I have heard nothing but good things about the Tetra OFX line. I wouldn't hesitate to get one. I'm not sure which one you're considering, but if it is the OFX 3000 check the price also at AZPonds.com. ($240 there vs. $310 at countrygarden.com)

Without a KH test anything you do lacks of value, so that 1/3 of RO to 2/3 of tap is like trying to cover the sun with a thumb. PH is highly related to two parameters, General Hardness ( GH ) and Carbonate Hardness ( KH ). General harness is the meassure of all dissolved salts in the water, carbonate hardness is the measure of all dissolved calcium carbonate or salt that behave like calcium carbonate and that give the water it´s buffering prperties. High PH indicates high hardness. The trick is to reduce the hardness by eliminating the salts or by binding them to form chelates. How to: 1.- Reverse Osmosis: it´s called reverse osmosis because it´s performed by pumping the water through a semi permeable membrane that traps pollutants and dissolved salts. 2.- Boiling: you boil the water and the boilibg process causes slats to precipitate. 3.- Ion exchange resins: the water runs through the resin and traps the undesired salts changing them from something else like sodium carbide. 4.- Acid: you add acid ( usually phosphoric acid ) or run the water through an acidic media ( like peat ) until you neutralize the buffering properties of the water. But is not as easy as it seems, to play with the parameters you need to know what you are doing or you can kill the fish. Those are the most common methods but they are not perfect: 1.- RO, unit expense is high and after you have gathered enough water you still have to reconstitute the water to the proper physicochemical parameters, either by adding a certain ammount of tapwater whose PH, KH and GH values have to be tested prior to perform the mix. 2.- Boiling reduces the hardness but not all of it and in case the GH and KH are very high the benefits are minimal. 3.- Ion resin exchange, it´s easy to go to the pet store and purchase one of those water softener pillows, yes they will leave the water "soft" ( low general hardness ) but since they only exchange one salt for the other the KH remains the same, the water will be soft but still very alkaline. In order to make the water soft on both sides ( GH & KH ) you need another resin, problem is that those resins are not easily obtained and need a special unit. 4.- Acid: acid is a cheap but dangerous way to reduce the PH, problem is that until you reduce the bufferenig properties of water the PH will continue to bounce back, more acid is needed until you lower the PH again, a couple of hours later it bounces back and so on, it may take many days before you can finally maintain a stable PH reading. The simplest method is purchasing RO water and slowly mix with tap water until you get the PH, GH and KH right. You will need a container to keep the water and a heater to heat it to get to the same temp found in your tank. 78 degrees is a little bit "cold" for tetras, 80° is what they should have.

I think I've realized that no matter how careful we are about our water, we don't always have the ability to really control the quality. From time to time there are all sorts of weird things that are coming through our tap that are safe to us, but not so safe for the fish and it hits them in some way resulting in illness or death. My brother lost all his fish one time when there was some surge of bacteria in the water. It just wiped out everything he had including 10 year old oscars. Just something to keep in mind when you know you've been doing everything right and suddenly something throws you for a loop! I've found mollies do best in a pretty high concentration of salt and do better in a tank strictly for brackish water fish (something LFS never really tell you!) I think you just need to remove your current stock of live plants, working on just ridding the algae, and then reintroduce the plants. But do realize that the algae will be also probably be resident ON your plants somehow - and ridding yourself of the algae in your tank doesn't mean you're rid of algae completely. I really love having live plants in a tank, but I've found they're just really a lot of work!! Okay - so I'm a lazy sort of fish keeper. I really like being able to just enjoy the fish swimming around happily without having to deal with planting medium, fertilizing, always having to keep trimming plants, sometimes having to thin things out so other plants get light, keeping algae out, AND keeping water parameters balanced. And then for true planted tanks, they always recommend additional CO2 for the best growth possible. Planted tanks are a lot of work. I used to subscribe to Aquarium Fish mag that has a regular planted tank column. The writer is really very informative. So while I love looking at a live planted tank with fish - I've been sticking to fake plants in my tanks! Only my pond fish outdoors get plants - and they always wind up eating those.

I have to say I understand the reasoning for the larger aquariums, especially for very agressive fish, and many of those are messy eaters from my recollections of watching a large oscar eat snails many years ago. Uneaten scraps of any live foods or frozen foods would I imagine quickly foul any tank that wasn't a good sized one. Hoever since my space is limited and my floors of dubious strength to support a larger tank, as well as my budget not permitting some larger aquariums , there are "practical" limits how big I want to go with an aquarium. It still seems to me it's almost a "luxury" to have a 30 gal. aquarium with only two very small fish in it, but perhaps it's a wise decision. I just know I had many more fish years ago in both my 30 gal. and 55 gal. tanks and the fish were always healthy with frequent water changes and some good filters etc., though I didn't have the most agressive fish either, with a couple of exceptions. I must say however, though there may have been lots of the same information available in those days about "cycling" and "holding" capacity etc. I must not have done as much reading as I should have considering how many fish were in my aquariums, and in those days the average aquarium hobbiest, didn't even talk about water testing at all, and that was usually reserved only for salt water tropicals. I don't think the "tests" were even available in those days for nitrogen levels etc. I must confess however, water quality is sort of a gradual process sometimes and with slow changes it wasn't even apparent to me that my water had taken on a decidedly yellow tint over time, til I compared it to water right out of the tap, and it wasn't til then, that I began the frequent water changes. Oh well, you just hopefully learn as you age, and don't make too many mistakes over the years. I'd like to think, that despite the "practical" considerations I've mentioned, I still make my best efforts to keep my fish healthy, happy, and long lived for many years of appreciation. Perhaps I've misunderstood something along the way, but as I understand it , when someone says no more than two of any particular fish to a tank , they also mean not to include any other fish of any variety in the same tank, and that's were I see a very "sparse" looking tank where you have to hunt to even see any fish in it!!