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Hi all: Thought I'd share yesterday afternoon's quick project. My Easy Green doser is based on a glass Starbucks coffee bottle, a USB nano pump, and a few parts I had lying around the house. Here's what's involved: 1. Starbucks bottle ($3): Glass is necessary for this kind of approach, because it doses the fertilizer based on air pressure. Plastic bottles flex too much! 2. Digital timer ($7): Needs only to be accurate within one minute. 3. Airline adapters ($0.25): for joining multiple lengths or air tubing. 4. Airline adjuster valve ($2): Higher quality is somewhat important here; I recommend the Ziss valve. 5. USB nano air pump ($9) 6. Airline tubing ($1): I used three lengths, about 5 feet total. Total Cost: About $22-$23 After cleaning the bottle and removing the labels, I drilled two 3/16" holes in the metal lid. I glued the two airline adapters into the lid from the bottom using 5-minute epoxy. (Silicone would have been better, but I'm impatient!) Then, I attached a short length of tubing on the inside of one of the adapters, and two longer pieces on the outside. That's pretty much all the DIY work that's involved! As air is pumped into the bottle, the build-up of air pressure forces the Easy Green out. I installed the Ziss valve on the output end of the fertilizer, and cranked it down to almost closed. I tested this with water first. 😉 Knowing the following: - 20 drops = 1mL - The digital timer can only run in as little as 1-minute increments - It will continue to drip for a few seconds after the timer turns off ...I set my digital timer to one minute and plugged in the pump. I then turned the valve all the way down so that I was getting one drop about every two seconds. That works out to about 35-40 drops (about 2mL), which is a perfect one-time dose for my 20 gallons of water. Here's the whole rig ready to go: And here it is installed in my sump: There you go! It was less than $25 in parts, and less than an hour's worth of work. Thanks for reading! Bill

After testing my aquariums for quite some time, I thought, “there had to be an easier way” reading the liquid color test results. When using liquid test kits, the colors are sometimes a bit hard to discern. A lot of it is attributed to the ambient lighting in the room. Some homes, mine included, don't have “ideal” lighting for reading these test tubes accurately. Was always dragging a lamp, flashlight or going to the nearest window to compare the color chart with my test. So, I specifically built this light producing fixture/enhancer for my aquarium testing. Wow, what a difference. The colors are now vivid, in person, and very easy to compare. The biggest benefit is that the light 'shines through' the tubes and really gives a true color representation. Also, for some of the 'timed' tests, I.E. Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, it's interesting to watch the colors change accordingly. Basically, the parts for the unit are simple & inexpensive. Three AA batteries & holder, LED's, resistors, switch, wires, enclosure, etc. If you are into electronics, like I am, most of these spare parts are probably nearby. Am sure there are many ways of constructing the same unit. Most importantly, when dealing with liquids, one should always use low voltage applications for safety. This was my first attempt in building this color enhancer, so maybe the next one might even be better. That's another wonderful part about fish-keeping; experimenting with your own designs. 🧐 LIQUID TEST COLOR ENHANCER UNIT ** DIY ** 🥽 📊 📉 📈

My grandfather has a 30-gallon tank in his home office that's been set up for about 3 years. He has only ever kept neon tetras in it. Started with a dozen ot two, but within the last few months, all but one had died. On top of having just a single, solitary fish in a 30 gallon aquarium, there was also just 2 pieces of decoration, and AND, for the last eleven months, it has not even had a light!!! It had :: -2 decorarions -1neon tetra -a filter -heater And so just literally NOTHING going on. So on Tuesday when I was over, and sitting there lookin at this pitiful, but could-be-amazing tank..my mind just started SPINNING with ideas!!! And when he said he wouldn't be home the next day??? The idea gate swung wiiiide open!!! CUT TO NEXT DAY / "Day 1 of Revamping Gdads Tank" - First I tested his water - and it. Was. Almost. PERFECT! 😱 (8.2, 0, 0, 40) With all the ideas in my head, I had basically ended up bringing like everything you'd need to have for a tank...and then some! Haha I had a light bar I was no longer using (though it's a few inches longer than his tank, but IMO it's MUCH better than having no light at all!) So I brought that... Then, since at the beginning of the year I fully converted and planted my tank, I had like 4 big bins of "spare decore". So I picked my fave ones and packed them up to take. Took a few of my own live plants over with me too (just some small - medium sized water wisteria). Then, at the insistence of my all 3 of my kids, I also took and added 3 juvenile platys and an endler (more fishies to come/be added in the coming weeks). Here's the killer part that I discovered while decorating this tank. In the three years that he has had this tank up and running with fish, not once have you ever clean vacuumed the substrate! It was terrible! So that made my decision two yet again come back again the next day. On to the next day / "Day 2 of Ravamping G-Dads Tank" ... I - -gravel vac'd -took the filter and just swished it in some tank water ~ I will worry about CLEAN cleaning it later on -added a few more decorations -added a few more live plants -and added a second filter with cycled media from my own tank. SO HERE IT IS --- pics of the progression of the revamp! First pic - this is what I had started with - minus any light - started with a tank that originally had no light on it, only 2 decorations, and a single, solitary neon tetra (only one remaining out of original 2 or so dozen). So on day one - a light bar, a few pieces of decor, 2 or 3 small live plants, and 4 of my own fish. Second pic - after the first day of me foolin' with it Third pic - the second day and the end result! Fourth pic - the BEFORE before, and after / end result! I'm going to go back over on Monday, and am going to test the water. I think as long as it stays good when testing, which there's no reason it shouldn't I wouldn't think, then over the next 2 weeks, slowly start adding more neon tetras - so the lil lonesome fella that's in there has some buddies! What do ya think!?

