[Local Pet Store had a sale today....]

Nice pick up. Great time of year to find some deals on tanks. 

[Aquarium Coop Root Tabs]

I've heard some people poke a hole with a pin in one end so the air escapes as you're putting it in. I personally don't have this problem but I can see how some who use sand could. 

[The new fish room and studio build thread.]

4 hours ago, Steven Dykes said:

@CoryIn love with this table/shelving. I need to know where you got this!

I purchased it on Etsy. Lots of craftsmen on there make this type of stuff. 

[Other Pets]

Nice pup. is it a corgi?

[Tips for catching fish]

Here is the video I did on catching fish. 
 

 

[Zebra Danios gill flukes.]

I would start with raising the pH. A ph off 7.0 would probably do wonders for them. 6.3 is quite low.

[Ich on Goldfish?]

Doesn't necessarily look like ich. It could be just starting, but ich usually has more spots. You could do 1 tablespoon of salt per 2 gallons as a preventative. 

[UV sterilizer for shared sump recommendations]

Uv sterilizes mostly come down to contact time. Watts vs how fast flow is. You need large amounts of watts and slow flow to kill something like ich for instance. In a sump like that, I would go with whatever the largest uv sterilizer you can afford is. There are some cheap "diy" solutions on amazon that are just a uv sterilizer tube with an on/off switch and some suction cups. If you put that inside of like 1 inch pvc, and move some water by it they work pretty well. But you need some type of shield as it'll damage acrylic, your eyes, fish, bacteria etc. 

[Rainbow fish black chin]

Water parameters are unknown, so can't go there. I would put it in Qt with 1 salt per 1 gallon and see what happens. could be something like TB which is incurable , but if the QT tank has good water parameters and salt like that, if it's bacterial or fungal , it'll usually get it. 

[Light Options for Fish Room]

Typically the best diy option I've found is using shop lights. However lighting is one of the spots I learned to not be cheap on as I want to actually see my fish, not only when they are looking great, but if they were to get sick. Be able to grow plants, not grow too much algae. I personally use and like stingray lights, 48 inch ones would run about $75 each and cover 4 tanks. Shop LED lights usually are $30 to $40 but will be really powerful on those 20s, and usually the wrong color temperature to look good. You can take some chances on amazon lights, they run the spectrum, some have too much blue, some are too bright, some too weak, some last forever, some burn out in 9 months etc. 

[Help! Very cloudy and murky water]

Looks like your aquarium just needs servicing, gravel vac, and a filter cleaning. Looks like debris by what has settled in your cup. 

[Dirted tank thoughts]

I guess my question is why would you do this? This would just be a crazy amount of nutrients. The problem with dirt already is controlling the amount of nutrients all of this would just make it worse. 

[Easy green freezing]

You'll be fine, when it gets too cold you may get some crystallization , but getting it to room temp of like 70 degrees will let it dissolve back in, shake it up. 

[Issue with Cycle?]

Got a picture of the tank? it seems like it is a young tank with a high bioload. What I'm not understanding is, how did you have 40ppm nitrate in the water, change 50%, and end up at 20ppm if your tap water has 40ppm of nitrate in it?

[Vorticella on Plants]

I've never heard of it on anything but shrimp personally.

[brine shrimp egg left out of freezer]

Yeah, we are doing testing to see if we can tell any difference, so far we haven't been able to. You'll be fine.

[Airstone in HOB filter?]

Should work pretty well. Also know that you can turn the pump down quite a bit on the oxygen as well. It doesn't take that much air to get lots into the water, if the air flow is any issue in the hob. 

[Reduced Occupancy in Our Retail Store]

The two inventories are independant. Essentially it doesn't make sense for a business of our size to have up to the date inventory. I am looking for ways we could implement this, but it's a massive project and likely to take a long time to implement. 

[How many fish at once?]

The trick is, it depends on how much you feed. If you put 1 algae wafer in for the 6 corydoras, or you put 1 in for 6 corydoras, a pleco and 2 snails, it's the same load on the tank. 

 

In general I recommend adding 1 species at a time. 

