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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

Still a few days left for Christmas shopping, what are you going to get your fish?

No Felix 🙂. I moved the blue spotted sunfish and Gambusia affinis out and moved in Gulf Coast Pygmy Sunfish in. The tank has gone pretty green which is perfect for raising baby pygmy sunfish but not so good for be able to see what is going on with the sunfish. Pygmy sunfish are just the sort a fish that would have been collected and kept if more exotic tropical fish were not available. But after the pygmy sunfish run their course, the next step will be to move in angelfish, zebras and swordtails and see if I can get the aquarium to look like this: I have got all 3 in holding tanks waiting for the Vallisneria to take off a little more. So far the val has been slow to grow. I might put a little dirt underneath the Vallisneria to see what happens.

Anyone who has tried to determine if their nitrates were between 10 and 30 ppm would agree with you. Haha. They do a great job of alerting that they are above 40 ppm or around 5 ppm. Other than that it’s a toss up.

Goldfish fry fresh from the eggs.

Here’s a single goldfish scale. We had a swim bladder aspiration done on one of our goldfish, and one of the post op treatments was antibiotic injections under a scale. 3/4 times we managed to do it without lifting off a scale, but at least we got a cool photo out of the deal.

We have little swimmers, as of tonight. This is our first spawn with our German Blue Rams. Throw me ALL of your tips and tricks. 😃 Super Exciting! I was expecting that they maybe would have eaten their eggs as they did last time and I was expecting to need to give them one more try... so this was such a fun surprise!

Does anyone else dread the idea of water changes, but once they actually start one it's relaxing and doesn't take nearly as long as you thought it would?

I had to break down my old work fish tank and figured I would set up a journal on the rebuild of it in my new location. I’m a manager at one of the big box pet stores and I decided to set up a planted 75 gallon aquarium on our sales floor a couple years ago because I hated throwing away so many rotted plants and I also wanted to use it as a teaching tool for my associates. Also, of course it was just because I wanted my own tank at work to satisfy my MTS 😂. Pretty quickly we went from throwing plants away constantly to being the best in our district in aquatic sales. Unfortunately this location is significantly smaller than my old location so it will have to go in our break room so it won’t sell as many plants but it will still be a great teaching tool. The first picture is what it looked like the last time I took a photo of it about 6 months ago. I wish I took a picture of it before I tore it down but hindsight is 20/20. The second picture is my progress so far. The substrate is the old stratum that came out and I plan to top it with Carib Sea Peace River gravel which should compliment the stone. Speaking of the stone, it was sold as “New England Stone” which matches perfectly to the rocks in the river by my home. I plan on snagging some smaller accent stones from the river but I am more than glad to pay $2 a pound rather than loading monster stones in my backpack in the middle of winter. Filter will be an Aquaclear 70 and possibly also a Eheim Pro 4 (I think?). Probably going to add CO2 as I have a spare set up in my basement and I would like to fill out with plants quicker. Lighting for now will be my current Fluval Aquasky and a spare Marineland LED I have in my basement. Plants are a long list but I’ll get to that later. The thing stumping me is what I should stock as I want everything 😂 I’ll keep you all posted though

I will be upgrading my 75 gal tank to a 125 gal in the very near future. I am currently using 2 Aqueon Pro 200W heaters for the 75 gallon, which I am very happy with. (They are the old style with the red/green led in the front, which I like far better). I don't feel 400W will be enough for the 125. Please let me know your thoughts on 2 options I am considering: 1) Add a 3rd 200W Aqueon Pro. (I am able to get an old style, to match the others...symmetry/looks are important to me). I am not thrilled with having 3 heaters, as I was going to add an INKBIRD controller. With the inkbird, I wouldn't want to do more than 2. 2) Start fresh with new heaters. I can get the old Aqueon Pro's in 250W...so I was thinking 2 of those. (500W total). I can also get the new Aqueon Pro's in 300W (so 2 of those), but I hate that style with the light on the knob, and I have had issues with one of that style in the past. I am not 100% married to the Aqueon Pro's, but I like the all-black, minimal sleek look. Plus, the 2 that I have in the 75 have been rock-solid in maintaining a steady temp, knock on wood. Thanks in advance for all advice.