Sometimes it's just a bad batch, and notice ultimately Cory is going add the ones that died off and the ones that did better all to the same big tank. He says there is some risk, but he is willing to take it.

Share your goofy fish videos. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram... we all likely have videos our friends just don’t seem to appreciate at the right level. https://vm.tiktok.com/JYk7Q2Q/ - Onip slow mo https://vm.tiktok.com/JYBeksb/ - ramshorn snails + the Bieber https://vm.tiktok.com/JYBFQ1m/ - adorable yet murderous puffer https://vm.tiktok.com/JYkthYW/ - bonus kitten Let’s see some fish videos!

Thanks Bill, Duke, Dave, etc. I love seeing folks test and share ideas!

So the panel with the pass-through charger was a non-starter. When sunlight hits the panel, the charger slowed down the pump power to get what it could from the sun. These things are just not meant to play together! I think a solar-powered air pump designed for this purpose is probably the best way to go, but I think I'll be running wire for my outdoor projects. 🙂 But, for me, it was still a useful test! Bill

Do you know what your Gh is? If your water is super soft it could be some mineral deficiency. Your faster growing stems plants could be soaking up minerals and nutrients before the Java fern and anubia. Maybe try dosing Easy Iron once a day week to see if that helps. I grow Java fern quite well under high light.

Maybe not so much being a 'fish nerd', but you might have a 'fish problem' when you have the following conversation with your 6 year old child (whose daily morning job is to help you change the water on 300 betta jars). Son (bursting into tears), "Dad, I wish I had two broken legs! Me, "Oh no! Why?" Son, "So I didn't have to change the bettas jars every morning!" He's 26 years old now, and we both laugh about it. And I think he has even forgiven me for the time we forgot his birthday because we were at the 2001 International Betta Congress convention in New Orleans and stopped on the way home for an impromptu birthday meal at a sketchy Mexican restaurant in southern Alabama where he got food poisoning and threw up for the rest of drive back to North Carolina.

I just made a little video showing the benefits of algae. Algae and plants are the primary producers in the food chain with all the animals in the food chain secondary and dependent on the primary ones. Or think about it this way, this is the ultimate 'Nano' tank because you need a microscope to see all the biological drama!

My wife will see me eyeballing a piece of wood on a hike and yells "NO!"

And yes! He loved it, as well!!! 💖💖💖🤗🤗🤗

This forum is clearly being funded by 'Big Guppy'. Apparently guppies are the opiate of the masses. After not having any for years, I too got guppies this week! Two weeks ago you could have knocked me over with a feather if you told me I would start jonesing for guppies again.

Today, and yesterday, I painted one of my walls black, got new dressers for the aquariums, and got a new desk. First, I had to get rid of the old cabinets and move the tanks somewhere else temporarily. After that I painted the wall, put the new dressers and desk together, and put the tanks on the new dressers. And lastly, I put all my stuff in the drawers.

I keep many small aquariums in my apartment, mostly Walstad-style, with organic soil from a local composting spot. I enjoy running really stable ecosystems. These photos don't show much of the fish and shrimp. I also keep some outdoor tubs here in Vermont. Cheers, Jason

just thought i would see what the opinions are here. i buy my dry food in bulk and vacuum pack it in to smaller portions and freeze it until use in a chest freezer.the food smells and seems fresh even after a year and the fish eat it like its fresh but want to know if there might be some thing im missing and if i may not be on to as good a thing as i think i am.thanks

I have been doing a co2 passive diffusion with an inverted 14oz bottle for my 16 gal tank. Doing this just about every other day and only during the time I have the lights on. I have been filling my bottle off hubbys modified soda stream machine, he has a 5lb CO2 tank on it and the rod that gets placed inside his soda bottle is the perfect size to slip a air hose over the tip. I could keep doing this but I really should get my own tank. I have been looking at the Generator System CO2 tanks where you make your own using citric acid, baking soda, and water. Anyone else out there using these for their CO2 supply?