[The new fish room and studio build thread.]

15 minutes ago, DaveSamsell said:

Am wondering if the room has a central floor drain?  Also, some large wooden ceiling fans would be a nice touch.  Lots of room for many wonderful possibilities.  The project is really taking shape.  Nice job...  I helped my brother build a good portion of his home and it's very gratifying having seen the accomplishments, every day, as well.  

No central floor drain. We are going to attempt to take the water on the outside of the building. As for fans we'll see what is needed after the mini splits are installed and the HRV.

[Airstone in HOB filter?]

I'd be a little careful, and ask this question. How do you know it provides enough oxygen? I rarely meet people who test for dissolved oxygen. Most people would say, there aren't that many fish in that tank. The reality is, the oxygen is consumed by plants at night and bacteria much more than fish. So You'll find that a couple hours before lights come on, oxygen can be dangerously low. 

I would doubt that a HOB, wouldn't let the fish live, but enough oxygen  is a relative term. During forest fires, there is smoke in the air, and there is enough oxygen to breath, but long term it leads to problems. This happens in aquariums too, where oxygen can get depleted. This was my observations from doing all the testing I did with a DO meter. My conclusion was that an airstone even at super low flow provided essentially maxed out oxygen levels in our aquariums outside of extremes, like 1 airstone with slow flow to 10k gallons of water. 

 

This is the old video with bad audio and some lost footage as the testing took many many weeks with different setups. However the testing I did, in other fish rooms and my store it was a wake up call for me. I couldn't predict a single aquarium oxygen's level unless it had an air stone in it. In which cause I knew it would be high. 

Again, I think odds are for quite a while, your setup would be fine. However with a high plant load, and a water change where dechlorinator uses up oxygen, you could find your fish in a panic some random day way down the road.

 

[Reduced Occupancy in Our Retail Store]

2 minutes ago, KBOzzie59 said:

Thanks for the update!

 

@Cory

Any chance of "will call" for large orders?  82 items in my cart right now.

 

Currently not all items on the website are at the store. 99% are. Also stock levels are different. if you wanted 2 linear air piston pumps for instance, We have 50+ in stock at the warehouse but 1 at the store at this moment. So unfortunately we don't have a local pick up option yet. It is on our list to figure out how to do long term. However in the short term we need to figure out some logistics to make it feasible. 

[The new fish room and studio build thread.]

Spent the whole weekend working on it. Got flooring mostly done. Installed one of the desks and made 3 tables and a coffee table as well. Made some good headway.

Need to mop and clean up the new floor but more people will be in and out as we continue to work on it.

[Reduced Occupancy in Our Retail Store]

With the new restrictions  in place, the maximum occupancy of our Retail store is 12 including employees. We are still limiting entry to 1 party of of up to 2 people per employee working. The employee will be actively working with you to get your items and check out in a timely manor. Masks are still required.

We have implemented a restaurant  pager system for customers who are waiting to get in. When you arrive please knock on the door and receive your pager. Then return to your car where you can wait out of the elements and away from other waiting customers. We will try to give an estimate of a waiting time while picking up the pager. We ask that when it's your time to please have a list of items you'd like to purchase that day to limit the amount of time spent in store. This ensures the shortest wait time possible for all customers. 

We have expanded our hours on weekends to 10am to 7pm to help spread customers out, we are also asking people shop in the retail store during the week as it's half as busy as Saturday and Sunday. Please try and limit time spent in store to 15 minutes. 

If you won't be buying fish at the retail store, please consider ordering what you need online to be shipped quickly to your home. Typically this is a 24  hour delivery.

Thank you for everyone's patience while we try and keep everyone healthy during this winter season. 

[Airstone in HOB filter?]

the way you currently have it setup, it can pull air into the impeller and cause cavitation. Also popping bubbles will put gunk on your blinds. Typically the way an air stone is added is to drill a hole in the lid and feed the airline through it, and you'd have it in the media compartment. This is easier to do on other filters, but not impossible on that aquaclear. Also know that the airstone will clog a lot faster being that all the gunk will be run by it.