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Here is a experiment that I didn't intend to run today. My power just went out. My entire fishroom is on couple of large(ish) uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). One is an APC Smart-UPS 2200 and one is an APC Smart-UPS 3000. I have always wondered how long will they keep the whole room running during an outage? You can see all the equipment plus my computer are still up and running as of now. But for how long?

The three substrates for this project will be: CaribSea's EcoComplete Planted CaribSea's Super Naturals Peace River and Rio Grande mix Garden dirt capped by U.S. Minerals' Black Diamond Blasting Sand The Black Diamond Blasting Sand seems to be one of the most popular black sand type substrates used in aquariums. With tax the 50 lb bag that I purchased from my local Tractor Supply was $10.66 which certainly made it popular with me. The front of the bag indicates it is 'Coal slag'. Not being sure was exactly this was I looked it up on the U.S. Minerals website's FAQ and got this description: What is coal slag? This stuff is boiler slag, which is a recycled product from coal burning plants. When coal is “fired” at over 2500 degrees it melts and produces a by-product called slag. When the slag is cooled through a process called vitrification, it crystallizes, forming sharp, angular granules in a variety of sizes. We reclaim this slag and put it through several screen processes to remove dust and unburnt coal, and then size the remaining crystals into five different “grit” categories. There was also a Safety Data Sheet which listed its composition: I thought to myself, is this stuff safe? But it was almost like U.S. Minerals read my mind because one of the next FAQs was: Is it safe? You’re darn right it is. It’s a recycled product, for starters—and it meets drinking water standards. Black Diamond Granules have been tested and not linked to any disease, including Silicosis. That’s because Black Diamond Granules contain less than 0.1% free silica and are low dusting and chemically inert. And if you’re worried about berylium, don’t sweat it. While our slag does contain trace amounts, an independent lab says we’d need to have 1,000 times more before we’d have to report. So rest easy. Fortunately, I learned, I don't have to sweat the berylium! I think they meant beryllium.

Hello all! I hope you are enjoying your tanks. I’ve been eyeing this part of the forum because I thought it would be fun to keep a journal of my tank’s progression in a public place. Hopefully, we can discuss some of the successes, failures, and works in progress going on with my 75 gallon aquarium. Here is a little info on my tank. I setup this 75 gallon around the middle of May. 1/3 of the gravel and sand substrate came from my 25 gallon aquarium. I also moved over 30 mixed mollies (mostly fry), 1 neon tetra, three Corydora (2 peppered and 1 Sterbaii), 7 Rasboras, 4 otocinclus, 65 red cherry shrimp, and three mystery snails. I also moved over a lot of plants. My 25 had been my testing site for plants. So I have a variety. here are some images of my tank. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

There have been several recent threads about breeding angelfish in a community aquarium. I want to show that although this is possible to do this, you get lots of attrition of the fry, or even the eggs (watch for juvenile angels stealing eggs about midway through the video). The spawning pair keep swimming over to the edge of their territory to protect their border from other adult angels in the tank and that's when the young angels sneak in! My son Walker and his fellow composer Richie Varnadore wrote and performed the music in the video. I said 'give me something fishy sounding', and this is what they gave back to me.

Late to the party! I have a 5g portrait that I layered with 1.5in dirt and maybe 1-1.5in extra-fine white caribsea super naturals sand. It looks gorgeous, and has done well with madagascar lace, dwarf hair grass, and Ozelot sword. To hide the contrasting layers, I built a wet sand frame on the glass walls, put the dirt in wet in the middle, and capped it with more sand. I liked it so much that I just set up a divided 20g high with half of it based with 0.5-1in dirt capped with BDBS, planted with stem plants--rotala, hydrocotyle, scarlet temple mini and saggitaria--and a tiger lotus bulb. I made the other half a thin layer of the white sand and epiphytes on rocks, with a matten filter dividing. Build thread to come--this is my new guppy fry auto-sorter, fingers crossed that it works! Just waiting for the next drop!

