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Hello folks! Jimmy of Aquarium Co-Op here with my latest little creation, my pond. Using a 12g Resin Whiskey Barrel - $20 = Found here @ Home Depot I put together a quick pond on my porch. We settled into an apartment that did not allow fish tanks over 5g inside the house but really didn't say anything about the outside ☺️. I swung by Aquarium Co-Op today and grabbed some crushed coral, plants and had an employee squeeze the dirtiest sponge filter we could find into a bag for a quick cycle. Using old hardscape, I built a fun little setup and didn't even break the bank. I'll get some more photos in the morning but this is a start of a fun little journal.

USB air pump (1/3 watt) + good sized UPS should get you quite a bit of runtime for not that much money. You could then pull the bio media from the canister and stick it in the tank with the bubbles underneath. I think that should get you quite a bit of time if there is a longer outage and keep the bio media alive.

I don't know what your water situation is, but if there is a way to get unpowered water, you can do water changes daily, feed very little or nothing, and use some prime, if you are not evacuated. The tank will make it. Treat it like a giant fish in cycle, and disconnect the filter so it doesn't putrify and then blast that into the tank unexpectedly. An airstone would be nice if you can run it. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, I have had to low tech survive a lot of power outages. If you don't have unpowered water access, stockpile as much as you can asap.

Built mine as a self-contained unit with everything you need. Way over-engineered, but fun. And yes, I bought a Ziss hatchery anyway. 🙂 Build log is over at Reef Central: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2694002

Please share some of the tanks/fish rooms your are proud of here are a two of mine. The first is a tank I had in college it had the plants were native collected the fish were hybrid white bass and other natives from jonah's aquarium. The second set of pics are of my 300 gallon hillstream community inspired by Rachel O'Learys 150 gallon. I'm shooting for more US natives like darters and other shiner species.

Seeding your QT filter in the display is a good way to go. To maintain the cycle in my QT tanks I keep a few hardy Danios in them permanently.

hey all! i wanted to share my very unconventional community tank for my goldfish. i have always loved my goldfish and i love pushing boundaries to see what works and doesnt. i do want to throw out some info/disclaimers before i post photos 🙂 tank info 90 gallon (210 on standby, just no space to put it currently. the second floor wont support it and im currently house shopping so no point in reinforcing if im going to be moving anyway) filtration: 2x fluval fx6, 2x zeiss filters, lots of plants 75-76F during the day, 73ish at night (you can see my little desktop fan working) ph: 8.4 out of the tap (liquid rock here), gh and kh are high as well. gh last time i checked was around 16 drops. 50% water changes 2x a week, ill do a third one if i feed super heavy one day. nitrates stay around 40ppm. ammonia/nitrites are always zero (i know people will ask) running co2, (low nitrate) ferts, and pretty high light with all of that out of the way i wanted to give some background. this started as a goldfish only tank but as i would downsize and tear tanks down, id just add the fish in temporarily while i find them a new home. the ones that i saw were doing well stayed. since the water is so mineral rich and hard i generally stick with species that do well in those parameters but i do have some oddballs in here. i took most of these while doing a water change last night so pardon the bad quality. full tank shot is included. stand was built by me as well and basket is temporary for some mystery fry i brought home from work. i just did a trim yesterday as well, usually the plants reach the top and i find that i trim them every 1-2 weeks. top of the tank growing pothos, peace lillies, sweet potato, corkscrew val, red mangroves (which love my water no surprise) and a few others im sure im missing. two fluval 3.0 as lights and im likely going to hang a grow light above since the plants growing above the hanging fluval arent doing to well. its getting too cramped so im going add another planter i think to spread the plants out. diy planter: i bought these rubber/plastic holders from the home section in target and used a soldering iron to drill holes. using stratum and fluorite as the substrate for them. you can see the roots growing out. the fluval fx6 outputs are pointed to skim the back of the tank so the planters get fresh flow. its attached by a hook to the top glass and i superglued some pretty strong suction cups to the back that sticks on the glass. one of them came loose which is why the left one is hanging wonky, ill fix that soon. tank inhabitants, i haven't measured them in a while so most of the measurements are ballpark ones done by sight based on what they used to be: goldfish, these range from 2.5/3" all the way to 7" which is my largest (arthur). these are a mix of phone shots i took last night and some photos i grabbed with my camera previously. this is ryan carlos arthur and the smallest one benji this is the same goldfish, he is colored differently on each side which i think is cool this fat guy

Looks great, what are your stocking plans? Did the landlord say how many 5g are allowed? Might be another loop hole there and you could get into killifish for instance.

