Just thought I'd say hello to everyone. I came back to fishkeeping (lots of house moving and a few rentals with no pet clauses made it difficult for several years) about 9 months ago.
Couple of my old clearseal 30" tanks survived the years away and convinced the other half to let me get one going, the other is looking for a suitable location in the house where the building dust won't get to it. Now got a couple of shoals of tetras, some corys and a few amano shrimp and am struggling to get used to very hard water, having previously kept fish is very soft water.
Fascinating to see the changes to the hobby after some years away. My FE Co2 is running nicely and has reduced the algae I managed to bloom considerably (can't quite clear the last bits of the filamentous stuff though, it's become the bulk of my maintenance).
Other than just saying hi. I was looking for any advice from those with stupidly hard tap water (tried rainwater but it seems to be falling out of the sky with ammonia in it, volcanoes perhaps? RO may end up being an option for me once I've built the utility) and any tips that may be related in getting rid of filamentous/hair algae. I've got Co2 running, plenty of fast growing plants, tried blackouts, dosing ferts, water parameters are better than the tapwater for nitrates (which tells me that either the plants or the algae are eating the nitrates). My next plan was to load in lots more plants when I'm setting up the fluval Ebi I got for subscribing to the PFK magazine. Hopefully I'll be able to stop the stupid stuff from growing faster than I can clear it.
Couple of my old clearseal 30" tanks survived the years away and convinced the other half to let me get one going, the other is looking for a suitable location in the house where the building dust won't get to it. Now got a couple of shoals of tetras, some corys and a few amano shrimp and am struggling to get used to very hard water, having previously kept fish is very soft water.
Fascinating to see the changes to the hobby after some years away. My FE Co2 is running nicely and has reduced the algae I managed to bloom considerably (can't quite clear the last bits of the filamentous stuff though, it's become the bulk of my maintenance).
Other than just saying hi. I was looking for any advice from those with stupidly hard tap water (tried rainwater but it seems to be falling out of the sky with ammonia in it, volcanoes perhaps? RO may end up being an option for me once I've built the utility) and any tips that may be related in getting rid of filamentous/hair algae. I've got Co2 running, plenty of fast growing plants, tried blackouts, dosing ferts, water parameters are better than the tapwater for nitrates (which tells me that either the plants or the algae are eating the nitrates). My next plan was to load in lots more plants when I'm setting up the fluval Ebi I got for subscribing to the PFK magazine. Hopefully I'll be able to stop the stupid stuff from growing faster than I can clear it.
