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  1. Ed Seeley

    Help needed with low CO2 setup

    Well if it were me I'd probably look at Tropica Plant Nutrition plus as it's an all-in-one fertiliser with nitrate and phosphate. Still a much more expensive option than EI though but seems you'll have no choice. I love Aquasoil and would always recommend it, but I use it with good CO2 and...
  2. Ed Seeley

    Help needed with low CO2 setup

    Whereabouts are you based? I assume you're not in the UK? You can use excel/easycarbo as a complete replacement for CO2 but the growth is slower and it may get rather expensive on a 180l tank!
  3. Ed Seeley

    Which soil to use?

    Normally soil is heat sterilised rather than irradiated like frozen food and I bet a fair few bacteria will survive the heating process anyway. Personally I just shoved some nice loamy garden soil in the tank I used and wasn't too worried about its source!
  4. Ed Seeley

    Which soil to use?

    When they say sterilised it's almost certainly very far from it! As far as a gardener's concerned it means that there won't be any weed seeds or similar, not down to a bacterial level. And as soon as it's removed from the steriliser it will soon be contaminated by bacteria again. It's...
  5. Ed Seeley

    Diana Walstead style tanks

    I've got a soil and no CO2 tank at school and it does quite well. Never going to be an aquascaped tank as I simply don't have time to maintain it enough and the plant growth is so slow. It has some algae as the fish stock is really too high for a planted tank IMHO but the fish are happy and...
  6. Ed Seeley

    el natural questions!

    In emersed plants large leaves generally evolve to collect as much sunlight as possible (along with a range of other adaptations to the cellular structure of the leaf and alterations to the photosynthetic pigments) in calm (so the leaves aren't damamged) dark places such as forest floors. Sword...
  7. Ed Seeley

    carpetting / foreground cover

    Under the lighting you've got with good reflectors you can grow hairgrass and glosso (as I am!), but I would try them without CO2. I have E.tennellus growing brilliantly and have grown that, and Marsilea crenata, in lower tech tanks in the past with decent success, but I'd really try and get...
  8. Ed Seeley

    EI Natural v. Low Tech

    It's not E.I., it's El (EL), as in rather bad french pronunciation. From what I understand it started of as a little joke and kinda stuck. Flora said this in an earlier post. If you want to read more about 'El Natural' look at this thread on APC. Diana is a very regular visitor there and the...
  9. Ed Seeley

    Which soil to use?

    Well you get a nice tank out of all the to-ing and fro-ing!!!! I'd honestly go for Tanganyikans if you go for hard water cichlids. Much more intersting than Mbuna! And you can always put a few plants in too! As for the bottle test, basically it's putting some soil in a bottle or other...
  10. Ed Seeley

    Which soil to use?

    I'd go with your back garden soil. Former river bed should be pretty good stuff really. You may want to do a quick bottle test just to be sure that it doesn't contain too much Organic waste that could cause problems. If you buy some soil then Pond soil would be very safe option and if you want...
  11. Ed Seeley

    EI Natural v. Low Tech

    IMHO, El Natural means tanks that have a soil substrate and infrequent (twice yearly (!) or so) water changes coupled with decent fish load, no CO2 and only mechanical filtration, apart from the plants as Flora said. I'd say Low tech would be a broader church of all the types of system that use...
  12. Ed Seeley

    My Wife thinks I should buy a new tank...

    I've heard this before, even from Diana Walstad, but I'm not too sure about the science behind it really! Once you get roots growing then I am sure that they are transporting more water and nutrients from the substrate than natural diffusion, and that is a pretty potent force itself and will...
  13. Ed Seeley

    My Wife thinks I should buy a new tank...

    I don't know but I don't think so. I have BBA in every tank I own! It grows in this tank where NH4 may well be an occasional issue as this tank has 2 big wild angelfish, 10 cories, 4 big congo tetras and a pair of Pelvicachromis suboccelatus 'Matadi', so it's pretty well stocked and as it's in...
  14. Ed Seeley

    My Wife thinks I should buy a new tank...

    No expert in this either, but I do have one soil tank/no CO2 running at school. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed really, as it takes hardly any maintenance (that also has to do with the mainly crypt planting too). It has got some BBA growing though, but I seem to have this in all my...
  15. Ed Seeley

    new tank set up

    CEG I agree with a lot of your points and hope you see the sense in mine. Do bear in mind though that Tom's observations and experiments are one point of view. There are a lot of others who have studied similar things and come to different conclusions. That doesn't mean that anyone is...
  16. Ed Seeley

    new tank set up

    Hi CEG, I think you've slightly missed my point on this. EI relies on large water changes to reset levels weekly. Keith isn't doing these large water changes and that is the reason I advised caution and some way of monitoring levels. Quoting from Tom's EI article, "Example #1 Suppose you dose...
  17. Ed Seeley

    new tank set up

    Watching how plants and fish respnd is always a good idea, but Test kits can be useful as long as you accept their accuracy limitations. While you can't rely on them accurately giving levels such as 12mg/l, they are usually accurate when compared to previous tests. For instance I would do a...
  18. Ed Seeley

    new tank set up

    Sounds good Keith. All I'd say is that I'd do some testing to check the levels of nutrients in your tank. As you're adding nutrients, both as the salts and as fish food, and not removing them in any way apart from when you trim your plants and remove plant tissue from the tank you may get a...
  19. Ed Seeley

    new tank set up

    That's looking really good Keith. I hope you don't mind me adding the image here with hotobucket.com/albums/l17/keithd100_2006/IMG_3562.jpg[/img] As you've posted this in the low tech bit, I'm wondering whether this is an 'El Natural' tank with soil substrate and no CO2? Or is there some...
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