My little tank has a piece of bog wood nicely covered in java fern and some other plant (with round leaves). However this tank also has a nasty infestation of hairy algae that I see in another forum is unbelievable difficult to get rid of. I suspect it is NOT a good idea to put this in my new, currently pristine tank?

Also, is there any problem in using gravel / sand from the local garden shop? After it's been thoroughly washed of course! I have a layer of 3mm gravel / laterite mixture however it is somewhat short of the recommended 2.5cm depth. Given that I can get a 20l bag of gravel from the garden shop for $10, I am very tempted to finish off my substrate with that!

Finally, I am definitely going to do a Fishless Cycle once the dust has settled (I only filled my new tank yesterday). I see people are using diluted ammonia products: I guess this takes fancy work with a calculator to figure ppm's? Given that we don't have Walmart in NZ, I'll try the local supermarket first. Then the hardware store. Then the chemist. Then panic.

BtW I wish I'd checked here before buying the BIG bottle of useless Cycle! I guess I'll keep sloshing it in seeing as I have the stuff.

This post has been edited by Ruby Jewell: Jan 22 2006, 11:48 PM

i personally wouldn't move the old bogwood into the new tank. Are you going to keep the old tank running?? as for the substrate i wouldn't buy from any where than my lfs, but it could be fine i would wait for another opinion tho.
chris.

There are a few threads over in Hardware about substrate gravel sand etc...they may help

I'm going to use my old tank for tadpoles (and then frogs!). I hoping they'll croak?

Had a feeling it wasn't a good idea to introduce the bog wood to the new tank. I'll start again with fresh wood and a new java fern.

In the end I opted for yet another bag each of glacial 2-3mm gravel and laterite rather than risking sand from the garden centre.