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I have always always always used the API master test kits, but I've heard test strips are getting better these days, the Sera kits are good from experience but the one i used was the big black briefcase type kit with all the tests.

The plants will love the ammonia as long as it's not drastic levels, the snails will survive ammonia spikes, I'd say get it in tomorrow with your mate, plant it up, refill with dechlorinated water, change 50% then refill again with dechlorinated, and off you go, instant setup, wait for ammonia...

Well i'm a fit chap, and lifting aquariums isn't the easiest thing in the world even for me, i calculated that if your substrate is 1/6th of the tanks volume that would be equivalent to 12.6kg, it is a lot of stress, not on the tank but mainly on yourself, don't do anything that's going to keep...

Keep the plants dark and moist somewhere nice and temperate not too hot not too cold. The snails will survive with just a minimal amount of water for up to a few days as they can just suck back in the shell, especially if they are mts and pond snails, ramshorns may last a little less time, a...

i have witnessed a few full ADA setups in person, nothing compares for clean simplicity and ergonomics, i would just have to save for a year or take out a new credit card to afford it though, like my friend Napoleon from here says.... if he didn't buy ADA, certain substances would be a cheaper...

Where i live... not great options to be honest... i can collect some nice wood and stuff but finding rocks with real structure and character that aren't reactive is definitely an art form in itself...

Personally? i'm going to answer the budget option question as that's the type of hobbyist i am... Tank: 2nd hand Aquarist classifieds, ebay, gumtree. Cabinet: DIY or get one with the 2nd hand tank. Filter: Tetratec, Jbl or Eheim external, or hamburgmattenfilter with moss/rheophytes (still want...

I concur with this, razor blade in a scraper cradle (stanley and screwfix do good ones they are like 2 quid) and either just use water for the soft stuff, or a spray with vinegar and wait 5 mins for the chunkier stuff, i'm constantly scraping evap lines myself, but if you do it regularly you...

My fish always seem to prefer the cold water end of the tank at a waterchange, i usually drop about 2 degrees C when refilling without any problems. I dont know whether it is that accurate or not but i take my temp off my heating thermostat and compare to a food grade thermometer, my thinking...

Could always use a booster pump before the RO unit to up tap pressure and reach appropriate head height. mine doesn't like being over 1 meter above the RO either, seems i'm on a similar pressure to you michael.

From the articles i have been reading relating to nitrifying bacteria/archaea and chlorination/chloramination, there may be more to it. These bacteria are actually quite sensitive to low concentrations of chlorine. But it may be the case that the colony in your filter has vast capacity for...

Mine are always full of tiny particles of wood and nerite poop, pretty sure they eat the wood in my mind, always smells like cold tea inside my canister...

Us londoners can only dream... i am very jealous. should imagine being in NL you will be fine, but could you maybe just take a couple buckets extra out the tank on filter cleaning day? i mean it makes sense to me to use "used" water for the environments sake, rather than using tap, and just...

The real issue for me and why i don't do rinsing in tap, is chloramine dosing because of pipe works in London, you can never trust thames water they will just use the stuff willy nilly, i sent an email to their "PR department" and they replied informing me it was fine to use aerated water as...

I just squeeze out my sponges inside the canister tub, empty that and refill, then i do my waterchange afterwards to get rid of anything that kicks out of the filter. Not sure i would trust washing my filter sponges in thames water tap.

Agreed! and there is quite the colony of something on the left hand side of the glass there... get the scraper out matty!

We need a closer photo i think!

Enhance! 🕵️‍♂️😅

i just thought it looked kind of like the marine cyano ive seen, never seen it in my planted tanks.

Having stared at the picture for eternity, it seems there are bubbles inside some of it on the left side and a more purplish colouration which is indicative of cyano. Closer picture and some more info would be lovely.

Indeed i forgot about this video, i tend to just waft with my fingers, but it is a really good technique.

Depends on the tank size, for a smaller tank a large turkey baster is amazing and doubles up as a fry catcher feeder etc etc, for a bigger tank i think you would be there a long time basting away.

Nice DIY :) thanks for sharing.

The only diffuser that ever worked for me was the neo style with the ceramic plonked ontop of the glass part of the diffuser, these youtubers probably don't care much about how long their bottle lasts as they probably have 5 more sitting in a store room waiting, so if the drop checker isn't...

For reference, my eheim jagers are anywhere between 0.5 and 1.5 degrees off the actual temperature they cut off at, i own a fair few cheap digital 'aquarium' thermometers and they are off by quite a bit too, my most accurate are my TDS+temp and a meat thermometer that i got off ebay.

Buy an accurate digital cooking thermometer then set your temperate based on how far off the heater is, no heater i have had has been the same as the next one. i like eheim heaters but they are all much of a muchness, they will all break one day.

best i could do with the res on the image, the fish are harlequins. ;)

Nice! this is some of the palm flower stems i foraged.

