Hi all, Darrel those articles were really useful, thanks for pointing me to those! Sam you are good, this is the great thing about this forum, it has an huge archive and a lot of posters (like @Bas Pels) who really know what they are on about. I don't need to re-invent the wheel I can go and find a ...

Hi all, As additional info these tanks all have sponge filters, heaters, almond leaves and java ferns. Pretty basic and want to make the maintenance and hygiene as simple as possible to increase the success rates. I plan to provide first foods of micro worms and newly hatched brine shrimp, not sure ...

Hi all, Yesterday morning at 6am I ran down to the fishroom to get something and noticed the 29's lights were on. I looked under the tank and realized the timer had jammed against another cord with the result that the lights had been on 24/7 for two weeks! 99% of algae outbreaks are caused by a comb...

Hi all, http://fisheries.tamu.edu/files/2013/09/The-Use-of-Salt-in-Aquaculture.pdf I'm honestly not sure it helps us a lot. If you are reduced to using salt (NaCl) to control nitrite (NO2-) poisoning, you really need some help long before that. The mechanism by which Cl- ion reduces NO2- intake is l...

Hi all, @Samdaark, yes all my tanks are heavily planted. That one is particularly stuffed, because it has a more powerful light on it and I let the plant mass develop layers until all available PAR is utilised. I'm pretty sure the Pygmy Corydoras wouldn't mind if that structure was mainly leaf litte...

Hi all, Thanks Darrel. I've included a pic of the tank in question (the one on the right) where there are around a dozen Pygmy's. That looks perfect. By the sound of things you are suggesting my water is a bit low on the carbonate and PH for these guys, which isn't a problem since my London tapwater...

Hi all, ......I have a cool, soft water hillstream setup that I have grown Bolbitis heudeloti ...... but I don't recall how important temperature is for B. heudeloti . Its done very well for me in this set up though, so definitely worth considering. It grows well at the temperatures you would keep H...

Hi all, .......whether my water parameters would be suitable for Corydoras Pygmaeus, so that they would be super healthy and also provide good conditions for breeding. Water parameters are: - Temperature: 25'C - KH: 2-3 'dKH - GH: 8-9 'dGH - PH: 6.2 - NH4/NO2/NO3: All close to zero............ You c...

Hi all, Same as the others really, Cryptocoryne spp. are good. Any of the C. beckettii forms will do. Potamogeton gayii is also good in a current, but maybe difficult to find. Bolbitis heudelotii is an epiphyte (so needs gluing to a rock or wood), but likes soft water and high flow. Most epiphytes a...

Hi all, Indeed. Darkness is just one big shelter but not the best one? I do remember commercial pleco breeders talking about spawning species and rearing them in darkness - but those had plenty of shelter too. My guess would be that for, non aufwuchs eating, plecs darkness probably is optimal. I thi...

Hi all,

....... Although shelter did not show any significant role in the overall growth, it significantly reduced the larval mortality than those reared without shelter......

My take home from that is the shelter aspect, rather than the darkness.

cheers Darrel

Hi all, Measuring TDS in clean freshwater is tricky to do in the lab. as well. Even if you are meticulous about filtering (you want the "dissolved solids", not the "undissolved ones") weighing (and keeping the filter paper in the desiccator until the last moment, often the filter...

Hi all, A TDS meter really measures condutivity. And therefore, it only measures charged particles, ions that is. Now, some antibiotics are charged, but as these are still rather large compounds, I wonder whether the antibiotics would bring tis extra TDS measurement. I would assume the pot contains ...

Hi all, So what your saying it will take time to neutralize, I will try to keep my tds count stable between 50 and 60 I really need it to go down to the low 5's. On the butterfly plecos the ph influences the incubation time of the eggs if its to high they hatch prematurely. Thanks for the massive re...

Hi all, Finally got a RO filter going did my first changes did small 30% changes My L168 tank tds is down to 60ppm GH1 KH 1 but the ph is still stuck at 7.6 how long before i can expect it to stat dropping? Will the drop happen gradually? I do have lots of wood in the tank and also added some liquad...

