Recent content by peterS

I can certainly drop the lights a little more - both time and remove a bit more white and red to see how that helps. If we're overfeeding, will it show up in nutrients/nitrates? We're only doing half a cube per day, but I'm conscious that the filters are browning after only a couple of days -...

The snails are doing their best, but the glass is greening up again. Any ideas of the likely cause or remedy?

Hi Colin. Well, I knew that was going to be the obvious question, but I'd just cleaned it, so wasn't much too look at. So, after cleaning it about a day and a half ago, here's a couple of shots which give you an idea. You can see the green whatever it is growing on the aquascape. The...

We're new to all of this, having recently setup a 123L Fluval Flex reef tank in my wife's office. It finished cycling, and we added our first livestock a couple of weeks ago - a couple of clowns, a cleaner shrimp and a half dozen snails to munch on a little bit of brown algae that was forming...

And, I guess a follow up question. Our tank is newly cycled - a week or so since everything stabilized. Is there any problem with doing, say, an 80% change at this point. I know the bacteria live on the surfaces, in the filters, on the rocks etc. rather than in the water, but is a big change...

Thanks Sean. I guess my underlying question is - what can I use as a source of pure enough nacl - I assume any "salt" you'd buy will have lots of additives.

We've got our new saltwater tank cycled now, but due to a c*ck between my wife and I adding things after a water change, we've managed to get the KH, calcium etc. out of whack with the salinity. So, after a water change my KH and calcium are currently about right - 12 and 430, but the salinity...

Thanks Sean - got to love the practical advice :) There's no plants in it yet - we wanted to keep it as simple as possible through the cycling period and then build up very gradually. Patience is a problem, but we're sticking with it. So, off the lights go.... We'll likely do occasional...

We're in the midst of cycling our new 123L saltwater tank for the first time. We're in the "ammonia cycling nicely but nitrites not yet". After dosing with ammonia chloride, ammonia will all be gone again in 24hrs. Nitrites are still high, but we know they're getting processed because...