On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 08:43:58 +0100, "Ali Day"
wrote:


"Gill Passman" wrote in message
.. .



That sounds ambitious....the water change water butt thing sounds good -
certainly better than carrying buckets outside to throw them on the
plants...

I presume yours is about the same as mine around 600 litres? 20% water
change every week ten days or so that's a lot of buckets to be carrying. I
have a hose that sits in the garden that I use to syphon it off with at the
mo, but it's minus a lot outside at the moment and weekend I don't want to
leave the doors open to syphon the tank.

I've not come across undergravel heating over here...what's that all
about?

Theory is plants grow markedly better when the roots are heated, also it
creates a water convection within the gravel itself, which helps breakdown
the crud build up. Now how true this is I'm not 100% sure, but it's a gadget
so what the hell. The other thing is the gravel acts like underfloor
heating, it takes a while to build up to temperature, but then your heaters
in the tank are hardly used at all.

I've been looking at those heating cables in the catalogs for years. I
understand the theory and it makes sense, but so far I have not been
tempted into forking over what turns out to be a pretty stiff price
for a setup in a large tank. I've wondered about the convection
heating that is put into motion with underbed heating, but I wonder if
the convection would be totally blown away by the much stronger
filters that we use. Placing the heater horizontal and close to the
gravel is said to be almost as effective. I've also placed a heating
pad beneath the aquarium, essentially achieving the same end. But I
have not really seen any real difference in plant growth. There are
too many other toys higher on my list. I'll leave the heating cables
to the real techno plant freaks. I can't remember if Amano uses them
or not.


-- Mr Gardener