Recent content by andy-hipkiss

Charles, Is there an issue in terms of conclusions and pet theories in terms of the paper you summarise records both nitrogenous and phosphorus based fertilisers. Can we reach any conclusions from this? Perhaps the increased N is of advantage whereas the P is the opposite (or indeed vice...

Having tried it both ways, certainly CO2 makes life a lot easier. If you have lots of space then the idea mentioned above of keeping many cultures on the go probably avoids the need for CO2 for our purposes. However if, as I am, you are space limited, you can bring a culture up to density...

Randy, The "Balling" (Balling is the guy's name from Germany) method utilises NaCl free salt (so IO without the salt if you will) and then to make up the "missing" Na and Cl one can use either NaHCO3 and either CaCl2 or MgCl2 (or both) such that Na and Cl more mirror NSW. If you like, it is...

Randy, FWIW , the Balling method is balanced .. depending on the aquarist's ability to measure out CaCl2 and NaHCO3 of course.

I must say I agree with Greg on this point. For a simplistic reason, it tends to curb the flame wars (at least a little) .. if "one" is replying to a post by "Kermit_the_frog" then it's too easy (at least for me anyway) to be more abrupt. A fault on my part, sure, but I just find it different...

Garry, Overgeneralising perhaps but knowing the "normal" way that is preferred for adding Ca and alk to the aquarium (assuming that you have animals/algae that require Ca and alk) may help understand. For a small tank then such methods as ESV's B-Ionic (not available in the UK) or C-Balance...

Sorry, coming in very very late on this thread. I own the 1.7m (5') version. Good skimmer. The "best" .. who knows, but certainly very effective. Not as plug and play as say a Deltec (which is like an Euroreef on steroids it seems ... ), but debatably more effective. From what I've seen of...

FWIW this page does the Ca/alk balance calculation for you ... http://www.andy-hipkiss.co.uk/caalkcalc.htm HTH

FWIW, the only manufacturer of HID bulbs in Belgium that I know of is Philips Lighting NV in Turnhout, which is not a million miles from Philips HQ in Eindhoven (which confusingly enough is in the Netherlands). Now, assuming that these bulbs are the ones (known as 14KK or maybe 11700K in Europe...

Grief Mouse OK, lemme list what I know about the situation and hopefully Randy et al will be able to fill in the blanks. Rowaphos is not new on the market (I assume you mean the UK market Mouse?), however fairly recently a more formal import mechanism (from Germany) has been established...

Nathan, Blush.... FWIW that was my old site, its all on http://www.andy-hipkiss.co.uk now, so to get to the calculator use: http://www.andy-hipkiss.co.uk/caalkcalc.htm If anyone has any URLs that detail calcium and alkalinity measurements for various oceans ... please tell me know ...