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I found one of my Easy Flows was slowed down and gunked up. Wanting to really clean it out beyond a brush. I found the straw of an air duster fits perfectly into the Easy Flow inlet. Just pinch and hold to create a tight seal. A quick burst of air blew out the holes restoring max airflow.

Frogbit is my favorite floater. It doesn't matter if it gets splashed with water.

Frog bit, its not as temperamental about getting its top wet as red root floater is.

Water changes should not cause any deaths. If this a frequent issue, I would be concerned. Steps I would take, use a tub or similar to fill, add a pump or air stone, declorinate as soon as the storage is filled and add heaters to keep the water near tank temperatures and to off gas excess CO2. Water changes are incredibly important in a planted tank. Organics, soluble and insoluble, will build up and cause problems. You can’t test for these with hobbyist level test kits, but need to be removed. I prefer 50% weekly and often do near 90% when I really want my tank to look the best possible. 50% makes calculating nutrients easier and is why I mostly stick to this amount. This tank received 60% weekly and 90% twice a week 1 month before the AGA. I’ll add that water changes also replace Macro and micro nutrients. For example, Calcium and Magnesium (GH). In many ways, water changes keep the tank water stable. You don’t see all in one fertilizers with Calcium and contain insignificant amounts of magnesium.

The streets need some work, and the myrio Guyana needs to grow in, but overall I like where this is headed. I also finally got some decent pics of my chilatherina sp. Upper Tor

Exactly. 😆

It took half a year, but I got some red lizard whiptail babies! I got these guys wanting to breed them right off the bat, but I didn't have much luck. I initially set up the aquarium with three of the whiptails as well as some forktail blue-eyes. I thought having these as dithers would make the whiptails more comfortable, but I guess the forktails were harassing them too much. I recently took out the forktails and placed them in my community tank, and about a month later I saw these little free swimmers roaming around the tank! They're still super small, maybe 5 or 6 mm in size, but there are more than I can count in the aquarium. I don't have another aquarium at the moment to rehome the adults, so hopefully these guys will be okay growing up with the adults. I guess that'll be the next part of my experiment. As far as care goes, I have the tank heavily planted on two sides with just sand and cholla wood in the middle. The tank they're in is super filtered with both an internal sump in the back as well as an Oase Biomaster canister filter. This tank was custom made and is about 20x24x12 inches (around 15 gallons). I specifically planted with plants that have broad leaves on them since I noticed these guys like to hop on the leaves and sway in the aquarium, kind of cute. Their diet is really varied and I don't really follow a set schedule for feeding except for brine shrimp every other day. On the days I don't have brine shrimp, I feed NLS pellets, XTreme Nano Pellets, Frozen Blood Worms, Freeze Dried Tubifex, Hikari Vibra Bites, Repashy Soilent Green, and Repashy Community Plus. Attached some photos to this post that I took with my Canon. These guys are still super small so it was hard to take decent pictures of them with all of the extension tubes I had to use, but hopefully they'll grow up and be easier to take pictures of soon.

The solution to pollution is dilution. As @Mmiller2001 says, you can't test for alot of the crap in your tank.

I actually use the plant coral to keep them out of the HOB flow, even though mine is pretty gentle. It seems to work pretty well!

It’s looking very solid!

As a beginner, something pretty similar has also been happening to my tank, and I also struggle with keeping fish for a long time. It started with one guppy dying of dropsy. Then another fish gets depressed, passes away, and the cycle repeats itself, with more fish getting stressed from the loss of a tankmate. I have only really kept one guppy for over a year, but not too much longer, as he unfortunately also fell into the cycle of depression. However, remember, when you bring the fish home, they are at least living a better life than they did at the pet stores, in the overcrowded tanks, probably with ammonia too, if you have seen the numerous fish that have passed away in the feeder fish tanks at chain stores. The fish there are mostly mass bred, and come with diseases or deformities. Where do you get your fish? The last time I went to my local PetSmart, there were only three guppies, and only one that I liked. Sometimes, they just have an inbred batch of fish.

Air loop is up and running 🙂 some small adjustments and more Air flow valves are needed. I bought some steel valves but I think I like those in plastic more.

I think that’s the one thing we as new keepers really screw up. Most of the time things can be solved just by watching and maintaining parameters. And doing absolutely nothing else. But we panic, and then really screw things up.