I don't believe silicone would add any significant tensile strength to resist the pressure from the water on the glass. I do believe JB Weld makes a plastic epoxy which may (keyword: may) be a very temporary solution, but then you are dealing with epoxy and any consequences from it. While JB Weld is a great product and has its merits and uses, I would really be hesitant to say an aquarium is one of them.

A quick google says that aquarium silicon uses a different chemical to begin the curing process vs. other household silicon sealants. I don't have experience with aquarium silicon specifically, but my experience with household sealants says that it will not function as much of a glue, especially with several hundred pounds of water pushing the brace further apart. If it were me, I'd be going crazy trying to replace the tank within a week, even if it meant downsizing temporarily.

I like to draw. I used to draw all of the time, daily. I rarely can ever draw now, because it is so straining on my health condition, so it’s for a few hours every few months typically. But, I still tend to enjoy it. I’ve been working on a Lion character a friend of mine has for a long time, as I can only do a little at a time. I also work on service dog patch designs and labels for businesses sometimes. In the past, I used to do some traditional art on occasion.

I wouldn't worry about it. All mine do that, but the Pogo keeps growing like crazy.

I’m switching from a Tetra Whisper 20 to a Seachem Tidal 55. The Tetra is cycled but only has sponges in it. The Tidal has a weird shaped media basket so I can’t just chuck my sponge in there. I’m running them together for a week or two so that beneficial bacteria can grow in there. Is that silly or am I right in thinking that’s a good idea so I don’t disrupt my cycle?

Today I brought water sprites to the LFS - no discount, but they took the donation. Maybe if I keep bringing them every couple months they'll give me an extra fish or two. I left with 12 adorable juvenile harlequin rasboras, who are now settling into quarantine. They seemed hungry so I fed them a little and they all ate. The danios got baby brine shrimp this morning, are settling into their new tank, and starting to get their color back. I'm worried about two who are hanging back a little and still very pale. The dominant male is reminding the others that he's still boss. I'm so happy to have them in the bigger tank! Refilled all the water jugs. I already regret my lighting purchase for the 20L. I will be saving up for that more pricey light (Finnex? Fluval? The programmable one - could be the same kind that @Danielfound dropped in his tank). Now time for coffee and to watch the season's first snowfall for a while!

Can't really reason with bacteria 😄

I bought a lid from Amazon that was slightly too wide. It’s tricky but a small piece, like a ½” to ¼”, can be trimmed from a piece of glass. Use a simple glass cutter from the hardware store. Score the glass. One good solid even score is best, but if it needs to be improved that’s okay. Here’s the trick I learned to get a clean break when you can’t just snap it like you a larger piece. The glass cutter has a little ball at the end of the handle. Use this ball to lightly tap on the underside of the score. Keep tapping lightly until a crack starts to run along the length of the score. Slow and tedious is the way to go. When the score has completely cracked, with hopefully no runs into the good side, go ahead and snap it off. Use some emery cloth to smooth down the now very sharp edge. There’s a good YouTube vid on the subject. I had cut larger pieces of glass before but was very nervous about making such a small cut into a $30 lid. The video tip really helped. I trimmed about ¼” off of my replacement lid and it worked great.

closer to 10ppm in my actual testing. Either that is off, or the "pump" dispenses less than 1ml... I should measure that actually. It can't be much less.

Using zip ties won't hurt anything, but you mentioned turning off heaters and filters during water changes. I don't know if you're interested, but I have all my heaters low enough (even if they're very near horizontal) that they stay below the water during water changes, and my HOB intakes also stay in the water, so I never turn anything off.

