PlecoSam

Eheim back in the day were brilliant, I have owned several of them, much better then the Fluval of the same era in my opinion (I owned Fluval as well). Today though, Fluval are much improved and are probably of equal quality and ease of use to Eheim. I am like you Slips, have had a number of cheap canisters but found them poor quality and prone to failures, there are gems in the cheap crowd but knowing which are good is the problem.

Thats how it starts VIS, nekminut 8 footer again.

I have kept Plecos with my Cichilds for many years, they generally do well in a cichlid tank but are more difficult to feed properly.

Hey @Link2Hell, no problems on my side of the city, on the other side though it is quite devastating. Thank you for your thoughts. Sam.

My thoughts as well, I stopped using NLS years ago with the same issues you have. Dainichi and Northfin are good foods.

I have not had Marbles for a long long time, but I do remember having a few physo ones.

Do they, yeah they did, came home to a floating Electra... he had the crap beaten out of him.

Oh, I would not worry to much, he is just defending his turf, I would leave it as it is. My Taiwan reef is called Bigred, he rules my tank, but is a pacifier too, the only fish that fight aggressively are my Placidichromis Electra, two fought to the death and every so often the other two lip lock and duke it out.

Is the chasing excessive or does the Benga just chase the Taiwan out of his territory, any lip locking or fin nipping?

There is nothing wrong with NLS, it provides size and colour the caveat being excess filter sludge and waste and therefore extra maintenance, in my opinion there are options which provide the same colour and size without the blocking up your filters with excess waste sludge.

There are other options apart from NLS, in fact many of us have moved away from NLS, your filters will thank you. In my personal experience, Dainichi, Extreme and Northfin are all good foods without the negative filter effects of NLS.

I would not say an Eheim compact vibrates the house down, I would not even say my or the Eheim 5000 is loud. However the larger Eheim's do emit a low frequency hum which will pass through gyrock/dry walls and at 2am this low frequency noise is annoying and will keep many people awake. I use my Eheim as a water change pump now and upgraded to a Dragon variable pump, expensive but at 2am I only hear the noise of trickling water. Another positive factor for a DC pump is the Eheim would use 75-80ish watts, but I run the Dragon at 40ish watts, obvious savings there over the Eheim but at the Dragon price point 40watts is a very long payback time.

I would say the newer Fluvals are as good as an Eheim or Fluval have bridged the gap, Eheim was once leagues above but the latest Fluval filters are very good.

I tried startright but it does not dissolve very well, have you tried continuum’s products for rift lakes?

Is there a Ritalin for Fronnies?