I have a utility in my basement right next to my office where I have 5 tanks. It's been there for years, I didn't install it for this purpose, but it works great and keeps up with all the water changes, dumping 5 gallon buckets at a time it drains pretty quick. Here is what it looks like.

Big news: I got new fish! I picked up 6 celestial pearl danios at my LFS on Monday, and they’re settling into their QT tank well. I hatched out live baby brine today (quite a bit too much oops 😅) and also fed frozen daphnia (which they get in the store). They’ll be getting a water change later today, and I may start a preventative deworming treatment, but I’m not sure if I will, since they seem to have round bellies and are eating well. I was gonna get some pseudomugil gertrudaes that they had but they had sold and been replaced with clown killis who got Ich. I’ll be keeping my eye out for more gertrudaes tho. Does anyone know if you can breed signifiers in freshwater? I’ve heard they’re brackish or fresh but I’m not sure about fry.

Here are some other ways I’ve cultured them too. I seem to always have at least a few different ways going at any given time.

Odorless paramecium cultures can be tough to get started, but are amazing once they are set. They are basically a seasoned planted aquarium using plants that grow up out of the water and drop old leaves back into the tank. I’ve found ludwigia sp. to be the easiest for me. Once you’ve got the plants growing, you need to kill off any micro-predators. I just use Safe-Gaurd Dog Dewormer (Fenbendazole) at 0.01 grams per gallon of water. I do this daily until I can’t see any cyclops in the tank. Then You just wait. The bacteria will feed on all the things you killed in the tank, paramecium will have survived and will begin to feed on the bacteria. And the plants keep the water from fouling. then just keep the water topped off and trim the plants as needed. Note if you do trim, dry the cuttings and then add them back to the tank. Do your best to keep cyclops out of the tank or they will eat all the paramecium. They will also eat some fish eggs and very small fry. If they do come back, just treat the tank again. Once the culture has been rocking for a few months, you can also add in some Neocaridina davidi and they will keep the paramecium at a high but stable population so long as you feed them daily. Otherwise you’ll want to harvest the paramecium everyday or so. you can also do this without killing off the cyclops, you’ll just go through cycles of heavy paramecium followed by heavy cyclops. Here os a short video of example where the cyclops have just started coming back.

Harvested the daily Daphnia out of the summer tub.

Give your kids the gift of Murphy cookies, indoctrinating them in the Co-op ways and ensuring a bright a successful future :) Not spectacular results but not terrible, the wife and I are not cookie experts at all, although she is very good at most other forms of cooking/baking. Perhaps a shortbread dough would have had better results. This was just for funsies anyways. 3D printed cutter and stamp we tried.

Taken with an iPhone 8.

Ember Tetras or Chili Rasboras would be great. I have them both in my 10g. Love them!

I've kept these for a little over a year and raised several dozen fry to adulthood. They are probably my favorite nano fish, and I think I'll always have a tank of them. Their behavior is so much more intelligent compared to a tetra. Your female looks super healthy and plump. I bet she's full of eggs. Mine like to spawn early in the morning, and they like to spawn in dense plant mass. A cup of moss or carpet plant works well for this. The female will swim around and scatter her eggs, and the males will swim behind her and fertilize. The males seem to do lots of "shimmy" dancing during this. If you want to raise up the fry, you could put moss in a breeder box and scoop the female and a male into it in the evening. In the morning they'll spawn, then you can out the parents back in the tank later that morning and wait for the eggs to hatch in the moss (about 48 hour after spawning is when I see fry). The parents will eat their eggs and the fry, so if you want to raise them up it's important to separate them. I notice when one of my females is laying eggs, almost every male in the tank is trying to chase her. The males do seem to chase the females, but I've never noticed them doing it enough to distress the ladies. The females seem to just ignore the male if they're busy picking at a leaf or doing other fish stuff. I try to keep them in female heavy groups, 2 females per male at least. I think I've got about 15 in a 75gal community tank right now. They spawn every morning but I rarely see fry. Occasionally I'll see one fry, but then can't find it a few days later. I'll try to see if I can spot one tonight and get a video of it. I've also got swordtail fry in this tank who are getting big, and I think they've started eating the CPD fry. Over the summer I put the CPDs in a greenhouse tank with green water, and they bred like crazy. I scooped out 40 at the end of the season. Mine spawn every morning for about two hours, around 8am (before my tank lights come on). Watch for the two that go behind the rock and "hug" 😉 at :04 for about 10 seconds. Then the male lingers to finish fertilizing the eggs that she dropped.