It might not be their ideal, but I disagree that there aren't a lot that will handle 8.2 pH. My water is 8.2, and I have trilineatus, pandas, and pygmaeus that are thriving.

I'd recommend stopping the Stability. I see no reason to use it with a fishless cycle, and it might be throwing off your test results. Since your tank is processing the ammonia quickly it sounds like you're very close to having the cycle completed.

I have limited fish to feed also. I have two of this little hatchery. They love the live food!

Hi Mac, I was just perusing the brine shrimp topic, and someone mentioned adding baking soda to raise pH. I'm not sure what its supposed to be but am going to do that with my next batch to raise it to 7.5, just to see if more will hatch. I only have the ring-dish setup, no air or heat except from a light.

Much to the horror of the "One True Way 'Scapers of YouTube", I've decided to subvert the dominant paradigm and let my planted tank kinda get out of hand. As a consequence, I haven't seen some creatures in weeks

Epic Brine Shrimp Fail and a cool new dark tank setup. A rough patch in the Fish-Apartment recently. Moving around so many aquariums at once really threw off alot of the balance I had going in many of the tanks. Algae explosions, sick fish, a cichlid pair that has decided they can no longer live without constantly trying to destroy each other has led to a slight feeling of burn out over the past weeks with the constant shuffle. But all is not lost. I treated myself to my first "fancy" pleco the other day picking up a L128 Blue Phantom and am really looking forward to it getting through the quarantine process and into the living room front and center. Whats a little retail therapy to brighten things up? I did, however, manage to fail my first attempt at hatching baby brine shrimp. With only a month or two away from the two year anniversary of my re-immersion into the hobby I figured it was time to step up my game. I put my order into the Co-op and familiarized myself with videos and the like on the basics of a successful hatch. Now, here's the thing. I really thought I was going to nail this. I was pretty dang confident that with a 2 liter bottle, some aquarium salt, and a clever little heat and light arrangement I was fixing to hit the big leagues. Well, my friends, I have been sufficiently humbled. I have found some, but definitely not all, of the faults in my execution. I cut the top--or technically the bottom--off a clean two liter soda bottle and inverted it like all the cool kids in those DIY internet examples. I used the cut off bottom as a lid with a hole in it for my airline. So now I have a bottle, a lid with some rigid airline to the bottom, I add straight tap water, two tablespoons salt and its about to be showtime. For my stand I felt especially ingenious. I have a shallow storage tote that is about 20 gallons but only a few inches tall. I use it to grow out killifish and plant clippings on a desk that I have a little preset 50watt heater in. I took a Costco Mixed Nuts jar, filled it with water, put it in the tote and then placed the cone of the hatchery bottle snugly into the nut jar. Heater heats the tote water, tote water heats the jar water, jar water heats the cone of the hatchery where the airline terminates, thus distributing heat throughout. Right? Well...just to be safe I had a little desk lamp near by to provide a light source and I swapped in an old 60watt bulb to make sure the heat idea had a contingency plan. I went with 1/2 teaspoon of brine shrimp eggs stirred in and waited patiently for the magic to happen. I had set a reminder on my phone for exactly 18 hours and couldn't wait to see if I had hatched my first baby brine shrimp. To my dismay, nadda. Looked just like I left it 18 hours earlier. Ok, no problem, might be late bloomers, give it another 4 hours. Zilch. At this point I felt a sneaking suspicion that I had screwed something up. My first step was to turn off the dang desk light that was blinding me as i searched for any signs of life in my attempted hatchery. Reaching for it I immediately became aware of how warm it was. Like, really really warm. I grabbed a thermometer I had laying around to drop in the hatchery and watched the red skyrocket. I took it out as the temp surpassed 90F and climbing; I think I found the problem, the light nuked em. But today was a new day! I had reset, applied our lessons learned and set out to hatch some brine shrimp! This time I thought ahead by monitoring the water temperature for a few hours before adding the eggs to make sure I could maintain the recommend zone. The tote-heater-jar-bottle set-up along with ambient room temperature kept the temp right in the 75-78 range and I managed to move back the light to where things hung pretty well at 80 throughout the late morning and past the noon hour. So, lets try this again. This time, feeling bold, I used a whole teaspoon of brine shrimp eggs. Double or nothing! 