On Mon, 08 May 2006 22:00:48 -0000, "Frederick B. Henry Jr."
wrote:

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On 2006-05-08, Mister Gardener wrote:
On Mon, 08 May 2006 20:17:07 -0000, "Frederick B. Henry Jr."
wrote:

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On 2006-05-08, Koi-Lo wrote:

"Frederick B. Henry Jr." wrote in message
...
My 3 black neon tetras, 1 h. rasbora and 2 glowlight tetras seem very
happy, and aside from the diatom/brown algae I have to scrub away with
water changes, the tank is clear. Today, more than two months after I
set up the 10g tank, and after even trying some (useless) Cycle, my

Actually, 6 fish in a 10 gallon is a lot of fish for cycling, more
than enough. Have you taken a sample of water to your lfs for testing?
Can you bring home a cup of seasoned gravel from a lfs tank?
Test kits can lie sometimes. How is your tank furnished? Gravel?
Ornaments? Plants? Sponge in the filter? All places for bacteria to
grab hold of and grow? If you have gravel, go easy on the vacuuming as
you want bacteria to grow there. During the cycling phase, you don't
want to be scrubbing anything to squeaky clean. Hmmm.


OK, here is the deal. I change the water only when the ammonia gets
around or over that 2 ppm level. I don't vacumm the gravel, though I
did in the beginning. I feed the fish *very* sparingly. I effectively
have two testing kits: 1) aquarium pharma kit 2) dip stick. They
coincide. My test kits are not off. There is brown algae growing like
crazy (here in Chicago we have a high silica level). The water is hard
as ell and clear. I only scrub the brown stuff off because it was
literally obscuring my view. I use tap water treated with Aquasafe. My
buckets are clean and dedicated. I just dons't know why it is taking so
long....

Fred
I think we've asked all the right questions, and I think you gave all
the right answers. And we're not getting very far. Has Richard logged
in on this thread? Netmax maybe? Dr. Axelrod?

-- Mister Gardener
-- Pull the WEED to email me