Good luck with your breeding project! I got 5 CPD’s a few months back, but two died so I was left with 1 male and 2 females. They were in a 10 gallon planted tank with my betta, but a few months after I got them the betta died (he got caught behind my heater) so I decided to take the fish and equipment out of that tank and move it to a different one. About a week later I look into that original tank and I see TINY TINY baby cpd’s, they hatched without a filter or heater (the water was in the mid 50s) The little tank they were in was covered in algae. I didn’t really have to feed them at all because of all the infusoria and little critters in there, until they were a few few weeks old then I started feeding Baby Brine, first bites, crushed up flake, freeze dried daphnia. Now it’s been a little over a month and I love these little guys. It’s hard to get a picture but they are starting to get some Orange and some spots. I don’t know if these accidental fry help but maybe it will lol.

The Ultimate Guide to the Celestial Pearl Danio (Galaxy Rasbora) WWW.FISHKEEPINGWORLD.COM The Celestial Pearl Danio is a freshwater fish found in small, vegetated ponds in South East Asia. These fish boast plenty of color from the white pearl like... http://www.tfhmagazine.com//Areas/TFH2NA/img/TFH_Favicon.png The Celestial Pearl Danio: A Cautionary Tale | TFH Magazine WWW.TFHMAGAZINE.COM This article seeks to separate fact from fiction regarding the relatively new celestial pearl danio (Celestichthys margaritatus). Celestichthys margaritatus – Celestial Pearl ‘Danio’ (Danio margaritatus) — Seriously Fish WWW.SERIOUSLYFISH.COM Here's a couple articles I found. It says that it is normal behavior for the chasing to occur, and having hiding spaces for the non-dominant males will make sure they aren't picked on to death. That could either be in the form of live plants for them to hide in or decorations. For the videos, I would imagine that posting a link to tiktok is fine.

This pet peeve doesn't have to do with other hobbyists but the fish themselves. Rainbows...why can they fit food in their mouths that will kill them if they swallow it due to tiny throats? Just doesn't make sense to me lol

I don’t have a macro lens, but this is one of the better shots I’ve ever taken. IOS auto edit helped a bit too. This little guy (all 1” of him) loves to attack and bite my hand while I scrape the glass

Let it go for 26 hours, the control lost 12 ml and the one with floaters lost 10 ml. I also took temperatures through out, didn’t notice a difference when the light was on, but after turning it off, the one with floaters seemed to stay about 1 degree higher than the other. My guess is that the canopy of red root floaters worked almost like insulation baffles keeping it warmer while also reducing evaporation. I am retesting with duck weed against a control, to try and remove the insulation effect and see if I have similar numbers: I measured the 160 ml with the duck weed In, so I don’t have to remove it to measure the water tomorrow.

Posted a while ago on the same topic.

It looks like it would have gone at least 2 hours but likely not have made it to the 3rd hour. I could have shutdown the computer and switched over to a laptop. And the 3 40 breeders in the bottom row didn't need to have lights on. If it were in danger of getting cold I have a wood stove that would keep the downstairs warm. If I whittled it down to just air pumps needing power, I bet I could keep the USB nano air pumps going for quite a long time.

I love the smell of brine shrimp in the morning.😉

Experiment over, power came back on. Result of this trial was - it will run at least 1 hour. And the 1930s tank of course didn't miss a beat. 🙂 I just checked the available storage on the 2 UPS's APC Smart-UPS 2200 was at 68% APC Smart-UPS 3000 was at 61% Only 1 tank has a heater, 2 tanks have filters. So the the primary consumer of power was the computer.

