Milliardo Peacecraft

@JChristophersAdventures That looks like an amazing list of fish for a 75 gallon tank. You'll have to post a few pictures when it's complete. I also am in the process of getting a 75 gallon set up. I haven't quite decided what will all be in it, but my 6 year old daughter always has suggestions everytime we head to the fish store. Unfortunately between work and home responsibilities the progress has been a bit on the slower setup. The stand arrived this week from FishTankUSA, now to find time tp build it.

@JChristophersAdventures I would probably have to agree with you on stocking. In my younger days it was always what was the biggest baddest fish I could get, but over the years I have become far more interested in schooling fish and like aquariums that have constant action in them, someone is cruising around somewhere always.

What is the Most Bazaar, Odd, or Weird thing in your fishroom..... hmmm, I guess that would have to be me. 😉

I don't know why I never thought to put a little piece of aluminum or stainless angle iron infront of it to block the gap. I also have issues with bright lights causing me issues, to the extent that I have dimmers on all of my lights in the house for bad days.

Yep, blue jean gravel works just fine with cories. I always have cories in my tank and haven't had an issue. Just took the picture below of one of the cories in my tank with basically the exact same gravel.

I have use cholla wood in my aquarium a couple times, so far I've boiled the pieces until they became water logged enough to sink. I haven't run into any weirdness in my 29 gallon aquarium with it in there. My plecos did just fine with it along with my other "community" fish (platties, black skirted tetras, cories, Denson barb, buenos aires tetra, etc.) I haven't noticed it lowering my pH, but the water here tops 8.0 pH on its own so it would take a lot for a small piece of wood to lower it. I would say it lasted maybe a year before the pieces had become too thin and soft such that they started to fall apart.

Thanks for all of the info. One other question, I have an Aquion 75 gallon aquarium with a glass lid on it. Do any of you know or have pictures as to which manufacturer of light will fit tightest to the lid and have the least light leaking past between the light and the top of the lid.

I am currently in the market for a new aquarium light for my 75 gallon aquarium but haven'tbeen able to figure out what would be the best option to get. The aquarium currently has mostly low to medium light plants in it, but I'm sure over time that will evolve and I'll ultimately at some point change things up an high light plants will eventually find their way in there. My current light is an older Finnex 24/7 planted light. I was looking though their website for their new lights, but I have to admit, their lighting options aren't setup very intuitively and I'm not sure which would be the best option. I do have a top on my 75 gallon aquarium, so something that fits tighter to the glass would be a plus. I've noticed some people are posting lighting profiles from their phone, what lights are those from? Are those lights advantageous vs the finnex lights?

If you are looking for quieter, nothing says you have to use only 1 filter. I use a fluval 307 canister and a fluval C4 HOB on my aquarium and my brother uses two 307 canisters (intakes on opposite sides of the aquarium) on his 75 gallon. The 307 canister is very quiet, mine is not in a cabinet and sits in the livingroom about 10 feet from my TV so it would drive me nuts if it was loud. One other advantage to using 2 smaller filters is that they are lighter and easier to clean. Since my aquarium is in my living room I have to haul the canisters down stairs to use the utility sink to clean them out. The smaller canisters are way easier to haul around (especially when you have a marginal back) and not make a mess throughout the house when it comes time to clean them.

One suggestion I would have is something I've run into here in Southern Wisconsin. The water here has a higher pH, mine is about 8.4 in the aquarium. When I use Seachem Equilibrium in my water at 8.4 pH I got abnormally high nitate readings, but when I used some pH down in the aquarium and got the pH below 8.0 I started getting more believable readings. I have only run into test strips reading artificially high for nitrates when I had the combination of high pH on soft water that I had added Seachem Equilibrium to. I'm not saying that you are definitely running into that senerio, but it took me months of trying to figure out why my nitrates seemed to be running wacky high before I stumbled across what was occurring. So it might be worth trying a little test by adding a little pH down and get the pH a little below 8.0 and see if your nitate tests come out different.