Anyone else freeze their left over baby brine? I rinse mine in fresh water and sometimes I feed the left over to the display tank or goldfish but I also got on of these ice cube trays with soft silicone bottoms and a lid that work perfectly for freezing the baby brine. They come out as little gum drop shapes. The trick is to have them pretty concentrated without too much water. They work great for feeding later or to my non-fry tanks.

I keep a portable generator under my big hexagon tank and 4 100' contractors extensions under the tank next to it. When the power goes down, I roll the generator out to the back deck and run the cords to each fish room. Unplug the power strips from the wall and into the extensions. It is weird during power outages that all my fish tanks and the refrigerator work but nothing else.

I keep a breeding platy and guppy colony together, along with cherry shrimp, amano shrimp, and panda corys. Corys I think are an essential part of a guppy colony. All the powder food (and heavy feeding in general) ultimately sinks to the bottom.

I rarely or just about never name my fish. In fact of all the fish in my 50+ tanks right now there is only one fish that has a name. Years ago and two fishrooms past, I was an avid discus breeder with about 50 tanks of discus. At that point in time heckel discus were few and far in between. I somehow managed to get one and my wife proceeded to name that one fish "Mr. Heckel". He was a glorious beast growing rather large but after having him for about a year and a half I saw no breeding activity and had not been able to come across any other heckel discus, so I sold him off. Big mistake, you don't sell off a fish your wife or a family member has named. I still here about this once in a while today some 35 years later.

I suggest going all peacock or hap just don’t go predator haps and they won’t get too big

Sloppyscaping: instead of separating micro culture plants and painstakingly gridding them out in ADA soil, you grab handfuls of guppy grass, slap a rock on the bottom part, anchor some in pool sand, and call the hair moss intentional. It will not win awards, but your husband won’t divorce you for spending more money on Anubias than you do on food. And it leads to some cute moments like this one: This is just meant to be sort of a picture journal of experiments and failures in aquarium keeping. New to the hobby so if you see me try something that will result in complete disaster please do intervene! the Sloppyscape, A Gupster’s Paradise. I am not sure how many mutts are in here but there are also Corydoras julii, MTS and ramshorn snails, and pond snails that feed other fish. 40g with a canister filter, trying to figure out what else could go into it. I am playing with the idea of trying to do some kind of Pandaria themed tank with panda guppies, and potentially panda corys? I have a variety of 5-20 gallon tanks I could use, but am not sure where to start with stones or plants. I have a 12 gallon rimless nano with an integrated back sump that I would like to use, but I’m not yet sure how intense the flow on the pump is or if it can be adjusted.

Here is mine based off the Dean design. However I use a fishing mouth spreader to hang it.

I picked up this pair from my LFS last week. I've never had Kribensis before. I have been kicking around an idea for a ten gallon build and they had this nice pair so I scooped them up. I put them in a holding tank on my fish rack until I can get their permanent tank up. I noticed the male seemingly guarding the opening to the cave. I thought "they can't have spawned already". Well I guess they won't be moving so soon now! 😃

Just playing with streaming.

Caterpillars would be a good candidate for Bacillus thuringiensis spray, which should be fish safe. It will however also take out mosquito larvae, and blackfly larvae, and so on, you may want to avoid it in your daphnia set up. Or not, it should only bother larval stages of insects. Alternatively hand pick and squish and feed to fish!

In my experience, crushed coral is a perfectly serviceable substrate for freshwater tanks. Even though I also live in a place with hard water and high pH, my multi colony loves it: I don't think there is any harm in using as a full or partial substrate in a tank where your fish are suited to hard water and high pH, even if your water already has that. I don't really think it will make the water any harder or raise the pH to any noticeable degree, if they're already high. I think it will serve to increase your buffering capability. But for folks who want to use crushed coral for soft/acidic tanks, I've heard 1 pound per ten gallons as a common measure to help raise and buffer the pH and hardness.

