Crystal

Marineland is recalling the Stealth Pro heaters 100-350. I am not sure if this applies to the older "non-pro" models, though one person said it did. This is part of an email I got last week: "Marineland is currently investigating a potential quality issue with respect to certain models of the Stealth Pro Heater line. As a result of these issues Marineland has suspended sales of the 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 watt models of the Stealth Pro Submersible Heater line." Just in case you happen to have one running (I happen to have one running which I will have to unplug).

Lol. I somehow doubt daisies (even 8-bit ones) and water lilies are very closely related...

I have several of these plants. They don't resemble the pond lilies I am more familiar with. The leaves are mostly green with some rectangular red splotches, underside of leaf is completely green. Leaves are all about 3-4" long and 2" wide. Stems can range from a few inches to 2 feet, depending on water level. There are no submerged leaves on these plants, and they refuse to produce one. Every leaf floats on the surface (or attempts to in stronger current), if it cannot establish leaves on the surface, the plant eventually dies. The stems are fragile, and snap like a thin, crisp bean sprout. It has no tubers, and the roots are white (and "crisp" and snap easily) and only grow about 5-6". The plant detests having its roots moved, and my most of my plants are in small pots so I can move them without the plant dieing. It reproduces by runners. When I got mine, the parent plant had small white flowers which floated on the surface - none of mine have flowered. It barely grew for over a year (no runners), but the last 2 months it has shot out at least a dozen runners. You can see the runner and the lack of submerged leaves. You can see the roots, and lack of tubers. This guy was in an awkward place to root him, so I never got around to it. This is my 90g, and the stems reach the surface and stretch quite a ways, if the plants in front of the filter can't get their leaves on top, they will die after a while. Any ideas? I do have a hardy pond lily in my tank and it is completely different. I am going to have to sell some of these soon, and would like to be able to tell the people what it is.

I am having issues between around 6am until 11am. I get an error. It is almost like the server is doing backups.

In a 10g you could do a small colony/pair of shelldwellers (Neolamprologus Multifasciatus, Brevis, gold occies, etc). Not the most colorful fish going, but plenty of personality and they breed easily. You could also do a planted tank with a mix of small fish (mountain cloud minnows, danios, etc) or shrimp.

1) The purple thing? Looks like it is possibly a kind of sheet coraline algae. Or the feather duster behind it? 2)Type of macroaglae 3) Looks like a type of sheet coraline algae, although I had a sponge at one point that looked like that. 4) Not sure, possibly a harmless hitchhiker. If it moves, it may be a type of snail. 5) algae 6) looks like a feather duster or tube worm. 7) can't see it clearly enough to tell. Although most pistol shrimp occasionally make snapping/popping noises once the lights go out.

Here is my largest tank. A 90g planted tank. Unfortunately, I am terrible at remembering the plant names, but there there are java ferns, several varieties of crypts, a lot of pygmy chain, 2 kinds of hygro, limnophilia?, hardy water lily, a miniture lily that spreads by runners, rose sword (it has bloomed twice), vals, diva duckweed (I keep a few on top as they go nuts before algae has a chance), and a couple of others. There is co2 so the plants think they are weeds... I originally had a breeding pair of red jewels and a pair of albino BN plecos, it actually worked very well - once I put some rocks on top of the sword roots as that was the only place the jewels wanted to dig. I just wanted more fish, so I removed the jewels and decided to create a mixed community. The fish: 8 red rams, 5 neon rainbows (originally 12), 2 SAE, 3 albino BN plecos, 1 angel fish, some livebearers, 24 pygmy cories, a pair of keyhole cichilds (soon to have their own 20g), 8 gold mountain cloud minnows, and a lot of normal Mountain cloud minnows. Oh, and a few million MTS to keep the substrate clean and eat rotting plant debris. What a difference in the first six months... Most of the photos are from today, just did a major pruning, so plants aren't at their best. My picture skills aren't the best either... January 2010 (just a pair of red jewels and the plecos) July 2010 (rams, angels, SAE, and the plecos) January 3 2011: Full tank view mini lily (leaves are about 3" long) one of the runners Red ram Keyhole with red ram Angelfish Pygmy cory Dwarf Neon Rainbowfish Swordtail (got these at the auction - would love to find out who sold them, I would like to get more) Mountain cloud minnows (Who says these guys are boring? My males are almost pure black! The gold morph adds some contrast) Feeding time And to think it started out as a saltwater tank...