Historically I've used silk plants for years. Sometimes I'll use natural looking plants and sometimes ones that are extremely colorful just to do something different that really popps. I attached a picture below of one of the more colorful ones I've done. One nice thing with the silk plants is that if they end up getting covered in algee you can do a bleach wash on them without them losing their color. I basically just pour in a shot of bleach into a gallon or 2 of water and then soak them for 5 minutes or so and it cleans them up really good.

For the first time ever my Anubias Barteri is blooming! Do any of you know how often the plants produce blooms? Reading online many places say its when the plant is really stressed, aka thinks it's going to die, that it will bloom. This plant has been super healthy and is about a year and a half to 2 years old so I'm not totally convinced that the plant only blooms when stressed or at its end of life. What are your thoughts?

I have these same ones and they have worked fine for me as well.

Time is totally the limiting factor I run into.

Thanks!!!

This is a question I never thought I'd be asking as I've never really been all that interested in glofish, but my 5 year old daughter just discovered this weekend that they exist....so I'm pretty sure they will end up in my aquarium in the near future. 😉 oh well, she loves them, so I'm ok with that. Anyways, I have a fluval planted 24/7 light on my 29 gallon and I'm wondering if that would work for having them look good, or if I would need a black light. If a black light is needed, does anyone know of a submersible one that I could hide behind some hardscape so I don't need a 2nd light ontop of the aquarium.

I have kept Betas in my 29 gallon community tank from time to time over the years and I just use soft water and Seachem Equilibrium. Natively it comes out at about an 8.4 pH. I then use about 7 mL API pH down to bring the pH down to 7.5 to 7.8. The fish did just fine.

That looks awesome, I may have to try that in the future when I set up my 75 gallon.

I used plasti-dip black rubberized coating to spray the back of my aquarium. It seemed to work pretty good and while I haven't tried removing it yet, it does seem like I could get it off with some peeling/scraping if I really wanted to. I attached a link below so you can see the product. It's sold at several different stores. https://www.acehardware.com/departments/paint-and-supplies/specialty-paints/rubberized-coatings/19507

I was debating about doing this, but in this senerio would the roots of the plants grow into the bags and thus make it harder to move the plants around later if I wanted to change up my layout, or just want to make room for other plants that I've picked up.

I was wondering about how useful in the long run is layering substrates for a planted aquarium. I've never been that crazy about the colors available for some of the more nutrient rich substrates so I was thinking about using a colored gravel substrate above the nutrient rich substrate to get the color I was looking for, but I'm wondering if in the long run, say 1-2 years down the road it would all ultimately end up as a mixed up gemish anyways. Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks! It seems like most places only carry the reef version, but I did find some that at least show the freshwater version for sale, though everyone appears to be out of stock. I'll keep my eye open for it.

Does anyone know if there are any good aquarium tests for potasium? So far I've only come across one, but it appears that it only tests from 200 to 500 ppm potasium and I read a couple spots that if you are not running a reef aquarium you are probably targeting more of a 20-30 ppm range for live plants. Is this the range I would be looking for on a low tech aquarium that is just running typical plants (Anubias, Java ferns, Crypts, Amazon swords, etc.)?

@JoeQ. Thanks for the suggestion. Interesting reads, so my reduced light is basically balancing the light level to the lowest nutrient available. I think I'll give Seachem Trace and Seachem Iron a try and see if that changes anything up. I suspect my 8.0 pH is making things a bit harder. I've been using DTPA iron, but at 8 pH from the graph earlier in this post it still looks like a lot of the iron isn't solubilized/available. From the little bit I read, it sounds like the Ferrous gluconate in the Seachem iron is less effected by pH.

Update #3, after a couple weeks of adding iron twice a week I can say based on the algee growth on my substrate and in my filters that I don't think I am lacking enough iron to need dosing Easy Iron twice a week....though I'm sure my Otos are quite happy with it. I'm back to using iron once a week and I am now trying lowering the intensity of the lights and after 2 weeks it seems like the plants are looking better, not quite perfect yet, but a step in the right direction. Guess I was effectively bleaching the crypts and anubias with too much light. Have any of you run into that before?