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Sometimes I use the same knife for the peanut butter and the jelly. We are all horrible people.

Made some small adjustments to the live stream camera today. 📸

Finally got the background sealed & installed. It's way more subtle than I expected. But I think there are a couple of things affecting that: I've got a great bio-film going on the front & back glass, AND I think my water's a bit on the green side. 😏 Over all, I'm very pleased.

Morning all, another Meme Monday on the books.

I know how I got into the hobby. When I was 9 years old I read a book about a boy who kept guppies and the humorous plot centered on how fast the guppy population got out of control. So I gathered a dozen quart jars and saved my allowance and bought some female guppies. I could see the babies developing in the gravid females and when the first babies were born I was excited. But when it turned out some the babies from gray moms were golden, I was hooked. I think the why centers on glass boxes. Glass boxes allow us in the comfort of our own homes to see from only inches away the intimate details of complex biological systems with all the majesty and drama that life on our planet brings. I have an honey bee observation hive in my house also and it is a completely different more engaging experience than the other 120 colonies I keep outside. Our fish aren't in a barn or an out yard, they are in our living rooms, bedrooms and even bathrooms and aquariums contain entire worlds of wonder. And yet, I think this part is important too. Aquariums aren't completely dirt-easy. There is a learning curve and therefore a challenge. And just when you reach a new peak of competence there is yet another peak to climb, so it never get old. And the more you learn, the more fun and rewarding it is. It is a virtuous feed back loop.

I confess, it is true... I don't: do any cycling on a new aquarium and I put fish in moments after the water goes in to the new aquarium have a quarantine aquarium or think about quarantining new fish rinse my baby brine shrimp Probably the first 2 are much more serious sins than the 3rd one. I think I get away with the first one because all my tanks are dirty and I use a lot of hornwort. I think I get away with second one because most new fish go into their own (uncycled) new aquarium (or maybe it is just luck and I just haven't run out the string yet). I pretty sure @Dean’s Fishroom would give me demerits for the 3rd one, but it is my lazy way of providing trace elements to my fish 🙂.

I only joined CARE yesterday, but so far I love the feeling of community here. I think I've already spent a couple hours just scrolling through the replies from various posts, but I could definitely just keep scrolling and reading about everyone's fish keeping adventures. Everyone is very open to sharing. I enjoy watching all the big fish youtubers, but I love seeing the everyday behind the scenes stuff that everyone else goes through. I'm loving all the pictures of tanks and fish being shared 🙂 It's nice to see others like me who don't have as many tanks or are still learning.

Lol, that video of you pushing the discus away! I love how inquisitive they seem. The picture labeling all your plants is very helpful too. I may just have to push discus to the top of my "large aquarium" bucket list now.

I have a different light on practically every tank. So the betta tank is actually a fluval spec 16-gallon, using the stock fluval LED it comes with. I have it on a nicrew dimmer/timer, which allows me to start it really dim in the morning, full blast during the day, then step down again to dim right before lights-out. I would agree it looks super lush, and I don't really know why. The cabomba replaced the hygrophila and is doing much better. The pearl weed releases oxygen all day long, and the chain sword is multiplying. There is a fair amount of hair algae in there, but it's well hidden by the plants. The endler tank is running a fluval aquasky. Totally unnecessary because it's a low light tank, very short half-intensity peak period. My big tank, and my living room tank are both using Fluval 3.0s. My big tank is having diatom issues that made the dwarf sag look awful, but is otherwise moving in the right direction. It's a 24-inch tall tank, so the single fluval 3.0 is not going to deliver high light to everything. My living room tank suffered for a couple months because the root feeders were not getting enough nutrients. In the past 3 weeks, I started injecting CO2 and it has noticeably improved since my October 2 update. October 2: 3 weeks of CO2: I need to get better at duplicating lighting for these sort of comparison shots, but you can see the dwarf sagg has gone nuts, the lily leaves are massive, the crypts are growing (I even removed two of them because it was getting crowded), and the vals are filling out. I trimmed the red sword leaves significantly because they weren't doing well before the CO2. The rest of my tanks are running various models of Nicrew lights, all using the same kind of dimmer/timer. No complaints there. They all function well as low to medium lighting, and they're cheap. I have a CO2art regulator and a 20lb cylinder on order, and it's going on the big tank this week. I wish I could find a place to loan me one of those expensive par meters. I feel like it would give me some good insight as to why some tanks are doing better than others. I have a ridiculous number of variables across all the tanks -- different types of active substrates, inert substrates, different models of lighting, different fertilization regimen for the highly stocked tanks vs. low light tanks vs. medium light tanks, etc.

