DaniV

Alrighty! Last water test of the year! Haven't used the Easy Carbon for a week after that massive pH spike, and it's back down to normal numbers. Still don't know if that's what caused it to jump, but not gonna mess with success now. Tank was still getting covered in brown stuff, and even though I said I wasn't going to add any more fish, I caved and bought 2 Bristlenose Plecos and 2 Pepper Corys. Tank is looking much cleaner now, even the rocks are their natural white color again! That being said, now I think I'm pushing it. The testing showed 0 ammonia (yay), but the very very very faintest hint of pink color for Nitrites. Not enough to register it as .25, but not completely clear either. I know that's nothing too crazy to worry about, but I haven't seen any hint of Nitrites for weeks. I've also had the itch to get a 2nd tank, but I haven't decided what I wanna put in there, and where. I could get a small tank for a betta (like I've wanted from the start), or I could do another community tank to get some other fish that can't fit in this one like an all tetra tank, or mystery snails, or some other cool fish I haven't seen or thought about. Maybe if I hear of a tank sale at Petsmart or something, that'll help motivate. Started doing Easy Green treatments 3 times a week now instead of 2, and I'm already seeing some recovery in my older plants, especially the Amazon Swords. Bulb is still just sitting there, being furry. It's been 2 weeks and I've been turning it looking for growth, but I'm just not seeing much. It'll be just my luck that I happen to get the one dud. 😛 One of the mollies wanted to say "hi!" I'll try to remember to post these monthly in the future, but for now, here's the record of my tests since I started this bad boy. Even though it was very late in the year, jumping into this hobby has been a big highlight of 2022 for me. Here's to a half-decent 2023 for the fishies! EDIT: Page 2...party time!

While I also have no idea how this actually affects fish, having a high GH is beneficial for snails. They need calcium for sturdy shells, so the higher the GH, the stronger the shell will be. There is also this blog post!

Absolutely gorgeous! My 2 female swordtails don't have any signs of stubs, so maybe that's due to the breeding? Keep it up~!

That's cool! Makes you appreciate the process and time it takes to make our tanks.

Pretty much what @quikv6 said. I started with mollies with my tank, and from my experience they are pretty dang hardy. They kickstarted the cycle and have been thriving since. They probably need time to get adjusted to their new surroundings, since you don't have any ammonia or nitrites that could cause any problems. But once you start seeing ammonia and nitrites showing up in the tests, change out some of your water every couple of days to keep it from going too high.

Look at that little guy, strutting their stuff in the happiest place on Earth.

Maybe some weird multiverse convergence shenanigans taking place?

Oooo, nice looking tanks! Welcome!

I got this for a gift! Pretty interesting from what I've read so far. Also got my Harlequin Rasboras out of quarantine and brought them to my main tank.

Took some time to grab 'em all, but I moved the Harlequin Rasboras into the display tank! They're all swimming together, haven't seen anything odd between them or the other fish. Just darting around and checking out the new surroundings. Now that they're in proper lighting, I can see that some of the Harles are more orange/bronze color than the others. I also got this for Christmas from mom and dad! EDIT: Just did my weekly water change and saw the pH jumped to 9 at some point during the week. I've started using Easy Carbon for a week, so I dunno if that's directly causing it. Just to be safe, I'm gonna hold back from adding it for a week to see if the pH does indeed go down. I went and did a 50% water change, vacuuming up as much of the gravel as I feasibly could and got a lot of the waste out. Still need to get scraping/cleaning tools, but that will have to wait until I can safely drive to a pet store.

Surviving the winter storm has been fun, fortunately no power outages, which is good cause I don't have any kind of backup systems for that. With tomorrow being Christmas, I figure it'd be a nice gift for the Harlequins to finally introduce them into the display tank! It has been a month, they got their meds, no issues or deaths, so I declare my first quarantine a success! WHOO! Speaking of display tank, the Dwarf Lily bulb grew some grey fuzz, which I read is pretty normal. Just waiting to see any roots spring out from it, gonna give it a turn later tonight. The Anubias is just chilling, and the Microswords are getting a little yellow and stringy. I add Easy Green to the tank twice a week for the plants, started adding Easy Carbon to try and control the algae bloom I've got going on, and the plants are still looking a little sad. I think it's time I invest in some of these magical things called Root Tabs, lol. I keep seeing people swear by these things, so I'll give it a try and order some after the holidays (along with some more plants perhaps).

Merry Christmas everyone!

Woke up to -4° F, snow, wind, and ice. No way I'm going to work today! The local news was saying all day yesterday to just hunker down for 24 hours, and fortunately we haven't lost power. Stay safe everyone!

I've taken 2 belly dancing classes, 1 with veils, and another just a standard class. You're right, it's very difficult when you're moving different body parts every which way, but it is fun when you can pull some moves off!

