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Hi everybody 👋 I wanted to share my new 29g pea puffer tank. The video is to big to upload to the site so check out the link below of you would like to see some live action shots 😊 Bill

She has a buddy, who was bigger than her but now is smaller - but that’s okay, because Nova is just very chill except about food. Indigo, on the other hand, is a little *ahem* who still thinks this is her tank. She’s not really the brightest, either, but she’s a tough little thing. And pretty.

Six months later, it's now January and I've lost 3 or 4 neons. Currently, there is one with visible white lumps and a ragged caudal fin, the others look okay visually but I can tell from how they are tilted in the water a bit that they aren't 100%. The two guppies in the tank are doing well. When I set up this hospice tank I did not think it would still be here a year later.

Apparently a slumber party and tank “greeters” welcoming me

I can't see a dang thing!!!

This is my guess. Peroxide is damaging to plants. Reverse Respiration is much gentler on plants. Use a freshly opened bottle of seltzer and submerge your new plant for 5-9 hours. If you are trying to kill algae 9-12 hours.

Apistos or Rams would look great in that tank. Rams are a bit harder because they need almost zero nitrates but they are super fun. Here are some pics of Rams I have had in the past.

@lefty o @Lots Of Loaches well I ended up taking the easy way out after seeing a sale at Home Depot. I bought these husky shelves that are rated at 1000 pounds per shelf. I’m feeling confident about the stand and it is up against an exterior wall perpendicular to the joists. The only thing is now I’m a little fearful about the narrow legs compared to the original plan I had for the DIY stand. Hoping it doesn’t go crashing through the floor.

Well it's a bit complicated, but the short story is that once it started being the source of bba in my tank, time to go. Removed it from every plant, all the wood, I've siphoned the substrate beyond all sort of reason, and it still managed to be a sticking point. Root development also hasn't been up to my standard and was doing better before I had changed from the 29 to the 75G. It's a lot bigger tank to push CO2 in, so things really have to be dialed in. As an example, the 29G w/ CO2: They aren't doing "well" but they are growing and the roots were solid. This was only with the flourite black. It's compressed and worn down over the years. I'm sure if you zoom in too you can see BBA on some pieces as well that I just never caught before. The same plants in the 75G w/ CO2 and it's dialed in really well: I should've seen it carpet or at least double. I've lost the growth I did gain and then some. KH and GH play a role too, but the main issue I've been experiencing is just rooting behavior, how quickly things can thrive. The swords I just pulled had some really long roots, some over a foot, and they are pretty new. I also didn't realize what it was when I bought it. The bag says, and all the marketing repeats, how it's a planted tank substrate. It's really not great and the CEC I was hoping for was extremely minimal compared to something like aquasoil. With the water I have, the aquasoil is actually really perfect and makes things spot on where I need to, and stable, for plants. KH is 4, GH is 8. PH is sub 7. It's really good for a lot of the stems and more difficult plants. I just found out caribsea is rebranding their stuff and they have a new black substrate, midnight river. I'm really excited to see it in person.

Yep! I've seen it online on one shop, might be on Amazon, but I'm really intrigued to snag some. Tank update. I planted it at about 2.30 last night. Isn't that when everyone gets work done! Blue buddy shrimp is the one I want to make sure is doing ok and he was definitely stunned a little bit from the day. You can see the residue.all over everything, especially the back wall panels.

@Guppysnail accurately predicted where Flint would enjoy spending his time.

Thanks @knee. I will try again in the future.

@Lots Of Loaches I totally feel the MTS addiction haha. The shelves were around $150 which is more than the wood would have costed but the quick install and the 1000 pound per shelf rating made it worth it for me. Especially with a Christmas gift card which offset the cost.

Hi! Got myself in a bit of a pickle. I had 6 juvenile angels in a 75g. community. ended up with 2 breeding pairs, which was fine for a year. mildly territorial until one of the females switched partners. Then that male who was peaceful, became something of a murder missile. unpaired angles are out of tank. Praecox are leaving. They even went so far as to push the other pair to the opposite side from where they had been laying their eggs for a year. And then they promptly laid eggs on the fx2 canister intake (on the side of the grate). Have always been very nervous about removing the eggs. But have no choice at this point. As soon as they become wigglers, they're going to be toast. Have an in-tank breeder box, but how do you safely move them. Have only had a couple of batches of surface swimming fry. And am very sure the praecox had them for lunch. (another reason they had to change tanks). So how do I keep them alive and growing?

A small amount of hydrogen peroxide in a bucket of water is the method I’ve heard used. It is still harmful. There are microscope images of the damage it does on the Reverse Respiration article and webpage.

@Guppysnail @jwcarlson Well that sucks. I thought it was pretty standard to disinfect plants with hydrogen peroxide. I guess I misunderstood wherever I heard that. I've seen the reverse respiration method on the forum. Ill take this as my queue to try it. Ill get some seltzer water before I get more plants. Lesson learned. Thanks for the info.

