Tips and Tricks

[Shane]

Modified Marineland filter. The sponge filter attached to the intake is actually sold as part of their reverse undergravel filter kit (RUGF). These kits sell for very little and add about 40 gallons of sponge filtration to any power filter.
http://www.thefind.com/pets/info-revers ... vel-filter

I'll owe a beer to anyone (but Jools) that can point out what is really weird about these two filters being used on the same tank (Hint: Electric catfish).
-Shane

[2wheelsx2]

A gift from Jools, this has to be the best piece of aquarium kit ever.

I need to find one of those....are they in hardware stores?

[andywoolloo]

wow, i need to find that also.

i love this thread.

[Shaun]

I don't really have much in the way of tips except: RECYCLE! I never throw any old fish gear away, it all ends up being used for something. A good example would be: instead of buying clamps to hold hoses in tanks, I use an old canister inlet (a plastic U-bendish thing) attached to a hose and it just hooks over the side. The old inlet strainer even breaks up the water flow so there's no strong current to disturb fish/plants/sand.
Old tanks turn into sumps, and all my trickle filters are made from old buckets. I've turned the foam boxes that fish arrive in into planter boxes for vegetables (some of which are then fed to the fish), fish water is used on the veggies, veggie scraps feed worms which in turn feed the fish.
You get the idea

Sorry if this is repeating any previous tips or tricks, I'm still reading through everything...
Shaun

[JoePlec]

I use a pepper-mill for grinding tablet/granule food to fry-size grains.

--
Mats

Amazing.. ive been stuggling...

[Jools]

A gift from Jools, this has to be the best piece of aquarium kit ever.

I need to find one of those....are they in hardware stores?

Yes, you get them with washing machines and dishwashers but can buy them individually.

Jools

[Jools]

This might be a New York thing it think??

Pizza Hut UK delivery use these too, however dominos and most independents do not. However the top of a ball point pen inserted into the sponge (use three if you wish) do the same job.

Jools

[crkinney]

Those are some good tips .
When changing water I use a 1 in. tygone hose with the strainer off of a over the wall filter on the end ,sediment goes and fish don't
I keep a tank of fish from the swamp so I keep dark water. In stead of mixing a bunch of leaves and stuff I hang a tea bag in the filter until I get the color I want with very little change in PH.

[MatsP]

A gift from Jools, this has to be the best piece of aquarium kit ever.

I need to find one of those....are they in hardware stores?

Yes, you get them with washing machines and dishwashers but can buy them individually.

Jools

I couldn't find the thing on it's own when looking over the DIY/plumbing web-sites [maybe my searching wasn't particularly good], but you can certainly buy a drain-hose with the bending bit included, for just over £3 ($5 or so).

Jools, do you have a reference where the bit is sold on it's own?

--
Mats

[Jools]

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/76974/Plu ... -Hose-1-5m

Jools

[MatsP]

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/76974/Plu ... -Hose-1-5m

Jools

Yes, I found that - I was lookig for JUST the bend bit itself, without the hose.

--
Mats

[crkinney]

DANGER: Use care or good judgement when useing kitchen tools.
Wife caught me with her turkey baster and fine strainer in my fish tank .
I will heal up and replace her kitchen tools And I promis never again

[thijs]

Whahaha, superb!!!! My housemates girlfriend was not so pleased when she found out I use our mugs to defry the frozen mosquito larvae.

[snowball]

Always rise out all maintenance equipment with tap water when you are finished - hoses, buckets, nets, etc. This prevents mould building up inside the hoses (visible as dark patches) and eliminates the musty / fish tank odour, not to mention reducing the chance of cross contamination between tanks (be it algae spores or disease).

Cyanobacteria
...

I also noticed that the cyanobacteria was about 80% gone. This should not have been a surprise as Melafix is an antibacterial, but truth be told, it had never occurred to me to use Melafix to rid a tank of cyanobacteria. If you are battling blue-green algae, give Melafix a try. It is certainly less "harsh" than many of the medications and antibiotics recommended for getting rid of cyanobacteria.
-Shane

Have you been able to repeat this or can anyone corroborate this? It seems such a smart way to deal with it and much easier than trying to change the nitrate / phosphate levels with raw chemicals that the planted tank brigade seem so obsessed with doing, but I have no affected tanks to test the theory on.

[2wheelsx2]

A 3 day total black out is the best way to battle BGA without chemicals. Totally covered, no feeding, no water changes. Works every time.

[Shane]

Have you been able to repeat this or can anyone corroborate this?

Yes, several times. It will not get rid of every single bit, but will wipe out the vast majority. Also keep in mind that it is not curing the "why" for the bacteria, which will need to be investigated.
-Shane

[snowball]

Thank you for your reply Shane.

I have been wanting to test melafix on it as it seems a great way to give it a knock without causing much disruption to the tank, but I haven't had any growing in any of my tanks for years.

[Hansen]

What a great thread

not really a tip or a trick but a question - anyone used aquarium pc software?