Ah yes, that's a good one. I think there's a core philosophy difference here. Some people regard fish as pets, many regard them as art/decor. If the latter, the "expendable" mentality rears its ugly head pretty easily. But it's no less real a perspective on fishkeeping.

This right here is the single biggest thing I have learned from Aquarium Co-Op. It's helped me chill out.

Praecox Rainbow fry chasing after some food

Thanks! I'm in Essex. Here are some better photos of my setup.

Hi! Name's Alec, I'm 29 years old living in Indiana of the US of A. I've been in the fishkeeping hobby on/off since I was 8 years old with my very first tank, a 10 gallon. My dad had a 33g with all kinds of cool fish such as Angelfish and Gold Gouramis. I was hoping to have a cool tank like his. Ya'll know what went down as a clueless 8 year old with a tiny tank. I loaded that baby with any fish I liked and many died as a result. I ended up with only a fully grown dojo loach a year later before the tank sprung a leak and I had to shut it down. 10 years later at 18 years old, I had a moment of nostalgia and that was all it took. I started off with a 10 gallon and an Oscar (Yeah, that happened). I quickly grew to love the little bug-eyed guy that I had named "Oogie-Boogie" and also began researching about him. Upon realizing this fish's needs, I blew my next week's check on a 37g that I could keep him in until I eventually get the 55g (This was the generally accepted tank at the time for oscars according to a forum I was in, we all know better nowadays of course). I bought live-bacteria to insta-start the cycle and let it run for a week. I moved Oogie over and he didn't really seem to care that he was in a different tank, he just focused on me, my mom and my dog. My dad had always been able to curb aggression in his tanks, he had all kinds of things that cannot be together but they were and I was determined to be the same guy. I tried Zebra Danios first and Oogie didn't seem to mind them at all. This encouraged me to keep putting more fish in. A few months later, I had full grown Blue Gourami, 5 Zebra Danios, 6 Tiger Barbs, 6 Black Skirt Tetras, a dojo loach, common pleco, a silver sailfin molly, a red tail shark, a betta and a few guppies. Oogie did not bother any of them and was especially afraid of the red tail shark. I thought I was hot stuff then for figuring all this "aggression" out but nowadays, I know I was just lucky with a very tame oscar. When Oogie hit about 4 inches, I went all out on a 55g just for him. When the day came to move him, we were all very excited as the tank was beautifully decorated and was smack in the middle of the living room. However, Oogie was quite bummed and seemed like he missed being a part of all the activity in the 37g. He completely changed, often refused to eat and no longer did tricks for food as well. It wasn't long after that when these tumors started growing on parts of his body. Brownish and translucent, I'm not even sure if they were tumors, I have no clue what they were but I do know Oogie didn't like them and they certainly didn't look healthy. Long, long story short, he passed away and shortly after that, I lost all interest in the hobby and shut everything down. (I had about 5 tanks running with over 200+ fish, the LFS got a ton of free fish that day) And finally, 11 months ago, I got back into the hobby a third time! This time, I am older, more patient and far more curious than I used to be. I got a 10gallon tank kit for Christmas and immediately dived into the internet to see how the fish world works today. I couldn't find my old forum, I don't even remember the name of it but I did find a massive section of youtube dedicated to fishkeeping. About a week later, I understood many important things that I barely understood or knew nothing about 10 years ago and I was ready to start my tank! I wanted 3 dwarf gouramis and 2 dwarf mexican crayfish. I had a crappy light so I decided to start with a Windelov Java Fern and see if it would survive. I did a fishless cycle for about 4 weeks using the ghost feed method. By week 4, I finally had 0 ammonia/nitrite and 10 nitrate! I was ready to go! I got a Neon Dwarf Gourami to start and a Windelov Java Fern. I'd share pics of the first tank but I cannot find them 10 months later... I now have 4 tanks, a 55g, 29g, 20g long and a 10g and MANY more on the way (keep that on the down low). I battled Dwarf Gourami aggression, algae outbreaks, sudden fry explosions and equipment breaking. I've enjoyed every minute of it the third time around. I have spent more money on live plants than I have on fish and that blows my mind. Within a week of buying my first live plant, I had stopped using plastics and just loaded my tank with hornwort. From then on, I was in a live plant frenzy. My favorites are my main 3 Dwarf Gouramis. Pastrami, Salami and Tsunami the Dwarf Gouramis! They constantly bicker and each have a unique personality that entertains me everyday. Pastrami is the boss, Salami will pout in the corner if I even slightly change the tank and Tsunami likes to shove his head in any hole he can find and that includes the water siphon. My favorite plant is the Crinum Calimistratum but it's also been my most frustrating plant. At first, much of it died back and then it exploded in growth while also getting covered in staghorn algae. After months of trying to deal with the algae, I was sure this plant was just a goner but as the months went by, it continued growing despite being absolutely covered. It's still covered today and it's a bit unsightly but man, it sure is a tough plant and is growing fast (for it's growth rate anyways). Here is some crappy pictures, I plan on getting a decent camera soon! Thanks for reading folks! -A third time obsessed fish-keeper