Last year I went to aquatic experience and had a really good time and wanted to know if anyone know any information on fish shows possibly happening in 2020

So, I am new and I don't know much, but I have a planted tank with guppies and sponge filter, 3 planted tanks with integrated internal filters that take a space behind the rear "wall", and a planted tank with a canister filter. I think your plants don't need a filter at all and the shrimps probably LOVE the sponge. What the internal filters (which function a lot like a HOB but are just more hidden) really do for a planted tank is: add some flow (something you probably won't want a lot of for shrimp) that can theoretically keep plants freer of certain types of algae. improve water clarity by adding a high rate of mechanical filtration (if you add filter floss or a polishing pad) I do like the ability to collect debris conveniently and whisk it out of the tank. But I don't honestly think my plants or fish or shrimps care. It is a little like a roomba for your home. It is convenient. A broom also works. The sponge should keep the tank water healthy with appropriate stocking and water changes.

I appreciate the info struggle! I'll be sure to post pics as the vision becomes reality!

Finished the air system today but someone (me!) didn’t check the material for the electrical system and there issues so no progress there.

If you feel like it needs more filtration or water movement sure. You could also just add another sponge filter to the other side. But if you aren't having any problems, it's probably fine as is. Completely up to you and how you want to maintain the tank.

Thanks! I’m also going to try the extra micronutrients and see if that makes a difference. Thanks for posting this Beaka!

Mick, Thank you for your response! I see now it IS likely my stem plants that are taking up all the nutrients. I am going to rethink the planting in this tank to prevent this in the future.

Cory, thanks so much for your response. It makes perfect sense, and I will now have to rethink the plant ratio in that tank. As I said, the other tanks don't suffer from this issue, and I now see why: there are less stem plants present.

I love this picture. It might be worth raising snails just so I can feed them the duckweed.

Bill, Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that....

This happens to me quite a bit and it always makes me chuckle. I just had another one and figured I'd share. "If your friends just randomly leave buckets of driftwood or rocks on your porch.... you might be a fish nerd."

I've kept most fish in the hobby at one time or another but I never had an interest in guppies until following Cory and hearing all his love for live bearers. I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of colors come from spawning.

It used to be a hobby of mine to source and collect as many different types of nerite snails as I could and document the species names, difference in behavior and preferred living situation. By far the cutest and most interesting was the Neritina pulligera. Here is a photo of one of my old "Dusky" nerites.

My green hair algae is probably not the same species as your hair algae. My algae has explosive growth and forms green, slimy mats with the consistency of phlegm. My green stuff sounds similar to @Brandy's brown stuff. Here is a picture of it in a tank I setup last week. It shows that if combine a Diana Walstad 'I just dug up my lawn and put it in an aquarium' tank with too much light, you get enough hair algae to make a nice green wig. Biologically this a fabulous tank. But it is not fashionable because it looks like the backwater of a natural pond. But then again why would a tank of hairy green/brown snot algae ever come into fashion? I have tanks with the same amount of light, but no dirt, and these tanks do not have green hair algae blooms. But without the excess light, the hair algae wouldn't bloom either. And for me, like @Brandy, big slimy hair algae blooms, don't tend to happen in long established tanks. I am not sure why, but maybe the long established tanks are more diverse and the resources are more locked up and the hair algae just cannot outcompete its rivals enough to have a population explosion. All in all, lots of light and plenty of nutrients with few competitors and no predators seems to be the recipe for growing luxuriant slimy hair algae.

If it were me, I would assume something is wrong and check TDS, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, PH, and Temp. If nothing is wrong with those, then i would verify nothing weird like an air valve turned off to a sponge filter, weird bio film, or something. if it is none of that, i would assume it is an oddity and monitor the tank more closely for the next few days, if deaths continue, hopefully through monitoring i will know how to treat. In this case i assume the initial tests would have found the ammonia and I would have tried to deal with it as best as I could. Not actually know what is causing it, I would have used ammonia neutralizing pads, 25-60% daily water changes, and dosing with something that neutralizes ammonia, like seachem safe or api quick start, after the water change. Eventually everything would be back to normal and i would probably assume i just lost my cycle for some weird reason. IMO, the ammonia neutralizing pads are the key to the whole thing, with just water changes and chemicals it can be hard to counter the ammonia of a dead animal but the pads add some breathing room, put them in your hang on back, cut them in squares and sew the sides together so they slip on intakes, or wedge them between your sponge filter and the side of the tank, that is how i use them, get them near the flow so they are always working.