A little update. This photo is an in progress shot (aren't aquariums always in progress? Feels that way), since taking it shows me a few things I want to change. Did some glass cleaning last night, and refreshed the white sand in the front. So future things to change: The val is taking over the back left more than I'd like, and has choked out some of the giant haigrass. Looking at the pic from 6 months ago, the hairgrass was almost double the width it is now. I think next water change, I'm going to pull out a bunch of the giant val and replace it with some giant hairgrass to grow in. I also added 3 crinum natans in the back left. They're growing in slowly but surely. I hope they'll one day be large enough to replace the val in this corner and drape across the top. They're very slow growing though, it'll probably be years until the get to be that big a size. And, I added some mini velvet buce on driftwood to the foreground. Just did this last week, so it needs time to grow in.

The reason I mentioned hornwort above was I thought I read somewhere that it was used in some wastewater treatments @KBOzzie59 can check me on this. But after reading @Jessica. and @MattyIce post's above I went poking around on Google and found this paper: Responses of bacterial community structure and denitrifying bacteria in biofilm to submerged macrophytes and nitrate WWW.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV Submerged macrophytes play important roles in constructed wetlands and natural water bodies, as these organisms remove nutrients and provide... After spending 3 minutes speed reading it, I think one of its conclusions is although most denitrification is thought to occur under anaerobic conditions, plants (aquatic macrophytes in the paper's lingo) can provide a large surface area for attached biofilm (epiphytic microbes in their lingo) thereby providing a 'pathway for the biological modulation of nitrogen'. Yay! That's what we want. The density of the Nitraspina, Nitrospinacacae, and Nitrospria bacteria (the famous beneficial bacteria) was much greater on the surface of plant leaves than either gravel or plastic (I didn't know that, I thought all surface area was the same, apparently plants enter into a beneficial relationship with bacteria and help provide the oxygen and organic carbon the bacteria needs) . Obviously plants with greater surface area to leaf ratios like hornwort or Eleoacharis (hair grass) will provide greater opportunities for biofilm. Duckweed roots get a brief mention. Almost none of the bacteria could be cultured but was detected through DNA analysis. In summary, one of the reason hornwort is so good is that hornwort has a lot of surface area for the beneficial bacteria to grow on. And not just any old surface area but plant leaf surface area, the bestest kinda of surface area if you are a beneficial bacteria.

I FINALLY got to put my stickers on my fridge! They’re pretty lonely. Maybe I’ll have to bolster the collection when I get a ziss brine Hatcher... I need to find my Murphy sticker too, it’s somewhere in my storage unit I hope. If not I’ll order another