We use USPS Priority shipping (takes 1-3 days if there aren't any delays). Here are a couple of pages that talk about the shipping process: Shipping Policy for Aquarium Co-Op | Freshwater Aquarium Supplies WWW.AQUARIUMCOOP.COM Use our interactive map to find out how long your shipping takes for your order. Watch our packing process and learn about our live arrival guarantee. Fast Shipping Policy WWW.AQUARIUMCOOP.COM Hands down, we have the fastest handling time and ship quick. We over-staff so that your orders go out as fast as possible, if you order during business hours, we often ship it the same day. We ship everything(yes, even the big...

There often aren't right answers, there is just the answer relayed by someone saying what has worked for them. In another thread I listed all the 'wrong' things I do. But for me they aren't wrong, they actually work really well. But I would never suggest to a new aquarist not to cycle a tank or not quarantine their fish. One way not to get confused is not to listen to all the opinions. For example, if you wanted to learn how to keep discus you would find on this forum that @Jessica. has really nice discus tanks and has the pictures to show the results of what she does. I would follow her methods and her advice and maybe filter out competing advice. @Jessica. also posts links to where she looks to for discus information, which is really helpful. So if there is a certain kind of aquarium you want to keep, find someone experienced here on the forum and follow what they do. It will cut out a lot of the static.

The yellow patch is what is called a saddle. It is the shrimp ovary where the eggs develop. Got yourself a lady shrimp there 😉

I've got better things to do with my time than worry about what someone else is doing.

Went to visit Jacobs ladder north of Gallatin this past weekend 😄

Some women have children. I have discus. 😉 Though I'd start a journal for my planted discus tank. It's been running a few years now, and these fish are my babies. The tank sits next to my desk, and I work full time from home. We all spend a lot of time together. Photo from Spring 2020 (and the best photo I've gotten of this tank!) Here's the tank in Dec 2019, a few weeks after planting The layout for the tank was inspired by an ADA tank I saw in a youtube video, this tank: (this photo is a screenshot from a youtube video of the ADA gallery in Japan. It is not my tank) Stocking in the tank is currently 10 discus, 5 Sterbai Cories, 4 oto cats, 10 Amano Shrimp, and some random guppies who snuck in on a net as fry and grew up in the tank. I had 12 discus, but decided to re-home two who were pairing off and picking fights a few months ago. I hear some people say discus are skittish. That is not my experience. They are nosy, always up in my business when I'm trying to do maintenance. I end up pushing them away so I can see what I'm doing.. lol! Thanks for reading! I'll keep updating as the tank evolves.