I didn't see anyone else responding to this. I use a piece of freeware "aqualog": http://www.joejaworski.com/aqualog/ where you can see who to credit as well.
Works great, I think. Remember to back up your files though; when I created a new tank log, the program overwrote the log for the current default tank without any warning. You can bypass this by manually change the filename for the different logs.

keep your heater, if fully submersible kind, below the 50% water level horizontal, so you can do 50% partial water changes without worrying about exposing the heater and you do not have to worry re unplugging and 15 minsn and replugging in and waiting 15 mins.

If working in the tank, I would definetely turn off all elecrical powered equipment. Better safe than sorry.

[sidguppy]

lol

recently I got a bunch of pix from a friend ("I can fix this!") as a joke; this one would fit in there straightaway


here's another from a bunch of doofus who don't know about the wonderful combination Water + Electrickery

[matthewfaulkner]

Give them some credit, its probably RO water

[Hansen]

lol

recently I got a bunch of pix from a friend ("I can fix this!") as a joke; this one would fit in there straightaway


here's another from a bunch of doofus who don't know about the wonderful combination Water + Electrickery

Even better than mine!
I can't resist bringing my favorite in the category "safety at work", eventhough it's very much off-topic:

[sidguppy]

another trick;

you know those 'clamps' you can screw on the wall to hold your tools?

those will fit around a fluorescent tube as well; so even without proper TL holders (wich are sometimes hard to get) you can fix the tubes on the inside of a wooden tankhood with ease.



especially in a fishroom; use these to fix the tubes over the tanks and add a reflector to avoid the light shining straight in your eyes

[Jools]

To add to Sid's tip, use a size bigger than the diameter of your tube. It makes it a lot easier to fit and remove tubes but still keeps them nicely in place.

If I were to fit out my fishroom with reflectors, it would have cost me over £500 just for them "off the shelf"! After some good but fiddly results using aluminium baking foil and blue tack, I've since used radiator heat reflector and it's great. You simply attach this above and around the lights and it reflects light and heat at the tank. I really think it also cuts down on condensation too. In an open rack you can just put it under the tank above.

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/10612/Plu ... m%20(2.5m) - I did the whole fishroom for £15!

Jools

[MatsP]

Those clips can also be used to hold hoses in place!

And I've used a piece of PVC guttering as a reflector - I may well go to Screwfix for some radiator reflector to line it with, but it's definitely working better than lighting up the wall behind the tank, as it used to do!

In my case, I had to cut the guttering lengthwise to fit it into my home-made lighting unit - which uses cheap Wickes fluorescent light units.

--
Mats

[2wheelsx2]

That clip idea is great....I'll be using that one in the setup I'm doing right now.

[JoePlec]

been thinkin what would be my best tip for a while now...

heres a couple.
1. put up a little shelf behind the tanks in your fishroom. ideally when first setting up.. cheap tongue and groove will do. make it so the shelf is about 4inches below the top of the tank. then when you drop stuff behind like thermometers etc it doesnt get lost. and u dont have to try and fish it out.

2. dont type in caps.

[grokefish]

I also keep the towel there whenever I have a tap turned on.

Jools has a special baseball cap for this purpose. It either hangs on the tap (water off) or is on his head (water on). Smart idea.
-Shane

Awesome plan!!!

[Hansen]

I don't know if everybody does this, but I was given the advice to keep the salinity (for a fresh-water tropical tank) at 0.05%, i.e. technically at the lower limit of brackish water and upper limit of freshwater. Among the reasons for doing this is to reduce the likelihood of various forms of diseases among the fish. That is, you have to add salt (NaCl) corresponding to 0.5 g per liter of water in the tank and add the corresponding amount at each water-change.

[Jools]

I don't know if everybody does this, but I was given the advice to keep the salinity (for a fresh-water tropical tank) at 0.05%, i.e. technically at the lower limit of brackish water and upper limit of freshwater. Among the reasons for doing this is to reduce the likelihood of various forms of diseases among the fish. That is, you have to add salt (NaCl) corresponding to 0.5 g per liter of water in the tank and add the corresponding amount at each water-change.

This has been the topic of many a long debate, but in summary, it doesn't appear to be a good idea (or at least in any way beneficial) for the majority of catfish keepers. Good husbandry beats adding salt in my book!

Jools

[Hansen]

I don't know if everybody does this, but I was given the advice to keep the salinity (for a fresh-water tropical tank) at 0.05%, i.e. technically at the lower limit of brackish water and upper limit of freshwater. Among the reasons for doing this is to reduce the likelihood of various forms of diseases among the fish. That is, you have to add salt (NaCl) corresponding to 0.5 g per liter of water in the tank and add the corresponding amount at each water-change.

This has been the topic of many a long debate, but in summary, it doesn't appear to be a good idea (or at least in any way beneficial) for the majority of catfish keepers. Good husbandry beats adding salt in my book!

Jools

Jools,
Thanks for your response and correction. I saw somewhere a suggestion for a "myth-busting" thread. I think that would be a great idea - and perhaps making that thread and this one a "sticky"?