Thanks for the follow-up! Freckled cellophane, that's a great description. I was kinda wondering cos I know he is part cellophane, but with 'spots'. Freckled sounds infinitely cuter, and also less doggish, not that it's a bad thing ;P hummm, the water is still the main issue. I thought I cleared the cloudy issue by removing the leaching pebbles but the water is cloudy again, and I did a full change yesterday! Well it's more hazy than cloudy, I can really see the difference from today's versus yesterday's water. I should really get the test kit and find out what the problem is. Do uncycled and unfiltered tanks get bacterial bloom? The tank is a 1.5 gallon. In it is just the betta and some hornwart, plus 2 silk plants. And a little aquarium figurine from walmart. I would really like to find the cause of this. When I had him in the 0.5 gallon betta kit there wasn't this problem. The hazy issue has only cropped up with the Faunarium, and has does so overnight immediately after water change. I use Aquaplus, and aquarium salt. Plus the water was left overnight to help adjust the temperature. The water looked sparkly clear after the change. Suddenly overnight it turns hazy. I have a feeling that it is contributing to the splitting fins. Gaaah, this is when inexperience really kicks in....my poor fish. I cleaned the tank with warm water, then rinse it off with cold, if that makes a difference. I didn't use soaps of any kind...Another factor could be the difference in water I'm getting - I was on residence before, but has since moved. I found that the water gets hazy in the new place. Other thing is, the water I have standing by in jars are still clear, so I wonder if its the tank. Sunshine is still acting fine, he's a bit toned down today, not as much zipping around. Hope he's just having a lazier day. He's eating, flaring and curious as ever. Hope I can find a conclusion to this, and many thanks to all who've replied!

I will only reply to the parts I have knowledge of. To control algae, the best way is to not let light hit your nutrient solution (or limit it as much as possible). paint your reservoir black or cover it with aluminum foil. I don't grow with lights, but have always read 18/6 is pretty much ideal for vegetative growth. Remember even the sun goes down a couple of hours a day. As for nutrients, I can't speak to long term or lettuces, but I've grown basil and Italian parsley using just miracle grow and Epsom salts. When I did it, I would generally watch for tip burn on the leaves, then cut my solution with water until it went away. Eventually, you'll find the right concentration that they like.

Oooh, that is so nice to hear of someone who ordered from "bars and booths" and had a good experience. No one I know locally is into doing their kitchen in any way but "predictable Long Island". I do see some awesome vintage ones from time to time, but those are usually original to the house. I was golfing today with a lady who is over 80 and when I started to tell her what we were doing in our kitchen, she got so excited. It was so much fun to have someone gung ho and not look puzzled or like they were humoring the crazy person. I think we are changing our backsplash plan as well. Actually, it is just a tweak. Instead of doing the 4 x 4s in black at the bottom, we can use the chrome banding that has black inserts. We will also do that for our table when we get it "refreshed" with a new top and sides. this is how it looked for someone else with red inserts instead of black: you have to picture ours with chrome but this is a basic look of our splash. We are cutting the lavender 4 x 4s (got a sample in the right color today, finally!) into 2 x 4s since 8" of lavender would put the liner too much in the middle (and 12" is too much field unless we want the bs to be 18+" high with grout factored in). The lower lavender part will be also cut like that and staggered. It just does not look right with them as 4 x 4s on the bottom if the others are 2 x 4s. If we do decide to do the 8", it would be with 6 below the line and 2 above. Our only other possible change is the accent liner itself since it is made by a different company and so we'd have to take out their purple and maybe put in gray. My tile guy is trying to see if they can do a better color lavender for me without a crazy upcharge by just doing it lighter than the sample he has in his shop. If they can't get to the right shade, we will go with today's.which I found in England, of all places, lol. BTW - we are now leaning towards putting the glass arch on a matching laminate/chrome counter too. I guess our fabricator will modify the vanity top I bought at HD Expo for us (cost $35, so we snapped it up 2 years ago). It needs the vessel sink and faucet cut outs. We also will have him do a dresser top that broke in our move here (we finally get to use Verde Fantastico in our house, YAY!). We will be doing our family bath once we recover from all this and will also use VF there too, but I imagine that is at least a year away and probably more like 3... We will make sure to get enough stone to use up our deposit and then some, lol.

The product I was using was Norton 360, I've always presumed they are on the up-and-up. But I got tired of all the come-ons to purchase Lifelock and a more secure router from them after paying them quite a bit for protection. It was constant. Kudzu9, awhile back I posted here asking if Windows Defender was good enough. You advised me that Avast Free was very good and gave me instructions (so complete and easy to follow, thank you) on how to switch when my contract was up. So when the contract was going to end I did the switch a couple of days before it ended. Everything went fine, I had uninstalled Norton before I downloaded the Avast program. So 2 days after the contract was to end was when I got the phone call. I just think it's quite a coincidence. I'm just wondering if it's a scare tactic. The robot that left the message never gave the company name. Mayfleur01, I don't know what you are referring to concerning ACH, what is that?