tooManyPumps

My experience with corys is they are a set-and-forget species but like some others noted, it's easy to underfeed them in a community setting, I have to strategize to get food down to them regularly. Also, I wanted to generalize about all fish: it might not be you, your aquarium, or even the species, but a problem with the batch of fish. A difficult transition or hard sloshing in the car ride home, or compromised immune systems can be just sitting there lurking from before you even got them in a bag, in a whole batch of fish, and they'll slowly disappear. It happened to me with one batch of rainbow fish, whereas the same type of rainbows from other sources ALWAYS thrive in my tank now.

Thanks for reaching out to make it right!

Thanks, I was new to the plant when this arrived on Monday so I was hesitant to complain until I saw how they perform in the tank. I think they can still get roots down eventually with good care but there's going to be a substantial wait, during which I'll struggle to keep algae off these. It might be a problem of setting expectations, also my first time ordering any plants from ACO. I'll message customer service.

My shipment arrived in less than 24h after packing. The plants that came were not just tiny but had almost no roots and looked like they were taken from a bolting (flowering) mother plant. They were not bright green and vigorous like you want a healthy plant to be. Pale and fuzzy. Very costly for something so ill looking. I'm very disappointed compared to the other plants I received which were vigorous with good root development.

congrats to the proud parents! be careful, these are like zucchini in August around here. I swear my neighbor left a bucket of them on my porch while I was out.

I was not cautious about storage, maybe they got too warm. But even so, I'm shocked by the low hatch rate. I'm getting maybe 5% to hatch after 24h in 82F with 1 tbsp of marine aquarium salt per litre. Last time I used the same approach and I saw more like 80% hatching. I repeated my process and measurements twice to be sure. Both batches resulted in very few hatchings despite all parameters being correct.

Step 1, download the 3d design and print it: https://github.com/readysetawesome/aquatic_prints/blob/main/DIY brine shrimp hatchery.stl Step 2, you need a plastic pitcher that is almost exactly 100mm in circumference. I think this will work according to Amazon's dimensions, but it is not exactly the same as my pitcher which was found in my closet: YMMV https://www.amazon.com/Home-X-Pitcher-Design-Perfectly-Spaces/dp/B078PTPPJS/ref=sr_1_88?crid=JB2VZFQG98OE&keywords=plastic+pitcher+tall&qid=1674704435&refinements=p_36%3A100-1300&rnid=386465011&sprefix=plastic+pitcher+tall%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-88 Step 3, you need a couple things from the hardware store: extension cord lamp socket and a wide style bulb with 7-11w of LED power Step 4 put it all together! slip the extension plug up into the base and out through the hole near the bottom. pull the cord through completely put the bulb threads down into the top of the stand, through the hole in the middle, and bring the socket up to meet it. Twist together completely plug in the stand (and switch on the light if the socket has a switch) place the pitcher into the top of the stand so it's sitting on top of the bulb add salt water, brine eggs, aeration. Check the temperature after a while, it should be around the low 80s F given heat from the light. if the light creates too much heat, add one or more layers of aluminum foil between the bulb and the pitcher. wait for success!

there's a somewhat popular youtube guy I was just watching. has a tiny box of a fish room and no tanks larger than 55g, he loves keeping several large cichlids in each tank and I just 🤦‍♂️ If you have a business or a rescue I can see why this might happen but for a hobbyist it is just selfish.

This is one of those myths that spread because of an ounce of truth in specific scenarios/species. I think there may be a short list of fish do this, like Salmon, but most aquarium fish do not. People like to say this about Oscars and other big cichlids, however: It's important to note that some fish clearly don't work this way, for example Tilapia (cichlids farmed as food) can grow to large sizes seemingly regardless of stocking density provided water quality is adequate**. source I believe what you often have in this scenario is a combination of competing goals: the aquarist imagines their oscar to be a fish capable of living in 40G, and they want to maintain water quality without excessive maintenance effort, the aquarist thus under-feeds the fish chronically (a growing oscar needs absurd amounts of food, easy to underfeed). Another possibility is the 40G oscar aquarist sacrifices water quality by providing adequate food for a healthy, growing oscar, leading to rapid waste buildup. Either scenario will contribute to stunting. IMO Its just much easier for hobbyists to blame some unproven hormone theory than their own fishkeeping choices (40G is undersized), or something more subtle like genetics *shrug*

exactly, this is precisely the approach I'm taking. I was able to verify with a TDS meter that today's 1/2 daily dose of my DIY mixed macro solution had an impact of <5ppm total across the various constituent salts, measured one hour after it was added. While this cheap device is still not the epitome of precision, it gives me a lot more confidence than guessing at the colors in the liquid test tubes. So the difference here is largely expected. My solution has 3x or more Nitrate than Easy Green so of course it was a lot easier to measure a result, but perhaps the result was not as dramatic as I thought due to test inaccuracy.

Indeed, this is just the latest in a series of experiments confirming to me the limitations of all the API tests! At best we get "oh this is probably fine" vs "this is probably really high" I'm going to standardize the TDS of my incoming water and measure conductivity to monitor nutrient buildup.

This post includes an assertion that 1 pump:10G leads us to 3ppm of Nitrates when using Easy Green. I have not been able to measure this, or anywhere close. It would take me 5-10 pumps per 10G to get a noticeable change on the API liquid test of 5-10ppm.

Well I'm a little differently confused now, there's no way to account for the Nitrate reading on the API test given only the single daily dose of fertilizer I added. It's gone from 10/20->40ppm and I measured and added enough for only 1ppm. This was triple-checked. Even if I made a small mistake in measuring or dosing, it would have to be off by a factor of 20x, this is not possible. So I must consider other sources! My only plausible theory now is that while moving large amounts of substrate yesterday (fixing up the 'scape), I kicked up organic waste (ammonia and friends) and it is driving up the reading. I did a 25% water change and now the NO3- looks closer to 20ppm vs 40ppm. I'll check back tomorrow

Thanks for the ideas! I originally suspected the test as well, which is why I bought a second one a couple months back. Both kits are unexpired, less than a year old, both give the same result. I follow the test instructions precisely and verified that my source at the tap is at 0ppm. I think the leading suspect now is indeed calculations - I reread the manufacturer website and found somewhat confusing and possibly conflicting information across 2 separate guides. Possibly my dosage is stronger than I thought with the new dry mixed ferts. I'll be testing again with a fresh tap water dilution of the fertilizer solution, that should clear this up. BGA was in my tank visibly after I moved the entire 120G system w/sump to my new home. It completely disappeared after 2 treatments with chemiclean, that was 3 months ago. So while it's possible I would be quite surprised if it was present and not visible. my tank is well lit with bright colored substrate, which made it obvious last time.

conundrum: I have been struggling with chronically low N in my planted tank. Not here to sell any other product, just to understand this conundrum. Why is it Easy Green consistently failed to raise my N levels toward my target, according to API test results, even when I progressively overdosed it up to 7x the recommended strength? I did the math on soluble N content and my target PPM concentrations, and I just can't seem to get to the target by using what would seem like plenty of pumps. Today I added my first dose of a precisely measured mix-it-yourself macro+micro system at "normal" strength for a single daily dose and it made my API liquid Nitrate test read "hotter" than I have ever seen before. According to the instructions my additions should have added less PPM than the Easy Green 7x dosage I mentioned above.