That Graca M. study seems to suggest it's less about the species of leaf and more about what organisms are living on and digesting the leaf... i also found this interesting study on biofilms in macrophyte plants in flow vs static waters, it seems the colonies are extremely diverse i don't...

A for effort though.

Well i just learned my TDS meter is just a conductivity reading multiplied. :lol:

Firstly thanks for the reply ;) Funnily enough i get pretty much no melting apart from when im transplanting crypts and trim the root system, i use almost exclusively ADA amazonia and fine play sand. (not together) Used to get plenty when i was using injected co2 but not since going low tech...

Myself i use the transparent top from a old mini propagator with the vent removed as a plant pot and an old extra large mag float cleaner to hold it onto the glass. i was also wary to place my plant into a HOB as the roots will eventually reach the impellor, i'm probably going to add a larger...

Actually surprised me that Darrel, curious as to why only 10%? but everyday instead, i'm in the 40-50% weekly club even without dosing EI (low tech), london tap means i have to dose less ferts... i might increase that if i'm getting diatoms early in a setup or something.

Thanks for the link zozo love those cup pods on there, i actually collected some palm pods and dried flowers, date stalks, and a couple fronds today as you all got me in the spirit. :) Part of me wonders if the suitability of alder for feeding shrimp is in any way related to the trees love of...

i finally figured the site out haha! only took me 2 days. :lol:

Still wondering how you actually order botanicals off that site... am i missing something? is it seasonal only?

Decaf tea :lol: Boiling bits of mopani wood is good for making tannin rich water too.

Forage up a load of beech and oak leaves to make a brew, wash them, dry them, then boil em up into a dirty gravy, just make sure you are collecting responsibly and away from footpaths and such, not near trees marked with spraypainted dots in red and green because of pesticide spraying, surely...

It's food safe, the only things i can find on it is caffeine changing some biomechanisms in fish... but the study said it did not induce oxidative stress after 168 hours... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29438913/ I just use leaves and wood myself.

My vote goes to aliens....! :lol: but what miranda said sounds more plausible.

Sometimes when i put in new floating plants they dont want to float so you have to encourage them a little bit by trying to catch air under them, and repeatedly blowing dry the leaves. Are you using something to diffuse the water as you refill after your waterchange? (red colander? LOL) being...

So they are adding nutrients via a soak/shower process and drying afterwards? i have heard of calcination kilns but i thought those ran at far higher temps, that's why i assumed aquasoil would be kiln dried clays, but you are saying it is calcinated soils? all very interesting to me, you guys...

Hi ceg, curious how this works, so as aquasoil is kiln dried at around say 190 degrees F, it is not subject to the oxidation process during manufacturing? is this why certain aquasoils are considered ammonia free? because they are baked in kilns that run at a higher temperature?

As far as a sense of depth goes, in person it's very hard to achieve, but you can sort of cheat and gain depth by changing photography angles etc, also planting schemes and different heights of plants can help to create the illusion of deeper spaces in the tank, i have to say you have much more...

For a second aquascape, that hardscape is mad.... very natural looking and the transition between wood rocks stones and sand really flows....

I know it doesn't look that good right now guys! but watch this!...

Good shout on pre-soaking, my brain isn't all there recently! also very true about a nutrient rich substrate not necessarily being needed to grow decent plants. As Courtney said, you may as well keep the Aquasoil in the tub rather than the fish! at least until you are ready to tear-down and...

The way ive always dealt with cyano is manual removal and regular water changes and it just goes, i have had more problems with it with older aquasoil than fresh stuff.

Fluval stratum doesn't leach ammonia, fish can stay in tubs for prolonged periods with mature filtration and lighting.

That is genius i have to say.... especially for tubs and water butts....

This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar

Now i'm going to be hoarding water bottles... :lol:

Difficult to keep small as once pruned they produce very large epicormic shoots, which you can remove to retain the previous shape, but leads to gradual loss of vitality.

Others have put some good information across, but i will give my opinion because why not :lol:, leaves from Lime(Linden) and cherry will decompose quickly and are not very long term, lime is better as a food source than for leaf litter, oak, magnolia, walnut and sweet chestnut are good options...

Lol! so cute, like a little doggy playing in the leaves.

What a beauty. :clap: Nice aquascape.

Would be cool if it was a bryozoa, propper intriguing organism, my thinking on it being an iron feeding bacteria was based on where you found it, as this convenient wiki article states on iron-oxidizing bacteria, "Iron-oxidizing bacteria colonize the transition zone where de-oxygenated water...

iron leachate bacteria bio-film maybe? are you dosing iron or traces into the tank?

I've never used them, i've seen anecdotal evidence on other forums that products such as Hagen's "cycle" make no difference in the time it takes to cycle a tank, best bet for speeding up a cycle is to try and find someone who can sort you out some filter mulm in my opinion.

