tolstoy21

If you look at drip emmitters, you also have to make sure your water line is pressurized to the correct degree. Most of them require you to be running at no higher than 30 - 40 psi. This is easily achieved with simple valve that is usually available inexpensively through most drip irrigation vendors. I use the 0.5, 1 and 2 gph emitters from DripWorks. Not sure their degree of accuracy, but they work in my applications. I use simple in-line solenoid valves plugged into simple plug-in timers to help regulate the drip duration.

Sand is not required. I breed apistos fine on Carib Sea Peace River gravel substrate. It’s small sized and they can dig in and rearrange it fine, as they like to do. This is my favorite non-black sand substrate. I think apistos appreciate (but dont require) something they can dig in and rearrange.

I’m in the area too (Jersey side) and use both Fish Factory and Hidden Reef. Sorry, can’t help ya on the splitting the costs of tubing, but just wanted to chime and say hello to fellow aquarists in the area.

Definitely good advice. With plants, aquatic or otherwise, you have to learn to adjust one thing and then just wait. Plants don’t turn around overnight. It could take a few weeks before you notice any change at all after putting in root tabs. Resist the urge to make additional changes until some time passes and you’ve spent time observing your plants. And as Cory stated, put a bunch of root tabs in. Don’t be shy on using them. I put 6 to 8 under large swords and replace those every 3 ish months.

Yeah pretty much that's my experience of married life. Someone gotta catch you before you go too far down those slippery slopes!

I think it all depends on how they are spraying for pests. If they are fogging your rooms, then yeah you need to cover up tanks. If they are spritzing around the baseboards and cleaning inside kitchen cupboards and whatnot, you probably don't need to worry so much unless your tanks are under or near the cupboards in the kitchen. Years ago, I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn that sprayed regularly for cockroaches/pests and they just sprayed stuff around the baseboards that didn't get up into the air at all. From your description, I'm going to guess that's what they are more likely to do than fumigate. Really, in the end, it depends on how fine a spray they are using and proximity to aquarium. Draping plastic over the tanks is probably a good, easy, safe option. But if the pest product is completely aerosolized as a fog, then you'll probably need to seal them up somehow. If you don't need to leave for a while when they come to do this, and they don't show up with respirators, I'd guess your fish will be fine.

In had the same exact problem a few years ago in a large community tank with three dalmatian mollies. I had mostly tetras and danios. At feeding, the mollies dominated the food situation and were overall bullies. I had about 50 neons in this tank, but that number didn't stop the aggression. Maybe it spread it out, but still, fish were being aggressively chased away from food. In the end, I brought them back to my LFS which gave me a little bit of credit on the fish.

I just asked a question about heaters for the Ziss and @MickS77 recommended the Uniclife 25w heater available on Amazon. I have since purchased one and can attest that it fits the Ziss blender perfectly. Only had it a few days, so I cannot comment on its quality long term, but it is a perfect fit and reasonably priced. Here's our original thread -

Also @Cory, I blame your root tabs. I used them. Now I have too many crypts. 🙂

Yeah not sure on the resale part yet. I'd say, maybe? I need to thin out some crypts and wanted to grow out the small ones shooting up in the soil in some of my grow-out tanks. Not sure yet if I'm going to try to sell or trade them or not. Just depends on how many I accumulate. Are there any caveats to rock wool?

Can rock wool be used as a medium to propagate plants in pots submerged, or is this something that's better suited for immersed grown plants? If not, what's an easy medium to use in pots for submerged plants? Planted substrate?

I use a Thermapen. Super accurate and fast. Sometimes I even clean it afterwards before using it on a steak or chicken! 🙂

So to ‘calibrate’ it’ just turn the red dial to point to 78 so it matches the actual water temp.

There would be no benefit to RO for your 40 gallon setup. You’d just be incurring the expense and work of remineralizing and buffering the water you just stripped down.

@DanielAre those nice graphs a result of the journaling in a spreadsheet your were talking about in an earlier thread a while back?