I don't remember what caused me to first get into the hobby. It was the late 60s. I think it was the only pet my parents would let me get and I loved anything to do with "nature" but I wasn't allowed to go camping or fishing or hiking... or well pretty much anything. When I finally broke free from that life, I dove into all those things I wasn't allowed to do. I went camping as often as I could and I lived for a good hike. I fell in love with kayaking, birdwatching, etc. I was always out in nature in some way. Get me away from people and civilization and that's when I felt most alive. Then a few years ago I got hit with an incurable auto-immune disease. My body was/is eating itself. Suddenly doing all those things that made up a huge part of who I was, just weren't possible any more. I retired from work and pretty much from life too. I'm lucky in that I have an amazing wife and three adult children who have all been incredibly supportive, but I still felt lost. I no longer had a purpose and I couldn't really do a lot of the stuff that made me happy. Then I saw a twitter post from a comic book writer I follow who's name is Greg Pak. He had recently got back into fish keeping too and was posting about his fish tanks. I remembered all the joy I got out of keeping fish when I was a kid and I knew we had a 10 gallon tank in the basement, so I had one of the kids bring it up for me and I set it up in my office. Suddenly I had something I could focus on and even on those days when I couldn't get out of bed, I could still read about the hobby and discover different ways of doing things. That was 4 months ago. I got my first guppies about a month after setting up the first little tank, and now I have a 55 gallon, two 45 tall tanks, and two 20 gallon tanks. I have guppies and shrimp in two of the tanks and some CPDs in the little 10 gallon, which is now my QT tank. I have some mystery snails coming this Friday and some Boesemani Rainbows are ordered too, but they haven't shipped yet. Now I can have that little piece of nature right by me. Even when I can't walk, I can still experience it and my quality of life has gone way up in the past four months. My wife has said she sees a big improvement in my outlook and I just don't feel as resigned to my fate as much any more.

I think it would be fun to start 3 similar aquariums at the same time, but try 3 different strategies for the substrate and fertilizer. First a Walstad type dirted substrate - in this case dirt from my yard Second, CaribSea's Eco-Complete And third, a 'normal' tank with CaribSea's Peace Rive substrate supplemented with Aquarium Co-Op's Easy Root Tabs and Easy Green liquid fertilizer. For this experiment (okay, this is definitely not an experiment as I do not have a hypothesis, any controls, or replicants) I will use three 40 gallon breeder aquariums that will likely have sponge filters, heaters, and Finnex lights. It should take me about a week or two to gather all the resources for this experiment (again, definitely not an experiment as my N on each tank will be 1, but my fun quotient ought to be greater than 1 because this will also be an attempt to setup 3 aquariums that are some more than green water fry tanks or mulm factories).