Somehow i feel i am to blame for this derailment... :lol:

Pretty sure it was a bitumen based sealant with all sorts of horrible stuff in it, can't blame them for trying though, i've seen a few tanks circa 1920's-30's in the flesh and they are pretty horrible lol.

I have seen illustrations of cast iron aquariums kept in victorian times, they seem to have plants and fish, but who knows whether they are actually accurate!

ADA aquasoil is the only one i trust, still not tried the tropica stuff @Zeus. ;)

I have to say i have learnt more from tom barr posts than takashi amano, but mr amano provided a lot of inspiration even if i was never an ADA fanboy. Sent from my E2303 using Tapatalk

Great reading guys thank you kindly for the in depth replies. i have always just used a drop checker with 4dkh in my co2 tanks never owned a ph pen. Since coming back to the hobby i am trying to perfect non-co2 growing in a moderate to high lighting tank, its going fine in the tank with lots...

Surely a cheaper probe would do for a PH profile for co2? it might read the wrong PH but it would still read the 1.0 drop? or am i just completely wrong? :)

That's shocking, i ordered 3 bags with free postage, then 6 bags with free postage again, very odd for them to charge you extra.

Knew you would have an answer Darrel, i learn so much reading your posts. :bookworm: :lol: :thumbup:

I'm not a geologist so consider these guesses, but the 2 on the right look like granite, the top left might be gneiss, and the lower left looks like pumace or eroded limestone, @dw1305 might have an accurate answer. :)

The gear excites me, the price certainly does not....:lol:

Sounds like temperature swing if it looks milky.

Yeah our funnel web spiders are just cuties, i don't envy the antipodeans there....

The stuff i find is usually full of funnel webs, really not for the arachnophobes lol. :lol:

Lovely piece/s, they look lignin dominant too so should be great for an aquarium. :)

i'm using the API master test kit, they are all a bit of a sameness really unless you go for something lab grade, but even then it doesn't really justify the extra price, a lot of fish vets actually use the JBL testlab kit.

Not really the same amount of choice though, the mother plants on aquaessentials at 10% off are a good deal, could always try pets at home for tropica plants, one of my LFS does aquadip plants which are 3 for 11.99 too.

10% off plants at aquaessentials right now. :)

Rams horn snails, they are pretty harmless to plants, they feed off decaying detritus, excess food and algae in the tank, i like them myself but snails are a controversial subject to some.

Q1. What filter media goes in the sump. The design of the Reefer means I need to use filter socks/cups.... but what else do I put in, and how much? Biological media, some sponges, i run filters so i don't know about freshie sumps really, check out corvus oscen on youtube for freshwater sumps...

I will be sure to tune in. :)

My instinct says taking em off is going to be more trouble than it's worth, unless its shoddy glue and they are loose already, i don't want to just say yeah have at it, because likelihood is there is a risk you could do some damage.

Check your local water provider for an accurate water report, better than your test kits will give. As far as nutrient base layers go, there is a hell of a lot of choice, Colombo flora nutri base, Tropica plant growth substrate, JBL aqua basis+, JBL proflora, ADA nutrients (expensive), have a...

Got a picture or what brand the tank is?

Are they from nick fish by any chance? his plants look pretty decent.

Get more plants than you think you need, i got 200+ plants and 4 1-2-grows for 2 tanks totalling 240L, and it literally was just enough, for a juwel rio 400 you are going to need a big pile of plants.

Nice! :thumbup:

By all means, please do, i would be happy to help buddy. :):thumbup:

Yeah without experience it is hard, if in doubt, don't take it, i can tell from the structure of it and the branch unions, but that is what 10 years cutting trees does. Also if you are prepping dry wood, there is a process to it, you have to dry it completely for a month or 2, until it is bone...

My area of expertise... :D yes there is such a thing as safe wood, definitely not pine, or any toxic species like laurel, yew, laburnum, etc. make sure it is not near any sources of pollution. Standing deadwood or good dry deadwood is always what you are looking for, lignin based deadwood is...

Now i'm curious... o_O

Got one of those maps for the southeast @dw1305 ?

I too have been a stupid mong and put a bottom panel tank on a stand with nothing underneath... 1 grain of sand later and waking up at 3am with water gushing everywhere.... i will never put a tank down without anything under it ever again.

I like large focal points on large tanks i think they just work, i'm not speaking from experience though as i can't own anything huge myself. a good example is this video from Filipe Oliveira. And George Farmer's aquascaper 1200 illustrates a nice open substrate large tank.

I got some great eleocharis 12Grows from P@H, it was actually the first time i have ever been in one, i tried my best not to look at the livestock to be fair, the plant selection was limited but healthy.

Some great advice there darrel, the over watering during winter makes absolute sense as my dad always goes a bit mad watering the house plants even during winter.

Could be the reason some of my house plant cuttings have not taken you know...

these little buggers love my house plants.... grrr :banghead: i use the old fashioned fly strips when they get excessive.

What diseases does the sciarid fly transfer if i may ask @dw1305 ? just curious.

turkey baster