My salt and peppers spawn regularly too, but I’m not sure how long between spawns. I’d say I see them laying eggs at least once or twice a month, but I’m not really paying attention 100%, so it’s probably more regularly than that. I don’t do anything to trigger them, they just do their thing. This is in a community tank. I’m not intentionally trying to breed them. Occasionally some survive to adulthood by hunkering down in the java moss or between rocks. I started with 2 and in two years about two dozen have made it to adulthood. I found I had the best survival rates when my dwarf sag had filled in real thick. When I removed all that one day I was like - wow look at all these corys I had no idea we’re in here!

As @MickS77said, you sometimes need to calibrate them. They’re not always calibrated 100% out of the box. Those steps are in the instructions. However, I have a few that just won’t calibrate accurately not matter how hard I play with the red dial. For those I just adjust them according to the tank temp reading and tweaking a bit and don’t pay attention to what the dial says.

I really like Flourite Black Sand and pretty much exclusively use that. #1 reason I like it -- looks. I like the black sand look. Plants grow well very well in it, and I have noticed i almost never have to vac it, ever. My corydora pack does a good job kicking up everything into the water column from the surface of that and that gets pulled out into the filter. Can't remember the last time I used vac. Ok so cons -- and there are few: Expensive. Hard to keep plants rooted until they root themselves. Has to be super rinsed or you'll have an insanely cloudy tank. Has iron in it, so git will get stuck in a magnetic cleaner if you get too close to it, then you risk scratching your glass. If you do vac it, its sucks up easily and if you use a python, gets all over your sink and in your trap. So why do i use it after all the above? I like it. Looks nice to me. I'd use it again in a heart beat. It grows plants well.

Yeah, nothing stays put in Flourite sand without hassle. Tweezers in sand never work because as you try to release anything, you inadvertently move the sand aside as the tweezers expand and create a path for a stem plant or a root tab to escape upwards. The angled tweezers work better. But in both cases, it's easy to crush the tabs. In the end, there is no tool engineered with more sophistication, control and tactile feedback that ones own fingers. If I just go that old-fashioned route, I never have problems with root tabs that like to float.

Can anyone suggest an adjustable heater that fits well in the Ziss artemia blender?

I found that too, so I just use my fingers.

Hmmm. Yeah I was sticking to the three month schedule. I'll monitor their growth and adjust if needed. I do appreciate the fantastic growth, but on the other hand, when plants grow too fast, I gotta get in there and do some maint and thin them out.

If you think you're going to be adding more tanks in the near-ish future, it could be worth the investment. However, if you're not expanding anytime soon, or just don't have the money to justify an expensive air pump at this juncture, you could probably get by with a couple inexpensive Tetra Whisper pumps. As en example, I use a Whisper 100 to power 2 sponge filters in two separate 29 gallons. It's more than enough air for that. These run like $15 each. If you're not pushing much air to your tanks, then you might be able to split that across a few more tanks, but your mileage may vary and this depends on tank size and how much flow/filtration you need. Really the decision comes down to what your tank sizes are, how many sponger filters you'll have in all of them cumulatively, and if it's worth the cost savings if you'll be adding more to that soon and find yourself adding more individual air pumps. This is a stop gap measure until you start expanding, and if you don't expand, its a waaaay lower-cost, plug-n-play solution. Now if you're doubling the amount of tanks you're running anytime soon, then yeah maybe thing about the expense of a linear piston pump, plus the cost and time of installing a PVC loop. I'm sure there are other solutions available, but my personal path ran through the Tetra Whispers, so I can speak to that experience.

I have been using the black, blocky, slab-of-chalk-looking root tabs for a few years now (trying not to mention a brand name) and I recently switched to the Aquarium Co-Op ones simply because they were less expensive. That was literally my only motive. I thought, hmm these are less expensive, I hope they work. However, after about a month+ of planting the tabs in the substrate, my crypts and swords have exploded in size and growth rate. My Wendtii Red are easily 12" high. Lot of little ones popping up through the substrate that I can now propagate to other tanks. Maybe something else is going on and I'm falsely attributing this growth to the Co-Op's tabs, but this is literally the only change (I haven't changed other ferts and don't use EasyGreen liquid). This is a very low-tech planted setup. Anyway, wanted to share my experience as I really like what I'm seeing after switching from the the more expensive slabs of black chalk offered by a larger company.

I think the Angels are less likely to snack on the rummynose than they are neons. I'm also partial to rummynose.