18 hours later...nothing. 24 hours later... I muttered words adults use to express displeasure with situations. Now, much later and many paces back and forth through the apartment I have made two observations. First, the brine shrimp appear to have at least attempted to hatch. It looks like little yellow critters clinging to the brown case of the egg-cyst thing just bobbing around. Second, the PH had plummeted. For some reason I decided to check the PH and was pretty shocked to see it bottom out the color scale of the API liquid PH kit. I'm talking yellow water. No hint of any blueish hue whatsoever. This could be my new problem. Before I cooked them, now I melted them in acid. Brutal. So I'm at a bit of a loss currently. Not sure whats next, maybe add some ph buffer or something. Water out of the tap is usually 7.8, the municipality says its 8.2 and all my tanks settle in at right about 7.0-7.2 but has nearly zero for gh or kh. Maybe this is a clue? Please, someone, read this far and give advise so I dont have to create a new thread on how i suck at brine shrimp, ha. On a completely unrelated topic, I was rearranging tanks and fish and plants and created another "dark tank" setup with driftwood, leaf litter and subdued lighting. It is another 20 gallon long and is situated on a huge dresser in the bedroom next to the previous dark tank I had featured earlier. In the move and reshuffle I decided I liked the idea of those two tanks being together as the previous tank has some really cool occupants now that we had to put in a place to give lots of interaction. At some point I'll talk about those fish which probably deserve their own thread. But anyway, I took some excess ecocomplete and florite substrate and a sword plant from a rescaping I did in a tank in the living room and added a few runners of crypt wendtii, dwarf sag (i think) and a few java fern to some drift wood and leaf litter. The tank has my first and only attempt at a Matten filter and is lit with a single LED strip light hood from a box store that came with one of the tanks I bought off craigslist. The current stocking includes ten nannostomus eques and a whiptail catfish that I believe is rineloricaria eigenmanni. The pencilfish are easily one of my favorite fish, super chill, and have some really interesting behavior with eachother. They are a bit skittish, especially in this tank because there is no surface cover, but once comfortable are much more confident around the tank. At least they were in their previous home. A very underrated fish considering they are surprisingly inexpensive. The whiptail is a gem that has only gotten better as its grown. I'm pretty sure this fish can change its color based on its surroundings as somedays its a very uniform color and other times it shows a striking thick dark banding. I saw this guy labeled as "whiptail cat" at a Petco one day for $5 and was like "yep!" Great impulse buy. I havent decided if I will be adding any additional species to this tank. The relaxed feel and fish is something I want to preserve. One thought was possibly moving the sundadanio axelrodi rasboras into here or possibility getting another similar species that would really show well in the setup. We'll see. Happy Holidays everyone, thanks for looking.

Super macro, but one of the stupid protozoa that was terrorizing some of our brood stock for a while. Happy to see those gone eventually.

Dwarf gourami

Yhe main benefit of live baby brine is the "live" part. All that wiggling around motivates picky eaters to eat, so ideally you would still be hatching the decapsulated shrimp. I suppose you could feed it without hatching it, but I think you would be losing the best part of what brine shrimp is. Decapsulated brine is usually more expensive. I have heard good things about Vibra bites for picky eaters, but have not used it myself. Perhaps give that a try?

I’m no expert. Maybe do a search on Allelopathy / Diana Walstad. From Diana Walstads Book. ”Aquatic plants contain a variety of allelochemicals whose primary function is to protect the plant from being eaten by fish and insects or being destroyed by disease” I’m not sure if this would be the case with your Red Tiger Lotus.

