tolstoy21

It's a fun challenge to tally what you can find in a given geographic region in a given year as it pushes you to explore new places to get higher numbers. I did a local county Big Year once just for fun and it really drove me to try to figure out what specialized habitats existed in little nooks and crannies in my small county in an attempt to find birds that I needed for the list that specialized in those habitats. A friend and I stumbled upon a Crested Caracara in a corn field during that effort, which was an insane accidental find in the middle of suburban NJ. My buddy noticed it because he thought it was someone's escaped chicken.

I've been a hardcore birder for a looooong time. It's definitely an amazing hobby and can become somewhat of an obsession in a fun way! Love the pics! Based on the birds you've got represented there I'm going to guess you live somewhere east of the Rocky Mountains (unless these represent rarer vagrants in your neck of the woods).

Totally agree. I have 0 KH as well and run three tank scenarios. Leave water alone for soft water fish. Others get some crushed coral for a ph of 7.2 ish. African Cichlids get aragonite sand for a higher ph. I find this super easy to implement and stable. I just leave my GH alone which is 9 out of the tap.

Thinking in terms of smaller vs larger wattage heaters, I think a factor is also the fish your keeping. If a small heater fails and the tank temp drops but your fish are mostly ok, maybe not optimally happy, but still alive at room temp, that’s better than the alternative of a large heater stuck on and cooking everything. Plus smaller heaters are a little less expensive to buy and run, unless they are undersized and run all day. My heater failed recently and my tank sat at 70 for longer than I know and everyone was still happy as can be.

3 heaters are only bad on your wallet (well if you had to buy all three). I would imagine if you had 2, 3 or 4, your tank will still be as warm as the highest set heater. Theoretically, if you had something ridiculous like half a dozen 300 watt heaters, you could easily over subscribe your circuit. But that’s the only negative, other than cost, I can think by running more.

GH hardiness is unrelated to Ph. Ph is normally a result oh your KH levels. My tap water sits about 9 GH but has a ph in the 6.6 - 6.8 range. As some else suggested aragonite will buffer your water but I’m not sure how much higher above 8 ph it will push you. I kind of feel it tops out at 8.2, or at least that’s my experience in my water. Not sure how it influences GH. I find crush corals and Aragonite influence that a little bit and have more an impact on KH, being primarily used as a Ph buffer. A product like Equilibrium, which is just powered mineral additive, can raise your GH to wherever you want depending on your dosage levels and don’t impact KH at all, if that’s your goal.

I rinse mine. Just a habit. But sometimes I don’t if I’m lazy or in a hurry You could always rinse them in tank water unless you have a too many tanks to feed or don’t want to cross contaminate something from one tank to the next. id imagine unless your dumping like 2 quarts of brine into a 20 gallon tank 2x a day, you’ll be fine. A turkey baster or so full will probably have no impact.

I use two 150 watt Ehiem Jagers in mine to raise the tank temp about 5 - 7 F above room temp.

My tank goes heater-less and runs between 68 - 72 depending on the season. 82 degrees sounds very high for them. I’d expect them to fall apart fast at that temp, but others may have had success with that and can offer alternative advice $12 each seems pricey. I usually list mine for $4 each locally when I’m trying to thin out my herd, which is comparable to prices I see with online breeders for a similar grade shrimp.

Exactly why I set up a nitrate filter. Got tired of making RODI and re-mineralizing it. I was burning through Equilibrium. In the end, i found I still did have to adjust the Kh via crushed coral. But my well-water is about 0.5 Kh to begin with. The nitrate filter strips that down to 0.

I regenerate mine using a solar salt brine solution like one would use in a water softener. I let the entire cartridge sit in that for about 24 hours, then drain it and then flush it with water till the nitrates leaching out read zero on a test strip. That's been working for me, but i came to that solution via about a week of trial and error. I'm sure it probably does not regenerate it 100%, but it regenerates it enough for me to get more use out of it. I do this it bi-weekly, but that's just an interval I invented. I have no idea what the required interval really should be. I've experimented with re-generating with Lye (sodium hydroxide) but that was a royal pain in the butt. Salt is waaaaay easier. I think the basic idea, like in a water softener, is that you're looking to the displace the nitrate from its spot on the resin beads with sodium ions. The waste water coming out of my cartridge when i lift it out of the brine is like 20 bazillion ppm nitrate. if you're getting a whole house unit, I would imagine they should be able to auto-regenerate from a brine tank weekly. if you're replacing the media every few years, it could be because the media breaks down over time, not because it's saturated with nitrate. I doubt the resin itself has years worth of capacity in it. But that's just a complete, un-educated guess. I'm certainly not a professional at this, and just know what i know from chatting with my well/water guy when he comes to service stuff, and from my tinkering with RODI and figuring out how to regenerate my nitrate filters to save money. Someone posted a good link to a video on this forum a few weeks back that was basically a nice, easy to follow, lecture on understanding water chemistry. If I can locate that, I'll re-link.

