Why I love Coralife
Posted Friday, July 16th, 2010 By Alym
I bought a TurboTwist 3X UV Sterilizer recently and, in my wonderful stupidity, managed to crack the lamp-on indicator that shows you if the UV light is on or off. Yes, I over tightened it, thereby breaking the threads.
Now, if you’ve ever tried to find a missing part for an aquarium tool, you know that they can be daunting to find. This was certainly no exception. I tried every local pet store, called up all my fish friends, and posted on forums…fora…[insert plural for forum here] to see if I could locate the magical piece that would stop my UV sterilizer from leaking.
Sadly, I could not find it anywhere. And then I thought I’d try calling Coralife Customer Service. They were incredibly helpful, and wanted to make things right for me, and immediately mailed me the missing piece!! Now that’s what I call customer support. They were super friendly, and extremely helpful as well – and through the entire conversation, their main goal was to help me get my aquarium back up and running.
I can gladly say that I am now a permanent supporter of their products and encourage anyone reading this site to do the same. Their commitment to making things right have made me a lifetime customer.
Thank you Coralife. You rock.
Permalink | Tags: coralife, turbotwist, UV sterilizer, warranty | Posted in hardware, tools | No Comments
Today’s Tankspiration
Posted Thursday, July 15th, 2010 By admin
After a long hiatus, we’re back with today’s tankspiration!
The above aquascape uses sand and blyxa japonica to separate the hairgrass from the beautiful background stem plants.
The subtle rock work, with black background tie in the tank and make it aesthetically appealing without being overbearing.
Beautiful.
Permalink | | Posted in Aquascaping, tank of the day, tankspiration | No Comments
Tropica Site Relaunch–New look New plants
Posted Monday, June 21st, 2010 By ibenu
The new and improved home page is a delight!
I am most excited about these two new plants to the Tropica line up, featured in the changing banner of the home page. One more plant and some other stuff to come in next article:)
Plants first as really that’s why we are all here! The arrival of Pogostemon Erectus was a surprise to me. I thought I knew all the pogostemon plants. This has actually been in the hobby for a while under the erroneous name Rotala verticillaris. 
Google image searches for P.Erectus will disappoint, while looking it up under its incorrect label reveal glorious examples of its use in aquaria.
From Tropica we have the P.erectus grouped with the Hygro Pinnatifida, another plant I would like to share with you as well as order as soon as I can!
H.pinnatifida is just fun to say outloud,as well as a red that is easy to achieve from what I have read. Tropica description–Hygrophila pinnatifida originates from India. It obtains brown, patched leaves on the surface with a distinctive burgundy colour underneath. It creates horizontal side shoots and the top shoots should be pinched out in order to maintain compact and attractive growth. The horizontal side shoots easily attach to both wood and rocks. Growth is moderate and the colour is attractive when planted in small groups with a plain background. Intense lighting ensures compact growth due to the plant’s slow to medium growth rate.
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The “drawn” version of the plant has always been a point of contention with me. I would find myself opening new tabs in browser just to search images of a plants name. As this was common, Tropica appears to have really listened to consumers with real pictures added to every description in the lower left corner.
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These pictures are expandable so you can really see the detail of leaf structure as well as best possible colouration, if the plants needs are being met.
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Next up in things I love, is the many ways to look up plants. This A-Z features pictures of the plants, and all A-Z is available on that one page. I really appreciate being able to compare plants, even if in drawing form all at once instead of toggling back and forth on their previous navigation system of all plants.
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Simply stunning examples or a well worked navigation system.
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Here are some other screen shots of the goodness to be found at the new Tropica site.
I look forward to sharing more good things from Tropica. I often use it to ensure a proper name of a plant and they have made that so much easier. There is a push toward T/P or tissue propagation to allow for a sterile product to be mailed around the world, and Tropica’s 1-2 GROW is it’s product to cover its bases that way..
We in Vancouver BC are lucky, we have a micro tissue propagator locally. Aquaflora Nurseries is so great it’s going to get an article all to itself. They ship to CANADA and USA
Permalink | Tags: Aquascaping, plants, Tropica | Posted in Uncategorized, plants | No Comments
Update of my 90 gallon – 6/13/2010
Posted Sunday, June 13th, 2010 By Alym
Here’s an update of my 90 gallon from today – - it’s bright out at the moment so I apologize for the reflection!
