T&J

Yikes, my weather loach has never jumped the tank - maybe it's time to get a cover before he does!

What's on sale? I can't find any mention of it on their site.

Wow, that's a close call for sure. You daughter must have a nocturnal sixth sense for impending disaster.

I had basically the same experience, selection seemed solid but prices were pretty awful an a lot of things. I was looking for an XP3 and hoping that the new store in town would have lower prices to attract new customers - no dice, the filter was $20 more than Gold's, so I bought it elsewhere. Staff were very green and seemed to know less than I do, and I'm fairly new to the aquarium thing myself. Plant selection was rather nice and I might swing by another day to look at them more in-depth.

I've spent the last few months setting up my 55G freshwater and I got around to taking some current pics of it tonight. White sand substrate, stock filter & heater, homemade stand. How it started, basic 55G kit with crap lights (2X15W), fishless cycling: How it looks now with loads of plants and a much-upgraded light fixture (260W of CFL's plus moonlighting) Golden gourami, she's surprisingly aggressive. Sterba's Cory (pretty sure anyway, they weren't identified at the LFS), got 3 of them and they're awesome. Got a few more plants to add and a better CO2 system, but she's petty well finished for now - at long last!

That's a great idea, using the processor and veggies. I've got a couple predators that would probably enjoy that, will the smaller omnivores (gouramis, mollies) eat it as well if it's processed into small enough bits?

You'll need to resize them, try Photoshop Express if you don't want to download anything. https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html Hosting sites like Photobucket will also auto-resize for you if you want them to.

Interestingly, my ammonia was at zero ppm with only very small amounts added for the duration of the "stall." The bacteria was turning ammonia into nitrites pretty much as fast as I could add it. If there was single reason for the delay, it wasn't the water's ammonia content. A also realize that rinsing in tap water is recommended against, but even after that, the 24h-test I did still got rid of the ammonia post-haste. Whatever the reason, what I did worked.

So, in retrospect, I think I initially added too much ammonia too quickly and created too large of a culture which caused my nitrite to skyrocket and kept the second culture from growing. I ended up doing a 75% water change, and rinsed out one of my filter cartridges with tap water to bring down the bacteria count. I followed that up with a 50% change to bring the nitrite down to readable levels and added a smaller ammonia dose (3ppm). I cranked up my water temperature also. Over 6 days the nitrites took a short jump upwards past 5ppm and then plunged for zero! After a small change to remove most of the the produced nitrates (down to 10ppm) I'm ready to stock my tank! Thanks again for your help!

The line on mine specifically states "minimum depth", as that's the minimum level the heater should be submerged to to prevent the above-water glass from overheating and cracking. I suspect that's what the line on most, if not all, submersible heaters represents.

Yeah, I've been adding a small amount of ammonia daily to keep the primary culture fed and happy. I'll crank up the heater a couple notches and see if that helps, thanks!

Thanks for the help, folks. I did a 50% water change yesterday and the nitrites are still above 5ppm, so hopefully that gets things going. I've got lots of oxygenation, so that should help things along as well. Just gotta have patience, I guess! I suspect that reading the articles online about people cycling their tank in 10-14 days got me impatient, haha!

Sorry for the newbie question, but I'm halfway through cycling my 55G FW tank and it seems to be going nowhere fast. I used the Septo-Bac/Ammonia method to get it going, and initial response was positive - I loaded the tank with ammonia to ~6ppm and let the bacteria develop, it slowly dropped until after a week when it dropped sharply and nitrites really spiked. Ammonia dropped to 0, nitrites jumped from trace to 5ppm+ in the space of a few days. I added small doses of ammonia (0.5ppm) to keep the first bacterial culture healthy while the second developed. Unfortunately, the second kind of bacteria doesn't seem to be coming along. Nitrates have not increased above the 5.0ppm level that's already present in my tap water. Nitrites remain outside of my readable range (5ppm+) and have been there for a week and a half now. Is there anything I can do to get this thing going again, or am I just expecting too much?

Egad. :shock:

Thanks for the tips, those Red-line Barbs are stunning - but also stunningly expensive!