@TheDukeAnumber1 You know, don't know well depth. I do get it tested on a semi-annual basis, as I don't trust it either since I live on a busy road in a congested, polluted state with a gas station and well traveled highway not to far away (few hundred yards?). The city a few miles down the road from me routinely finds lead in their municipal water, so i'll stick with the well. At least I can have someone tell me what I'm drinking (and slowly dying from). Free poison is better than poison you have to pay for! Honestly, I'm pretty confident of the makeup of my water; its been stable in terms of what's in it for many years.

Yeah I agree with @Coronal Mass Ejection Carlin terms of household needs. Whole house RO is probably a better, more comprehensive option. The DI stage of RO/DI units will clean up anything not rejected by the membrane. But never having looked at whole house RO, in not sure if those also incorporate ion/anion (mixed bed) resin stages. This adds a complication for freshwater aquarium usage but only in the sense that you have to build the water back up with buffers and remineralizers but that’s not difficult.

I’d be curious if anyone has anecdotal or actual observations of the effect of sodium from softened water on aquarium fish. Seeing Cory dump briney water from his shrimp hatcheries into his tanks and those tanks thriving seems suggest that the actual amount of sodium introduced by ion exchange would be negligible in comparison. The real challenge I would think with softened water would be the resultant low-levels, or lack of, calcium, magnesium, etc (aka GH) of the softened water. I’d think that’s more likely to cause tank issues if your have nothing re-mineralizing the water. (Being a good internet citizen, I’m speculating here, but when I ponder the subject that’s the conclusion I come to without any real evidence — but that’s the inter webs way!).

@braids I've had similar struggles with nitrates due to runoff from a golf course/country club behind me. I'm not at quite as high a level as you, but I'm just under the EPA safe drinking limit. When I cross that line, I'll have my well-service guy l do a whole-house install for me. In the meantime, as a stop-gap measure, I've installed a smaller filter (DIY, larger than under the sink, smaller than whole house) for my aquarium change water (this is plumbed in-line with an auto water change system). I have it fronted by a sediment filter, and have a flow restrictor valve installed to keep the flow rate optimal for resin exposure. The nitrate resin cartridges run me about $150 each and last about 3 months. They are meant to be disposable, but I've figured out how to manually recharge them and so far I've not had to buy any replacements (I do keep a backup on hand, just in case). In my experience, the nitrate resin I use will also strip the KH out of the water (does not touch my GH). These resins are 'nitrate-selective', meaning they 'favor' nitrates, butt hey will also attach to other ions. Your specific resin could be different in terms of its behavior, but I'd get to know your water params pre-filter and post-filter, just so you know what you're working with for your aquariums. For me, I just use it raw for soft-water tanks, and everything else gets some crushed coral. Also, for household reasons, make sure you understand how all this affects your Ph (or if it does at all -- it might not). Highly acidic water can be rough on copper plumbing and lead to other issues. I don't think I'd worry about UV unless a comprehensive water test from a professional told me I had a problem that only it would remediate. A UV sterilizer in your aquarium has benefits, but I'm not sure your aquarium fish will benefit if its treating water outside the aquarium. Like I said, unless a professional instructed me to have one installed . . . sounds like a solution in search of a problem. Pics of my setup below. This setup would not keep up with the 'whole house' demands of humans. But it's been great for aquarium purposes.

@AleshaI also somehow wound up with half a dozen female cherry barbs (and no males) in this tank, and they do the same. Swell up immensely with eggs from time to time and get that hunched/bent look. It sometimes look painful for them to swim.

I really enjoy rose gardening but oddly never considered that a hobby.