Thanks to Lisa, we moved around the hardscape somewhat to create a gap in the middle, this opened up the scape a LOT. Another friend of mine, Stuart, was kind enough to sort me out with some HC and four leaf clover as well. I’m still not seeing the right shape on the leaves of the rotala macranda, but I also haven’t yet dosed calcium. I’m also finding that the light is still too white. I need to swap out one of the 10000k lights with an UVI Aquasun bulb, or something from Geissman — I think the red from those lights is what’s missing. We’ll soon see!
This dutch aquascape is really starting to take shape though 
Enjoy.
Permalink | Tags: calcium deficiency, dutch aquascape, geissman bulbs, uvi bulbs | Posted in Aquascaping, alym's 90 gallon v1 | No Comments
Creative Aquascape Union Step by steps… Field of Dreams
Posted Friday, June 11th, 2010 By ibenu
I am getting a new aquarium. Ten tanks is a nice round number don’t you think? My new tank is acrylic, 48 long and only 16 high. I’m hoping it will allow me to get the reds I only see at the top of the tank a bit more towards the mid ground.
I have been checking out one of my favourite haunts for inspiration and ideas. Creative Aquascape Union has some of the ADA contest entrants as regular posters. It only having about half in english I appreciate the study room greatly for its pic pic pic steps..
I have shown a few photo’s here of one of the most inspiring journals.
Please click through the other pictures to see the step by steps of those also.
1) Tank size: 100cm x 40cm x 40cm, completely cleanup for this setup.
2) First apply a thin layer of black soil. The purpose of stainless steel mesh is to separate the sand and soil, however, I took it out due to the layout adjustment.
3) Apply a thin layer of penac W.
4) Then cover with base fertilizer.
A plastic mesh is covered on top of the base fertilizer.
6) Fill up with black soil and white sand.
7) Spay the soil surface to make it completely wet or fill in some water. The purpose is the wet soil dust would form as cement to hold the substrate. Later on, when fill in with water, the sloped base would be keep and there would not have soil powder spread to the sand surface. Besides, the stone could hold firmly if the soil is wet, that is to avoid stones pour down after water is filled.
8) On the foreground, the visual effect of the white sand is not matched, so have to give up and temporary replace with black soil, The position of the stone also adjusted, after the water quality became stable, add two major plants Hemianthus micranthemoides and Vesicularia sp.Taiwan.
9) Hemianthus micranthemoides grow rapidly before prune, I have to prune those over grow strew for the first two month. It start blooming after three month, it is the time to prune as the desirable shape.
10) To prune Hemianthus micranthemoides, you have to reserve a suitable length, the pruned strew and leaves must be clean up. If those pruned part wilted on the shaped ball, part of the plant will also wilted, so to ensure clean up all the pruned leaves.
11) The Hemianthus micranthemoides grow densely after prune.
12) Finally, I select the sand for the foreground, it is ADA Sarawak Sand, the yellow brown appearance match the tone of the aged stone.
13) A month before photo, a final touch up is necessary.
So inspiring! Hope you enjoy and spend some time looking at the following set up guides..
Permalink | Tags: Aquascaping, planted tanks | Posted in Aquascaping, new tank setup, plants | No Comments
Battling BBA – the final installment
Posted Monday, June 7th, 2010 By Alym
For those of you keeping track, this recap is totally unnecessary, but here are some photos of the BBA infested aquarium before treatment with metricide.
Before
After 6 hours:
After a few days:
Two weeks post treatment
As you can see, the metricide took IMMEDIATE effect when sprayed on the BBA. To be honest, it didn’t stand a chance. I’m getting great growth from the existing plants in the tank as well (photos coming soon!). Suffice it to say: spraying metricide on BBA kills it. Plain and simple. The experiment worked!
Permalink | Tags: algae, bba, black beard algae, metricide, spray method | Posted in algae, alym's 46 gallon bowfront v2, articles | 2 Comments
Alym’s 90 gallon: green water GONE!
Posted Sunday, June 6th, 2010 By Alym
After dealing with repairing a UV sterilizer, fixing a broken XP3, dealing with leaks, green water, green dust algae, cloudy water, and pretty much every other problem under the sun, here are some shots of my 90 gallon tank.
The UV sterilizer I bought was used. Unfortunately, it was leaking from both hose intakes as well as from the “lamp on” indicator on it. It was cracked from overtightening I think. The sterilizer in question was the Coralife Turbotwist 3x model. Before going any further, I wanted to talk a little bit about the customer service I got from Coralife.
