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I've seen questions about the Co-op's nano air pump pop up often so here is a quick teardown of the usb nano air pump. With half of the out rubber removed we can see two main components, the motor(right) and the pump(left). On the bottom of the motor we can see a large 50-Ohm resistor between the terminals. I believe this resistor is there to protect the power supply. When the power is cut off the motor still spins for a moment and can throw some power back at the power supply, this resistor would help eat up that power. On the pump end we find three small screws. Once we remove the screws and top we find three small diaphragms that pump up and down when the motor runs. Now with the diaphragm rubber removed we can see the motor head piece that moves the diaphragms and on the underside of the top we can see the three small rubber backflow valves. I guess those screws weren't so small after all. And there we have it, the guts of the fabled pump popularized by our beloved Co-op.

To keep ya'll updated, I'm okay, me and my family are safe, the hurricane brushed passed my home so at worst, it's probably a power outage. Sucks for my nitrogen cycle but there's no fish luckily. Praying for that little bladder snail and my plants but we're okay.

Hi all: I'm drowning in multies! Some months ago I purchased 7 neolamprologus multifasciatus from my LFS, hoping they would breed. Boy did they ever! Now, I want to redistribute some and sell some back to my LFS (who wants them). Since catching shell dwellers is very difficult when using the more natural-looking escargot shells, I thought I should document the process I will attempt after having consulted Mister Internet: I will temporarily migrate the fish to PVC caves that are easier to empty. I originally gave my multies a 20-gallon long on my Home Depot rack all to themselves: They started breeding almost immediately. I fed the fry freshly-hatched BBS and Aquarium Co-Op Easy Fry Food, and they grew fast. After giving away 7 to a friend and moving 7 more to an office tank, they exploded again (over 20 juveniles just in the pic below)! There were over 30 in the last batch...maybe it was two simultaneous batches? Now that they've grown a little, it's time to find them homes. Extracting them from the shells, one at a time as I was instructed by my LFS (holding the shell out of the water on its side until the fish lets itself slide out), takes hours and can really stress out the fish. Instead, I plan to move the shells higher in the water and entice the fish over a few days to move into some PVC-based caves, from which it will be much easier to get the fish out. So I started by making my caves. Each one is simply a 1-1/2" length of 3/4" PVC pipe glued into an elbow, with a PVC cap that remains removable. I made fourteen: Next, I cut a couple pieces of "eggcrate"-style lighting diffuser, at roughly 4-1/2" x 12" each: My understanding is that shell dwellers prefer to live on the ground, not above it, and generally won't want to swim "upward" to get to their home. So tonight, I will suspend these two eggcrate sheets in the tank as "shelves", and move the shells up there, with the new PVC caves available below. More to come! Bill

I've used this plastic canvas you can get at craft stores. Tie the moss to it then weigh it down with a little substrate until the moss gets going real well. When the moss gets a little taller I bury the plastic canvas in the substrate. I love this stuff. You can make moss walls or use it to attach other plants as well. I've even made ledges and caves with it, then cover with substrate or rocks. There's so many uses for an aquarium. Cover a nano tank, cut small pieces to cover gaps where fish might be able to jump out, tank divider, separate filter media, etc, etc.

An update. I got some Endlers and Daisy Rice fish in. Pond is running smooth so far. 🙂

G'day fish community! I just wanted to introduce myself to this wonderful community! Thanks for having me here! I am a 12-year-old kid named Lazarus who LOVES fish so much! I have a 20L shrimp tank, a 20L swordtail/platy fry growout tank, a 60L outside tank, a 90L in my living room, an 80L community tank, and a mini, mini pond! So 6 setups in total, and am always busy! I even have a youtube channel, too, that I started in December and has reached over 1,000 subs (currently sitting on 1.27K)! This is a great community I mUST say! Have a fabulous evening/day guys! And I will be more than happy to help any of you out! Cheers, Lazarus! :)

Tonight I attached some short bungee cords to one of the shelves, adjusting to the height I wanted by hooking onto the right sections: I then hanged the shelf on the bars of the rack above the tank, suspending it in the water just a couple inches down: Turned out I only needed a single shelf. I moved all the shells onto it with planting tweezers, taking care not to let air bubbles get into them. Suprisingly, not as many of the fish fled into shells as I expected when I started moving them. Next, I dropped in all of my alternate PVC caves. New digs, guys! The fish immediately started checking them out: So far so good! Tomorrow I will start removing the shells, just a few at a time, after ensuring they're empty by checking them for occupancy with a flashlight. I have two external breeder boxes that will serve to hold the fish as I catch them, so that I won't have to move them to a different tank with different water parameters. More updates coming soon! Bill

I'd probably just water change for 30+ days with new fry and shrimplets. When you do vacuum it, vacuum into a bucket! If you do pick up a couple little ones you can net them out of the bucket and put them back.

