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Bill Smith

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Everything posted by Bill Smith

  1. Bill Smith
    From the bottom-up, I use a cut-to-size piece of blue & white floss pad (blue side up), followed by a couple layers of AC coarse foam, and topped off with the white foam block. This ensures the water flow goes from coarse to fine on its way back into the tank. No rings, no carbon. I replace the piece of floss every week or so, and rinse the rest in tank water.. I can get over 30 such pieces by cutting up a foam pad I picked up at PetSmart for $7. It's a 3- to 5-minute operation to keep this filter clean. 🙂
  2. Bill Smith
    Platinum blue angel. 😉 Will help with your population concerns. Though social, they do just fine on their own.
  3. Bill Smith
    Hi all: Thought I'd share yesterday afternoon's quick project. My Easy Green doser is based on a glass Starbucks coffee bottle, a USB nano pump, and a few parts I had lying around the house. Here's what's involved: 1. Starbucks bottle ($3): Glass is necessary for this kind of approach, because it doses the fertilizer based on air pressure. Plastic bottles flex too much! 2. Digital timer ($7): Needs only to be accurate within one minute. 3. Airline adapters ($0.25): for joining multiple lengths or air tubing. 4. Airline adjuster valve ($2): Higher quality is somewhat important here; I recommend the Ziss valve. 5. USB nano air pump ($9) 6. Airline tubing ($1): I used three lengths, about 5 feet total. Total Cost: About $22-$23 After cleaning the bottle and removing the labels, I drilled two 3/16" holes in the metal lid. I glued the two airline adapters into the lid from the bottom using 5-minute epoxy. (Silicone would have been better, but I'm impatient!) Then, I attached a short length of tubing on the inside of one of the adapters, and two longer pieces on the outside. That's pretty much all the DIY work that's involved! As air is pumped into the bottle, the build-up of air pressure forces the Easy Green out. I installed the Ziss valve on the output end of the fertilizer, and cranked it down to almost closed. I tested this with water first. 😉 Knowing the following: - 20 drops = 1mL - The digital timer can only run in as little as 1-minute increments - It will continue to drip for a few seconds after the timer turns off ...I set my digital timer to one minute and plugged in the pump. I then turned the valve all the way down so that I was getting one drop about every two seconds. That works out to about 35-40 drops (about 2mL), which is a perfect one-time dose for my 20 gallons of water. Here's the whole rig ready to go: And here it is installed in my sump: There you go! It was less than $25 in parts, and less than an hour's worth of work. Thanks for reading! Bill
  4. Bill Smith
    So the panel with the pass-through charger was a non-starter. When sunlight hits the panel, the charger slowed down the pump power to get what it could from the sun. These things are just not meant to play together! I think a solar-powered air pump designed for this purpose is probably the best way to go, but I think I'll be running wire for my outdoor projects. 🙂 But, for me, it was still a useful test! Bill
  5. Bill Smith
    You win.
  6. Bill Smith
    If your Latin is better than your English, you might be a fish nerd.
  7. Bill Smith
    Here's the best pic I could get of him where you can really see the blue in the dorsal fin: Definitely a male; I can see about four of the markers.
  8. Bill Smith
    I have sumps on my two larger tanks. In the sump, I took a 2 gallon bucket, drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom so water could pass through easily, and filled it with pot scrubbers for bio media. Once that was elevated a few inches off the bottom, I had all the dividing I needed. No silicon divider work! Then, I laid a piece of floss foam on top of that, and it becomes very easy to maintain. My sump handles my heater, UV sterilizer, auto-water-changes, and fertilizer dosing. Highly recommended!
  9. Bill Smith
    My story is exactly the same as yours, except that my dad bred angels once or twice. I was captivated!
  10. Bill Smith
    Yeah if I'm fortunate enough to breed a swarm, I'll definitely need to unload them! The gold white clouds are so pretty. I started out with two dozen from Aqua Huna, and they came in larger than expected at 100% survival rate!
