faydout

I use one (different brand) on an outlet with my canister and heater. That way I can cut the water flow from my canister without digging around behind the tank at feeding and tank maintenance time (this is why I have my heater plugged in also).

I love a bunch of the things listed here, but one I haven't seen mentioned yet is the silicone airline tubing. I've replaced all of my airline tubing with that stuff at this point, and need to order another 25 ft just to have on hand.

I just had a pair shipped overnight to me on Monday (got them yesterday) from a shop in Oregon. These are the first Apistos that I've kept, definitely not my first dwarf cichlids (Keyholes are my favorites so far). Any advice that I give you on them is going to pretty much be stuff I've read online at this point, but I can show baby pictures, and who doesn't like baby pictures?

At this moment I'd have a hard time choosing between banana plants, buce godzilla, my wenditti (red), or dwarf lilies. I guess I've been in a bit of an oddball mood lately. Normally crypts (especially retrospiralis) are my faves, and hygro compacta.

I use a 15 gallon plastic tub intentionally, to avoid MTS. The only additional advice I'd add to yours, is that I keep a few small cichdlid caves, and 10 or so fake plants for everyone to hide in (no substrate).

Me first and foremost. I don't keep aquarium critters to do my maintenance for me. I like that some happily share the workload with me, but at the end of the day. I'm the cleanup crew. That said, I like to keep Nerites and mystery snails (single mystery snails per tank to avoid them reproducing) around because they look cool. Bladder snails are great, the few times I've found them coming in from Co-op plants, I've intended on letting them do their thing, but they don't seem to do well in my set ups. I think my Keyholes eat them in one tank, and the other is cycling and they may not like the ammonia I'm dosing. I don't consider Corydoras part of any clean up crew types of fish. They don't eat algae or or fish poop.

Not a professional chef or anything, but I lucked my way into a set of Shun's. I scoffed at the price until I started using them. These are the first set of knives I've owned that weren't the crap sets that you start out with at 20 years old. I've gone so far now as taking the 2 that I use the most with me to Mom's house when we're both going to be cooking. Would spend the money again. Made In is a US brand that I haven't used, but some of the folks backing them are big time pro chefs. The one that caught my attention is Grant Achatz of Alinea. Tbf, I'm more interested in their cookware, but would imagine their knives are going to be better than decent.