Joe O

Is it true you can put your sponge filter in a ziplock bag and freeze it? I'd seen it mentioned somewhere but never tried it. Supposedly you can put the frozen sponge into the tank and when it thaws (in the water) the bacteria will (mostly ) survive?

Hi, Searched first, didn't see anything on this. I did find an online topic in a forum elsewhere that was like 4 years old. I have a 1.5 year old male Bristlenose in a community tank. I also have plenty of mystery snails which breed in a different tank. OK, I have LOTS of snails as my shrimp tanks are also pretty much bladder and ramshorn snail tanks. For a long time I had a male Apisto in the community tank and he liked eating the smaller snails, which kept them under control. He'd ignore the big mystery snails. But at night I'd hear a tink tink tink noise when light were out and I'd find the Bristlenose smacking the mystery snails against the glass. Even saw a crack in one of the snail's shells from it. The Apisto is gone, the tank is more 'friendly' now. Aside from the neons, green neons and harlequins I've added zebra danios and some cherry shrimp (the danios only hunt the baby shrimp, I built a rock pile in the back to give the kids a chance). There's one giant mystery snail and a couple smaller ones (between nickel and quarter size) This morning I awoke to a snail... corpse... just a pile of snail meat with the trapdoor still attached. I thought the pleco was just beating the big snail randomly, but can they rip them right out of their shell? It's definitely one of the smaller ones. I guess with the cherry shrimp in there the snails aren't as neccesary, I'm just looking for some verification that it really could be the bristlenose creating these horrific Halloween scenes in the tank, seems nothing else is big enough to pull it off. I thought they were 'peaceful vegitarians'? edit: not sure why the photo is upside down, aplogies...

Just following this thread to learn, the idea of trying to remove my shrimp if this happened is daunting. But the above quote from Antichton will probably give me nightmares for a long long time!

"Sure! This baby Redtail Catfish would be fine in a 75 gallon tank"

Those elbows were a true headache, and I could never get them to fit my intakes correctly. Loved the idea. Currently I just have a co op coarse pre filter sponge on my AQ110 and have driftwood impeding the view. The finer sponges that came with my original AT kits had limited life spans but the coarse sponge has been on for over a year. I did have to throw some floss in the HOB to catch the finest particles in the water.

Doesn't Dean do something like that for taking photos? I could probably make one but I'm lazy. A quick connect flex tube to run from my HOB intake to sponge filters in further parts in the tank.

I keep Neos in tanks from 72 to 80. I'd read the threat of the 80 plus temps is the dwindling O2 levels, is that accurate?