This seems like an ideal place to log the changes in my tanks, and get opinions on issues I'm struggling with. You'll notice a trend in most of my aquariums -- collectoritis. I'm at the stage of fishkeeping right now where I can't fathom a species-only tank. My schooling fish are all in sufficient numbers, but I still love the variety. I think I have an even bigger problem with plants. Over the past year I've just been buying all the plants to find out which ones grow (it's a secret, no one knows). I'll post each tank in order of acquisition. 1. Living room display, 40 breeder, initially set up August 2019. Below is what the tank looked like back in October. Started it out as a super-artificial scape, and then I realized how much I liked live aquatic plants and began adding them in droves. After some experience with subsequent tanks, I went back to this one for an overhaul. This is what it looks like today (changing the substrate was a B-and-a-half): YouTube video on this tank: The tiny sword plant you see in the lower left corner of the first pic has grown into the giant sword plant in the second pic. The floating moss ball was a recent addition from the Co-op, and while it arrived in great condition, I am cursed when it comes to growing moss. I just can't figure it out. Stocking: Angels, rosy tetras, maccullochi rainbows, australian rainbows, otos, powder blue dwarf gourami, and emerald corydoras. Update 4/10/21: I've been messing around with backlighting on this tank. See video below. 2. Dining Room, 20 tall, initially set up September 2019 I wanted to breed bristlenose plecos. It didn't take long before I saw baby bristlenose all over the glass, at least 30 of them. Unfortunately, they dwindled one by one over a period of two weeks - no idea why. There was one survivor, which has grown 2+ inches. But since that initial spawn, I've only seen white eggs that the male pushes out of the cave. Any tips to get this back on track? In addition to the plecos, it's housing my wife's platys from her classroom tank (she's a teacher) which are breeding, as well as breeding endlers and cherry shrimp. Stocking: Male and female adult and one juvenile bristlenose pleco, platies, endlers, cherry shrimp. 3. Daughter's tank, 20 tall, set up October 2019 My daughter (8 years old) wanted a tank for her room. Trying to move her away from the artificial plants but she likes them too much. So I just have to keep doing bleach dips every month or so until I can get the lighting balanced (upgraded her light recently). The lighting upgrade seems to have negatively affected her live water sprite, though. Used to be lush and green and now seems to be falling apart. Stocking: Platies, platy fry, green fire tetra, sunset honey gourami, pygmy corys, and guppies from my wife's classroom tank 4. Son's tank, 20 tall, set up November 2019 My son (6 years old) loves dinosaurs, so we went with sort of a prehistoric jungle theme. Stocking: Zebra loaches, panda corys, cherry barbs, purple harlequin rasboras, and one platy (offspring from my daughter's tank) YouTube Video on my Kids' Tanks: 5. The livebearer tank, 40 breeder, set up in February 2020. In the dining room next to the pleco fail tank, I have guppies, platys, and cherry shrimp breeding up a storm. I started with just guppies in the 20 tall in October, trying to breed the fancy strains from my LFS. I could never keep a single one alive for more than a couple weeks. I had purchased some already-pregnant females, which gave birth and died. I raised the fry and let them breed as well, and it looked like I was getting some strong stock out of them, so I set up this 40 breeder to let the guppies do their thing. Simultaneously, my daughter's platy was having babies, which I also added to this tank. Because of how much feeding I was doing, I added panda corys and cherry shrimp to the mix. But then in March/April, there was an outbreak of some horrid bacterial disease. My corys were happy, my shrimp were breeding, and the platys were thriving. But for several weeks the guppies died one by one, then two by two, then five by five, etc. I probably lost 75% of my guppy stock. Maracyn didn't touch it, nor did . What ended up working was kanaplex, though it crashed the cycle. Should've quarantined... I didn't lose any corys or platys during all this drama, though. I decided not to buy anymore guppies and just let my surviving endlers and guppies breed. Things are doing better, so much so that I've been able to grow out enough stock to trade in at my LFS. Also trying to grow java moss glued to foam (removed from my bonsai tree because nothing was growing). Stocking: Guppies, endlers, endler/guppy hybrids, platys, panda corys, cherry shrimp, and amano shrimp Note: The background in the above tank, as well as the cave, were DIYs that were intended for tank number 6. However, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the result and found a better DIY method online. Still, didn't want the first background to go to waste. EDIT (April 30, 2021): The amazon sword has really taken over since that above pic. I finally finished my video on this tank: 6. The Bedroom Display, 90 gallon, set up February 2020 Sometime in December, I dove into a large DIY project. I had 1/2 inch glass cut to custom dimensions so it could fit in a particular space in my bedroom, and I siliconed it all myself. Tank dimensions are 55"L x 17"W x 24"H. I also built the cabinet/stand and created the foam rock background . The tree used to have the moss I mentioned above, but recently changed it out for subwassertang. I plan to buy more of it soon. Every plant in here is exploding. I've had trouble keeping cardinal tetras alive. Can't tell you how many I've purchased, but the 15 or so left in here are doing well now. I've lost far fewer rummynose. This tank is just so much fun to look at. The rainbows and corys are always spawning, the forktails play in the spraybar current, the rummynose stay together and swim back and forth, the amano shrimp are big enough to stay visible and crawl all over the rock wall, and the gourami patrols the tank like it's his job and eats from my hand. The cardinal tetra just sort of exist and look pretty. It's the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning. Stocking: Cardinal tetra, rummynose tetra, boesemani rainbows, forktail rainbows, pearl gourami, otos, julii corys, and amano shrimp. 7. Betta in the bedroom, 16G fluval spec, set up June 2020 My wife wanted a betta tank, so we got one, tank number 2 in the bedroom. She made all the aquascaping and stocking decisions. New tank so still sorting out the algae, fert/light balance. Another christmas moss floater, doing better in this tank for some odd reason, but still don't have high hopes. Stocking: pygmy corys, white cloud mountain minnows, and betta BONUS: Quarantine bin Learned my lesson with those guppies, so I'm quarantining now. I'm trying to add a few more cardinal tetra to my 90G. I've had great success with aqua huna fish, except for their cardinal tetras. This time around, I ordered 20 and put them in this 10G sterilite container. I lost 9 of them over 48 hours, but the remaining 11 have been alive for the past 6 days. Still don't look great, though.

