AllFishNoBrakes

Increasing the numbers could work. I had 6 in my 55. 2 got taken out as they formed a breeding pair. The reminding 4 were exactly as you’d expect. The only real aggression is when the pair in that tank spawns, but I just pull the eggs and by the following day it’s back to normal. Eventually I held back 2 Angels that I raised and put them back in the 55 to bring the total back to 6. No problems adding the fish as I grew them out enough before adding them. The male that was paired with a different female is now paired with a female from the 2 I added back. Again, the only real aggression is when they spawn as they protect their clutch.

Cichlids gonna cichlid!

It’s Wednesday. You know what that means. I’m gonna start this week with the things I learned. I learned that you can leave your canister filter off for 24 hours and not have an ammonia spike. I turned my canister filter off to feed, and forgot to turn it back on. I didn’t realize until the following day (last night) when I went to turn it “off”, and it kicked back on. I figured today was maintenance day anyways, so I turned it back on after feeding and let it ride. This morning, I tested for ammonia and the test came back 0. This leads me to believe one of two things happened. Either the bacteria in the canister didn’t die, and therefore didn’t create an ammonia spike or any ammonia that was produced was converted by the tank overnight. I’ll never know which one is true, but one of them is. I also learned that a sponge filter can become clogged in a fashion that makes your air collar/easy flow kit glug. One of the sponge filters in the grow out tank has been glugging, and I just couldn’t figure it out. From everything I tested, I figured it had to be the air pump. So, this morning I ripped off the Hygger 10 watt and put it out on the rack to run the 55 and the 29. Hooked it up, and both ran like a dream. Thought it was strange, but whatever. Hooked the grow out tank to independent Tetra 150’s, and what do you know. No glug! The one that was glugging wasn’t pushing as much air, but I chalked that up to the pump starting to go out. All day the filter was fine. I go to feed tonight, and it starts to glug worse than it ever had! I could visually see the bubbles coming out of the air collar going hard, stopping for a split second, and then going again, causing a massive glug. I figured it had to be the pump so I opened it up, inspected everything, took a couple of things apart, and put it back together. Hooked it back up. Same thing. I figured it had to be the airline. I thought maybe there was a kink or something. I ran a whole new line. Still glugging. Figured it had to be the air collar so I popped that off and cleaned it. STILL GLUGGING! At this point the only thing that was left was the sponge. I popped the air collar off and noticed (this time, finally) that it was producing air at a steady rate with no glug. Cleaned the sponge, hooked it back up, and voila. Running like a dream with fill air and flow coming out of it. I feel like an idiot as I literally bought that Hygger pump because of this issue and it took me weeks to figure it out when all I had to do was clean the filter. It’s just literally the last thing that made sense to my brain. The more you know… Outside of that it was a normal maintenance sesh. Water out, water back in. Cleaned all the pre filter sponges (and the one sponge in the grow out tank lmaooooo!). Boiled some Indian Almond Leaves and hucked those in the blackwater tanks. Next week I’ll probably clean all the sponges. I guess with the Easy Flow I’m collecting more detritus and need to clean them more often. Lesson learned. Still having a ton of fun with my RG405V as well! Crushed Pokémon Silver, and learned that there’s a second half of the game AFTER the Elite Four that my little 8 year old brain didn’t know about back in 1999. Moved on to Killer7. It’s another game I played when I was super young and never beat. So far, I’ve only found one game that doesn’t run very well. I think I might have to turn up the speed in the settings just a little bit. Audio is perfect, but game runs like it’s in slow mo. Still having tons of fun. 29’s looking nice: I love the Black Neons schooling around in the back. This thing is turning into a jungle and I love it. Java Fern finally growing some, too. Some tips have BBA, but baby Ferns are growing out of them so I’m gonna see if the baby Ferns becoming a thing before I go chopping. I hope you’re having fun with your tanks!

I’ve never quarantined snails. I quarantine all fish as I’ve spent the past 4 years setting up healthy ecosystems, but I’ve never done it to snails.

I’ve had 14 tanks for 4 years, and all of them have at least a Coop sponge filter. Larger tanks have additional HOB’s, canisters, or internal filters. All of my ACO sponges were fitted with air collars upon release, and anything bigger than a 10 gallon has the easy flow kit. I actually find that the air collars pull out more mulm and detritus than just an air stone. I think what you’re seeing is the smaller pore size non Coop sponge is simply collecting the smaller detritus faster, leaving not much for the Coop filter to pull. Coop sponge is definitely full of bacteria and performing biological filtration, just not much mechanical as the smaller pore size of the other filter is performing that function. I bet if you took out the smaller pore size filter, the Coop will pull smaller detritus as the bigger pores become “clogged”. Coop is all about Easy, and with the larger size pores that means cleaning the sponge less often. The trade off is it takes more time to be able to pull smaller detritus from the water column as the pores have to get smaller to pull that small detritus.