Living in Spain for a few years now and love the nature around me. I started birding this year and love to get out with my binoculars and just see what's around here. Being close to Barcelona, it is just a few hours ride to get into the Pyrenees mountains where you can fish for brown trout, brook trout and rainbow. There is an abundance of wildlife and birds as well. On the rooftop of our apartment, we have about 40 plants in pots including Peachtrees, pear, lemons, pomme granate, and we raised tomatoes this year. ruud

Update: I cut the long stem on the right (in the pic from 2 weeks ago) at the point where the new rootball was going wild, took a big piece to float in the quarantine tank (babies finally starting to explore it!) and planted the rest in my 10-gal. Here are pics of all 3 sprites growing like mad.

Hey Everyone, This is Tom from Niagara, WI. A little about me and what has become my addiction as of late. I Grew up in Milwaukee, WI. In early 70's I had a 55 gallon with under gravel filtration and 2 crappie, 2 sunfish, and a bullhead. I could never convert them to eat the Tetramin flakes I had bought for them so I fed them minnows from the local bait store. I found that those fish are much heartier than any of the fish I have kept since. Then when I got my first house in the 90's I upgraded to a 125 with a boat load of Haps and Peacocks, They were beautiful. But when I moved up here to take care of my elderly parents, I had to put the tank in a storage locker. Fast forward 10 years and another home. I started with a 55, planted community tank. all was good. It turned into a great tank after the plants filled in. Then I started to watch Cory's videos on YouTube, and thought about getting a little 5 gallon shrimp tank. I met a woman that wanted to get rid of a 29 for cheap, so I set the 29 up last week, instead of getting the 5 gallon. It just has swords, platties, and two gouramies. But it's my first attempt at a dirted, planted tank. Last week I got a smokin' deal on a 75 gallon and stand, so now I have to set that one up, soon as I decide on how to set it up. Which also means more plants from Aquarium CO-OP. Here's a pic of my 29, minus the latest shipment of plants. It's a little cloudy but its only a few days old. So much to learn so little time, lol.

You could remove the hood, and run a Fluval Plant Nano.

Community tank on my laptop. Got a guppy sticker coming in my shipment this week. But my laptop is getting old. I wonder how well these stickers detach and transfer.

I'm not properly in the hobby yet. Honestly, a large part of the allure is the opportunity for technical tinkering. Growing up, I desired what I now know is called a paludarium. Ultra natural, no exotic species. Recently, my daughter said she'd like an aquarium, and I was ready! Planning and prepping as we speak. 🙂 an ordinary tropical community, more or less, I imagine.

I was cleaning out the Eheim Pro 3 on the discus tank today. If you’re not familiar with this canister there are 4 trays in the stack with the top one having the coarse sponge. I’ve got all the trays in the slop sink to clean the pads so as I clean them the trays go back in the canister. I get to the top tray pull out the coarse sponge and clean it before I put it back into the tray I rinse the gunk out of it and what’s flapping around in the bottom of the sink a pair of Sterbai Cory fry. They must of got sucked in when I took the intake sponge off to clean it early last week.

7.5 Cube

That is indeed a frankenfilter, wonderful reuse of a litter tub I have like 5 laying around. Might have to steal this idea 😈

I think it's more like 15-20 of one species or the other.

@PennyThe tanks are really coming along nicely. Atm I think the ammonia test really only tells you what you know. If you are making nitrates and nitrates then ammonia has to be present. Until you have fish/shrimp the levels of ammonia and nitrites is a bit unimportant. I think I'd avoid water changes to keep the food for the bacteria in the water. Once they all the ammonia and nitrites are staying at near 0 then I'd say start keeping the nitrates >40. Also I agree with @Jessica. On the matching of the betta and shrimp colors or at least complimentary. The first step I might start with is bladder snails and maybe one of the more fancy snail types. The longer you wait to add fish and shrimp the easier the process will be. You are totally going at this the right way for minimum stress on you and your fishy friends.

Very nice tanks like the look and flow a lot!

Hello Nerms! I recently joined this forum and look forward to learning a lot. Here are some of my tanks...

Early fall in the Mad River Valley, Vermont.

Beautiful build! @Lynze That would be perfect for a Plant Nano. You can run the metal L piece the opposite way for more height if you want. This makes the little slot available to run an airline thru for a centered sponge filter!