Bill Smith

Agreed, on not chasing the water parameters. I find that any fish I can get at my LFS I don't worry about it, unless they are applying special parameters, like discus.

Wow, super exciting to see it working out for you!

I make a fresh salt water mix on the same day I start my hatchery and store it in a spare bottle.I rinse the hatched shrimp in RO water and then place them in a 1-inch-tall tupperware with wide surface area, in the fresh saltwater I made. The tupperware container has an air hole poked in the lid, but it's otherwise covered and stored in the fridge. My bbs stay alive for the better part of a week. More lately, I've been freezing them immediately to try to preserve maximum nutrition and try to get some of the extra protein in those yolk sacs!

Guppies are also their own fry predators, and without too many hiding places, will keep their own population in check.

I have this tank! I didn't hot-rod it as much as you; I ended up leaving the filter pump in the back and fill that area full of foam pieces and plastic pot scrubbers. It's also a good place to hide a heater. I found that the glass top is designed to fit only one way. If I line up the curved front of the lid with the curved front of the tank, there is no gap in front, and the black plastic piece covers most of the space in the back. I love pedestal tanks; I have three! The pedestal is nice because it allows me to slide a towel under the "drip-edge" all around the tank prior to maintenance. Cleanup around a pedestal tank, for me, is always much faster than the regular ones. I also found this tank's light to me inadequate. I picked up a cheap NICREW clip-on from Amazon and it is SO much more powerful. My Portrait is planted very heavily, and houses a pea puffer. Great little tank!

Yep, I'll definitely be introducing the tension fish at some point to see how that changes things! Thanks!

CENTER ISLAND & FIRST TETRAS My center island is an Anubias tree! I started with this overpriced decoration from PetSmart, cut off all the plastic flowers, and sliced off about an inch and a half off the bottom with my bandsaw: I then gathered together an assortment of Anubias I had collected over 2-3 orders from Aquarium Co-Op: 1 x Anubias nana 2 x Anubias golden 3 x Anubias nana petite (one had split) I superglued the Anubias to the tree. It helps to have a CA glue kicker, if you're into modelmaking or those kinds of things. 🙂 And here it is in the tank! I found 8 ember tetras at a nearby Petco, so I pulled out the platies and put those guys in. I will start to build up the numbers over time. Water parameters are zero on the ammonia & nitrite, under 20 on the nitrates. I gave it a spritz of Easy Green, and I'll watch those parameters very closely. Tomorrow I'll squeeze in some mulm from one of the other tanks during my weekend water changes. These guys immediately shoaled together, and that little shoal started to slowly migrate around the center island: S So far, so good! It will be interesting to learn the quantity of fish at which the group behavior starts to change. The shoal loosens up when I walk away, and tightens right back up when I get close again. What happens when there are so many fish in there the shoal becomes a directional school? Will it? Thanks for reading! Bill

Beautiful tanks there Red! You've inspired me to pick up some of that rotala!

Okay, NOW I'm beginning to understand the appeal of ponds. Being outside in nature, with real sunlight, insects, plants and microorganisms, and life just...happens. I took a closer look at them under the lights tonight and noticed pond #4 had half-inch guppies that I'd never noticed before! One of the females must have popped right after I received them! Better yet, in pond #2, I noticed several 1/8" sized leopard danios as well! Driving home from work today listening to Aquarium Co-Op livestream archives on the Podcast App, @Cory made a point of mentioning: Always feed fry food in tanks where you HOPE to see fry; don't wait till after you see them. This has never been more true for me, and I'm very surprised and happy with the results! I just dumped a gallon of green water in all 6 ponds! Bill

I agree, I don't find it that loud. But I do think water level really matters too. Mine are noisy when the water level isn't all the way at the top. The gurgling changes to larger bubble sounds.

What I've read suggests flow doesn't matter, for the most part. In fact, flow can work against me, because the fish seem to like to swim against it, thus looking like they're standing still. That's not the behavior I'm after.

Nice! How many rummies did it take?

I would focus on the clamping technique first. I would really invest time in getting this clamped and positioned just right. This would then inform me where to apply the silicone and how much to use. You could always pick/peel off the excess.

Anacharis IS a kind of elodea, or something like that. Same requirements basically.

Looks like anacharis. If anacharis is illegal in your region, it's probably another kind of elodea. Either way, it's a hardy, easy-to-grow plant that can be planted or floated.

I don't know anything about wood fillers, but I would second the motion for silicone. The long working time for silicone could actually prove to be an advantage, as you seek the best way to distribute the adhesive and clamp the pieces together while they cure. I would also consider Bondo body filler. That stuff cures in minutes, but I don't know how inert it is after curing. It's probably fine for freshwater, but I'm not positive. Bondo is also not an adhesive, but it will give you mass for bonding surfaces with an adhesive after the fact. Good luck!