As they used to say on Monty Python... And now for something completely different! Welcome aboard.

Hey a thread where I can be useful. I am a structural engineer by profession, and if you got me the frame dimensions, steel sizes, and thicknesses I would be happy to check the stand for you.

My aquarium insurance is an Apex EL with a leak detection kit, and a UPS.

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

Turned my Grandparents neglected unused 4 foot deep 16 X 32 pool into a no filtration pond earlier this year. I have several planted tanks that lead to the need for a tank for trimmings, and then a second tank for trimmings, and then a third tank for trimmings, and then i just started dumping extra trimmings into an outdoor 100 gallon rubbermaid mini pond which was already full of water Hyacynth and other plants. I cleaned out the pool and filled it with about 6 inches of well water, transfered about 25 water hyacynths, about a pound of duck weed, a good amount of guppy grass, and lots of other random clippings. It has been about 2 months now and it hasn't completely failed so I'm making a photo journal about it. Unfortunately these are the oldest photos I have, they are from about a month after I first cleaned the pool, late July/Early August: These are from about a week and a half ago, thanks to rain the pool is about 1.5 feet full and my Dwarf Aquarium lily is blooming: Trying to do a Time Lapse of the flower opening: And here are some pictures from Today, 2 of my water hyacinth have bloomed:

Hi I'm Taylor from Minnesota and this is my alligator gar named Bubbles (Sorry for the bad photo). He is in an 800 gallon above ground pond in my fish room. I don't have that many tanks I have a 90 rainbow fish community that I'll be planting. I have a 300 gallon snapping turtle tank with a 150 above tank sump that has plants and a few fish. The last tank is a 300 hillstream community that I'm sure I'll make a post on. It is inspired by Rachel O'Learys 150 hill stream same kinds of fish just more. are their any other monster keepers here?

Source: Well / Ground water at my location in Pennsylvania 🧺 Ph 7.3 Ammonia 0 ppm Nitrite 0 ppm Nitrate 5 ppm Phosphate 0 ppm Gh 8 degrees Kh 5 degrees TDS 120 ppm

That's great! Your shrimp will love all the bits of biofilm, mulm, and algae in your tanks. Enjoy watching them graze and multiply!

it looks like it is just a different colored part of its mouth from genetics and it does not look like an issue at all. if you do not just want to leave it then just keep an eye on it

Now im noticing a second pregnant shrimp. Very excited about this naturally since I originally only had found 1. More updates to come.

It's no big deal. Think of it as extra mulm.

Those temps are definitely fine mine have been breeding in a tank that has been consistently just below 80* due to summer temps. Its great that you have a lot of plants, if you have larger rock surfaces for them to hang out on and theyll love you for it. The more flow the better but mine love playing in the bubbles coming from the sponge filter also. I also found that my leopard danios were a bit much for the hillies acitivity wise and seemed to stress them out but that was in a smaller tank, as long as they have places to escape to they should be fine.

It's about time for an update: 40 Gallon: Everything is ticking along. I'm seeing a lot of that green stringy hair algae and the nitrates crept up to almost 40. I believe that this is a combo of over feeding while trying to get food to the last batch of fry and length of time the light is on in the tank. We lost the first batch of fry. Even though we saw them eating, they slowly disappeared over the course of a week. There's another clutch of eggs in the middle of our Christmas moss bridge. I'm tempted to pull them because it would be easy, but I'm going to go ahead and give her another chance in the community tank. Sorry for the poor photography. I just snapped off some shots with my phone and I'm afraid there are some reflections. 29 Gallon The tank is growing in so remains a little empty looking. It's currently stocked with 10 black neon tetras, 1 female sunset honey gourami, 6 otocinclus and two baby long fin green dragon ancistrus. There were originally 2 femal gouramis but we lost the smaller of the two today. No sign of injury or disease and the water parameters look great. We purchased her locally so I don't think it was our very soft water. She just never seemed to thrive. We're obviously keeping our eye on things but I think this was just one of those things. She'll be buried under the maple tree later today and my son isn't quite so wrecked. Poor kiddo. 10 gallon and 5 gallon betta tanks. Both bettas continue to do their betta thing. I'm going to revamp the 5 gallon one of these days. The flow is just a little high I think.

i always air on the side of caution and with a 5+ foot tank i am more comfortable with support in the center. if that’s a standard 150g i think i would go with a center support.

My 11 year old son is very excited to see another fish keeper his age. Thanks for sharing!

I would think it depends on the tank. If rimmed glass, A is best, because the tank is supported only on its edges. If rimless or acrylic, B would be best, so long as you get the height correct across all three columns.

Probably not the answer you are looking for, but I would wait a bit longer before cleaning. If you cleaned, most of the items you would remove would be items the fry, shrimp and shrimplets really like, i.e. algae and detritus. In a tank with babies I would place their needs above aesthetics at least temporarily.

