AllFishNoBrakes

Indeed. In fact, the foam should NOT be thick. If the foam is thick enough, it could create pressure on the bottom glass panel. Enough pressure on the bottom glass panel… 75 gallon mess all over your house.

@TeeJay LET’S GOOOOOO!!! Looks great. Hope it treats you well!

My suggestion would be to feed the tank like you’re going to feed your fish. The whole, “your tank needs to process X amount of ammonia” has nothing to do with it, really. Your tank needs to able to process as much as you’re going to feed the tank. Remember that once your tank is cycled, you will most likely add groups of fish over time. You need it to process that baseline of the first fish, and as you add more fish you can slowly increase feeding so the bacteria can catch up and process the new amount of food. I have 13 tanks and have never cycled them to X amount of ammonia.

Looks like a Ramshorn snail to me. I love mine. Great algae eaters/clean up crew and they don’t eat plants. I intentionally make more of them to feed to my Pea Puffers.

It sounded like you aged your water before adding to the tank. If that’s true, I would personally add the Prime to the aged container right before putting it in your tank. If it’s not true, apologies for my misunderstanding. For my small tanks that I use buckets for water changes I’ll put my conditioner in as I’m filling the bucket in the sink and have never had a problem. For my bigger tanks that I use the Python for, I’ll squirt the dechlorinator in as soon as the water starts coming out of the Python and again have never had an issue. I also dose for the entire volume of the tank, and not just the new water going in.

@nabokovfan87 and @anewbie might have different thoughts from me, but here’s what I would do. 1. I wouldn’t do anything besides use a water conditioner. A well-established aquarium should be able to process 0.25 ammonia like it’s nothing. Even at 100% water change that would only be 0.25 ammonia and the tank should handle that. If you’re doing partial water changes that 0.25 gets diluted even further and shouldn’t be an issue. 2. Use Prime in the water just before you change it into the tank. By using the Prime right before your water change you will get the most out of the 24 binding affect that it has. Just my two cents and what I would personally do.

My tanks with c02 do not pearl as my intention is to just have a little more c02 to help combat algae and not have the plants run out, and those tanks don’t run crazy lights. My only tank that regularly pearls is my 6 gallon cube with a dirted substrate, Fluval Plant 3.0 LED Nano, and a heater. No filter in that tank. Pearl Weed goes crazy and pearls everyday. As mentioned above pearling simply means that oxygen is at max saturation so instead of dissolving into the water it cannot so we can see it. All my plants are super healthy in my tanks that don’t pearl.

I use a lamp with a 70 watt lightbulb instead of a heater

@Tommy Vercetti Your towel looks like this, too?! I also have a second towel that doesn’t look like this, lol.

For maintenance I use an aquatic thermometer to match tank temps. I also have the infrared gun which makes it quick to check all my tanks and make sure they’re in the range. Every tank has an aquatic thermometer, but basically all of them have dead batteries, lol. Need to stop being lazy and replace the batteries Here’s my everyday use Little green cup is for frozen baby brine shrimp cubes. Syringes are for feeding that out. Glass dish is for bloodworms, and the turkey baster is for feeding those! These are really the only things I use every day.

For this exact reason I have specific clothes I wear on maintenance day

Cichlids gonna cichlid! I have a group of 4 Angels in a 55 gallon. 3 males and 1 female. The most aggression I see is when the pair is about to spawn. Other than that, the males shimmy at each other and peck a little bit from time to time, but never anything crazy. When the pair at any given time (the female is scandalous and has paired with several of the males over the years) gets aggressive the others just hide a bit and have their own space. The tank has 2 big Amazon Swords and some Jungle Val so there’s lots of line of sight breaks and hiding places, and the tank being 4’ gives space for everyone. Hope this helps!

Happy Wednesday fish friends! This week has been a weird one. I lost 1 female Furcata Rainbow. All of the sudden she was just flopping around on the substrate. A couple days later, my female Betta was lying dead on the bottom of her tank. This seems to be the pattern for me. I have everything for a long time, and then I lose a couple fish out of nowhere. I guess that’s the circle of life, huh? I remain content knowing they had excellent lives in my care and I produce way more fish than I lose so there’s that part, too. Water changed everything besides the Betta tank that only now houses 1 Nerite Snail and the shrimp tank as I did that one last week. Squeezed some sponges in the HOB’s on the 20 high and the 55. Still need to water change the (2) 2.5 gallon tanks on the counter, but that can wait until tomorrow. Got a late start to the maintenance today so it is what it is. Did a heavy trim on the 6 gallon cube today: Before Pearl Weed Mountain trimmed out of the tank After. There’s a rock in there! Little bit of algae on the glass that wasn’t really noticeable before causing the picture to be a little hazy/blurry. Need to get that cleaned up. Tried to trim this time with a little more intent instead of just one level across the whole tank. Hard to tell from the pic considering it’s 95% Pearl Weed and therefore the same color, but I’m hoping the rock will be a little more visible as it grows in again. This tank started with 8 CPD’s that I didn’t medicate because “they were already “quarantined” as they were the only fish in the tank”. Down to a single male CPD and it’s the last reminder I need to always medicate new fish that come into my home. At some point I’ll get another group and replenish this tank. About to order the new light for the 20 gallon long blackwater conversion! Excited to take one more step towards trying something new. Cheers, Nerms. Hope you’ve had a great day!

@TheSwissAquarist I’m surprised you didn’t have to tear that thing apart lol. I have ~50 in this tank. Not looking forward to it.