My 6 gallon cube I did like 1/4” of dirt, and a 2-2.5” gravel cap. 2.5 years later it’s a Pearl Weed jungle with no signs of slowing down. There’s also no filter in the tank. It has been a fun experiment, but I haven’t set up any other tanks like that nor do I really plan to.

I focus on consistency, and enjoy doing my water changes. It’s a few hours on my day off where I get to throw on headphones and take care of my tanks. Now, when life gets hectic, I’m on vacation, etc then I have no issues whatsoever skipping a week. I just don’t make it a trend. I also have very soft water, so my tanks can really use that water change to replenish the trace amount of minerals in my water. If your tank is heavily planted, you probably don’t need to gravel vac every week. You’re just taking out natural plant food and making things harder on yourself. Just take water out and back in and call it a day.

Give it time and those Sword will engulf your tank. Slowly, though, and you can always trim them. This is my 20 high probably 6 months ago. I regularly have to trim these swords back. 55 gallon. The MASSIVE Sword on the left side is the first aquatic plant I ever bought. Started in a 10 gallon, then got moved to a 29 and I never touched it. Eventually, it took over the 29 so I moved it to this 55, and it has continued to take over. This Sword is 4 years old at this point.

I will say that my Pea Puffer tanks requires the most manual cleaning/algae scraping as snails are snacks. I have successfully kept Nerites with them, though, and that has been super helpful. My other 13 tanks I basically don’t have to control algae. My Pea Puffer tank I do

Lots of excellent info from @FLFishChik I’ve had my 6 Pea’s in my 29 gallon for the past couple of years. In my experience, they haven’t been overly difficult. Mine get fed bloodworms and snails. I haven’t been able to transition them to commercial foods, nor have I taken the time to give it an honest attempt as I simply don’t have the time. In my personal experience they have been easy. I dewormed them, feed them well, and they have lots of space in their 29 gallon with tons of plants. They’re super personable and lots of fun, but I know not everyone has that experience with them.

All but 1 of my tanks run Aquaneat lights. Great light for the price point. The 1 tank that is different runs an ACO light. All depends on your budget, but I’ve enjoyed the Aquaneats. Most of them I’ve had for 4 years at this point with 0 issues. I would also suggest getting a different lid for your tank. Glass lid, or make your own out of greenhouse siding.

It really comes down to what you’re personally comfortable with. Personally, I see no issue with it. One of my earliest lessons in breeding fish was just because you can produce them doesn’t mean you can sell them. Sometimes you can’t even give them away for free. Kribs were too easy, and I quickly became overran with fish and fry. The parents kept spawning while I was still trying to get rid of the first batch, so any additional spawns they made were fed to their brothers and sisters in a different tank. I did that out of necessity, and I believe that it’s a perfectly healthy food for the other fish. Fish eat fish in nature. Complete personal preference, and personally I don’t see any issue with it.

Howdy! Remember when I said I was done tinkering and had everything I could ever want and need? Ya… we all know how that goes. The Tetra 150 I had hooked up to the grow out tank started acting a little weird. It’s a single outlet, with a T, to be able to run two lines. Out of nowhere, one side was barely pushing. So i put some control valves on there, and that worked temporarily, but I was always having to balance it. Not sure why it happened, but I got my Q1 bonus, and decided to try a new pump. Hygger 10 watt dual outlet. Someone else on the forum tried it out and was pretty impressed, so I figured why not. Especially at the price point. The thing is a beast! Absolutely cranks some air and I love it. Now, the opposite easy flow kit is “glugging”. I know why it’s doing it, but I’m having a hard time getting it to stop. The top piece of the Easy Flow kit is not quite straight up and down, so the bubbles are jamming up, and glugging out the top. Looks like I’m not quite done tinkering… Other than that today was just your standard maintenance sesh. Just water out and back in and I was done in less than 4 hours. Felt good! It’s been a while where I didn’t have to do something extra, so the speedy water changes were nice. Some pics from the week: My Pothos vine is easily over 10 feet at this point, and I had a section that lost all of its leaves. I decided to cut that out a few days ago, and today I noticed perfect water droplets coming from the stems where it hadn’t healed over yet. I thought it was pretty cool. Lots of things blooming in the aquaponics tank. From top to bottom, the start of a jalapeño, a baby strawberry, and some lavender starting to bloom. Panda pair in the community tank had their second spawn. No eggs kept from this one. Color on the 29. It has taken a lot of time, but we’re where I wanna be! My girlfriend was awesome enough to pick me up an Anbernic RG405V emulator handheld console. It arrived today, I got all the ROMs on the SD card, and I’m having SO MUCH FUN playing all these games from my childhood on a portable handheld console. Anything from NES through PS2 and GameCube. So sick! I’m loving it. Cheers, friends. I hope your tanks are well and you’re having fun!

I have CPO’s. They are super rad at first. Over time, they’re just like bigger shrimp. Except when they clamp up and shoot backwards. That’s fun, but in my personal experience they’re just bigger shrimp with claws.

Your first shrimplets are super fun! Wait until you see one that’s as big as an eyelash. Super fun! Congrats!