I have a few zebra danio glow fish (kid really wanted glow fish in the community tank) that are so huge right now I’m afraid they are going to pop. They are like 9 months pregnant with triplets. I keep thinking they have dropsy, but I feel it’s unlikely that all the females got dropsy at the same time suddenly, and only the zebra danio females and nothing else in the tank. I did start dumping the remainder of my baby brine hatches into the tank daily some days back and I wonder if that encouraged them to fill with eggs. This is the smallest one

@WeehawkenFish Good question. Don't know. I don't wring mine out, but I've never moved one I thought was overly cruddy. If you do feel the need to wring it out a bit, just do it in a bucket of tank water and you're probably fine. Personally, I just move larger rocks or wood or sponge filters or plants or bio media, really anything I have on-hand that I think I can move to jump start a cycle. I test the water a few days after adding fish, and if I think I haven't jump started it 100% successfully, I might treat the tank with something like Seachem Stability to help it along. I think the key to jump starting this way is to keep the fish load low initially so as to no overwhelm the new tanks capacity to process waste. Having floating plants available also really helps. I keep water lettuce and salvinia around to jumpstart things and get tanks off to a start. I'll let others chime in, as really I just wing it and don't have any real science behind my methods (really they're just born from of overwhelming predilection for impatience).

@WeehawkenFish I don't know that their age or size difference will matter in terms of them being together and showing aggression or not. But honestly, I just don't know. Never really thought about that. In terms of your experience, I has a similar experience with the breeders I acquired being sick shortly after I received them. Perhaps this is a result of the stress of shipment, etc. Luckily for me, they spawned quickly. I still have the male, and like you had to treat for the fish for popeye. I believe the fish appreciate the leaf litter in the tank as places to find cover and to possibly spawn in. Mine enjoyed hanging out under the leaves a lot. The leaves also have other beneficial properties, but I used them to make their home more comfortable so they were more comfortable to spawn. I didn't use dither fish in my setup as I've never had a reason for them with apistos. When I come up to the tank, they are happy to see me, immediately come out from hiding, and realize i'm the mechanism that brings them food.

@WeehawkenFish Honestly, id say just do whatever is the easiest path to success. The extra size vertical of the 29 gallon won't matter to the adult fish. For them, it's all about bottom layer and its dimensions. On the other hand, the extra water capacity could be nice to have as your fry grow out and get larger just from a water volume/water quality perspective. I'd judge that against how long it will take to cycle a new tank based on what you have available (like pre-seeded stuff), along with the effort to relocate fish already in there. Weight that against the possible benefit of an extra 9 gallons water volume for grow out. And that extra volume will probably only benefit you in terms of how often you will need to perform water changes as the fry age, and how many there are -- in both tank size scenarios that could become daily no matter how you proceed and how many fry you have and how large you grow them out to before finding new homes for them. All in all, I think you can be successful no matter how you proceed, with some minor considerations. (Long-winded answer above aside!).

@WeehawkenFish I put mine in a brand new tank with brand new water. But I did move a pre-seeded sponge filter and a bunch of existing plants and java moss that presumably had beneficial bacteria on them to the tank. The tank currently has about 30 happy 2-month old fry in it.

I used a 29 gallon well planted tank and bred in it fine. My Ph is about 6.8 and I use a bunch of leaf litter, java moss, bog wood, java fern etc. I'd just make sure they're the only fish in there, and remove parents after birth if they start showing a lot of aggression towards one another. In my experience, it's the female that gets aggressive, not so much the male. I had a pair, but I did have to relocate the male because he was taking quite a beating from the female who didn't want him anywhere near her fry. I'm not sure how multiple females shepherding fry around a 29 gallon will react to one another. Once the fry are free swimming a few days, you can just raise them up in the tank without the parents easily.

Oh word of caution with an in-tank overflow. Make sure you have a way of keeping it from sweeping away fry or smaller fish. And if you use sponge or something to block the larger slots they normally have, make sure it does not get covered by plants or clogged with debris or you could see some issues. Floating plants are definitely problematic. I saw an endler make that journey through mine and meet it’s demise in the return pump impeller. Kuhli loaches also can’t resist taking a trip into the sump. Overflows are generally not nano fish friendly in my experience.

A few tetra whisper 60s or 100s? They have dual outlets. So one can do two or more tanks depending on tank size and how hard or gentle you need to run the air. You can find them for under $20 each.