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Latest thoughts



Hi!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I know I certainly did. Before going on 
I'd like to thank all of the people who were kind enough to send me emails 
recently in response to my last set of questions. I've been very truant 
about replying and I'll certainly try to correct that today.

This christmas I managed to rescue an old Magnum 350 filter, a 35 Gallon 
fish tank, the metal stand and a huge amount of old aquarium equipment from 
my parents home where it had been sitting for more then 8 years. Amazingly 
enough I actually had some new filter media including a Micron filter for 
the Magnum and some phosphate remover which was unopenned. I used to use it 
to remove phosphate in salt water.

So now I have my main tank along with a second small tank which I'll use for 
experimenting (and so it begins.......).

My biggest disappointment from the holidays was the non-arrival of my CO2 
system from Dave Gomberg. I'm really looking forward to trying this out. 
Hopefully it will appear in the next few days once the holiday backlog is 
eliminated.

For the smaller tank I plan to setup DIY Yeast CO2 just to try it. I imagine 
I'll get sick of it pretty quick.

In terms of experiments, some things are quite interesting. I purchased a 
bag of Nu-gro Tropical Plant soil which is already pre-fertilized. I placed 
this in a bucket, covered with water and then added some poorly plants to 
the bucket (there is a 60 watt incandescent plant bulb over the bucket). 
What I find interesting is that the Algae which was heavily coating the 
plant is completely gone. The plants themself are really green and there is 
new growth. This bucket has reduced the pH from 7.9 to 6.4. There is no 
water movement or C02 supplementation. I haven't tested Ammonia, nitrite, 
nitrate or phosphate but I expect to find high Ammonia when I do. Needless 
to say there are no fish in this tank.

I've noticied that certain plants around here seem to melt like Microswords 
and even red polysperma (I have the Micro swords but not the red poly. A 
fish store told me about that one). I believe the high pH might be the cause 
but I won't know for at least a few days. I took one of the micro sword 
pieces out of my tank and planted it in the bucket. I'm looking forward to 
checking out the results of this in about a week.

Enough rambling for now. My next post will be a five store fish store 
review.

~Jamie N


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