Recent content by soybean

I wish I could tell you - I have largely left them to it. The set up in my tank is pretty standard. If my test kit was in date I would give you some readings ;)  I don't feed any specific shrimp food, as they eat anything they come across. They're pretty tenacious. Basically I think the key to...

I cannot believe the sheer cheek of them sometimes. I dropped half a slice of courgette in the other day, and one immediately snatched it out of the water column and sat on a leaf where he ate almost the entire thing in one go, looking decidedly smug. Long live the little pests.

I have not posted on this forum for some years now, but I'm sat looking at my tank, and the shrimp in particular, and I remembered that I asked here how old amano shrimp can get. The amanos I asked about in this thread are 7-8 years old now! I will be so sad when they disappear from the tank one...

I run an external alongside the internal just for backup in case one fails, but if u want to remove the internal and just have external I would go for more powerful than the ex700.

Tell the employee too... The customer is always right, she can't walk away from you either ;)

Don't take it personally Ashley!

They do! And good in their own setup with plenty of room to avoid anyone who happens to be annoying them, and even better when you have an lfs prepared to take all their fry off you even though they'll never shift them because convicts are a P I T A ;)

Convicts breed like rabbits and dislike everything that comes into their patch. Not suitable for a community setup in a tank your size.

The micro pellets are designed to float and sink slowly so no they're not really suitable for corys. There ARE sinking pellets by Hikari but I don't think these are the ones being discussed, mattlee. Anyway, it may be microscopic food, but it's still food, and will be eaten by anything that can...

Or not :crazy:

Cherry shrimp definitely do. If you get hold of some orange ones and just breed those, you'll sell them for even more than cherries. And they're essentially the same thing, just a different colour! But if you mix colour strains they'll probably just turn out grey...

I imagine some people will say put a betta in there, but I think these fish deserve all the space they can get. Go for lots of moss and start with a few cherry shrimp, then flog them to LFS as they multiply.

I think peacock gobies are pretty. My male Bolivian ram also looks stunning when he's feeling particularly top dog.

Depending on fish and setup I would generally speaking class mature as at least six months, not including the cycling period, when there's a nice biofilm over surfaces etc.

Can you post a photo of the bulbs and light unit? Old unit, lights easily replaced. New unit, bit trickier. Bulbs should be changed about once a year, their output changes dramatically even if they look the same and still work.