Starting A Freshwater Fish Tank

On the plus side they are small, powerful, and inexpensive. On the negative side, my experience has shown these pumps to be unreliable and potentially dangerous. I have had a number simply fail to operate after just a year or two of service. Worse yet, I have also received mild shocks from a couple of these pumps. The potential for electrocution was the final straw. I systemically went through my customers tanks and replaced all the Rio pumps with comparable ones from other manufacturers. This was both a liability and cost-effectiveness issue. I can easily replace and bill a customer

As Ive written before Cleanliness is not sterility. Cleaning, vacuuming, bleaching ornaments too much, too soon disrupts/destroys needed bacterial cultures. Dont be too fastidious about cleaning all your system at once; you want good, strong beneficial microbe populations living in and on the "hard" surfaces in your system.

Wherefore

Even for "fish only" systems, a pound or more per ten gallons of either or both LR/LS is about all thats called for to get things going. How to apply the rock and/or sand? Plunk, sprinkle them in. Done

Should you be a U/G proponent make sure yours covers as much of the systems base as you can, utilize large air-lifts, stones, power-heads to maximize flow, and be diligent in vacuuming your substrate.

Biological filtering action is not confined to the above modes. Any suitable medium with the systems water passing over it will sponsor bacteria populations and conversion to some extent. I do not like to rely on just undergravel or any one ty

Additional airstones, fluid-moving pumps are great at eliminating anaerobic zones, moving wastes to filters, and speedy processing/removal.

Aeration:

Likewise cannot be easily overdone. Beware of the dangers of too fine bubbles (smaller than 0.1 mm) by limiting their possible exposure within a contactor or skimmer.

Filter Basics:

Removing Organics.

in the form of nitrogenous wastes (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates), phenols, scatols and much more is the principal goal of filtrati

Reply to tips for aquarium shots?

Photography is a still of life posted a reply:

Id say a dark room, no flash, and a wide aperture. Try using different camera speeds if you have a manual setting on.

phosphates too high
hello again- Well my 90 gallon predator/reef tank has been up in running for about 7 months. Everything is running smoothly so far- water parameters are nitrate > 20 ppm, nitrite 0ppm, ammonia 0 ppm, pH 8.2, salinity 1.025, but phosphates are way to high it's about 5 .