I actually swapped to selling them myself since I get way more that way. I just offer multi starter packages that have at least 1 adult male, 1 adult female, and at least 3 juveniles plus a few shells. I decided it was easier to catch them in shells. When it's crowded I order a new bag of shells and offer 4-5 starters for $50. So far everyone has been pleased that they end up with more than 5 (not shorted anyone yet) and happy to start a colony for what stores charge for just 3 fish. I do wish you luck, the shells is the only thing I don't enjoy about keeping these great little guys.

Might have been just mine, but I moved their shells way up on the ledges I have on the back of their tank and replaced them with PVC caves.... They just moved up onto the ledge where their shells were and ignored the PVC.

Hey @Lizzie Blockno worries! We all get busy. My guy is doing okay, but there's been a lot of stressors in his life lately, so he doesn't look great, either. I must say, though, your statement about his fins and the bottom being fine but the tail being the worst is SO ACCURATE. That perfectly sums up my guy's fins, too. I won't be moving my guy quite as far as you did, but we had to move houses within the city this week, and this weekend we're moving again an hour away. I feel like a bad fish mom for getting him while renting and not in a stable housing situation. I'll probably be moving again within the next 4 months. And thanks for the product suggestions! I have a bunch of almond leaves in the tank, maybe too many? I don't know. I will continue trying to mix up his diet. Gonna keep trying all the other suggestions! They're basically what I've been doing (Water changes, aquarium salt, almond leaves, driftwood, coconut shells), but again, the moving situation is probably very stressful for him (and me, too!). Any ideas how to tell if it isn't fin rot? I'm thinking maybe velvet, but at present I don't have great lighting. It just seems to me his colour is less vibrant. I've also noticed a couple white dots appearing on his face, but those disappear when I treat with Betta Revive (http://www.hikariusa.com/wp/solutions/healthaid/betta-revive/). Thanks for everything, I'll keep you updated, and keep me posted on your situation, too! I love knowing you had difficulties, but have found ways to work through them and see improvement. All the best, Lanna

UPDATES: I'm letting the floating plants of various styles grow out first before I decide too much on how I like the look, but I combined the moneywort from two ponds into one, and added a bunch of water sprite into the one. The water hyacinths are REALLY taking off, so nitrates are not a problem anywhere. As for fish, the most interesting pond is the definitely one with the blue guppies in it. The rest of the fish look pretty plain from overhead, but the guppies have a lot of personality. The clown killies look interesting from overhead as well, but they don't move around much. I plan to give it a few months, then pull some specimens out and see how they look. Hoping for big bold colors at that point! I've been feeding frozen bbs in the mornings, micro pellets in the evenings, and occasionally supplementing daphnia from the daphnia pond. Some of the bigger bugs are still swimming around in the other ponds! The daphnia pond seems to ebb and flow in population. I have to put in a 1/2 Tablespoon of spirulina powder every day, as they consume it so fast! My green water bucket just isn't enough! I added a timer to the lights, so they turn on just before sunset and stay on till 10pm, encouraging me to go outside and get a better view. Definitely worth it! I just added some elbow nozzles on the ends of the box filters to help direct water flow. That seemed to help a lot. I plan to start cleaning the filter pads of the box filters, just one per weekend, to keep the maintenance low. I'll post some new pictures hopefully this weekend! Bill

we usually get 1 -2 weeks straight where it doesn't get above mid 20's and is in the singles at night, every other winter or so. My friends have a 1/4 acre pond and most years it gets frozen solid enough to take a car out on it.

When my house was damaged by a fire, the damage to my aquarium was covered my homeowners insurance. The insurance company didn't blink and promptly wrote a check for $29,000 to restore the aquarium.

Welcome aboard.

@stephenp20 I agree. In fact you can often have the lumber cut for you at the store if you have your cut list. Then all you need is a drill which every home should have anyway. You don't need to pay a lot for one that can do the job. As to position in the house an outside wall is good in that it is 100% certain to be load bering. However what you really want to know is which direction the floor joists are running under the floor. You want the joists to be 90 degrees to the wall so the weight is distributed across more joists. Do you have a basement or crawl space to look?

Great news!

It might be more useful to people if start a Zebra Danio breeding thread

I have my wild bettas in black water tanks and I find it makes their colors pop! (The 1st tank shown was right after set-up but it’s dark now).

