Fish Tank Furniture

Branching off below this closed loop for any other applications is not recommended; we need a dedicated supply of water here. Obey the manufacturers recommendations for line size. Home aquariums of a couple hundred gallons or less will likely use 1" or " pipe. Larger pumps and systems will use accordingly larger plumbing for this purpose.

The manifold ring/loo

See your local fish store, internet e-tailers for these materials. Theyre placed in your filter flow path to maximize removal. Once again, realized that this is again a "stop-gap" measure, that you need to find, solve the source of the bottle neck in your cycling.

Moving Livestock: Obviously a good, practical approach GIVEN you have room elsewhere in a fully-cycled, stable system. <

The same holds true with more nitrate. The more you have, the less viable/healthy your aquarium water is.

Take care to not place too much livestock too quickly (variable with type of system, filtration...), nor too much in the long haul, nor over-feed the system... as all can and will cause trouble with overloading your biological filtration (among other things).

Too Late! Ammonia, Nitrite Too HIGH!!!

Should you ever find your system ammonia or nitrite concentrations approaching 1.0 ppm due to overloading, mis-feeding,

This may be accomplished in a number of ways. One way is to place a couple of "anchor" pieces on the gravel bed, and glue others to the back of the tank using aquarium epoxy putty (not silicone!). The rest of the live rock may then be bridged across these supports to build the reef, but not too high. The construct should be loose, not tightly packed together, to allow good flow through the rock. Care should be taken not to direct flow from pump returns across the gravel. The emphasis in aquariums using

After setting up the tank, adding water, testing your gear and allowing it to run for a few days, such live material can be added to it.

"Old" Filter Media:

Another "pre-seeded" possibility is placing filter sponge, ceramic media, carbon, polyester/wool et al. from an up-and-running system in your new set-up. Such media can be easily transported damp from one tank to another. One proviso: Make sure the "donor" system has no r

DIY Aquarium Cave
This tidbit I recieved in the mail today was too good not to share. Mark Shoemaker and Esther Baum wrote these great 10 step do it yourself instructions for creating an....

Fish on a plane
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060822_venomous_fish.html.

Daphnia For The Aquarium

Daphnia are a great food source for both young and adult aquarium fish, you could catch them with a net in a pond, but their's a risk of bringing in parasites. I just found an article about growing daphnia yourself, nice read for the real tinkers out there :-)