20 minutes of peroxide probably did it. If the rhizome is OK, it might recover. I destroyed my biggest anubias about a year ago with peroxide. It survived, but took a year to get anywhere near what it was.

Back in the days of early reef tanks before chillers became more common place, we used to use small apartment / dorm size mini refrigerators and run a stainless steel cooling coil through the wall of it and circulate tank water through the coil. You adjusted the refrigerator temp with the dial and if you needed more or less cooling than you could get with the dial, you added or removed coils in the fridge so the water spent more or less time inside the fridge as needed. You don’t even need to cut the coil, just reshape it and pull some outside the fridge. But more cooling (unlikely to need on a NANF tank where you’re already fairly close) you would need a longer or spliced cooling loop. Where you would like to cool multiple tanks, this might not be such a bad idea. Amazon has one for just under $90.00 and I see they also have a stainless steel cooling coil for under $40.00. You could add more coils for more tanks. I don’t know of any chillers that could run multiple tanks unless they were on a shared water / filtration system. You would need a pump for each tank to run multiple coils and it might be a bit of a Tetris moment to get multiple coils into the fridge, but I’m sure it could be hooked into a canister filter system for each tank. You might even be able to acquire any cheap, used but functioning refrigerator if you have room by the tanks, and use it for a second fridge in the basement (ala mancave beer / soda fridge if you’re so inclined). As long as you weren’t particular exactly how cold your sodas are. 😆

I've got space for it, but I need one that my wife can't see. Maybe I can paint it camoflauge.

Welcome to the CARE Forum! I like your tank. You'll get perspectives from all sorts of aquarists here. I'm more of a fish breeder than anything else, so my perspective is colored by that interest of mine. Those caves look inviting. You might consider some Apistogramma agassizii. Let's see if I can find a nice photo of a double-red / super-red male... Apistos love caves. That's what made it come to mind. Tetras are always fun. You might also like a lively school of Rummynose Tetras... There are a lot of cool Corydoras to choose from, so find one you rally like! I think that a few bottom-dwellers, a nice full school of shoaling / schooling fish in the mid water column, and 1-3 major centerpiece fish is a full, balanced tank if everyone gets along. There's an old rule of thumb: add 3x plants for every 1x fish. I'd love to see your entire tank loaded with plants, and then sprinkled with fun fish.

I have done this several times. It works just fine.

Little ones up close this evening…

It's the biggest aquarium I've ever had, I know you've got a bunch of massive ones, but this feels almost insane to me. 😄 Thankfully there's a floor drain, though a lot of stuff is going to be wet if she goes.

I wish you luck !

Check if your local petco has an aqueon 60 breeder. Same footprint as a 75 but shorter. I just got one on sale for 100 on sale (plus another 15% off with the rewards program)

You had me moderately concerned because I couldn't tell if it had the steel mesh under it and it looked like you might have had 400 pounds suspended on OSB 😄 I think those are a good option for an out of the box stand. And honestly, they don't look bad. I'm trying to slow-walk putting in a rack like this with some growout tanks. Do you think I'd be able to hide one in my basement right in the middle of the walkway to our oldest's bedroom and the laundry room?

@jwcarlson here’s a photo I took of the box. I put the plywood over the top for some extra protection

If you're doing mostly/all bottom dwellers, a 55 likely "wastes" a lot because the footprint is so narrow. It's really kind of a strange footprint, honestly. A 75 would be a better option and the same length as a 55 (48"). That said, you can accomplish a lot of those fish in smaller footprints. 40 breeder is a good, shallower tank size and actually has more square inches of bottom than a 55.

Pictus cats need a school and there are smaller knife fish that are becoming more readily available. But with an all nocturnal tank you may have issues of food aggression. Otherwise thats a doable tank. If you want you could also do smaller species of catfish. Anchorcats stay small same with cories and many loaches. If you wanted smaller knife fish, caterpillars are becoming more common. Or centipede knifefish. They all need a school though

It also depends on the fish. I bought bug bites for my community guppy/cardinal tank and while they like it, they don't go crazy. Drop a algae wafer and the entire tank fights over it, and the amano slip in to steal it. It's probably the tanks favorite, and I feed like 6 different foods including frozen. Fish be fish.

So, we are talking about 6 days for fish (Tuesday to Monday)? That might be stretching things a bit.

That's great you keep a tank in your classroom! My son and I helped out a 5th Grade class several years ago set up a 20 gal long tank, and then a 33 gal long. It was a lot of fun! We made some videos . . . I'll try to find examples . . . This one was the 20 long from 4x years ago... And here was the 33 gal long from 3 years ago... Depending on the filter you are using, you might find that the duckweed will not "stay put." You can buy an aqascaping net, and catch out most all of it if you want to. Otherwise, just wisk off a punch every few days to keep it from getting out of hand. I do recommend a larger tank. Smaller tanks are much more chemically unstable than larger volumes of water. I'd say that a 20 gal long is a perfect tank size.

