Why isn't my hammer bright green like in the lfs?

[MoreDakka]

Originally Posted by sphelps

Well that's great for regular maintenance if the goal is to reduce nitrates you should be looking at doing much larger changes. The tank doesn't look that big so changes upwards of 50% should be feasible. If you do 50% changes you need four of them within a short time frame to get you to 5ppm. Do the math for 10% and you'll see why it does nothing.

Perfect, I'll do a bunch of really big water changes to try to correct this broken tank. When you say a short amount of time what would that be? all within a week?

Looks like we'll have to live with the lighting we have for now and we'll save for an average cost set. Was thinking http://www.rapidled.com/ for a diy approach? I've seen a couple of these setups in youtube and they look good plus they seem to be great for the money. Anyone tried these?