Hello There

[Atoonfan]

Just popping it to say hi

I dabbled when I was younger (20-odd years ago) before water treatment became an issue and got away no probs

I've had my latest tank for about 4 years now and generally get along alright although I do tend to go through phases where I lose fish, (generally after I've introduced new fish in)

so I do however have afew daft questions

- if I change the pads inside my fluval3 when doing a part change, shoudl I change them all together, or stagger them (ie foams, carbon and erm white one)

- am I alone in thinking that Pets @ home are the spawn of the devil when it comes to buying fish

- has anyone in or around Gateshead got any recommendations for decent places to get fish, at the minute I'm driving down to dragonville

Cheers

 

[FishAreFriendsNotFood10]

hey welcome to the forum

ive personally changed the carbon for filter floss, the carbon is only used for removing medication from the water and some water staining like tannins

yes pets at home are rubbish lol im sure u will find many many flame threads on here because of their lack of training for staff

 

[Aqua Tom]

Welcome


P@H are rubbish at giving advice & looking after thier own fish, so i would not buy any fish from them.
I have bought plants from there before & had no problems.





Tom

 

[Skins]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

When changing filter media you don't want to replace more than a third of your filters media content, so staggering media replacement is strongly advised. I would only be inclined to change sponge(mechanical)and bio-max(biological)media only when its falling apart, its these two media forms which are home to the colonised bacterias which break down the harmfull toxins(ammonia/nitrIte)in your tank waters chemistry. When i perform filter maintnance, which on average is once a month my filter media is lightly swished around in some old tank water(NEVER TAP WATER!!)which of yet has never presented me with any problems.
P@H, as you know is a big chain of pet shops and from past threads within this forum that i have read can vary from store to store on how well each one performs. My advise would be to look in your local outlet and observe and if you don't like what you see then try another LFS(local fish store).

Best of luck, Keith.