@nabokovfan87 @Theplatymaster I bought the box, set it up in this 55 gallon tank, and have raised the Bristlenose fry in here and then the Julii Cory’s. If I had to guess the box has been set up for ~5 or six weeks. There’s been some algae and some mulm and some biofilm around the air stone but it’s all good. It really just feeds the fry. I use a turkey baster to suck out fungused eggs and anything that gets out of hand but that’s really it. The last time I sucked out the fungused eggs there was a big chunk of mulm and I’m glad I paid attention because that chunk of mulm had 5 Cory fry in it. Mulm and algae are really just a food source for fry and it’s okay with me. I’ve spent a long time getting the main tank somewhat decent but considering all the “bad” things are contained to the breeder box I’m cool with it and it makes my life easier. @Theplatymaster I’m not sure what you’re dealing with but let me know if I can help.

@Samuel testing for me personally really just confirms that nothing has changed. My 13 tanks have been set up for coming up on 3 years so it’s more just, “yup, exactly what I expected”. I tend to focus more on consistency than trying to push the limits

Simply wanted to document where all my baby fish are at. Oldest to youngest we have: Panda Angels. Crushing. Gonna get moved to the 55 grow out in the next week or two and they’ll really take off. Chocolate Bristlenose. First batch with these guys has been fun. Gonna be an absolute nightmare to move from this tank, though. Julii Cory’s. This breeder box has worked super well. I counted 23 in here this evening. 1 shy of potentially the perfect amount for the LFS but that’s nature for you. Newest batch of Panda Angels. I need to force myself to feed some of these out as fry as the bigger Panda batch is pretty large and I don’t want to flood the market. I made that mistake with the Kribs and need to learn to do better!

Agreed with the others that it’s hydra. I’ve used a dog dewormer on them to get rid of them before. I’ve also just left them, fed less fine foods, and with no food to support them they die off. Hydra are often found in shrimp tanks where the shrimp will not eat them and you feed lots of fine foods. I agree that a food dish for the shrimp can help prevent fine floating particles which the hydra feed on. Overall, they’re part of an ecosystem. I’ve never personally seen them eat any shrimp but I bet ones big enough could eat a baby shrimp. Many ways to get rid of them if you don’t enjoy having them.

@Samuel ACO test strips read like 0-5 nitrates for me while the API liquid test will read 40. I use the strips more for pH, hardness, and buffer than I do for nitrates. Also, I agree with the others that the tank is super lightly stocked in my opinion. I wouldn’t worry about it much.

Word up. I’ve been itching to do a blackwater tank so that’s the main goal here, for me. Just stoked to find which shrimp will do well in that environment

Appreciate the notes and in-depth response! Most of my tanks run in the low 6’s with basically 0 buffer. TDS runs like 50-100 in my tanks, yet my Neo’s have thrived for me for years. I think it’s because I originally got them from someone locally so I agree with you 100% on that. I’m not sure the botanicals/tannins will do much to my water other than tint it because of where the parameters already sit. My cherry shrimp tank already has a slight tint due to the cholla wood that’s been in there since the tank was set up over 2 years ago. Regardless I’m excited to check it out and if the cherry’s can’t make the change I’m definitely looking towards some Caradina’s to try out.

Yup. Gotta break out the step ladder to do a little bit of the maintenance on the top tanks, but thankfully I’m tall and knew what I was getting into when I set it up. Just one of those things if I wanted that many tanks, and I definitely want that many tanks lol

@looney_trout I run 5 tanks on a Tetra Whisper 150. Both outlets of the pump feed into the pvc, and then there’s 6 taps in the pvc tubing. I could probably pull off 6 tanks, but I’m happy with what this set up can do for 5 sponge filters. I’ll also add that this pvc outlet goes in all directions (pvc and pump is sitting on middle rack, 2 tanks on top rack, 2 tanks on middle rack, 1 tank on bottom rack) and several of the tanks have a HOB in addition to the sponge. The biggest issue I see with your proposed set up is that the tanks will be on opposite sides of a room. 20 feet is a loooong airline run that will greatly deplete the pressure from the pump. Me personally, I would use 2 pumps. One for each side of the room. Just my $0.02 with this pump running these 5 tanks for coming up on 3 years with additional filtration via the HOB’s.

@jwcarlson I’m curious about your recent experiences as well and am rooting for success! On Saturday I went out for a night (weird for a fish nerd, right?! Lol) and when I came back on Sunday afternoon I realized that my usb air pump died (no idea when it died but I believe it was out for a long time) and so did my hatch. For the first time I saw some “parachuted” brine shrimp, tons of eggs floating at the top, and basically nothing hatched and swimming around in the water column of the hatchery. I swapped out the dead usb pump for a new one I had on hand and had another 7 hours until the 36 hour usual harvest mark. I decided to let it ride and see what happened over the next 7 hours. Come harvest time, it was definitely the worst hatch I’d ever had, but honestly better than I thought it would be. Let’s just say I didn’t freeze and save a whole tray like I normally do, but had enough to feed live what’s usually leftover from a full hatch. Essentially, a 10% hatch rate with 0 air for idk how long. If I had to guess, we left at ~3pm on Saturday afternoon and got home about ~12pm Sunday afternoon, so almost 24 hours, and I bet the pump was out for the majority of that time. I’m curious to see if you’ve narrowed down what is getting you better or worse hatches in your trials and tribulations. The air pump dying on me made a HUGE difference and was literally the only change. Hope you’ve found some success with hatching BBS!

As I was changing out of my work clothes I saw a Pygmy Cory that definitely wasn’t the size of the adults and has to be a fry that survived in this tank! I guess the eggs have been there longer than I realized. Man, this hobby is so great. Add Pygmy Cory’s to the list I’ve passively bred and I’m excited to actually try to hatch and raise a batch!