I have a nice DIY background idea for a 20g, but I would prefer to use Black eggcrate instead of white. Nothing worse than bits of white eggcrate peeking through cracks between black rocks... Where in Edmonton would I be able to find black eggcrate? Thanks!

I bought the betta mirror ball for my cichlids (jewels), and it definitely gets some air when they get going.

I always have some Diva duckweed (pinkie finger-nail sized duckweed)in all my tanks (heavily planted, or no plants), it goes crazy before the algae does. Easy top remove with a net, and too large to get sucked into the filter. (I agree, the mini duckweed is horrid). Best of luck getting rid of the algae. All the above are good ideas, blackout, water changes, lighting, Co2, nutrient imbalance, etc.

My tank always used to be 7.4-7.6, but once I heavily planted it (there is no 2" space of open sand) and added co2, my ph has dropped to 6.3 over a 6 month span. I've noticed that driftwood and peat can soften the water, slightly over time. I use pond peat in my canister, it is coming out though as my ph is getting too low for my liking despite regular water changes.

A desk lamp, or betta bowl light with a bulb rated for around 6700K would work.

Looks good. I do something similar, but use bubbleponics. Lettuce grows great in a setup like yours. Let us know how the tomatoes taste when you get some fruit. Surely all those cords and wires don't belong to the aquaponic setup or other fish tanks...

Thanks for all of the good luck! It worked and the algae is gone! The blackout didn't do much. The co2 actually made it worse for the first month. The barley extract worked fairly well, slowing it down so that everything else could take it out. I moved my Red jewels out and will eventually turn the tank into a dwarf south American tank - but I can now add algae eating fish and snails. I added red ramshorn snails, who thought it was candy. I added giant duckweed on the surface to limit the light a bit and suck up excess phosphates. I also added 2 small siamese algae eaters, who are now quite fat. The duckweed actually made the most difference, the other plants don't seem to mind the reduced light either. The blanket weed seemed to die off once it no longer had direct light, it survived lower light in the bottom of the tank, but as the duckweed spread the blanket weed died. Finally! My tank is mine again! :thumbs:

I didn't use as much salt/copper as I normally do as these were 1" fry, I used about 3/4 of usual the dose. They weren't wild caught, their parents reside in my 90g tank, I have had the fry for a couple of months now. I simply had them in quarantine as it was easier to clean up leftover foods. It may have come in on some plants I recently got. Water changes used "established" water from my 90g tank, which is planted and has only a few fish in it. Where would one find the anti-parastic foods? Not that I am sure it would do much good against a pest that kills in 2-3 days... I already soak fish pellets with garlic every other meal (plecos get a few, fish get most of them though). I used to use green malachite, but ran into an ich strain that was immune to it, and used a coppersafe & salt combination ever since.

I had 30ish 1" BN plecos in a quarantine tank, some started scratching so I added salt. The next day many sported a few spots which resembled ich, I increased salt and also added some coppersafe (I have encountered ich many times and rarely have issues defeating it, except with the more sensitive tetras). By that evening all fish had numerous spots and some were already dead. Next morning most were dead. Did a 50% water change and adjusted salt and coppersafe levels to match the tank water before adding. By evening all fish were dead. I am completely stumped and as I stared at one recently dead fish, I realized the spots were actually yellow - I had simply thought that the yellow skin of the albino BNs had made the white of the ich hard to see. Then as I was watching, one of the spots starting swimming away with a jerky motion... The spots are a little bit bigger than the ich I have seen before, and upon closer inspection, there were many of the "spots" swimming around, and even more clinging to the glass. They appeared to be completely unaffected by the levels of salt and coppersafe in water. I have never encountered a parasite (outside saltwater), that appears and kills all fish within 3 days. Anyone have any idea what this is? I have an angel fish in a different tank also showing these same "spots" and I really do not want to loose this pretty angel!

