Recent content by dleblanc

Most of them run about 2 gallons waste to 1 gallon produced. I'm not especially concerned about that, being on a well. It means the pump runs about 30 minutes a day more than it otherwise would. What does get expensive is the chemicals needed to bring the water back up to something you'd want to...

Wow, that's really nice! I'm on a well, and have to deal with RO/DI, so I can only make about 200 gpd. I'd love to have a tank that size, but would need another RO/DI to be able to make the water.

What are your dimensions? That's a great find! Water changes are going to be some fun with 400 gallons total.

This has been taken -

Trying to get that balance right is really hard, though. There's a certain amount of energy loss, depending on the ambient temperature, surface area, tank composition, and whether it is covered. Ideally, you'd have just enough watts to overcome heat loss. Then if the heaters stuck on, they...

I had four Cobalt 200W heaters go out, one killed about $700 worth of discus. I haven't had any trouble with the Eheim/Jaeger heaters, and have about 15 of them. Even so, I now run every tank with 2 heaters, and a temperature controller. The controller is about $30, and will save me if one...

Your plants look great! Nothing to complain about there. I run about double the number of air stones they recommend in most of my tanks after being able to find out my actual DO levels. Even a well planted tank can run low - we have a 20 that is mostly small fish and a lot of plants, and it was...

If you're not too far away, I have a dissolved oxygen meter I can bring over. I'm in Monroe. Almost all my discus came from Steve - he's a good guy, and I'm happy with how my fish turned out. Personally, I'd do more water changes., but you're measuring your parameters, and 20 ppm is about where...

I have a stand that I'm not going to use. It is made of acrylic, and is 60" wide, 19" deep, and 30" tall. It was under a 90 gallon tank, so should hold weight very well. Free to the first one that wants to come get it, might consider delivery, but will charge you for gas.

Sorry about the late reply, but yeah - this is a tough problem - the algae covers the plant, kills the plant, plant decays, feeds more algae, and down we go. Kind of depends on the algae - some algae likes dying leaves more, won't be found on new leaves. Best case is that you remove the algae...

My wife wants to have shrimp and plants, the Seachem Fluorite Black Sand looks nice, but has a nice price. Someone posted a link to a place in Renton (???) that sold substrate in bulk, that seems like it could be a plan, but I can't find the link anywhere here. Any other suggestions?

Try to resist pulling plants - if the plants are doing well, then they will out compete the algae. Too much light can certainly be a problem.

How can you weigh a bunch of fish? I know how you'd weigh catfish - net them all, hold up the net, they're big enough we can ignore the water. But if we wanted to weigh a bunch of tetras or something like that, you'd stress them by having them out of the water. If you can figure that out, I...

I dunno if this helps, but I have a bunch of gold pristella tetras in a big tank with a bunch of other tetras, angels, discus and corys. The other day, I noticed that I had a few tiny new pristellas - not many, just 3 that managed to live to get big enough to notice. They must be breeding in the...

It has been interesting - it took forever for the nitrites to disappear in the 180, but when I dosed the 55, there was no bad effect at all - which is peculiar - both are running CO2, kept at the same pH and KH, but the 55 is a canister filter, the 180 a wet-dry sump. Just noticed that the BBA...