I phoned them pretty much at my wits end after trying to get this tank going. EVERYTHING was going wrong. I explained the problem to them and they just said, “no worries, we want to make this right”. They shipped me the replacement part. THAT is customer service. I know one thing: I will now be a lifetime supporter of Coralife. You just don’t see customer service like that these days. So a HUGE thank you to them.
Dealing with green water:
I was able to run the UV sterilizer for 14 hours with minimal leakage over a bucket. This was sufficient to zap most of the free floating algae. A bit of metricide later, the algae was mostly gone. I also reduced dosing nitrates. These two factors seem to have done the trick. I also ran a HOT Magnum filter on the tank using the micron filter for two days. It cleared it up pretty nicely. It’s still green, but not nearly as bad. I’ve now got a second XP3 running with a quick release borrowed from Lisa (ibenu). This has solved the leaking problem!
Dealing with green dust algae:
I don’t know what I did here! It just started to go away. There is still a bit, but it’s not nearly as bad.
Here are some photos of the tank now!
Above: Rotala macranda tops, the plant looks ok, but is still not showing the leaf structure I’m looking for. I’m trying to figure out what is deficient but I’m not sure!
Below: Mermaid weed. What a beautiful plant. With a change in lighting from 2700k to 6700k, I’m hoping to bring out the reds a bit more. We’ll see what happens.
Below: fissidens fontanus on wood, needle leaf java fern behind, free floating.
Below: full tank shot!
Permalink | | Posted in Aquascaping, algae, alym's 90 gallon v1, new tank setup | 1 Comment
Battling BBA – Update for 5/30/2010
Posted Sunday, June 6th, 2010 By Alym
As many of you have read, I’ve been battling a bad case of black beard algae (BBA) using a combination of spraying metricide, spot treating metricide using a turkey baster, and finally, adding it to the water column.
Happily, the experiment is working and the black beard algae seems to be on its way out the door.
Here are some updated photos!
The photo (above), shows the same piece of wood that was infested with BBA. After the metricide treatment, it turned red, then grey. A clearer shot will follow!
The powerhead was also covered in BBA. Here it is now, barely any left! Wait till you see the shots from TODAY! This was so last week (literally) 
All in all, this was a tremendous success, the BBA is all but gone. If ever you get hit with a bad case of the stuff, I’m telling you, drain your tank halfway, and spray everything. Works like a charm.
Permalink | Tags: bba, black beard algae, Excel, metricide | Posted in algae, alym's 46 gallon bowfront v2, articles | No Comments
Where have we been?
Posted Saturday, June 5th, 2010 By Alym
Allow us all to apologize to everyone visiting our site for the lack of recent posts. My 90 gallon has been having terrible issues due to an unscrupulous person who sold me a leaky XP3 filter at a local auction. The sad part is, I looked him in the eye and asked if it was ok, and he said it worked beautifully.
Well, I was wrong. After a week of toiling away with the filter, I finally have it working. Photos/updates for the 90, the 46 (bba experiment), new cool toys/tools, and such are all coming very soon!
Stay tuned.
Permalink | | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Root Capsules….Coming soon!!
Posted Saturday, May 29th, 2010 By ibenu
Recently dealing with some lack lustre growth from my rotallas I began to do some research on what I could push down into the substrate to give my plants more of what they were looking for. I have come across a product that fits the bill, I hope. Not only does it….
Check out the analysis, with your temperature alone determining longevity.
I look forward to getting some of the product this week, it’s taken way more phone calls and emails than I would have liked to arrange to get some as a “non farmer”. Thankfully, even the most ardent controller of things gets a kick out of us “whacky” planted aquarium folks.
Here are some technical diagrams for your enjoyment and enlightenment.
I am very excited to use this as I have been so busy lately. The lights go on for the big tank, the fish get fed, the water gets changed, but the EI dosing has really ground to a halt.. I’ll add something day 1 then day 3 , when I go to try to add something I do not remember what I did last. I am hoping that such a balanced product will really help with that. I have enjoyed the mixing and dosing but I want something lower maintenance. This looks like the missing element for me that could really round out my low tech style.
There is a most comparable product on the market already in the states for aquatic plants.. here is a side by side comparison of it, and what we will have 
I would love to hear some comments on what root tabs you have used with success, or failure. As well, please comment on the analysis, what do you think of the numbers? Happy planting, and hope you are all of to a great start this weekend.
Lisa
Permalink | Tags: aquariums, fertilizers, planted tanks, plants, root tabs, rootabs | Posted in Aquascaping, articles, ferts, tools | 1 Comment