First time forum user. been in the hobby for over 50 years and still learning and having fun. Just started preparing my first shrimp tank. About 3 months in at this point Here is my 90 gallon community tank

So I did this today. Lucked out and I was not crushed by the tank and the tank stayed in one piece.

@Rikostan Sorry to hear about your illness. I also have a chronic illness and have been going generally downhill for 4 years. I had to give up fostering kittens and horseback riding, but I’ve found that I can still manage fish. As for why I got into the hobby I can only offer this:

Tried it a couple times.

The first thing you should do is make sure they have very clean water. How long have you had these fish and this tank? Are they new?

I like that the number one rule is to act like a decent human. I can't think of a single other forum that doesn't foster toxicity in some way, either through ego-driven moderators or an overall lack of moderation.

When I was a young lad ( two years old) I saw my dad's friends fish tank with silver dollar fish and I thought, woah, that looks so cool!! Then I saw movies with goldfish and I just got more and more interested. The first time I visited an aquarium I was amazed and practically died! finally 3 months ago, I got fish ( I am 11) and by that time, I had wanted fish for 9 years and now that I am finally in, I have no regrets.

I think I'd try getting window repair resin. I also feel it's probably just a cosmetic thing.

If we’re confessing: I bought my first fish and tank at the same time, so definitely no cycling was done I also didn’t have a heater or filter for the poor Betta And the tank was definitely too small, still is On the plus side, I’m slowly fixing my mistakes and no one has died yet.

Nice haul! The little fuzzy plant kinda looks like Mayaca fluviatilis.

Similar situation. Bought a used tank, looked great, but after purchase noticed a chipped corner/edge similar to yours near the bottom of the tank. After a quick youtube sesh, Home Depot had what I needed. Try siliconing plastic corner guard to the outside of the tank if its not necessarily a display tank. Doesn't look the best but it'll hold. Comes in 4 or 8ft sections. https://www.homedepot.com/p/TRIMACO-1-1-8-in-x-1-1-8-in-x-4-ft-Plastic-Corner-Guard-Commercial-01184G/100118843?MERCH=REC-_-pipsem-_-202061361-_-100118843-_-N Check this video.

Haha I love it! Keep em coming

Excel is a good tool if you want to also visually represent trends in your data. So is google sheets. (These are very useful to quickly make sense of large-ish amounts of raw data). But in your case, it could be useful and fun to visually represent things for others to see, like in a forum post! Like how different volumes of water changes affect nitrates over time in relation to amount of food going into the system (sounds fun right!). Of course this wont be super scientific as there are so many other variables to account for, but could be interesting nonetheless. As for what to track, just track everything you do routinely that can be quantified in some way (with maybe some free form fields for notes), then later you can use that data to make sense of what you did. If you track irrelevant stuff, no biggie. Just don't included it in any later analysis. On the other hand, if you're just thinking of keeping a basic ledger for posterity sake -- go pencil and paper!

I do cool water changes but my tank has been at 74-76F for most of the time I have had this group. I think that they are laying the eggs in a tall patch of java/christmas moss, not on the glass which makes it impossible to see or to get the eggs out. I noticed one of the big females practically rolling around in there on Sat. night and did some research. I thought she was having swim bladder problems but then I noticed that she had her bottom fins clamped together as she swam into the moss. Apparently they deposit one egg at a time! Fascinating!

I track by tank. I don't have many tanks so they're currently all in one spreadsheet, but I could easily divide them into different tabs.

Acronyms are hard! Don't feel bad, I frequently find myself asking about what an acronym stands for as well. There's many out there that are 'common' chat speak like AFK (away from keyboard) but many more that are specific to what forum/hobby/topic you are discussing, just to add to the confusion! Most people know I'm talking about a filter when I say HOB (hang on back) here, but what if I wanted to, say, talk about BARF diets? I doubt anyone here would guess that Bones And Raw Food was what that meant. But its a very common acronym on a wolfdog forum I frequent.