I'll preface this with my experience. I have been in the hobby since Sept 2020, I have had 2 proper fish rooms, and moved the fish tanks 4 times(life has been hectic) My current setup is a manual water change system with 60+ tanks, in around 300 sq ft. and it has been running for just over 2 years now. Below is a mix of my opinions and advice I have received from fellow hobbyists (shoutout to Minnesota Aquarium Society and its members). First thing to ask yourself is what is the goal of the fish room. Are you looking to just show off cool fish, do aquascaping, breed for fun (or "profit") etc. This will guide you in making your decisions further along. I would recommend writing all your thoughts down to keep track of them. The goal of the fishroom may change as time passes too, and thats ok. The hobby is for you and you have to figure out what you like to do with your aquariums. Now to the fun stuff. Planning. Take your time and research other peoples fish rooms. Look on here, google around, and check youtube for fishroom tours. For my current fish room it took about 6 months from moving in to having a 90% plan of how I was going to set up the fish room. If you can, go tour other peoples fish rooms and ask why they did things and what they would change. No need to reinvent the wheel. For the not so fun stuff, you have to consider your 4 walls constraining your fish room. "Your time, money, size of the room, and the sanity of your spouse" - Randy Carey. Fish rooms are always more expensive than you think, I have spent around 10k on just the equipment for my room. 10'x8' is the physical space limitation. Feeding 60 tanks takes me about 30 mins. 1. Stands - I'm looking at industrial racks, probably Galdiator, Husky, Kobalt, etc. Any of those will work. I have the 6' and 4' husky racks with 2' and 4' wire NSF shelves. on the 6' shelves, you can fit 6ea 10s edgewise and a 5, or 7 10s depending on the cross bracing location. you can also do 2 40s on a 6'. 4' racks will fit a 60B with the edges sticking out or 4ea 10s. I did not care about leveling the racks when I put them in. Might be worth getting some shims if your floor is super uneven. 2. Tanks - mostly 20 highs and 10s but I might bring some 40s with. Tanks will be positioned short side out to fit more. Final count around 40-60 tanks. Speaking from experience, changing water with that many tanks takes a lot of time. Feeding too. I have them each running individually so problems don't compound. 3. Lids - Probably polycarbonate +/- a hinge. I used the greenhouse panel, put a cheap handle from menards on it and drilled a 2" hole for feeding. I'm too lazy to open and close hinges 4. Water - EXTREMELY hard. Auto water change? Continue with manual water changes? First plan the drainage, then the filling - Dean. I have 2 pythons that I use simultaneously when I do a whole room water change that go into a toilet. Auto water changes add complexity to the fish room and increases the chances of water getting on the floor, but it saves a bunch of time. 5. Lighting - I currently run cheaper aquarium lights, one light over 3-4 tanks. I've been trying the Co-Op light and will probably replace the cheap lights as they die. I run cheap nicrew lights, but have made it so I can run 24 on one plug. I split them off one adjustable power supply and use DIN splitters to run wires to it. 6. Heating - I have been heating the current room and had partially settled on an oil radiator heater for the new room. If a do a central sump system, I could in theory heat the room less and put heaters into the sump. I get free heat in my current apartment, but don't underestimate the heat that gets put out of a dehumidifier. I can vary the temp in the summer mostly by the dehumidifier. 7. Drilling - I have never drilled tanks before but after many videos, we're pretty confident that we can accomplish it if needed. Please see next point on +/- for drilling. I have drilled a 75 and it wasn't that difficult. The only thing I would recommend is ear protection because it causes the entire tank to become a speaker. I have also heard that 5gal and smaller tanks are finicky to drill due to the thinner glass. 8. Filtration - A part of me is tempted to just continue with the sponge filters and just keep up with everything manually, it just takes so much time though. The other part of me is seriously tempted to create central sumps, say one for each rack. I do quarantine but having multiple tanks on one system would be new for me in my own fishroom. What makes sense with this many tanks? Matten filters and auto water changes for non-breeding tanks. I like to control the parameters of any tank that is used for breeding, but when I have to change water twice a week on a 10gal with 100 ancistrus fry in it I question my sanity. 9. Opinions - Manual water change vs auto water change vs central sump? What would you change? What would you add? What did you wish you knew when setting up a fishroom? My next fish room will have auto water change to individually filtered tanks, with the option of RO or hard water at each tank. Plan for around 30" of space for anywhere you plan to walk. You will thank yourself later. Buy a nice step stool. Put in more shutoff valves than you think you need for your auto water change. Cold water dissolves more gas than hot water. This is a problem when the gas comes out of solution inside a fish. Age the water in a storage tank if you live somewhere where it gets cold. For the size of your fish room, a simple air loop will work, but if you have larger ones, gridding the system gets you better air pressure. For every tank, have 2 air outlets. Have a backup power supply for your air pump. Do not have a garbage can in there that you only take out once in a while. I still have these annoying little flies. Heat the room. All this makes me realize I should just do a fish room build thread....

