up my tanks with RO water and without bacterial filter I don't get accumulation of nitrates. So rather than removing nitrate by water changes I remove nitrate by (floating) plant harvesting. On top I probably do 5%-10% water changes but frequency can range from weekly to monthly...

I would think these don't hold up over time but they are probably easy enough to set up a new one every few weeks (or whenever the glass needs cleaning or the plant needs topping). I am running complete aquariums without water movement, heating, lights, filter, pumps, air stone etc and some...

My interest in Apistogramma, and other fishes for that matter, is linked to learning about and trying to recreate the biotopes they live in. Many apistos come from slow flowing small streams, shallow lake margins, and completely stagnant ponds or puddles. I have therefore been running many tanks...

Levaminsole, as mentioned, flubendazole (a bit gentler but needs longer treatment), or metroplex if they are still eating. If I have apistos that stop taking frozen food I often can still get them to eat live daphnia or grindal/white worms. Normally that gets them out of the funk but in that...

I consider RGB to only be worth it if you want to adjust colours to please your personal taste. As to the plant's taste I have yet to find someone who can tell me the ideal spectrum for plants. I actually don't believe there is a universal optimum and I don't think plants are particularly picky...

From reading comments it seems two blogs are mixed up. One blog has to do with using plants as the (sole) filter in the tank and the other with using high light intensity without using (EI) fertilizers or CO2. I'll start with the planted filter and we can get back to the bright-light topic later...

I reduced the size to be less than 1600 pix on the longest side and it still didn't let me. I'll get it sooner or later but are getting a big shipment of fish tomorrow so am a bit distracted getting all tanks ready for them right now.

This reply is to an old post (https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/maxing-co2-in-low-techs.29856/page-3#post-330177) that I liked. The two days of data points with filter on are very similar as one would expect if this is the routine operation of the tank. When the filter is switched off CO2...

I'd like to start with thanking all of you for reading my blog and having such a thoughtful discussion about it. If you write a blog you always wonder if anyone will actually read it so seeing this thread is rewarding. I'll be addressing some of the questions and suggestions but the topic is...

I like a nice detritus layer and only siphon some off when it gets too much, which in some tanks is never and others once every few months. I consider detritus as slow-release fertiliser and add zero macro fertilizer or root tabs to my tanks. Just a little iron and trace elements if plants seem...

Hi fellow aquatic planters I learned the ropes in The Netherlands from 1975-1995 and just got back into the hobby a year ago here in Edmonton, Canada. I run my tanks old-school, all without filter, some without circulation pump and some without anything (sunlight no heater). Plants, especially...