  11. Bill Smith
    Good stuff! I'm thinking of setting up about 6 such tubs with various stuff in them. Being that I'm in Southern California, I can keep them going year-round with a bubble filter of some kind and a heater!!
  12. Bill Smith
    That would be your unhatched eggs. They don't float. Once you dial in all the variables (salt, temperature, baking soda, time) just right, the quantity of unhatched eggs should get smaller and smaller over time.
  13. Bill Smith
    Hi David: Yeah, and I was thinking that first image has the greenery so far behind it (it's out of focus) that it's possible blue light wasn't even hitting it. It has been suggested in some of the reading I've done and livestreams I've listened to that it is a somewhat common practice for fish sellers to adjust their lighting in order to bring out desirable colors for photography. It's a lot of work getting a fish into a fully conditioned state where their colors are naturally that good! That being said, I still believe the platinum blue angel is probably the most beautiful angel I've ever seen, even as a juvenile, and makes a truly stunning centerpiece fish for my tank. Here's mine, unretouched (and very perturbed being woken up so early for a photo shoot): I'll try to get some better pics later tonight. Looks like I lucked out and got a male (hump on the head), and I'm hoping maybe his eyes will turn red also as he matures further! Bill
  14. Bill Smith
    Ah, nice, thanks! That happens to be exactly what I've done with my 100g Rubbermaid tote: Home Depot pea gravel and water hyacinths. I also dropped in some Java moss for good measure! I hope to see baby gold white clouds in the near future! Bill
  15. Bill Smith
    Did you do anything special to enable the danios to breed? Plants or moss in the water to help hide the scattered eggs?
  16. Bill Smith
    Panel arrived. I will hook it up with the pump and pass-through battery after tonight's charge.
  17. Bill Smith
    Those look a lot like the platinum blue angel. But the lighting in your pictures misrepresents how blue they really are. I have one as a centerpiece, and they are white with pearlscales, with some bluish striping in the fins once they color up. He is truly gorgeous. But not blue. 🙂 Your pics look like they're under blue light. There are definitely a bunch at one of the shops in my area (San Diego).
  18. Bill Smith
    LOL I came to the right place! Also found this calculator: https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/EffectiveWaterChange.php I will also try the nitrate check as a way to check the calculator. I have the API test kit, which is a little more precise, and if I do it across 3 different tanks, that should give me a close enough figure. Thank you!
  19. Bill Smith
    I think one angelfish would look nice. Pick a good one! Also, I'd suggest a ram, apisto, or gourami. I love pearl gouramis. Watch out for pairs unless they're a mated pair! Bill
  20. Bill Smith
    Hi: I am considering setting up some water changes with overflow drainage. But I don't think the math is as simple anymore when I'm trying to figure out the percentages of water changed. For example: If I know that I can fill the tank in 20 minutes with a certain flow rate, I normally would assume a 50% water change would take 10 minutes. But since I am not draining the water first (but instead letting the excess overflow) the new water I'm adding will mix with what's there before it overflows. So how do I get to 50% in this model? How long will I run the water to make a 50% water change? Is there a calculation for this? Thanks! Bill
  21. Bill Smith
    I've always wondered, do the wine barrels release much by way of tannins into the water? Do you have to compensate for reduced pH or anything like that?
  22. Bill Smith
    What did you bait it with?
  23. Bill Smith
    You mean like this? 😉 Not single plug-in, but effective!
  24. Bill Smith
    You are referring to the 6-in-1 strips. Tetra makes them BOTH. Ammonia is not on the 6-in-1 strips because of a chemical incompatibility. The ammonia strips are sold separately. You dip longer, read faster than the 6-in-1 strips. See for yourself! https://www.amazon.com/Tetra-EasyStrips-Ammonia-Aquarium-25-Count/dp/B0053PQZ9C
  25. Bill Smith
    Tetra makes those! I use them all the time! Dip for 10 seconds, read immediately! https://www.amazon.com/Tetra-EasyStrips-Ammonia-Aquarium-25-Count/dp/B0053PQZ9C Okay, this is gonna be a GREAT thread. I sense more such "actually that does exist" answers will be coming.
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