I was posting about this head-and-taillight tetra on my journal, and @Odd Duck and @Colu have been helping me. The fish has been struggling to swim properly. It is in quarantine, and I tried to treat swim bladder symptoms (just in case it was that). Today I notice dark patches around the stomach of the fish. Mainly on left side. My first move was to test ammonia; it is zero. I tested a few days ago as well (either Thursday or Friday) and it was zero. @Odd Duck has been suggesting the fish got injured. I wonder if this is internal bleeding? could it be something else that is treatable and that the fish can spring back from? I’ve never seen anything like this. Scroll down for more photos. The only treatments to date have been a 15 min Epsom salt dip (maybe 2 weeks ago), then I did mild aquarium salt on the tank he was in. After that, moved to quarantine because I was losing track of him in the plants, and he was “social distancing” as well. Also a 3 day fast, then I offered peas, but he spit it out. I offered frozen cyclops today but I couldn’t tell If he ate it. He swam in and out of the cloud of it a few times so maybe he got some. I was going to epsom salt this tank next, mild dose, but now I see these symptoms. I did a water change today after the cyclops feeding. Routine weekly water change. I remove uneaten foods as well within 30 min. Also my chart has something similar but for saltwater: Actually above that saltwater fish I do see similar for freshwater also. Sorry, was hard to see on the orange fish they have on the chart. But the fish is NOT slugging or hiding so it doesn’t make much sense as a diagnosis. He's always moving. I don’t see him rest during the day.

I promise I will move beyond this however like any new source of learning, I am having fun. My sister sent me a pretty good article and I wanted to share it with you considering I had so much trouble finding actual information. From what the article says I suspect I have Snail Leeches. https://www.aquasabi.com/aquascaping-wiki_parasites_leeches

might try fasting for a few days. then a bit of frozen peas. looks very bound up with something. hopefully just constipated. bloat usually doesn't end well

i also tried separating platys, they can be pregnant for an incredibly long time. i think not this long though. I eventually gave up and put them all back together again. I gave them plenty of cover and now have a 20g with about 30 platys. all sizes all ages. from 2 yr old to 2-day old fry. the numbers have been relatively stable for about 2 years now

75 gallons is the max size for a diffuser. You will need to run multiple diffusers.

One of the little embers decided to chill out for a picture finally. At least 2.5 years old. Colors were so weak when i got them from the store... of course they were much younger then. Gotta love these little fish.

Since an aquarium is an enclosed box of water and can't ever really mimic the biodiversity and chemistry of a true ecosystem, it seems unlikely that the substances monitored for by test kits are the only relevant variables. Fish emit hormones and shed bacteria and viruses and there are all sorts of plastics in our tanks and water, just so much more going on than the standard API kit can tell you about. I say that as someone who once killed a tank of beloved 7-year-old goldfish with a water change done when my city switched to a different water source due to contamination one summer. I understand that there is some risk to a water change. I prefer to manage that by testing new water before it goes in the tank and maintaining stability by regularly changing out old water with all the accumulated bacteria, hormones etc. for fresh water with the same basic parameters.

Azolla sp.

Thanks for all the responses guys, will look into every one!!!

Thx everyone and tanked my plants have started to grow back and i have seen really good growth with the helenium or whatever

Sera Micron until they start eating live bbs. As soon as they eat live bbs, I feed that. I also keep lots of leaf litter all the time

Yes! It held up just fine & is now moved to my BIL house & cycled/stocked. It turned out so well.

You could also do some red cherry shrimp. very small rasboras will also work. think along the lines of chili's. only 3/4 inch long. small thin bodies. maybe 7 or 8 of those. possible a few male endlers so they don't reproduce. or the betta and snail, which you could make a very happy betta in that. and all these options are really a this OR that kind of thing. not all of them at once I know, they make all kinds of cool looking little tanks. big box stores will tell you they're fine. it's not till later that you realize they're only good for a few things.