Don't try this at home. Don't alert the fish police. Whatever you do, don't feed them after midnight. Look, I've been keeping fish for over 30 years. I like a challenge every now and then, and I need something to help with the occasional boredom. So watch me crash and burn attempt to run a large school of nano fish in a 5 gallon tank, hoping to get them all moving in a single direction around a center island. Why is it a challenge? It's going to be especially difficult because I intend to introduce enough nano fish (probably ember tetras, also considering chili rasboras) to get them to school in a continuous direction. That will likely require dozens, if not more. It breaks all the rules for nano tanks, and guarantees I will be a slave to this thing on a bi-daily basis as long as it is place. Other than that, should be a snap! 😉 That's the plan, anyway. So let's talk about the setup. (All links are non-affiliate.) TANK I started with a Fluval Chi 5 gallon tank, simply because I've never played with it before. This tank presented several challenges that I didn't see coming, and I had to adapt to them pretty quickly. But I chose it because Fluval glass always seems to be clearer than most, and the sharp edges also reduce distortion. That's also is why I didn't opt for a cylindrical tank or one with curved corners, such as the Marineland Portrait. I was also limited by my bedroom nightstand space, otherwise I might have been tempted to use the Aqueon 15 Column instead. FILTER The first order of business was to hot-rod the filter and remove any dependency on consumable materials. This filter lives in a box that creates the illusion of floating in the water. It is combined with a fairly weak light, all in one unit. The filter works by sucking water up through the bottom, next to the light, and then pumps it out the top, where the stream of water hits a plastic dome and waterfalls down the front. Cute. I replaced the filter's flimsy piece of foam and disposable cartridge with a couple pieces of medium-coarse and fine foam that I had left over from my overly-complicated box filter project. I had to cut them to shape, but these should be a permanent replacement. They were also a tight fit, but the foam squeezed in there well enough. Water flow did not seem to be disrupted, but I will need to keep an eye on things. BACKGROUND Next up, I painted the back with a few coats of black acrylic paint. I do this with almost all of my tanks. INITIAL SETUP Time for a quick setup to see how it all works. I used sand and water from a fully seasoned tank; hopefully this seeded enough bacteria where I won't need to worry too much about cycling. I also dropped in a few platies from my livebearer Skittles tank. I'll also squeeze in some mulm from a tank cleaning this weekend. Notice how the light is low and weak? Since it's powered by the same cord as the filter, I can't put it on a timer. Must do something about that. FILTER LID The dome lid and water stream at the top of this tank are a little obnoxious. There's an LED light in there that is turned on 100% of the time and cannot be turned off. I didn't realize this at first, but that feature is totally unacceptable for a bedroom tank. I solved this by removing the dome and applying a trick that many other Fluval Chi owners have done: covering it all with river rocks: TANK LID This kit needs a serious light upgrade. Knowing that I will be adding lights to the lid, I spray painted it with a couple layers of black primer, followed by several coats of Plasti-Dip. This is my go-to coating for all things freshwater: it's inert when cured, causes water to bead up for easy cleaning, and the rubbery texture hides imperfections. LIGHTS I was looking for something bright, simple, yet waterproof. After much hunting and searching, I stumbled across the replacement hood for the Aqueon 15 Column tank. At $42, it was more than I wanted to pay, but it ticked all the boxes with NO LABOR. The lights popped right out of the hood's housing, and as it turns out, they ALREADY HAD DOUBLE-SIDED TAPE INSTALLED ON THEIR BACKS!! I stuck them to the underside of the lid, and it was ready to go! What I had expected to be the hardest part of this project became the easiest! Such simplicity was worth the extra $20. HEATER I picked up a generic 25 watt pre-set heater on Amazon for ten bucks. No fuss, no muss. SETUP COMPLETE After installing everything, I threw in a few spare Anubias for temporary cover for the fish, and stepped back to take a look. The light is bright, but looks great! And now I can use a timer. So that's it for now. The next update will be about making that center island for the fish to swim around. I'm thinking about gluing some Anubias nana petite to a fake tree trunk, bonsai style. I hope that will be full-bodied enough for the fish to want to circle. Plants are arriving from the Coop tomorrow! Thanks for reading! Bill

Okay, so I'm going to try it. But I ended up going with something a lot smaller than I originally intended: This is a 5 gallon Fluval Chi, with several mods I've made over the last few days. The plants and platies are temporary. After I make a real centerpiece island (bonsai-inspired tree with Anubias), I'm going to do something totally crazy and ill-advised. I'm going to try to fill this with enough ember tetras to see if I can get the directional schooling going in one direction. Maybe dozens of them. Maybe more. I recognize this is crazy advanced level stuff and that I'll be changing water every couple days and checking parameters constantly. And having a larger tank ready as a backup. Nobody tell the fish police! Watch the Journals forum for one of my over-detailed threads about the setup and mods! EDIT: Here it is.

Under the AC company logo of course! Clearly that Apple logo has got to go...

Love this! Thanks for posting!

Thanks Ryan, would love to see pics!

I have had the best luck with Ich-X over salt in my tanks, so I'd recommend that. It's also important to note that ich can only be treated during the part of its life cycle when the parasites are free floating in your tank. It's about a 5-day life cycle, so you will want to treat daily for a minimum of 5 days. The white spots are cysts that form around each of the parasites and protects them. They can't be killed while they are on the fish. As a result, treating ich means you have to treat the whole tank. You can't just take a fish out of an infected tank and treat that. Sorry to bring bad news!

I think Tazawa tanks explains it best. This is the video that inspired me to do it: Here's a picture of my own application:

The multies don't seem interested in moving into the new PVC pipes; they'd much rather hide between them or below them. I've managed to catch two inside the pipes by surprising them first thing in the morning before any light comes on. I'm fairly certain this is due to the fact that they haven't matured enough to want to pick out a dwelling of their own. But at least they are out of the shells, so next weekend I'll remove all the decor during a water change and net them out. 🙂

Yeah, it's a tricky one, no doubt. A couple years ago I spent a lot of time looking for clear hinge material that I was sure would fit, and although they exist on Amazon, I've never been confident they'll grip the glass tightly enough. However, I have had decent luck with these clear acrylic hinges: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071DPMQXV I bonded them to glass with epoxy, and they hold reasonably well. Lately, making my own lids from polycarbonate sheets from Home Depot has been most effective: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Sunlite-24-in-x-48-in-x-5-16-in-Polycarbonate-Clear-Twinwall-Sheet-174040/305560353 That material is so lightweight that I can literally use clear packing tape as my hinge, and it holds well! Hope some of that helps!