If you’re looking for a “real” camera, the Canon M50 with just the kit lens can be had for around $500 on the Internet. It’s a pretty solid starter interchangeable-lens camera for stills and the kit lens is great for learning and 1080p video. It also does 1080p video very well. A good add-on lens for the M50 would be the Canon EF 50mm 1.8 for around $100-$125. You would have to buy an additional EF-M to EF adapter that would run about $25. Another great option would be the Canon EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 is ii USM with the lens adapter mentioned above. That’s a $400-$500 lens though but it’s the best telephoto option for the M50 without getting into “L Series” lenses but if you can afford an “L Series” I’d suggest getting a better camera more suited for your budget. I would also get a CPL filter to fit the lens you use regardless of whatever camera/lens you end up getting. A CPL filter is a polarized lens attachment. Not only will it help with tank-glass glare and stray light, it will also enhance the colors of whatever you’re photographing, especially if it’s through water. Polarized filters shift the rays of light hitting the sensor to essentially reduce glare. If you’ve ever worn polarized sunglasses and looked into a lake/river )or even into your aquarium) a CPL filter does the same thing for your camera. if you can’t afford something like that, a modern phone is more than capable of taking pretty good pictures. Lighting your subjects are key. Don’t be surprised if you have to add more lighting to your tank just for photos. It’s ok though because those extra lights aren’t permanent. Just use them for the photos. Photo editing features on modern phones have come a long way and can also be helpful in producing a good photo. Again, lighting usually dictates that. You’d be surprised how much noise and grain can be reduced just by using proper lighting.

Fahaka puffers can be great to have. I’ve never purchased one myself, but I’ve had three over the past two years that people abandoned at my door in home depot buckets. Two where only about 7” and one was about 13”. I was a little nervous sticking my hand in the big ones tank;) I found that the best filter was a strong canister. They are a pretty messy eater. Often they don’t finish eating all the parts of what you feed them. As for what and how much, I find it best to feed them a mixed diet of live snail, frozen snail meat, frozen fish, and clams on the 1/2 shell. To figure out the amount I’ll do the following every few months. Feed them a little at a time and take note of how much you have feed until they stop eating. I personally take 1/2 this amount and divide it into two feedings in the morning and at night. They have a short digestive track and will pass a meal in 4-5 hours. The poop is large:) They are a river puffer and stronger water flow is ok, so long as they have a calm spot. I’ve found that all three of mine like Swim through caves to hide in. I’ve also found that Fast, smaller fish are easier to keep with them as they are too much work to try and eat.

Trying to go no filter/air, I don't want anything electric running out there and I like White clouds too much, if it gets cold and i lose a dozen white clouds I'm going to be more depressed than if it gets cold and I lose a dozen mosquito fish. next year though, going to do rice fish and white clouds, try to start by May and breed hundreds. I had gotten interested in the Dojo loach a little while back, and was thinking about getting some for an indoor tank, but never ended up doing it. They are Legal in PA and Aqua Huna has a 4 pack for 30$, Id say there is a strong a strong chance i will go with that if i figure out some things to help with over wintering. Put in about 30 mosquito fish earlier today:

In my personal experience I have kept two hillstreams at 78-82F and only sponge filters with no problems for a year now. I'm unsure what caused the death of yours though. If I was you I would give it another so. Be sure to quarantine them if possible. 🙂

Good luck! I don’t know how the storm is supposed to hit you, but put what you can on high counters and such. I was flooded out by Irene, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Upgraded my 10 gallon sterilite bin to glass. These platies are growing out to be sold to my LFS. I was trying to do the same with the ludwigia, but you can see the issue. I couldn't view the plants properly in the sterilite and didn't notice the algae. A quick dip in hydrogen peroxide at least killed it.

Thank ya'll so much! I got my plants in! Things are getting exciting. Thank you for the warm welcome!

Welcome, Lazarus!🙋‍♀️

Welcome!

Welcome to the forum! Excited to see you in here!

This isn't my image, but it was taken about 2 miles from my house a couple days ago The next two pics I took from where I am sitting right now typing this. I don't do anything at all with with about a quarter acre of our property, except pile brush in the late summer and early fall months, so we sometimes get a family of fox or turkey that move in. The next one is another one of my hobbies. We live right on lake Ontario and my kayak sits right by the water for most of the year. I love getting out on the bay by us and just paddle all day. So much to see, especially during the bird migrations. This last one was a few years ago. It was taken on a nice day in January. the temps were pretty warm and the lake was like glass, so I went out for a paddle. That ice on the shore is a good ten foot thick. Here is a video from that day... I guess it was longer than a few years ago, the date is over ten years ago. 🙂

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".

I got some recently locally from a hobbyist. I told him I wanted it to fill in across a large tank and he deliberately chose plants with runners on them. I was told the original plants would do very little, but the runners would be aggressive. This has been my experience, the runners are growing, slowly at first, the "mother plant" is basically plastic with some browning. Edited to add: I think it establishes roots first, and so it is growing, just not where you can see it. Like we used to say with garden vines, first year sleep, second creep, third leap! hopefully it isn't years tho, lol.

This is in no way a useful suggestion but it is the first thing that came to mind. I don’t really see anything practical you could do other than what you are already doing.