Well, let’s start with the basics. What’s your budget? Do you have a light? Your tank may or may not be cycled with a nitrite reading of 0.5 ppm. I’m leaning towards “not fully cycled”. You should have a reading of ammonia 0, nitrites 0, and nitrates under 20 ppm. If you aren’t seeing any nitrates, then your tank probably isn’t cycled just yet. as for stocking- you’ll be very limited on what you can keep in a 5.5g. While a single Bronze Cory will technically fit, they are happier and less stressed in groups of at least 3 (though 6 are recommended) which will be far too much for a 5.5g tank and would be more suited to a minimum tank size of 10g (20g is better). as for the current tank… you could do a single Betta with a Nerite or Mystery snail and a couple of Ghost shrimp. That’s about the limit. You may want to consider upgrading to a 10g so that you have more options as far as stocking goes. Petco regularly has sales on tanks and you can pick one up for about $12.

Thanks for the detailed analysis, Roy! I love the sciencey bits of our hobby... No CO2 currently or in near future. I'll give the Equilibrium a try for a couple months. Patience is something I'm good with...👍

Haha of course this happens all the time! Leeches are a large group of invertebrates. Some stay small like your brown leech some get large. Most are harmless living life in the sediment eating decaying matter. There are some predatory ones but they are usually quite large compared to the detritus eating counterparts. Several inches long and have beautiful olive green skin with tiger stripes. Those are the ones you typically want to remove and kill. The brown and black ones tend to be harmless. They will eat baby snails and shrimp if they can catch them but mostly just content eating decaying matter. Also behavior we are learning that most leeches we find latched on to fish and amphibians are actually just hitchhiking and not parasitizing the host. As was previously thought. I treated mine by feeding them to my fish. They ate them greedily. here is a pic of s predatory leech. This specimen is quite large and they will catch and eat anything they can get their mouths on. I usually find them attached to turtles or large fish.

Love a cute polish! I can say that I have had good experiences with Meyer Hatchery also for online ordering - they do sell hatching eggs I think, but not sure if they ship them?

Not scuds. Scuds are more shrimp like with their segments. An ostrocod has a bivalve shell which seems to be what those are. Some fish should eat them up if you're having a problem.

Initially and without any additional information (water change schedule & full water parameters would help) I wondered to myself if you are dealing with is white bga which is a bacteria. Its also fowl smelling and grows in sheets. A huge contributer to the problem is flow & silicates which is abundant in sand; silicates is BGA crack. New setups with sand often need large regular water changes to combat BGA untill a large colony of beneficial bacteria can grow

@Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics do you have a desk lamp or something with a shade/hood/reflector that will focus the light at your hatcher(s)? If so, you can grab an incandescent bulb from your local Canadian Tire. I use a 25W bulb in a desk lamp, and it provides light during the daylight hours (like is key for bbs, i'm sure you know this), and the amount of heat you add is based on the distance from lamp to hatcher, and also the bulb's wattage. The bulb burns out every 4-6 months, but a 4-pack is still really cheap.

Thanks for the info! As for slides I did get some divit slides specifically made for looking at water samples. You were also correct about plastic artifact in the picture, I believe these pictures were taken from a water sample in a Petrie dish when I first got my microscope. Also, any chance you can identify these guys. ?

Light will basically need to be pretty near max for that tank! The Val can be a pain to get going, but once it takes hold it's wonderful. The val and the bulb plant can handle a lot more like than you'll realize. It's a fun one once it pops! I ran meds, killed all of mine.... it's like they just never existed 😞 . I am hoping it comes back!

This is how i hatch my corydora eggs, if you leave them in the tank with all the other fish they make good snacks.

My first thoughts. It sounds like you’re a basic beginner, we all have made many mistakes at this point. Please don’t beat yourself up. I know it’s completely discouraging to lose animals. But there is a learning curve to this. We screw things up, we learn. We do better next time. It’s how this works. I completely understand. I did the exact same thing. Stay here, ask questions. We all like to help. For some of us, this hobby is relatively new. It’s not been that long ago we lost our own animals. We absolutely know that frustration. Trust me, it gets better. a few more things. Neon tetras and bettas are some of the hardest fish to keep alive for very long. They both have become way too fragile genetically from overbreeding. Neons are lucky to make it a couple of months (if they make it 3 months they’re generally fine). Bettas can last anywhere from 3 months to 3 years depending on the animal. They have a tough existence until you bring them home. You could easily have lost the majority of your fish and done everything perfectly. you tried live plants for the first time. That’s great. They didn’t make it, but you learned. You’ll do better next time. as an aside, ph is generally not a factor in if you can keep fish alive at all. There some species that are sensitive to ph but most will be okay in a decent range usually from 6 to 8. Of course there are exceptions. Usually wild caught animals need to be matched to their home habitats. Most places have harder water. 85% of the US has hard water. We keep fish just fine. More important are the values of ammonia, nitrites and nitrates for fish health. That’s why we constantly watch them. Ph kh gh are relatively constant numbers and are based on where your water originated. We usually don’t mess with them because it makes everything harder. Unless you really want a specific fish, then there are strategies to change the water. I know you’re completely discouraged right now, but it will get better. So if you need to, take some time. You can absolutely do this.