I tried them in a 20g, using a dry start, and I will say don't do it. The never attach / root to the substrate, any fish or water change you do will displace them into water column. Each new plant that grows, almost immediately has 2-3 seeds on its root, which are stick, they stick everywhere and start to grow asap. The seeds also entered my hob, and started growing in the hob. Basically a mess that consumes time and energy. They die off very soon, I guess in 10-12 days, though new ones alway keep growing, and attaching to everything.

At least one of my Cory fry has survived for 4 days so far. Spotted it today and I also spotted a baby CPD the size of an eyelash, probably just hatched. I guess removing the CPD parents a few days ago has allowed some fry to survive. Those CPDs are really voracious micro predators for anything that fits in their mouths.

My girls

Not a plant expert, but after a quick google search, I agree with @Lynze. I had one similar to what you have in the picture with the wavy leaves that I got at a Petsmart in a cup just labeled aponogeton. It got huge, like 2ft long leaves. They also have neat little flowers.

It looks like an Aponogeton ulvaceus

I feed about 9 tanks and use a pipette. After I rinse the baby brine I pour them into a glass yogurt container I have. It's a little bigger than a baby food jar. I do this because it concentrates the baby brine so thick in the little pipette it turns completely orange when I suck them up. My rational for this is, I feel like I'm putting more brine than water into the pipette and when I put it into a tank I am able to put a copious amount of brine with just a tiny pipette.

I was born into the hobby. My mother was a Betta and Cichlid breeder, so MTS was normal in my house. She had tanks all over, dedicated live culture shelves, grow out tanks. They were mostly confined to a "fish room" but there was spillover. There's always spillover. I remember moving across country, my parents had to rent an extra moving truck full of tanks, stands, buckets and bags of fish. I've had at least 1 tank in my room that I was entirely responsible for taking care of since I was 7 years old. Out of 4 kids, I was the only one that had any interest in my mom's aquatic obsessions. I was always drawn to feeder guppies as a kid. I loved their patterns, they were cheap (I liked to pay for things on my own) happy, and in a way I felt like I was rescuing them. I got a pair of Jewel cichlids when I was 10 and absolutely fell in love. They were grumpy, stubborn, ornery little explosions of glittery color that ate earthworms from my hand. My childhood experiences with fish still carried over into adult years. Sweet little prolific Livebearers and grumpy Cichlids are what fill my fishroom today.

I could give a complicated answer; but, the truth is I really like fish and I really like water.

@Daniel You jogged my memory. I remember a book I had as a kid... "A Fish Out of Water"

Today I finally accomplished a 9 month long goal. Upgraded my 20 gallon tall to a 75 gallon, again. Stand still needs it's trim and bookshelves. Thankful that my husband built the stand and helped me get the sucker in place. Now my happy lil trees will have room to "grow" and I don't have to part with an antique family heirloom. Still have more plants to put in. But the few fish and shrimp that are in there are happy as could be. Also found 3 surprise flagfish fry when I was searching the 20 for shrimp to transfer over. I thought for sure any eggs or fry would become snacks so was not even thinking about baby fish. No thought to take a picture either. It's only been a little over an hour since I moved them and the 2 flagfish are already doing their dance. There is also a pair of praecox rainbows in there. Internet says fish don't school/shoal with other species, but all 4 of these stuck together the first hour. Explored together, played follow the leader. Tomorrow some of the mulmy substrate from the 20 will go in the 75 as well. I also have some black mollies, cherry barbs and white clouds to add in a few days. Husband was rushing me to move the fish so he could go to bed. Better tank pictures coming soon in the journal section.

Tonight in the fishroom, a pair of young Coptodon kottae are guarding their first spawn. C, kottae is an endangered species of cichlid that's endemic to Lake Barombi-ba-Kotto, and the smaller nearby Lake Mboandong, in the Southwest Region of Cameroon. This is a substrate-brooding, benthopelagic fish, which has a maximum length of about 15 centimeters (6 inches or so). In my lifetime, this species will likely be extinct in the wild. https://www.facebook.com/brian.scott.10690203

A male gardneri killifish. But that’s going to cause problems for the shrimp. I think you’re going to have problems attempting a larger show piece fish with shrimp. Picture of one of my males gardneri innidere