I found ebay surprisingly cheap for brand names. It was cheaper for me to buy and ship it than for me to drive all the way to Edmonton and go through various stores - and there was no guarentee that the stores would even have what I was looking for. There are good deals if you keep your eyes open, in store, online, or even in the buy and sell.

I did it once with an interesting branch from a Manitoba maple. Peeled off all of the bark while it was fresh. I boiled it well, let it dry on the deck (very hot, +40 in summer, no rain beneath eaves-troughs) for a couple of weeks. Then put it in the oven for 1-2 hours (after we had finished baking cookies, we simply turned the heat off and left the door shut). Put it in the tank and used a stone to keep it submerged for about 3-4 weeks until it was water logged. The wood discolored slightly after a while, and it has an interesting color/pattern to it. Anything beneath the gravel wanted to rot, and the water soaked wood was always fairly soft like it was trying to rot, so use caution. Plecos loved it though - eventually I had to remove it as it looked like a well chewed dog's bone... Ensure you boil and bake it well - it does have some toxins; several horses on a farm near here ate some leaves and twigs from branch that fell too close to the fence and died. The dogwood branches I used did better, though it was a pain in the rump to de-bark and boil them.

What size of tank and how old is it? Marine tanks aren't truly stablized until they are about a year old or more. Excess nutrients and lack of flow are the usual culprits for that type of algae. Add carbon and GFO or, even better, if possible add a sump or a hang-on refugium and grow macro algae to absorb the nutrients. 10x flow is a basic figure and can be pushed higher. I prefer powerheads such as the Hydor Koralia, as they can be directed easily. If you use tap water, get an RO or RO/DI unit, bryancatfish is right, our tap water isn't good for marine. Heavy in certain minerals, they tend to build up in the tank, though refugiums with macro algae tend to help. I would never do a marine tank without RO water. If you feed frozen, rinse the food in water first to be rid of the "juices" which are high in phosphates. Feed only as much as you fish can eat - I feed mine pellet by pellet, so nothing is left over. Snails will help, I never really liked hermits though, as they often killed the snails (certain types are worse than others). Good luck.

I agree, is the heater working properly? :well: I never had luck with 50 watts, both of mine fried within days of getting them... I never bothered with a heater for guppies (or danios, or platys, etc). I used to have a 10g like that, I switched to 15 watt bulbs and they produced less heat (CFLs weren't out then). My HOB filter also fell an inch into the water and increased evaporation, and thus heat loss. Some people worry about a 1-3 degree temp change, I don't, as long as it is slow. You have to remember, the water temp in natural water bodies also changes, albeit very slowly.

Blue World Aquatic is having a frag fest sometime this summer (date not yet decided). Last year it was on Aug. 30. (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=58689)

Thanks!

If it dies, I have more. Loved the snails, some were nice reds too. I didn't get much, bidding often went higher than I wanted to pay. I got some nice plants, some red rams, and a bag of the Lemon-lime cichlids. I loved the "red spot angels" - gorgeous! but the bidding went over my budget. PS. Does anybody know a more common (or scientific) name for these particular angels? Or who has them? I googled "red spot angel" and only found diseases... :tongue: I would like to give thanks to the wonderful Auctioneers who kept everything moving smoothly, who were informative, and very entertaining! Without them, the auction wouldn't be the same. Cheers! :thumbs: Can't wait until the Fall auction!

Thanks. I am not sure what kind of swordplant it is. It might be, but I am not sure. This is about 1 week after I got it, but it is a closer picture.

I got a lovely swordplant from a friendly AA member back in January (thanks Catshanon!). I had a hard time getting it into my 90g as it's leaves were so big, I still can't figure out how we got it out of his 33g... It decided about 1.5 months ago to send out a flowering stem - this being my first swordplant, it really surprised me until I did some reading. The stem just wouldn't stop growing (it is about 4 feet long). My brother thinks it is going to attack him... :shifty: It has been blooming for the last month or a bit longer. The blossoms are so pretty! I can't detect any scent, which I think is a pitty. Now I have to figure out what to do with the umpteen dozen plantlets that I am going to have.