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I'm setting up a 4ft x 22in deep 18" wide natural tank with a soil base. What would be a suitable LED unit to go for?

I've picked up a Redsea Reefer 170 and thought it would make a nice planted tank. Any advice on sump media and lighting? Ultimately I want a very low mantainence tank that I can grow some nice mosses and plants in but needs very little attention! I plan to keep it lightly stocked with some...

My guess is that the discus would benefit from a nightime drip W/C and I could still do a 50% each weekend. Do plants absorb ferts in the dark?

I am lucky with where this tank will be situated. It's my office which is constructed in one half of a double garage. Just the other side of the stud wall I have water point, mains drainage and power. I can easily have a 50 gallon container or prepared water just the other side of the wall and...

Sure:) I attempted this before. Set up a nice 80 gallon tank and spent 3 months letting it get established and allowing the plants to get going. It actually looked pretty good....until the discus went in. With the increase in bioload and nutrients it wasn't long before our old friend Mr Algae...

How about if the water change was on a solenoid and happened after lights out through the night? I would probably still do a vac and small water change weekly anyway.

I'm planning a new discus tank. This tank has inspired me and I want to replicate something along these lines. The tank will be 4x2x2 with a sump. I'll use low lighting, a couple of T5's C02 and probably Tropica substrate under pool filter sand. I have the facility that I could have this...

Just a little bit of BBA appearing on the moss that's high up on the drift wood and close to the LED light. I've cut the lights to 6 hours a day and will increase the Easy Carbo dose.

Excellent. Thanks again for the help. I'm going to make a quick video of the tank next week as I have a DSLR filming lesson coming up. Also ordered a large portion of Salvinia.

Cheers sciencefiction. A solid days learning;) OK. I've now twisted the spraybar down...there is now no surface agitation, just movement. Floaters drifitng around nicely and now moving over the planted area. One question, surely I'm now lacking enough oxygen, particulalry with discus in mind?

Is the idea of the floaters to create shade or suck up nutrients? The reason I ask is that the way this tank is now set-up the floaters now congregate at the bare end. If they are required to create shade over the planted area, I need to move the spray bar to the opposite end.

OK. I've made a change to the tank. The JBL spraybar has been halved in length and put on the side of the tank rather than the back. Now the floaters are circulating in the current, but not getting pushed under. So, hopefully improved that problem and have shortened the lights on to 7 hours a...

I have the spray bar set up so it's blasting the surface. The floaters are getting somewhat battered and pushed under when they get right in the current. That's a problem, I want a good surface coverage of floaters, but have concerns about 02 saturation at 82 degree's. How about an eheim...

But it looks ugly? no?

Ah. Nail on head ;) But I need a lot of surface agitation to get 02 in. The temp is 28.5 (discus)

I have some Frogbit in there and have from the start. Maybe not enough. Looking at the floaters leaves i would hazzard a guess that I'm possibly not adding enough ferts. It's a bit early to tell really.

The nice thing with these LED's is the moonlight mode. I could set the bigger one for a couple of hours less on full power, then leave the small one on moonlight so I have some light to enjoy it with, later in the day.

If I turn the 18" Beamsworks down to it's low setting, it still looks OK...but is that enough for the plants? THE GDA seems to be worse right under this LED. It's not too bad, a thin film over most of the glass.

Try setting the colour temp manually. You'll never get an accurate grey card reading from a fish tank.

I'm starting to see a little bit of GDA in this tank. Never used LED's before and I'm concerned that I'm overlighting this considering the plant load and more low tech approach. The tank had been running for 4 weeks. That piece of wood with the nice moss growth was from another nature tank...

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=msdjll" target="_blank"><img src="http://i62.tinypic.com/msdjll.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a> I raced bikes up until late 2012. Had a bad fall and broke my hip. Now I ride just for fun, don't have to eat rabbit food and train for 10...

Shop Name: Wayside Aquatics Location: Brentwood, Essex Directions: 5 Blackmore Rd, Doddinghurst, Brentwood. Essex, CM15 0HU What they Offer: Tropical only. Most of it Dutch tank bred and excellent quality. Often a selection of the rare and unsual. Tropica Stockist: Good selection of very...

I'm starting to get a bit of GDA in this tank. it's 30" deep and I have 1 18" and 1 12" Beamsworks LED's over the planted area for 9 hours a day. 10ml macro's 10ml micro's on alternate days, 7ml Easy carbo a day and a 50% water change per week. Is the lighting too bright? or is this just the...

I thought a couple of pics may help. The large bogwood has a plastic ring underneath the sand that I put a small bag, around 1 cm deep, of tropica substrate in. I wanted to give the plants a decent chance that end of the tank. The other end is thin pool filter sand that can easily be hoovered...

Just watched the video on Plantfood.co.uk. Certainly looks easy. The 3x macro/micro dose they suggest is surely a suggestion for a hi tech?

Darrel - I have that floating plant in the tank. The shop I bought it from suggested watching the floating plant as well. They have some excellent low tech displays that have been running for years. Dry salts I have never touched. Would this give me something compareable to the Tropica ones?

I'm cycling the tank at the moment. I took the filter media from a nano and added just a few rummy nose. I will build the companion fish over the next 8 weeks before adding discus. So, a small amount of Tropica Specialised going in every other day until the bigger, messy eaters arrive. Swords...

Darrel - thank you, that's a great help and has clarified some thinking. The phosphoric acid is banished to the bin, mainly because it's going to lead to algae problems with a PO4 spike every waterchange. I left a glass of water overnight and tested this morning with a re-calibrated Ph meter...

