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Suction cups that don't suck, no wait, suction cups that do actually suck!

If you are trying to dial in a specific color balance, I would recommend temporarily using Manual mode. You will be able to see the changes immediately and then take note of the levels to apply to your Pro mode schedule. Manual mode is also great for photos. One tip from from @Bentley Pascoe comes to mind when looking at the schedule. You may want to drop your blue levels a lot, since high blue can favor algae. My blue levels are usually in the single digits. You could also see what that does to your overall color. I’m not sure about your tinting, but all my tanks are tinted by tannins, intentionally. Cheers

I thought it strage to have an aquarium in the bathroom so I never shared, but after seeing todays video with Dean's throne room setup I feel a bit encouraged that maybe it's not so strange after all! Here is my throne room setup. Overview and view from the seat (❛ᴗ❛)

Nice. I am glad we are getting these in the thread! For any program, you can always scale it up or down. If you just implemented this new schedule, give it two weeks or a month and see if your algae goes up or down. Use that as a metric to scale your power. Do not change anything else while testing your lighting. If you want to test some other factor, leave your lighting alone for that period. Cheers

Hahaha, Awesome!! I have aquariums in almost every room now. Including the bathroom. You have to turn your head, but this would be the view from the throne....

@ToScapeOrNotToScape, I have A LOT of pogostemon stellatus octopus in my aquariums, from the Co-Op. Grows so fast for me, I often rip it out by the handful, because it starts blocking the light. Best of luck with your plants. 😊

I am thinking DH is? Darn Husband Degrees of Hardness Designated Hitter Maybe none of the above? So glad you are here!

I have screen tops on my tank for jumpers. The screen is 1/8 wide and I was planning on setting the feeder right on the screen or center brace. I figure Xtreme Nano will fall through the screen no problem. If you have glass lids you can set it on the glass and cut a hole in plastic piece on back edge

Hi all. i am newly returned to the hobby after a 40 year hiatus. I had quite a few tanks as a kid with the usual suspects; Guppys, Neons, Angels, Loaches, etc. I am also newly retired and have started up a ton of new hobbies, like Extreme Hammocking, and Beard Growth Watching, but I was looking for something else to do...then I remembered the joy I got from keeping fish when I was in my early teens. I actually don't even have a tank yet, other than a little 10 gallon the kids used for rodents, years ago. I set it up to make sure I understood how to do the cycle and get the parameters down... Then I started watching Cory's YouTube videos and videos of a few other youtubers... Now I have a 20 gallon tank coming tomorrow and a 40 gallon that will be here Tuesday. I'm lucky that I live in rural upstate NY(right on Lake Ontario, I can see it as I type this) and do not have a fish store within 50 miles of me, other than the petcos and petsmarts and even those are a good hour's drive away, otherwise I'd probably have a big tank by now. I did spend my first $100 at the shop here already and got my package pretty quick, especially for what's going on with the USPS right now! I am going to slow down a bit though and get these two tanks set up and make sure I still enjoy it as much as I used too. The 20 gallon is going to be planted and have guppies, shrimp, and snails. Not sure yet what I will do with the 40 gallon, but I am going to set it up as soon as it gets here and do my research. I LOVE that we are really going for entire ecosystems these days. It's not just a cage for fish, but a home, so I am going to be doing a lot of plants and trying my best to put stuff together that like the same things. SOOOOO much info out there! Obviously there was no internet when I was a kid, so I rode my bike to the library a couple of times a week to check out another book and hopefully expand my knowledge a small amount. Looking back, we really didn't know even a quarter of the things that are "KNOWN" now. It was a lot of guesswork, so a huge thank you to all of you sharing info! I'll post pics as I go along and if things work out as I think they will, I'll show each new tank as they get progressively larger and probably my divorce papers somewhere along the line too.

I went back and reread your opening posts again (our newborn is happily destroying our sleep schedule hahaha). Really clever way to slice up the photo periods and I will definitely give this a shot. Thanks for expanding on a fantastic post.

Awesome thanks so for the green hair algae what should I lower in it and see if it helps ?

I really like the fact that a dollar per gallon sale exists because it gives me a target to shoot under for a used tank. Mostly for standard sizes I agree that new is better. However, I am still kicking myself for not jumping on the $100 120g with stand, filter, lights, heater, plants and discus included that I saw on craigslist a month ago. I couldn't find room!!! By any measure that would have been a screaming deal. I also saw one with SA puffers about a month before that for about $250. Both would have been amazing if I were ready for that.