I found the washing machine did diddly to clean my sock (and yes i turned them inside out before washing). My machine is an LG front load (not sure if front load makes a difference vs top load); so i gave up on the washing machine and clean them via strong water flow through a sprout (think chest level tub sprout with full flow). I suppose if washing machine would actually clean them it would be alittle easier though turning them inside out is still a pia. -- I can see the sponges as the doors aren't on the stand yet and for the past month the sponges are definitely not being clogged. As you saw from the picture i have a 5 so if it begins to flow over one there is time to clean it before it clogs the next. - Your point about waste break down and nitrate is an interesting one i had not known nor considered. To be honest that is one thing i hate about the CA setup as the filtration is top heavy and one aspect i had debate for a long time was drilling the tanks from the bottom. In the end i skip the bottom drill because i thought it was one less thing to go horribly wrong (gasket failing at the bottom - if it is at the top yea 50 to 100 gallon will drip out but that is a lot better than 600 gallons.

I just toss the socks into the washing machine with a little bleach and a second rinse. I have multiple sets, I wash all of them every few weeks. Washing the socks by hand would be a pia. I hated removing the sponge from the sump, all that crap in the sponge would dump into the sump. So then I would have to siphon all the water out of the sump to clean it. My first sump used two large sponges (course and fine). After a week or so, the water would just flow over them as the sponges collected crap from the tank. I prefer to get the crap out of the tank before it breaks down to ammonia. Video link. I need to add an air value to balance the flow between the airstones. I also put a 4" PVC coupling on top of the pipes.

I don't know about that, I just know that I don't want them in my shrimp tank if they will harm my shrimp. I am not happy about the idea of No Planaria in my tank as a poison in a closed system so doing a bit of research.

You won't regret getting the gate value. For a quiet system, you should have a couple inches of water above the main siphon drain in the overflow box. So if your water pump is operating at 432.7 gph, your main siphon line needs to be operating at 432.7 gph. It's not that hard to tune. Once you are close, you just tweak the gate value a little and wait a few minutes to adjust. FYI, the full siphon flow rate of 1.5" pipe may be over 1,500 gph. On easy maintenance, having filter socks makes a big difference. I am a strong believer in separating mechanical and bio filtering. So if your filter socks are removing much of the organic crap in the tank, the bio media (ceramic rings?) would rarely need cleaning. And if you change the filter socks weekly, you are removing organic material before it breaks down into ammonia. You should get less nitrates in the tank.

Bonus gif of silver dollar yeeting an algae wafer.

Well, I finally have water flowing through all the pipes (and not leaking). It's still a little loud, so I'll be trying to get some rocks or hydroton or something under the 4" L where it drops a foot or so. That's where all the noise is coming from, as expected. Unexpected benefit is the bottom 4" pipe leads to a 1.5" reducer so it holds more water than the rest. I can do some nft and some dft The bottom row should work much better for seed starting and smaller plants. That's my hope anyway. I got 4 geophagus sveni and 6 silver dollar juveniles, and they're all doing great so far. As far as plants, I just have some houseplant starts growing so far. Will get some veggies started soon, hopefully.

Date 1-28-24 Day 4 First eggs have begun to hatch The first eggs in the breeder box have begun to hatch 🥳, but some of them have not hatched yet. This is the perfect time to get some BBS up and running for these guys. In 24-48 hours they will be ready to start eating and BBS is a great choice. If you cannot get BBS I highly recommend Easy Fry and Small Fish Food, Just feeding it twice a day I have seen very fast growth rates in these fry. This is what new fry look like from a birds eye view. They are very small and look like smaller eggs, with tails and heads. You will be able to tell when they are hatched because for the first day or so, the newly hatched Cories like to dart around the breeder box exploring. I recommend doing a large water change at this point to keep water quality high. I like to use a clear cup, scooping from the top of the breeder box. The fry hang out on the bottom so catching any out is unlikely, and if i do accidentally catch any out, they are easy to see and put back.

Algae? ha-HAAAAAAA!