Over the past year, I've really gotten into aerial silks and lyra. I was originally looking for a reasonably priced yoga studio and found a fitness studio that offered it plus a ton of other classes, including aerials. Figured "eh, why not?" and gave it a try, and I fell in love instantly! I'm considered intermediate level on the lyra and high beginner on the silks. It's so much fun!

I did the fish-in cycle, but I was told at a LFS that some fish are more suited for it than others. She suggested goldfish and mollies, I went and got dalmatian mollies. Those little guys have been real troopers putting up with my cycling fumbling, and they're happily swimming around with my swordtails. That being said, I did try to add some Corys in the middle of the ammonia/nitrite spike phase (cause I'm an idiot, lol), and in a week I lost them all. I was testing every day, trying to stay on top of the water changes, adding the live bacteria, still lost all of them in the end. I hear that Corys are very sensitive with water parameters, so keeping an eye on them is an absolute must. Hope you have better luck with the Corys than I did!

I'm in the process of my very first quarantine. I went and got a sponge filter from ACO and had it in my cycled display tank for a few weeks just to start getting that nice beneficial bacteria, in the meantime I was buying my quarantining materials little by little. By the time I had everything set up, I took out that sponge filter and placed it in the quarantine tub to give the cycle a kickstart. Did it prevent any raising of ammonia and nitrites completely for the quarantine cycle? No, but it definitely helped keep those numbers low and manageable compared to when I was cycling the display tank. I've been adding live bacteria and some Seachem Prime just to be safe, and I've got about 2 more weeks left on my quarantine. Process seems to be working!

I think it was a bubble actually. I had done a gravel vacuum and water change before adding the new plants to make it easier and less messy, so that might have been it. I haven't seen any snail eggs whatsoever. I looked up how to sex them, but it's hard to see under their antenna even when against the glass.

Thanks! And good to know that I'm hitting the limit on fish. The Harles still have a few weeks in quarantine, tomorrow is day 7 after Med Trio, and they're looking strong. I'm gonna hold back from adding anything new until they get in the tank.

Snails are doing good, been roaming around. A bunch of the rocks have gotten cleaned up, but there's still a few that haven't even been touched. One of the snails (the striped one) had been living on the driftwood for the first 2 days before finally venturing to the glass. Dunno what they found there, but it must have had some good stuff for them to eat. The algae on the glass has barely come off, so I may need to clean the glass myself. In the meantime, I finally got around to ordering some plants! Everything in there so far I had gotten from Petsmart and they're doing OK. The Dwarf Grass looks like it's trying to spread, but the Amazon Swords, Rosette Sword, and some kind of fern aren't looking so hot. I took out the fern completely cause it just didn't look nice with the other plants, even when it was healthy. So I ordered from ACO 2 pieces of Micro Swords, 1 Dwarf Aquarium Lily bulb, and some Anubias Golden. Glued the Anubias to a rock and the top branch of the driftwood and placed the bulb in the back corner to (hopefully) fill out that space.

Tank looks nice so far! Can't wait to see the inhabitants along the way!

I just dealt with this recently, caught it pretty early. Same situation as you. Spots showed up on one of my Molly's fins, went to do some research, and in that time I started seeing spots showing up on other fish. Had to treat the whole tank. It really does spread and build that fast. I took out the carbon filter first since they say it can absorb the medication, then treated the tank with the Ich-X. Tossed some Aquarium Salt on the first day to help out the affected fish. Everyday after that as long as I saw spots, I did a 30% water change and re-dosed with the Ich-X. It cleared up within 3 days, but I continued to dose an extra 2 just to be safe. Put in a clean filter, and all the fish have been good since! Granted, I now have some algae build-up from the lack of proper filtration for a week, but that's a far easier problem to deal with than the damn Ich.

1 20 gallon column hex tank + 1 7-8 gallon quarantine tub. I do have the itch to get another one, maybe a 5 or 10 gallon, but I don't know where I want to put it yet. Give it time. 😛

I dunno if it's due to having taken out the filter during the Ich battle or if it was just a matter of time, but there's been some algae buildup in the tank There is some green and brown growth on the rocks, and some faintly on the glass. My dad noticed it and said it was time to get a clean-up crew. After doing some research, I decided to give Nerite Snails a shot. Bought 3 of them, got them acclimating now. 1 of them has yellow and black stripes, the other 2 have no stripes or patterns. I'm aware that the females leave trails of eggs behind, and I have no idea whatsoever which ones are female, but oh well. I'll deal with that when they get to it. Dad has never kept snails cause he had a massive outbreak of pest snails that hitchhiked from live plants, so bad that he had to take the aquarium apart, deep clean, and get all new gravel, rocks, etc. in order to get back to a clean and controllable state. Turned him away from keeping nerite or mystery snails completely, so this is a whole new thing for all of us. Harles are still alive in quarantine. Fed them very lightly yesterday since they've gone several days without food and I don't want them to drop dead from starvation.

No doubt, water conditioner. Between my display tank, quarantine tank, and battling Ich, I've had to buy more conditioner with the amount of water changes I had to do in 1 month alone.