Hi all, I was thinking of kitchen or sea salt. Frankly, I don't even know what epsom salt is. I would still bath her I can't comment on the efficacy of salt (Epsom or otherwise) as a cure, but I can tell you what "Epsom Salts" are. They are "magnesium sulphate heptahydrate" (MgSO...

Hi all, Thanks Darrel, for keeping this up to date. I'm learning a lot. Cheers, Eric I am as well, but it's back to the old problem, trying to line up all the moving bits and then work out what they actually mean in practice. I was thinking about this in terms of marine aquarists using Vodka, or sim...

Hi all, Last one for a bit. This paper looks at the interaction between dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nitrification and the microbial assemblage. The paper is open source, and should be available to every-one: Navada, S., Knutsen, M.F., Bakke, I. et al . (2020) Sci Rep 10 . Nitrifying biofilms dep...

Hi all, .....As for the AOA and AOB. I am not ready to accept the conclusions of Sauder. L. whose name appears on all of the studies I have read so far which conclude AOA are the dominant ammonia oxidizers in aquariums......... This is a paper where they didn't find any AOA, but they found a range o...

Hi all,
Now that is interesting and a pleasant surprise, I also suppose it makes a lot more sense that the image is the issue, rather than the gene sequence.

cheers Darrel

Hi all, ....... But most disturbingly, if their fish is ANY Rineloricaria , why is their COX1 tree throwing it in with all the Sturisomatichthys and Sturisoma . It's either really poorly done molecular work, poorly chosen computer settings for performing the tree building, or it shows COX1 genes are...

Hi all, ..........I have posted this before. Petersen, Nils Risgaard‐, Jensen, Kim, (1997), Nitrification and denitrification in the rhizosphere of the aquatic macrophyte Lobelia dortmanna L., Limnology and Oceanography, 42, doi: 10.4319/lo.1997.42.3.052 https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...

Hi all, I have Walstad's book. I thought it was very good......... I also know that she raises a lot of fish (especially fancy guppies, these days) and takes her own advice, sometimes running experiments to verify ideas. So while she could be mistaken about why something works she's promoting ideas ...

Hi all, I have Walstads book on its way in the mail but I have not read it. However I have suspicions that she is attributing too much to the plants and too little to microbes. No I don't think she is. It is always plant/microbe nitrification when you have plants, and since she wrote her book there ...

Hi all, Yes, I understand that but if the plant didn't release oxygen from the roots, the same ammonia that reached this zone would not be nitrified and could be taken up by the plant at less cost. The plant is "giving" the bacteria the oxygen that it then has to reduce again. It is really...

Hi all, Do you have any thoughts or experience on my problem with pothos not growing? No, it grows in some of the tanks in the lab. in pretty much RO water. Might be a light issue? About plants bringing oxygen down into the substrate through the roots, this article by Diane Walstad says that aquatic...

Hi all, .... she wrote that people, even if they have a planted tank, misunderstand the amount of nitrogen taken up by plants. proteins from fishfood -> excreted ammonia -> proteins in plants Now our fishfood contains 30 to 50 % of proteins, and the plants around 5. That is, only if you take out aro...

Hi all, ......Overall, if you are looking for nitrate removal the way that I think is easiest and least likely to accidentally poison everything is to use fast-growing plants in the aquarium that you trim back (assuming that you remove the plant trimmings from the aquarium). That would definitely be...

Hi all, This is exactly my point! 95%(?) of hobby fish keepers, fish store staff etc, even very experienced people, have a poor understanding of the whole "filtration" process and have no desire to try. The advertisement statements made by manufacturers not only go unchallenged but become ...

Hi all, .........I mean in common aquaristics. I have not seen any data to back up the claims of what various filters and filter media have in terms of properties or capacity. I see large sumps with several compartments, each with a different type of media. One has filter foam in sheets or cubes. Th...