If you are setting up a QT to get your very first fish for the display, you wont have luck seeding the filter for the QT from the display tank before buying the fish. The bacteria wont have enough food if there are NO ammonia sources. If you have a smaller display tank, you can just put the first fish in directly and add meds to the tank as needed. If the display is over 30g though that can get very expensive. After you have a few fish in the display tank you can then seed a filter for the QT, and quarantine all additional fish. If your display is big, I would get used filter media from you LFS, and seachem Prime and Stability, and a few of the toughest fish/snails you plan to keep, and do a fish-in cycle in the QT. A handful of duckweed or other floaters are great too. Alternatively, if you don't like that idea, add some food to the QT each day as if there were fish in there, and let the ammonia come from the food, once the cycle is done (by testing), siphon out the gross detritus and start your quarantine in a cycled tank.

I love the colors and color pattern of that fish. That's quite striking. Oh, and that's really good name for him.

I fused two ends of airline tubing together with a hair dryer. A heat gun is easier but I don’t have one 😣 No pictures to show but I got the idea from Foo the Flowerhorn on youtube.

Local clubs maybe? Or an ad on craigslist? I know that is sketchy in some parts of the country, but I have had the best luck there.

I live in FL. 'Nuff said. 😁 I purchased 2 of these from Amazon. They have both plugs and a USB port (which can be used for an Aquarium Co-Op air pump!) They work really well with our many outages. Our electricity has at least brown-outs during every thunderstorm and during the summer, that's every afternoon. They click on immediately and then go off when the power comes back on. In fact, I hear them click before the lights dim sometimes. That's really impressive. I also bought an older one before these 2. It had 2 USB outlets on it, but it's no longer available for a good price. But I've been really impressed with it too. They are handy little tools to have. I've not needed them during an extended outage before, so I can't speak to how long they run the air pumps. I will definitely unplug lights and heaters should that situation happen. Hope that helps. 🙂

So I actually do this six days of the week, not just today, but figured the pics might be amusing. This is the 'otto buffet' - I keep a small tub out side with a few inches of rainwater and dirty tank change water in it, and I throw these rocks in there to sit out in the sun and grow algae. I then pull two or three rocks a day and put them in this tank for the ottos to have fresh algae since they've done a fine job cleaning up the rest of the tank. These rocks will be cleaned in a couple hours. I will swap them back out to the outside tub tomorrow and bring fresh algae covered rocks in for them.

I picked out a itty bitty baby betta at petco and raised him up in a 5 gal tank. His name was Fin Diesel and he lived to be about 4 years old. He was just a normal blue splendens veil tail and he was a wonderful betta. He would swim to the side of the tank closest to me and hang out there while I worked on my computer. There is just something about raising them up from such a small size, they get to know you better as their food source, and care taker than others i have gotten who were at least a year old. With exception to my newest betta Hunter, he was the best betta I have ever had.

My favourite would be Fairy Moss - Azolla sp. They have a nice variation in colour as they grow with pinks and soft greens, but most of all is the texture they create, and the Bettas seem to enjoy hanging out just under the roots.

Sorry about the late reply, been busy moving... I love those haps, i think i will be going with either the peacocks or haps, those have great color variety and just look so cool. Thank you for all the help everyone!

I keep mine with white cloud minnows and Beckford's pencilfish. Pencilfish are underrated! I previoisly had a dwarf gouramj as a centerpiece, but it just never rwlly thrived and one day I just didn't see it anymore. Same with my peacock gudgeons. Now I just stick to schools of different species.

I am not a discus expert, my family had some as a kid but I have never had them myself. But I would pick a school of rummynose or cardinal tetras, and a few khuli loaches and otocinclus....aaaand I have just listed my current tank stocking list but I don't have discus. My tank is at 83 degrees. About to put in some rams. Fingers crossed. Admittedly, my list is pretty basic. I am going for balanced and non-aggressive.

That is a hydra. I had them develop in one of my tanks too and was worried as they have a reputation for potentially eating fry. General consensus was they are not that worrisome, but kind of fascinating little signs of over feeding. Many fish eat them. I put some plants and rocks with hydra on them in the tank with my blood parrot and uh, well, that worked.

I have red cherry shrimp and bristle nose plecos in my guppy mutt hut.

He's a new addition, I've only had him about 4 months, but I am IN LOVE with my betta boy Joey. He is just so engaging and fun! He loves having tank mates and likes to swim around and pretend to be a catfish. He's a good lad.