Took a bit more time with the driftwood today and finally got it to size. Added the plants to it and voila! I have a full spectrum light on order but for now, it’s lit with a floor lamp as my son wanted his reading light back. I added a couple rock shrimp but will have to snap some photos tomorrow as I kept the lights of to keep stress low and Ms Fishy (the betta) from getting too interested, she’s a total sweetheart and the shrimp are sizeable so I don’t expect an issue. Drip acclimated them for 45 min then netted them out without any drama which was nice after seeing how jumpy they were at the store. I look forward to seeing where their favourite spots are for sitting in the current and catching invisible snacks.

I have been using this setup for the last 13 years. I dump the oldest of the 3 cones everyday and then setup a fresh batch. That way I always have brine shrimp in one of 3 categories. Too old Too young Just right! If I was starting now I would probably go with the Ziss hatchery. @Bill Smith's hatchery setup above is absolutely mind boggling!

You all have such awesome setups! I don't have space for a Ziss and also have a problem with electrical outlets (not enough). So I have two of these dishes, which have inner rings that keep the unhatched eggs in one area. It requires only a light for warmth and to attract them to the center. But the hatch rate is not great, and after about 20% not hatching, each one barely makes enough for two meals for 7 rasboras or 9 dwarf danios, one at 24 hours and one at 36. The second pic is after 12 hours, only a few hatched so far. I've already made room for 3 tanks, and now I guess I'll have to find space for a better hatchery since I'm picking up 12 more rasboras today! (Assuming they have them - fingers crossed!) Since I can see the utter joy they get in hunting and eating live food, I want to give it to them every day!

You could attach dwarf baby tears, hygrophila pinnatifida, even hornwort as well if you wanted to. What others said (Java fern, riccia, mosses, bolbitis) all work well.

Longest days to baby brine was 44 days. Yours are looking great! Start planning on what you are going to do with your next spawn!!! It should be just a week or two away.

Thanks guys! I went with a Fluval! Fits great and the numerous settings are very cool!

@KyleKVKI use Eheim Jager & Aquatop heaters in my tanks. I would also invest in a controller like Inkbird. Yes that is my Cane Corso in my profile.

There are some at the link I provided above that are wired for your wall and ready to go.

Totally normal, I like to believe that when you notice those kinds of motions the plant is happy and growing. If you look up Rotala species, they all tend to do that as well. My rotalas begin to close up and start growing about an hour before lights shut off.

I added a new piece of Mopani wood, and fed some more brine shrimp. I made a big mess, but it should clear up. I will add more wood when I move the previous piece to my parents' tank. This is the one tank where I don't feel bad about making changes.

Do you mean we should change the name to Water Boxing Day? I make me 😆 laugh

My 40B full of Guppies, Guppy Grass, and Duckweed.

Anabantids are labyrinth breathers. Hardest development point seems to be when fry are developing this organ. Lots of breeders struggle at first. Some folks cover the entire top in plastic wrap to ensure uniform humidity...

Congratulations! I think Gourami parents usually tend to the eggs & nest (?) until fry hatch. Any chance the Angelfish and Catfish could vacation in another tank awhile? Cut back on flow too for little fry.

I have these Yellow Belly Metalicus, they are a Livebearer native to Cuba.

Well, here’s our Val-filled 55 gal. Easy Green it shall be fed!

Here is a wider angle: I really liked all the plants, but eventually even cool stuff gets boring. For the last few years I have gone with a hardscape only, which I did not think I would like. But, it turns out that is pretty cool also.

It's a biofilm. Some plecos, otos, snails, shrimp, etc., view it as food and will devour it. If you don't want any of those in your tank than chemical means are your only real option, but even then the film is likely to recur. Driftwood is an organic material and will breakdown in water and attract bacteria/fungi which will then create a fresh biofilm.