Bill Smith

Looking at your photo @Daniel, I think I might try to attach the feeder to the top rim of the tank, and run the USB cord down one of the black frame edges. You might need a longer micro-USB cord than the one it comes with (about 6 ft.). It DOES NOT come with a power adapter. In addition to the clip, it also comes with a velcro pad you can use. That's my preferred method with my indoor tanks.

No trouble so far; I've had some 90 degree days. Interestingly, the feeder has a bright blue LED that points upwards, so the fish get a blue circular "moon" effect overhead each night. 🙂

It's a lot of fun triggering a feeding on demand by phone/Google Home when I have guests over. 🙂 As for hanging, it comes with a pretty robust clip, that JUST fits around a 2x4. 🙂 I have one nearly upside down hanging over my mini-pond: Notice the tape partly covering holes on the end. 🙂

What do you mean by "inline" sponge? Are you talking about the pads inside the filter? If so, I think it comes down to your preference. Some people would prefer to do both, do maximize the bio media opportunities and protect tiny fry from being accidentally sucked in. Some do one or the other. You can always change your mind. 🙂

Depends on what you plan to do. If you're just bubbling or running a sponge filter, one is enough, in my opinion.

For what it's worth, I've had a lot of good luck recently with BBA by throwing in a few Siamese algae eaters.

Potted plant holders in the shape of rocks. 😁

They have those too: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GDD1XXN (non-affiliate link)

I was using Eheim before, but switched to these iLonda brand wi-fi feeders I got from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KWWGY6M (non-affiliate link) I love these things! I have six now. They have the EXACT SAME container shape as the Eheim one, but they are controlled by a phone app, and you can set up any number of feeding schedules, including on-demand. The feeder also has a physical button for triggering it on demand. It does require power, but it connects via USB...you know, the USB nano pump has a charger with TWO ports! 😉 Big thumbs up on this product for me. There are a few other brands with the same product, so it's probably a Chinese import. But I love it. Been running six for about a year now. Bill

The four remaining planters arrived! Still gotta assemble four more electrical boxes...I hope to get to filling by the weekend...we'll see...

I would think adding another female or two would help distribute the aggression and give your female time to rest...

And here's a shortcut to the Product Data Sheet: https://www.hikariusa.com/img/pds/PDS_IchX.pdf

👍

Bio-load is highly subjective and is dependent on clean water, not filtration levels. This just tells us you have a filter which can make nitrates faster than most. IMO, the indicator of whether a bio-load is too much all comes down to the maintenance, not the filter. This tells us you are not overstocked. If you are changing your water to keep the nitrates down to acceptable levels at a frequency that you are willing to live with, you haven't exceeded bio limits. But as soon as you have to make more frequent water changes than you want to in order to keep the nitrates down, your bio-load has crossed the line. For some of us, two fish can be too much. Adding plants reduces your need for water changes, and effectively buys you more bioload. For myself, I am committed to 50% water changes weekly on all my tanks. I have automated enough of the water exchange process that I can live with the 2-3 hours of effort every Sunday. So I stock more heavily than most. But five years ago, I had to struggle to motivate myself to change 25% monthly on one tank. And I was behind the rate of increased nitrates. So that tank was overstocked, even though it had only a handful of fish. Remember, it's about clean water, not about excess of equipment! Bill

Honestly don't know the answer to this one, but give it enough nutrients, it seems to want to spread fast! I just cleaned out FIVE dwarf lily leaves floating at the top and blocking off all the light. These leaves were four inches long and the stem over two feet long!

Yes, that's exactly what happened with my dwarf lily. It got extra big, and I was able to separate it into two plants by gently pulling them apart.

FILLING THE FIRST TWO PLANTERS No way am I waiting any longer... I have four more planters arriving from Costco midweek this week, but I figured I'd get started right away and get some enjoyment out of the setup so far! For substrate, I picked up a couple of these 45 lb. bags of pea pebbles from Lowe's at $4 each. I like that this gravel is very coarse; I hope it will help hide any eggs that get dropped by eggs scatterers. It's also a very natural-looking, dark neutral color when it's wet. I split two bags into three portions of about 15 lbs. each. This gravel is VERY dirty, so rinsing took a long while. I put a portion in each of my planters, and connected two of my hot-rodded "dagwood sandwich" round box filters from Jehmco: Here's a closeup of the layout for no good reason. 🙂 I'm using Fluval black air tubing for its stealth aspects: I filled up both planters using water that is ONLY from my established 100-gallon Rubbermaid stock tank pond. That pond has a couple sponge filters in it, so I squeezed them out in these planters to make things nice and mulmy. A couple hours later, it had all settled and cleared. If I stock lightly at first, I don't expect to have to worry about cycling at all. I have to decide what I want to put in them! One of the six is definitely for daphnia; I will try to find a local pond/lake where I can gather a seed population. Thanks for reading! Bill