Wish me luck! This is the 125 I re-resealed 10 days ago. I actually do not think I had a leak after the first reseal. There's some discoloration from the spray paint on the bottom. Oh well, it's better sealed this time, I think.

Honestly, I haven't had experience with the severum yet (they're on my list of things to do). But there is a good video from Prime Time Aquatics (youtube) that goes into their requirements. They're supposed to be on the less aggressive side for a cichlid. But being a cichlid it goes down to individual personalities. Possibly could try and find males and that would eliminate pairing. Now, i have done multiple anglefish together in a community. Ended up with 2 pairs. Which was okay for a year. They were territorial, but not extremely so. Which changed when one of the females decided to change partners. New partner is a large marble angelfish, who was very peaceful until then. When he paired, he turned into a murder missile. Even drives the preacox rainbows down to the bottom. Had to remove the unpaired angels out and currently working on removing the rainbows. So even with peaceful cichlids it can change. But I have seen multiple types together. But more than likely single sex.

I love it! I tried 6 times to grow a Dr. Seuss tree with moss and failed miserably. I’m very envious! 😍😍😍

Rainbow Shiners, Southern Redbelly Dace, and Mountain Redbelly Dace — grow out tank & floating / flow-through trays…

As an example of bba before it goes a bit crazy and it forms like a diatom I have two older photos. The first is just this discoloration on the pleco cave and the second is discoloration (grey-black) on the red lava rock. You can see one rock looks fine, the other has shaded out over time as the algae takes hold. That was taken down and set in tubs, then in the new tank it went nuts and thrived on me. I had a mix of staghorn / BBA develop. Some of your photos show the cyano, which you are aware and looking at, the other stuff you're showing reminds me of the above. I was looking at the tank this morning and I have a dead corner in the front left just because the intake is pretty weak. I am planning to swap it out, but it looks like circulation is playing a role in my particular case. Do you happen to have SAE in any tanks you can move to this one for a month or two? The above is what looks like BBA to me. This is what looks like cyano pretty clearly. I dig the plan! keep us posted.

This is the main stud… happy New Year!!!

Def agree with @Cory low pH and low light aren't great for vale. I also make sure to dose properly with EZ Green and I also run a CO2 set up, as I see you use both these you are good here. Here are my specs for my Fluval Aquasky(I think that is what you are running), a break mid day helps for longer enjoyment hours when I am home while keeping the chance for algae minimal. I produce so much in my main tank its in that I have to prune every other month as there are more shoots than I need. Hope this helps. 🙂

Little male tries dancing with the stars. Female takes off, and on the follow up, he meets a larger male…

@aqualust Bill, welcome! May I ask why pea puffers are your favorite? Great photos of your tanks and your dog looks very happy! Andy

You should target feed them with blanched veggies and snellos and algaewafers etc. They are bad at finding food. Dont consider them like mystery snails which can legit smell the food from miles away and go there very fast. Rabbits are easily outcompeted by any other fish/snails in the tank. Usually they are wildcaught and might not be great at accepting normal fish food/wafers. My tip for snails in general is, try blanched veggies at first and once you have a chance to observe what they like eating after many tries of different stuff, start making snellos with those by adding calcium/protein to it so you can easily cover their nutritional needs and no need to deal with blanching veggies everytime. they also love leaf litter. Would be great if you can put lots of leaf litter for them to snack on. Mines fav are banana and catappas.

'Tis the season:

im no engineer, but if it were me, and i wanted a stand more than a few inches wider than the tank, i would double up the front and back top 2x4's, just to be sure they didnt sag over time.

I separated out Swordtails from my Elassoma gilberti this evening. Pygmy Sunfish appearing everywhere!

Fieryblack Shiner… my NANF favorite…

NANF photos from home this evening… Greenhead Shiner Banded Darter Gulf Coast Pygmy Sunfish Rainbow Shiner Fireyblack Shiner 🔥

Another local waterways outing today. Nice to visit our miniature aquatic neighbors! Sculpin… Fantail Darter… Rosysided Dace… White Sucker… Stone Roller… Blacknose Dace + Rosysided Dace… The Old Man 😎… The Young Lad 🥳…

I know this is a little silly. But I came up with a simple solution to the annoying EF flashing. I pulled off the suction cups and turned the heater around! ha ha....I'm so high-tech!

Out with the lad for 60 mins on the creek today! Tiny trickle, but lots of life… I caught a colorful Crayfish… Sammy caught a cool frog… We loaded up on local fish. Rosysided Dace… Blue Ridge Sculpins… Fantail Darters… Blacknose Dace… White Suckers… And (a first for us!) a Stoneroller… Best hour of the day 😎👍