I have experimented with the "fertilizer cycling" method in one of my aquariums awhile back using only plants and Co-Op Easy green fertilizer. The tank turned out to be one of my most stable and favorite aquariums. Was monitoring Ammonia, Nitrites & Nitrates throughout the cycling process. Once the plants and algae started growing, and water parameters stabilized, I slowly added a few fish at a time. Seemed to work well for me.

I love these sponges. They work great and easily rinse clean. I make sure to add a few to every order. I found its easy using mandoline slicer to trim the sponge down into thin sheets. Perfect to use under a magnet cleaner. Depending on the strength of your magnet, slice the sponge thinner or thicker. When cutting apply even light pressure with the palm of your hand, go slow, and be careful . Most slicers come with an attachment to hold things while slicing, that may work too.

PLANTS AND LIGHTS! What did I find? Illumination... Time to light up the ponds. After much thinking and searching, I settled on this set of Jebao lights I found on Amazon for $53. They're a little expensive and fairly cheaply made, but I'm still really glad I did: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IM80AWK (non-affiliate link) The lights are separated by a 3-foot cord (wish it was 4 feet). The light itself can be separated from its weighted stand, although I ultimately chose to use the stands. As it turns out those stands are weighted by a big chunk of metal embedded in resin. This means they can be mounted or hung with magnets! I picked up some extra-strength magnetic hooks from Amazon as well: The hooks are attached to their bases with a swivel, and they held to the back of the lights' bases just fine. All I had to do was hook them on the rim of the planters at whatever height I wanted and angle them accordingly: I then secured the cords between the lights with some of that metal foil tape which holds so well. The cords were a little too short to disappear completely... ...but you have to look for them. All ponds, wired up for light! And when it got dark last night, I turned them on! Closeup of pond #1. The duckweed re-casts the white light as green: Less so with the guppy grass in #4: Here's a closeup of the Hawaiian blue Moscow guppies in #4: Pond #6 has a large Daphnia magna culture I picked up from AquaBid, and fed with green water from another bucket that gets all-day sunlight: The daphnia really flock to the light! The next things to do are to grow out the greenery more, try to get some better pictures, and put the light on a timer. 🙂 Thanks for looking! Bill

They're basically the same. The USB air pump is a small hobby motor that spins a 3-sided diaphragm pump. Different mainly in that the USB pump doesn't change the direction of motion, it's rotary motor to rotary diaphragm; while the normal pumps change from rotary motor to vertical diaphragm to power their pumps. Some pumps may also use a magnet to pull the diaphragm in one of the directions and a spring to push in the other. But the one-way valves and diaphragms are all the same. Linear air pumps are a whole different beast, that's why they're so quiet. Think two syringes connected by one-way valves, going in opposite directions; while one is emptying, the other is filling. Constant air pressure and very, very quiet.

I just feed the tank fish food as if the fish were there. I figure the food will decompose and create ammonia at about the same amount as the fish would. It probably adds a day or two from adding ammonia directly, but has worked fine for me.

If you have a quarantine or extra tank, you can always use it as a "toolbox" tank. Keep a few extra BBA-eaters in there (Siamese Algae Eaters, snails, Florida flagfish, etc.), and drop in a plant for a day or so when it needs to be cleaned off...

Hi from the uk I have 9 tanks mostly nano my biggest was a 40g but just got my newest addition a 75g and just bought a shelving unit for my nano tanks for my spare room making it into a little fish room cant wait 😀

I think we might want to establish some mega threads for some common topics or small questions. I have a lot of things that are small questions not large enough to warrant a thread but as a beginner I’d like the advice. Have to say, at first I thought maybe this was a post asking for relationship advice around breaking up. Glad that’s not the case and let’s keep it that way 😂

Hi from Queens 🙋‍♀️ I use a box filter for my QT tank. 🙂

I kinda use Brandy's turkey baster trick but a bit different. I fill the baster half way, then squeeze the bulb to get the air out. Just point at the detritus and release the bulb. Gentle enough not to disturb plants.

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.

My L191 royal pleco Ricky and his friend the L075 Sarbaji 'Para' pleco Leo are two of my favorite fish. However, probably the most fun fish to watch in this tank is my Rainbow Shark. He kind of acts like the 'Tank Boss' for the rainbowfish keeping them from going to low into the bottom feeder's domain while feeding.

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

We have fry!!