25 watts per 5 gallons is reccomended. Get one that has a control knob. The 7.5 says it is good up to 5 gallons and may be. But I don't think they have an adjustment on them. If a heater is overworked it will have a greater possibility to fail or worse over heat the aquarium. A 25 watt with an adjustment knob is the way to go. I like the freshwater master test kit by aquarium pharmaceuticals. I prefer the reagent type vs. multi test strips. In the long run the set is less expensive. The color cards are easier to read then some others, IMO. It has the vital tests you need pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. The strips ammonia test are sometimes skewed and are not accurate in some instances. It's like a Jr High chemistry set. You can get a small bottle of Prime by seachem or amquel+ ( I use prime, again a price thing you need less to treat more then amquel+, so it goes a long way) even though this is mainly for dechlorination it also removes ammonia and other crap. It can be double dosed to keep very high ammonia in check. Zeolite also helps. Usually just frequent water changes will dilute the water. If you read any of the bio-chemistry articles in the link I gave you you can see how pH plays a factor in the toxicity of ammonia and nitrites. Having well water is nice but you "could" have other issues to contend with. One major factor is pH, not so much for type of fish but it can really mess with establishing a nitrogen cycle. Water parameters will determine What% water to change and how often. After it is established, for regular maintainance IME with smaller aquariums I have found it better to do a smaller% more often, rule of thumb is 25% every 2 weeks minimally. If you have a Bio-wheel then you can change the cartridge part as the directions for it state. If you want to save a little$, make a slit in the blue fiber and dump out the activated carbon and replace it with new from a bulk container. I never had a problem in the past ( when I was a kid) establishing an aquarium. When I decided to start it up again (after 20 yrs.) I had alot of trouble. The city supplied water in the town I grew up in was pretty good quality and all I did was keep buckets of tap water on hand for water changes. I only had one test kit, pH, the litmus(sp?) paper. When that ran out I never replaced it. The only difference was water chemistry everything else I did was identical. The things I am mentioning are not gospel as the only way to do this. However, down the road when you may want to try different fish, live plants etc. it really helps to know how your system works and what is needed to maintain it. The only time I test the water now is if I suspect a problem or it has been a while since the last test. I always test new aquariums until I'm satisfied that they are OK. If Victoria's doesn't have what you need maybe Fredrick's ?? Also, don't get me wrong, I support independent fish stores but the link below can help for some of the things you may need that they can't order for you. Just click on the fish when you get there. Here is a link that might be useful: The good Dr.'s

Sarracenia and nepenthes can benefit from a couple pellets of osmocote. Both can benefit from a foliar spray of 1/4 strength urea free orchid fertilizer. Any fertilizer put in the media must be time release and too much will kill the plants.

If you install the latest version, it should recognize that there's a version installed and upgrade it. As far as Zonealarm requiring you to let Firefox access the internet, that's actually a good thing. I think the version that costs money is preconfigured with certain applications and their signatures so it's easier to use. Forewarned is forearmed: any time a program that access the internet is upgraded, you'll need to give it permission the first time it runs. This is also a good thing. Years ago (probably around 2000) some security expert discovered that all the firewalls except zonealarm could be bypassed by naming a malicious program iexplore.exe. Zonealarm recognized that it wasn't the valid iexplore and blocked it. Now they all have this feature. The key is that you can't just always allow an executable whose name you recognize access the internet. If you didn't install any upgrades, patches, etc, you shouldn't get a message that the program has changed. Note that IE is often upgraded with Windows updates. One other note is that sometimes Zonealarm gets a little aggressive in blocking access. If you share devices on your network, you may need to designate it as a trusted zone. I do a lot of work with various VPNs and sometimes I need to set them up as trusted zones so Zonealarm will treat them as LANs. One other note on Ravencajun's advice that if you don't know for sure, don't allow the access, you may want to leave the "remember this setting" unchecked when you disallow access the first few times, just in case it's something that does need access and you just don't recognize it. There's a way to change these settings after the fact, but IMO it's easier to do them using the popup boxes.

I think it is a question of semantics. From what I see on the Web site, I think Shambo is absolutely right, especially since she uses that brand! They really should not be using the word "flour" on the packaging, but they do. It does depend on the type of flour you use for your bread on how much gluten you will need. Apparently there are some special bread machine bread flours. I haven't seen them but that would present an additional conundrum. I use organic whole wheat bread flour that I get at the health food store, and King Arthur organic white bread flour that I get at ye olde grocery store. For a long time I couldn't find real whole wheat bread flour, and the labeling was confusing on that too, but the kind I get is the hard wheat kind, or so it says on the label. It gives me good results, that I know. It's also tricky when they add wheat gluten to low gluten flours to make them into "bread flour." I'm gonna have to try that honey wheat now, sounds like one BF will like. Right now we are lovin' up the yogurt bread. That's one of my favorite recipes in Beth's book. You get the sourdough taste without the sourdough fuss. I make a lot of the recipes in there with half whole wheat flour even though the recipe doesn't call for it. I just like the taste and texture of whole wheat better. I add a little more liquid to compensate, but not much. With this week's yogurt bread I subbed one cup whole wheat bread flour for one of the white, and subbed oatmeal for 1/2 cup of the flour. It has been a great loaf, albeit not very pretty looking! I have so many of those breads on my "to try" list, lol! Before my oven gave out I was just using the dough cycle and baking them in a small loaf pan in the oven. I don't like the big hole you get in the loaves when you use the bread machine to bake in. But it is a godsend right now with my oven being broken. We eat around the hole, lol! I also find some of Beth's breads very yeasty-tasting. I'm wondering if that just goes with the territory of homeade bread, in particular the kind made in the bread machine. Oh, and BTW, being able to find and buy real whole wheat PASTRY flour, has revolutionized my non-yeast baking. I get superior muffins and cakes using it, as opposed to the all-purpose whole wheat flour that was the main offering in the stores for so many years. I remember a time when I was happy they just started carrying whole wheat flour, let alone the different kinds. That's one modern trend I am happy about!