AquaAaron

AHH I see, I've heard they like harder water. My water is around neutral but I've got some ocean rock in there to help buffer it up a tad. The Val does seem to be growing now and sending out quite a few runners so fingers crossed it's now settled in

Hi all I wondered if anyone knew what test strips were available here in the UK that are as accurate or nearly as accurate as the aquarium coop test strips available to you guys in the US ? Thumbnail for attention/ example Thanks Aaron

Keeping saltwater fish isn't difficult you're right, just get the salinity right and you can even use just a canister filter, regular water changes like you would in freshwater, just when it comes to keeping corals, things get a little more involving, but can make it as hard or as easy as you'd like 👍

Atleast you gave it a go bud, I think for saltwater tanks, having an RO system and mixing up saltwater at home is a must, lugging water from the shop isn't ideal long term unless it doesn't bother you. But if you had to do a water change when the shop was closed then that may be problematic I suppose. Keeping just marine fish is a lot easier than keeping corals for sure though, if you have a refugium in your sump, the chaeto will suck out all the nitrates and phosphates, also the fish won't be too worried about having high calcium, alk, magnesium levels like corals do.

I suppose you could say the same about freshwater animals, that they belong in the rivers and lakes of the world, but we try and give all aquatic animals the best life possible (most of us)

Hi all I just wanted to get people's opinions and views on the old freshwater Vs saltwater debate. I currently have 8 aquariums and 2 ponds, one of which is a 5000L round pond housing a few Japanese koi. 1 of the 8 Aquariums is a 4ft by 2ft marine tank. As much as I love the marine tank and especially the fish in it, I do believe that that are a long term setup that you can't tinker with top often unfortunately (best when left alone), but at the same time they require a certain amount of maintenance to keep running well. Mine is pretty low tech, with the most advanced gadget being a auto top off. I rarely do water changes on the tank, and I do keep the auto top off topped up to keep salinity right when water evaporates. Because Im a pretty lazy fish keeper at times, anything more than soft corals seem to struggle. Probably because I'm not keeping up with the water changes. A massive negative I find is that very little in terms of growth, happens fast in the marine tank, and I'm sure if it was my only aquarium, that would all change when I spent more time on helping it thrive more. And that's what I love about freshwater tanks is that they are always changing at a relatively fast pace, especially when they are planted. Fish are also much more reasonably priced, and setting up or changing a tank setup is so relatively easy in a freshwater aquarium. There's so many different ways to aquascape a freshwater tank and endless things or fish you can add to make the tank more interesting. I have huge respect to those to can grow SPS corals in their reef tanks though, but I can imagine they don't have a load of other tanks they have to give their attention, money and time on. Just my thoughts, what's your thoughts and opinions on this? Thanks! Aaron

Hi all I wonder if I could get some advice on valisnarea. In the past week I have planted my 30 gallon aquarium with Val (jungle Val). I'm wanting it to propogate and grow well as soon as possible (not an impatient fish keeper or anything 😂). Have added 'tetra initial sticks' root tabs to my course black sand substrate, and I have a nice group of a mix of golden and standard white cloud mountain minnows, as well as a few endler/guppy fry. I've also trimmed the leaves of the Val, especially the leaves that looked a bit worse for wear on the ends, in the hope that this will help the plant want to send out runners. I've also added a nicrew planted tank light that is illuminating the aquarium beautifully. Do I just need to be patient now to let the Val settle to my water perameters and start to grow/send out runners and make new plants, or is there anything else I can do to help the Val have a good head start? Thanks! Aaron

Hello all! I wondered If i could get your opinions on the minimum size pond to keep a few Koi realistically, not to grow out as show koi I.e. 3ft size, but just to keep generic koi long term. I currently have 3 babies (3" koi) in my 130 US Gallon above ground goldfish pond, and i would like to give them a permanent home as they get larger ofcourse. any advice or recommendations would be appreciated, I can build the pond from wood to save money

I'll do some more research, and thankyou I built the.wood surround today as it was literally just a tub, so a bit of an eyesore without the wood

cheers for the advice bud, yeah they are young shubunkin/comets

So I setup my first pond here in the UK, around 500L and have built the wooden surround today, and pleased with the outcome! water temps here are around 8°C at the moment but likely to drop over the next week as we're due another cold snap here in the lake district UK. Would you say it is okay to feed goldfish weatgerm at this temperature or dont bother feeding yet? if so what temperature would you say the water should be to start feeding weatgerm. I'm adding shubunkin and comet goldfish as I've seeded the filters thanks! aaron

Cheers buddy I'll probably go for 4 or 5 for now and will monitor growth. Hopefully I'll be able to get a larger aquarium by that point

Yeah I didn't think I would be able to keep them their entire lives unfortunately, However hopefully once they have gotten to an adult size or atleast past the 6" Mark, I'd like to hope I have a large 6ft aquarium atleast by then (if I can convince the mrs)

It's just shy of 4ft long by 2ft deep, so deeper than your average aquarium.

Hi all I've just setup a 305L Aquarium (80 us gallons) and it measures 40" wide by 2ft deep. Do we think this tank is large enough to keep clown loaches? Thanks Aaron

Do you have any female guppies or endlers in the Aquarium? If not, having females outnumber the males should keep their attention away from the other males a little, also using plenty of plants in the tank to have line of sight blocks should help too

Spot on thanks, I was thinking for planted aquariums where salt isn't really ideal, is there another good option for bacterial?

Hi all I just wanted to start a new topic as I know that the Aquarium Coop medication trio seem to be highly rated across the pond, however I wondered if anyone knew of there were some meds we could keep on hand here in the UK that are as effective, since we can't buy the med trio over here? Thanks Aaron

Spot on! Thanks for the suggestion bud, I decided to go for Angelfish as the centrepiece fish in my 3ft community tank. Cheers Aaron

Cheers bud much appreciated 👍

They sure look to be thriving, Fantastic!

This is true, however there are normally a lot of fry in there so maybe that would keep the population under control But I'll have a good think at which fish will get on well with the rest of the community. Thanks for the suggestions so far, a fish that grows a little larger would be stunning sight in the tank

Cheers for the suggestion bud much appreciated I'll look up and do some research on the blue acara.

I did have a single long fin male betta in there a while back and he was doing well apart from the occasional livebearer that might nip at his fin so I decided he would be happier in a smaller tank. And yeah the floating tub had small holes in and it was when I first had fry. Now that the tank is much more over grown, I just let the fry grow out in the community and seem to do great

Much appreciated, it's much more over grown now which I don't mind as gives the fry plenty of cover. That is another good shout, those apistos look amazing for sure, I'll do some research into the pearl gourami too Thanks