I wrapped my Rubbermaid tub in this reed fencing material from Home Depot: https://www.homedepot.com/s/reed?NCNI-5 (non-affiliate link) It clips pretty easily with shears or heavy scissors. By cutting the fencing a little too tall and angling it, it pretty much stays where you put it. 🙂 I think it was less work than painting.

CONNECTING A SECOND POT Joined at the hip... Time to move this project outside to where these nano-ponds are going to Live. After assembling a second "electrical box, I attached it to the second pot. It's going to be my "end" pond, so power doesn't need to pass through it. I also didn't want tape and cords to show at the end, so I was careful in how far around I took things. There was excess power cable remaining, so I had to bundle that up as well. The cord has to make a "leap" from one pond to the next. I accomplished this by running the cord upward about 2 inches, giving it an inch or so excess, and then bringing it down on the other side. Not invisible, but you really have to be looking for it: Okay, time for a walkaround. How concealed is everything? From the right: Head-on (only the tiniest bit of cord showing in the middle if you look for it): And from the left: End-on, I begin to see the guts of everything. I'm satisfied with that. And no silver tape is visible! Quick switch-out of the blue carabiners for black ones and I'm good to go. Woo hoo! Two down, four to go! But I'm far too impatient to sit around and wait till the four remaining pots arrive. The day is young, I'm setting them up! Thanks for reading, Bill

I've really got to put in a plug for the USB nano pump here. I've kept fish for almost 30 years, and I will never use anything else. And before you click away because it's too small, lemme explain. Almost all pumps come with that characteristic hum to it. Some are quieter than others, but all have it. The USB nano does not. You just can't hear it. As a result, with my tank setup in my office, where I have 5 tanks running airstones plus two bubbling breeder tanks, I've installed no less than 7 USB nano pumps on one rack. But all I hear is air. No hums, no buzz, just peaceful white noise. I would buy 7 USB nano pumps before I would buy one pump to handle them all. A few other advantages: 1. With the adapter, you can put two on a single power outlet. 2. You can easily put a two-day battery backup on them. 3. If one fails, you replace the pump, not the entire system. 4. Want to upgrade? Just add a couple more. 5. Because it hangs from the rim of the tank, it brings its own drip loop and there is no shelf space necessary. 6. They draw less power: under 1w per pump, for the air that you get. I kid you not, if I had a fish room with 50 tanks, I would be running 50 USB nano pumps! Bill

While nitrates probably don't often actually kill fish, I've noticed that high nitrates do seem to increase stress levels, thus making fish more vulnerable to other things that might be more dangerous. It's always stuck with me from having heard in one of the AC livestreams, the idea that most fish seem to handle any one stress factor pretty well, whether that's temperature, starvation, an aggressive tankmate, disease, pH fluctuation, etc. But introduce a second stress factor (high nitrates), and things can fall apart pretty fast. And then there's the notion of long-term effects. Keep me in a smoky room all my life, and the coughing won't kill me. But my life might be shortened by lung cancer, COPD, etc. So yeah, I demonize high nitrates. I just seem to have healthier fish when I can keep the levels low. I shoot for 20ppm in my planted tanks if I can. Bill

You'll probably want to check out the Leviton app as well before making a purchase; not all of them support the "Timer" feature. I'd definitely double-check that network. While 5GHz networks do indeed run faster speeds, there is a serious range compromise, hence the dual-band preference for most.

You sure you're running ONLY 5 GHz? 99% of routers run both network speeds at the same time. You'd have to manually turn your 2.4 GHz off by choice.

Wyze smart plugs do that. They're at Home Depot. Just use your phone to turn it off, Click Timer, pick 5 minutes, feed and walk away

Hey there Dean, thanks for the chuckle! As for the "floor water alarms", they're here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M30SNSQ (non-affiliate link) You just hang it low to the ground and let the wire dangle till it's touching the floor. Water completes the circuit and it sounds an alarm. I can speak from personal experience that these things are LOUDER THAN SMOKE DETECTORS! Prevented a 1-gallon spill from becoming something larger in my home office. 🙂 So yes, they work. Bill