Hi Everyone! I'm so happy to be on this forum! As a teen I kept several 30 G Fancy goldfish tanks with undergravel filters. I knew nothing about water changes or the nitrogen cycle. I only knew that once you get a tank going, you can use the gravel to "seed" another tank. Fast forward 25 years and I have jumped back into the hobby - and things sure have changed! I currently have three tanks: 90G, 20G long, and a 29G bow front. All tanks are planted. I have the Fluval 3.0 on the 90G and Finnex stingrays on the other two tanks. I've been at it for about 2 years and have learned so much from other forums as members have generously shared their knowledge and experience. I hope to be able to share some of my experience with others, too, though admittedly I'm kinda knowledge-heavy on beginner mistakes. For instance: I thought the Walstead method sounded really cool so I decided to try it out in my 75 G. Beginner mistake #1: Don't bother to listen to your DH and do a big goopy experiment on your biggest tank. **Sigh** live and learn. Anyway, I'm glad to be here. I'm a little nervous about posting 'cause every forum has its own culture, but I've been pursuing, and I think this is going to be a good fit! And it's nice to have more than one Happy Place :-) Syndi

Welcome to the forum, its a great place to be 😃

Just a quick note. If you want to use both vinegar and baking soda use them each separately for the best job. Mixing them together results in salty water and carbon dioxide. Yes it bubbles but not much cleaning.

Nice the fish school kit has a small weighted half a field for football/soccer or American football. Hoops, rings, poles.... and his kid is a humorous side kick in the videos. My kid loves it. Of course he has the betta trained to come to the aquarium door for food but he's working on anything more.

As someone who keeps discus and has an RO system (for the discus), I would advise to wait on the RO. No matter what the conventional wisdom is on water parameters, I think a lot of it depends on the fish keeper. You must be a pretty decent fish keeper as you are spawning angelfish. I wouldn't try and change anything about the water at first. If you have good quality water that is consistent, I would do frequent water changes. Make sure the discus like the water changes. If each water change is a mini-setback, maybe not much on the water changes. Tannins aren't a concern at this time. As always with discus you will want to see how their appetite is. Find the best frozen blood worms you can get (I think Hikari is the best). Find live blackworms if you can. If they are eating well and growing, that is most of what you need to know right now. They like to eat small meals frequently. You do have control over the temperature and I would keep it at minimum of 84 °F maybe bump it to 86 °F. Worry about eggs later. We can burn that bridge when we get to it. First spawn rarely take with discus anyway. And we don't know if we have a pair yet. Job 1 right now is to feed quality food and grow your discus. If the appetite or growth is anemic, then lets begin to look why they lack vigor (including re-examining water parameters). Congratulations, you are a discus person now!

@Streetwise is it terrible I got the training school for my kid and his betta. He sucks with the wand with his tiny hands but maybe someday that fish will do something other then eat, ride on snails and sleep.

Ok, I will bring down the blue. That should help with the algae, at least. I've found it doesn't really add anything to the overall color of the tank. Thanks for the tip about the manual mode. I wasn't sure if plants needed that spectrum or if some of the colors were simply for decoration. About the tinting: I just did a 50% WC and the tinting is a lot less, so I'm sure it has something to do with the newness of the tank. I just need to let things settle out a bit. I know tannins are good for fish, so even if I can never get rid of them, I guess I'll learn to live with it. Thanks for your help!

I would much rather have such a prestigious aquatic title as puffer. Dan wins! @Cory go ahead and make cute titles. 😉. Ya know....because you have extreme amount of free time.

Wrong on all counts! Dear Husband! ya gotta know he loves me - just bought me a 90G tank and tolerates fish stuff all over the house...

My current favorite is my dominant male Venustus "Twitch". I name too many of them and get really attached, which is why I have so many cichlids. It's a little easier if they're long lived and leave behind family. Twitch is actually gen 2 from my original male Odin (named after losing an eye gaining tank dominance). My favorite all time was a 33" black pacu we named Pacman. He was super personable, could hand feed him and pet him.

Am I the only one who got excited that the Co-op had added new plants?

Awesome! We are doing so great things on the site adding more sellers so maybe by that time we will have even more options for you!

I saw some of your videos just today and took a look at your website... I am putting together a small guppy tank as my first tank in a good 40 years, so I might be hitting you up when I'm ready!