Very suspicious of my Ph meters accurracy, so just did a new 2 point calibration. Looks as though I'm .5 over on the readings. Leaving a glass of tap water overnight for a new test. Anything below 8 and I'm happy to leave well alone and let the future maturity of the tank pull it down a bit.

I'm actually tempted to try C02. My only concern is that most discus tanks I have seen with C That's a good analogy Darrel. Thank you for your thoughts. No one has answered my original question....will using phosphoric acid add phosphates to the water? I am going for Stendker discus, which...

Thanks ceg4048 I appreciate your advice. The tank is not C02 injected, but gets a dose of Easy Carbo and ferts daily. Planting is more on wood than substrate, so not really much in the way of fast growing, nutrient sucking plants. I'm assuming using phosphoric acid is also going to give me a...

Isn't phosphoric acid used in a lot of fizzy drinks and food stuffs? I used it for years to lower the ph when I kept discus some years back with no problems at all. I also know that the local Malaysian discus importer also uses it. I appreciate care is needed, which the water change process...

Chelmsford. Must explain the Essex sense of humour. Chelmsford. Must explain the Essex sense of humour.

I'm currently cycling a planted tank for discus. My local tap water has a high ph of 8.5 after 24 hours of circulation. So I am using phosphoric acid with weekly WC's (8ml 81% in 180l water) to bring things down to around 7.2 A question for the scientists on here: Would the acid be adding...

Would this give me the rich growth that I want though? Also, I'm guessing it would be very slow growth.

Nice. Are these all yours Edvet? There was an article on Practical Fishkeeping a while back, a tank make-over for a guy who's a minor celeb, from, I think, 5th Gear. This was mainly planting on wood and looked fantastic...that's more what I want to achieve.

Beefheart Internal power filter

Thanks Edvet. I will be using a 2217 external and also an internal as back up and to add some more flow. Lighting - I have 2 Beamswork LEDS, one 12" and 1 18" The Stendkers will be 12cm solids and solid snakeskins.

Can I ask you experienced guys for some help please? I'm awaiting the delivery of a new tank - 370L 40" long 30" deep x 19". My plan is to keep a few cory's. shoal of rummy nose and cardinals, along with 6 Stendker discus. I want to keep a thin layer of sand as substrate and only plant on some...

Anyone have any experience with these? I want to set up a natural tank. These look quiet stylish, come with decent lighting and filtration.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Flash-Trigger-fit ... dZViewItem Heres a link for the cheap radio triggers

With ETTL the camera is making the exposure decisions....and it is not always consistant. With the flash in manual mode you have full control. And once you find a flash setting that's to your taste/look your exposures should be the same every time. In fact, for aquarium photography I would be...

George, The ST-E2 does not work if anything gets in the way of the infra-red signal. You'll be much better off with radio triggers. Have a look on Ebay, you can get a transmitter and receiver that will fit your Canon flash from China.....around 15 quid, and they work just fine. You'll also...

ceg4048....you clearly know your stuff. :wink: :wink: I appreciate your help.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I have a one of the cheap Tetra Co2 diffusers....I get the feeling this is next to useless. Lighting is 11w unit. Will I get the neccessary nutrients from the tetra Plantamin if I start to use it regularly? Simon

I've noticed the crypts in my 5 gallon Nano have started to suffer a bit. Looks like a small hole appears then a section of the leaf dies off. They were doing really well, chucking out new leaves and roots. Can snails do this? Or could it be as the tank has matured the nutrient levels have...

When I finally get round to setting up my Lido, I think I'll give Akadama a look. Although I prefer a darker substrate. Perhaps Akadama with a layer of eco-complete on top.

This is a really cheap supplier of Akadama in Kent area....just 6.50 a sack! http://www.lvbonsai.co.uk/soil.asp

Sam, The Japanese bonsai sieves come with a set of size graded interchangeable grids....that way you can acurately seperate out the particle sizes. A bag of red line akadama with have particles from 1-6/7mm. http://www.kaizenbonsai.com they sell everything, infact some of the other Japanese...

I've just found this and I'm amazed! I've kept bonsai for 10 years and have always used Akadama...never considered it as a substrate. It does seem to break down after around 4 years with bonsai, not sure if being submerged in water will effect this. One thing I can add that might help. You...

I bought some from my local LFS. It was Tropica, but despite the well known brand name, I was horrified at how much green hair algae was mixed in with it. I still tied it to some wood.....looks like the green hair algae is growing as strong as the moss

I think I'm begining to make sense of it all! the article I was directed to on drop checkers was excellent....thanks to the author. I will go for one of the Ebay valve and solenoid sets. How about filtration? Keep the internal "eyesore" Juwel filter? or remove it, and replace with an external...

Thanks Graeme, Can I achieve this carpeted look without using RO water and weekly water changes? I'm happy to waterchange maybe 2 weekly. My tap water has a GH of around 14 and a Ph of around 7.5 Can you point me in the direction of C02 information with a solenoid night time shut off? I don't...

Guys, first of all, thank you for your time and generous advice. I used to consider myself quiet an experienced aquarist, worked in a shop, bred discus, kept all sorts....but this new planted concept and technology is quiet alien to me. I think it was just in it's infancy when I hung up my last...

Hi all, my first post here. After a 15 year lay-off (used to keep killies and discus) I want to dip my toes in the water with a planted tank. I was thinking of a Juwel Lido, but want to keep things reasonably simple. Can i get some advice from you seasoned pro's on: A: what plants thrive in...