Recent content by catman

Up your water change regime.. I usually find that large frequent water changes clear up most of my problems..... :)

LOL.. also if you keeping feeding them algae wafers, then they just eat them and ignore the algae!!

Water changes will also add vital minerals that fish require. With an over populated tank like that, i would suggest 25 % weekly as a minimum.. Personally i try not to let my nitrates get above 25, but i keep discus!?? At the end of the day it is personnal preference, but it can't hurt to be...

I brought 2 zebra? shrimp they spawned and all of a sudden i had about 50 shrimp!! My discus ate alot, but i reckon i still have well over 20!! They keep my plants spotless.. I used to have hair alf=gae but its all gone now... And they r definately interesting to watch!!

No problems with mine so far, despite dropping the lighting unit into the tank!!

you have perfectly normal readings.. (thats what my readings are..) :D

Gourami's will be fine with smaller fish (in fact most large fish prefer a shoal of smaller fish around, as it means there are no predators about..) True SAE's are not agressive, false SAE's are... Regards Kribs and Rams, i would not keep them together as i believe they have different water...

Increase the cardinals to a minimum of 20 (they look stunning when in a large group!), then add some gourami's. I would also consider a ancistrus cat fish for the bottom (but then again i just love em!!).. That will cover all 3 levels...

Regards keeping discus, they are shoaling fish and are best kept in groups of at least 6, unless you have a proven pair, which are best kept on there own... If this is ur first venture into discus, then i strongly advise to do a bit of reading as they are trickier than other tropicals to keep...

GH and KH are the hardness tests for the water. General hardness and Carbonate hardness. If your gh and kh are too low then you have no buffering capacity for your ph so it will crash. Take gh, kh and ph readings straight out of the tap, then again 24 hrs later as fishsmurf suggested. Post...

Unless of course you use a UG filter :P :D :lol: :lol:

You still have nitrites, so the cycle hasn't finished yet. Leave be until the cycle has finished (zero ammonia and zero nitrItes), then, post ur water results (ph, kh, gh) and we can advise you on the rest.. I personnaly do not use ph adjusters if i can help it...

Looks really good!! Can you come and do mine?? :P

Just to reinforce whats been said... If you keep adding the ammo lock, then you remove the ammonia. This stops the filter developing the bacteria colonies required to convert the ammonia into nitrite.. This then means there is no nitrite, so the bvacteria that converts the nitrite to nitrate...

There are loads of products out there to help cycle a tank, the one i use is bio start. Add this, add some food each day and just monitor the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings! I would also do this on your troublesome tanks rather than try and complete the cycle with fish in it! Good luck!