Two downsides: 1. To fit it in an AquaClear 50, I had to dremel off some excess plastic. 2. I have to unplug the heater BEFORE I unplug the filter, or the level drops below the heater and it starts to sizzle. But for me, the upsides of moving the heater out of the tank, adjusting it more easily, and dropping warmed water right into circulation outweigh it. I would totally do it again.

I have no idea how long the bacteria in filter media will survive with out circulation. I've certainly gone 2-3 hours keeping the filter media in a bucket filled with tank water and it hasn't created any problems. But if I let it sit overnight which sometimes happens there is definitely a foul odor the next day, which would lead me to believe that the beneficial bacteria has crashed or is in the process of crashing. Still I just rinse it very well and re-set it up and everything catches back up in a few days. To be sure you can always re-seed it by squeezing out a sponge filter from another tank into the tank.

That stand looks really cool! It looks to be welded out of steel, when you put it in place be sure the top is level and flat. Then if you want to be extra sure that the tank will sit flat with just a bit of padding you can get some thin 1/8" black weather striping tape. Get the type that is peel and stick with adhesive on one side only. I would say put down a strip of it on each of your cross tubes and then set the tank in place. Once filled the foam will flatted some but also level out any small inconsistency in level.

I've fed some Vibra Bites since it was introduced to the hobby. Great food and it is IMO pleasing to the fish because of the shape and more than likely the taste. I've even had some puffers snap it up once in a while. Plus for smaller fish it is easy to just crumble it up a bit.

Yep, get those plants in there right away. When I notice new plant growth I know the tank is ready for fish.

At worst they absorb ammonia nitrite and nitrate helping to prevent crazy spikes and speeding up the process and prevent algae blooms. At best they already have some beneficial bacteria on them and help seed the tank in addition to the above benefits. Some people like to start with fast growing and floating plants then add the slow growers after because they're more susceptible to algae but I've never done that or had a problem because of it

Freshwater Fish Tank Cycling - How to Prepare for New Fish WWW.AQUARIUMCOOP.COM Have you ever seen a fish in the wild living in pure, crystal clear water with no other contaminants? Probably not... From what I have heard plants-in cycling is easier, but the last time I started a tank without plants I didn’t understand how ammonia and nitrites worked so I have not experimented really.

Hi everyone! I got started in the hobby in January. Now, I have to admit, I didn't care one bit about fish until my grandpa gave me a 10 gallon tank he had sitting in his yard. He thought it would be fun for me and my daughter to keep some fish...and was he right! Of course, I went to Petco, was told all the wrong stuff, and two of my fish died the next day. But then I started looking for my own information and found Aquarium Co-op on Youtube...Then my platys had babies, I got really interested in keeping fish, discovered live plants, and inherited a 90 gallon tank from my in-laws. What can I say? I'm really happy to be here. I found this forum pretty recently and thought I'd start participating. Here is a picture of my 90g. It is, of course, a work in progress. Curious if anyone has any recommendations. My current plans are to expand my cardinal tetra school from 13 to about 30 or so and let the plants fill in. There is a patch of ludwigia repens in the middle that should grow up from behind the rocks. It's low tech and I'm dosing 1 pump of Easy Green per day and have some Seachem Flourish tabs in the substrate. Lighting is 1 Fluval Plant 3.0. 90g stocking is currently: 15 rosy tetras, 11 platys (mickey mouse), 3 melini corys (if I can find more around me I'll add some), 13 cardinal tetras

I have hatchetfish, and had the same concern. I position my feeder so that it's dropping near the side rim of my tank and cut the slot in the lid there. I position my airstone there as well, on the assumption that fish won't want to be jumping right at the position where there is a nozzle or bubbles moving current. It's not perfect, but it minimizes jumping opportunities. Having current right there also helps with the distribution of food.

Fish keeping is very relaxing because of all the indoor fins. ....Ok, I'll see myself out.

Ted Judy is making one in a video series in his channel right now. It looks really cool!

Years and years ago I ended up with what I think was an apple snail. It just showed up one day and grew and grew and grew. I loved that thing. I should see if I have an old picture tucked away on a thumb drive somewhere.

I couldn't make out the titles. It looked at first like the 3rd rank was "Active Puffer". I have just squinted a little more and now I see it might be "Active Poster".

A topic with algae specific pics would be awesome!

This one made me think of you Cory

Forgot to post the tank in my previous post. Enjoy! Lights at previous setting Lights at current setting. Sun is setting at the moment.