I almost exclusively run Walstad tanks, so I have a big dirt battery that is always on. I have dealt with hair algae via much lower light.

Irene just did a video on this on her channel. Looks like she just stores them in regular baggies in the freezer as well. I'm definitely going to start doing that. I feed a large variety and end up with 6-month-old half-used cans of flakes and pellets.

I'm new to the hobby and can't really help, however, I was trying to find information about my recently acquired clown pleco and was given this link by aquarium coop. I hope it helps you in identifying those guys for you. https://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/

I want a cory clone/app thing so when I have dumb question I can ask. Even if it just gives me a good source to go look up and do research. I have a lot of dumb questions, being a very literal person does not help my case. 😂

yeah, a little acetone/rubbing alcohol or similar can help clean up the places you want the silicone to stick to. Something volatile so that it goes completely and leaves a squeaky clean and dry surface behind. I actually received a cracked tank from amazon. They refunded the money and didn't want me to return the tank. I siliconed the crack and it is fine. It was a tiny crack on a tiny tank, but for a free rimless tank, I decided to risk it. It was actually really pretty quick.

I think you have the process nailed down tight.

I've been looking for something near Marysville and everything I liked had a big separate garage or workshop. The wife every time "how many tanks would fit in that?" She's a keeper lol

Cheap sheets of 1/2 - 3/4 inch acrylic.

I was finishing up my water changes, when my wife yelled 'Swarm!'. My favorite hobby is fish, but my profession is beekeeper and duty had just called. The bees were 35 ft up a beech tree and somewhat inaccessible. But with the help of a 25 ft ladder and empty 5 gal. fish bucket on a fiberglass pole, I was able to get the mass of the swarm, including the queen down to the ground. Once the queen walked in to the hive, the rest of the bees began to follow. And it is not even lunch yet!

If your Latin is better than your English, you might be a fish nerd.

If you live in a flat and uses half the porch to grow daphnia, because you want live foods and don't trust the quality of the live foods in the fish store, you might be a fish nerd

I am soery to read about the recent losses...Some additional thoughts backing up those already stated: the heater doesn't sound trustworthy...and maybe confirm that your thermometer is accurate too. Also: I would establish a plan to address that kh. The tank is really vulnerable to a complete ph crash if no kh to take up ions produced from the nitrogen cycle; it might be slipping even lower at night or other times, as mentioned by Tre. I fill media bags with crushed coral and tuck them in the corners, etc. You can put it in filters or just scatter on the substrate. I think I have read for secure buffering 1 lb of crushed coral per 10 g is recommend. Also you might check the water out of your tap...sometimes seasonally city water is changed (in my neighborhood, the source of water changes in the summer, and base parameters change). Most test kits only go down so low on ph, so how sure are you about accuracy there? Might your ph be even lower? Hope things are looking up

Seems to be my luck lately too. Maybe they have COVID-19. Sorry, that may be insensitive. Please pardon my gallows humor.

Hey, welcome! I love the assassin snails. If you need to get rid of some just let me know, ill take them off your hands! Haha

I finally mounted the TV in my bedroom. Quite the relaxing view.

And what would it take for you to ship? Lol

When I started the day I didn't have the intention of setting up another tank...but I needed a place move a pair of Apistogramma nijsseni to. I watched Cory's "Getting Started with Aquascaping" live stream where he mentioned learning from making mistakes and just trying a bunch of things. So I decided to move the apistos into a tank that I would aquascape with marsh plants growing in a soggy spot on the edge of my driveway. Sounds crazy, but I am happy with the results so far (tank has been set up for about 4 hours now). I dug up 2 chunks of boggy sod, added sand from my creek, and an old piece of wood that was last in an aquarium about 10 years ago (it has living abandoned in the woods for the last 10 years). It took about 15 minutes to get it setup. But it took another 5 hours to fill it because I trickle filled it with a piece of airline tubing with water from my big living room tank. We will see how it works out, but so far the apistos seem to like it.

LMAO! "We want good pictures and long format conversation. Now if that doesn't interest you, well, there is social media for that..." Thank you Cory! I think this is going to be pretty fabulous! I appreciate the hard work you are putting in, and will continue to put in, to make this happen. Lots of forums out there are pretty brutal, so its going to be great to not have some of that garbage. 🙂