Kara C

Old woods riding pictures. My apologies on the potato camera. While preparing to significantly downsize our lives due to one "bad luck" event after another, I came across a bunch of old pictures. Better days. Back when things were hard, but we didn't have anything to lose. Now, things are harder and we have everything to lose. Filtering through these forgotten files has reminded me of who we are how we got even this far in life- pure stubborn resilience. I also found some peace and realized that I take way too many pictures of trees. Who needs a couple thousand pictures of trees and forests in Florida? No one that's who. Hahaha.

Watermelon vine is doing great. (Thanks again) I recently picked up a ZZ plant as well as boarded the pothos train with a golden pothos. I have more Aloes than I know what to do with and no patients for division and potting them all. Anthuriums seem to be doing well. Not great, but they're OK. I have other indoor plants, but no pictures at the moment.

Jolly Molly the adventurous corgi.

Any of the following few posts, unless otherwise stated, happened within the past 3 years. Hence the rollercoaster in the title. Cruising craigslist I came across a 20-gallon tall full of extra goodies for $20. No lid, no light, but it did come with a ton of decorations and a couple of filters. Sooo many fake plants, a fake log and half of a ship. Gave my sister all the fake plants for her goldfish tank. Being a box store and Amazon regular I knew what the ship alone would cost so I jumped on it. I was on a small budget and wanted a planted community tank. I believe in upcycling, reusing, and recycling when possible. Especially when you’re on a budget but want or need things. Once everything was sorted and clean, I set it up to start cycling with what little bit of stuff I kept or had. For substrate I had a big bag of pool filter sand left over from upgrading the cylinder tank to the semi hex. I didn’t like the internal filters, got an aqueon hang on back instead. The tank was going in the center of the house behind the couch so needed a sleeker box. This fit the bill. The led never worked but that was not the feature I got it for. I didn’t trust the idea of it and didn’t plan to use the cartridge unless carbon was actually needed. I ordered an Aqueon planted led clip light online. Couldn’t get it in town at the time and it met my needs. Rounding up initial base set up cost me $91. Over the following weeks I visited my lfs probably 50 times for questions, plants, and to see fish. Fell in love with habrosus cories that were in quarantine. My store keeps all new fish in qt for a minimum of 2 weeks. They use to do 30 days, but they are a small store with no interest in growing so they don’t have the space to hold fish that long any more. Conveniently, the habrosus cories were done with their qt when my tank finished its’ initial cycling. I started with 6 of them, 6 or 8 neon tetras and a few cherry shrimp. Not all of the fish went in at the same time. For plants I chose dwarf chain sword, dwarf sag, bacopa caroliniana, java moss and hornwort. The hornwort and moss were free. When I buy shrimp and they come with a little piece of plant, I tend to throw it in the tank and see what happens. Needless to say, the beautiful little community tank that it became did not stay little for long. I wanted to upgrade them to a 40-breeder so they would have more room. For Valentine’s Day my husband gifted me a Marineland 75-gallon set that he caught on sale for half off. I’ll show that ordeal later in depth. That’s when my father-in-law started to worry. He’s a truck driver and it seemed to him that the tanks were multiplying while he was over the road... I was suppose to get rid of the 20-gallon, yet when he came home again it was set up with new fish. Dalmation lyretail mollies. They did not survive. Nothing I did would keep them box store mollies alive let alone well and happy. So gave up on them after many dollars and fish lives wasted. Next came flag fish and dwarf neon rainbows from the lfs. And all was well again. Until I decided to upgrade them too... Because with a bigger tank I could get more of them and add some cherry barbs. Dad came home to a crummy looking 10-gallon quarantine tank with more fish, random plants and floating sticks just thrown in sitting next to the 20-gallon... And a used 75-gallon in the driveway... More craigslist jackpot scores. That’s how it looked for a couple of months while waiting on the custom tank table/stand to be built. As I didn’t want to part with my cabinet. More on that 75-gallon upgrade endeavor later on too. When that project was complete the 20 went out to the garage for some black mollies I picked up earlier on at the lfs. Who miraculously survived. Okay, it wasn’t a miracle. They were locally bred in well water not brackish water. See I’m a little smarter at this point. No, they didn’t have the cool lyre tails, but they were friendly fish that everyone seems to love and they look great against a full planted background. Which brings us to the state that 20-gallon tall is in today. Once glorious jungle full of life, now a sad looking mess with happy friendly fish and cull shrimp. Have you ever noticed when moving and keeping cull shrimp sometimes they color up more in the new tank? That’s what happened with mine. So now I have a few small colonies of cherry shrimp. Nowhere near the numbers I had even a year ago though. That’s my own fault for slacking so bad for so long. I had a lot getting in the way for a while and am finding it hard to get back on my old maintenance schedule. Bare minimum has not been kind. The plants and shrimp were going nuts. Think I have magic water or something haha. When I get around to posting the 75-gallons then and now pictures you’ll see what I mean.

Last couple days I've been sorting my couple thousand fish and tank related pictures on the computer in to folders for easy access. Should have been doing the garden pictures too but oh well. Today I thought I'd try my hand at making a closed terrarium. Starting small and simple. An old dollar store jar, a little bit of volunteer garden pot mystery moss, sand from the new neighbors yard (sshhh lol) and a couple rocks. I didn't want to take all the moss but I'm an impatient person so may add more. I.d. welcome on the moss. I can't figure it out. Will be moving the final handful of guppies out of the house and into the garage tonight. Procrastinated with this mini project now have to cool off for a while.

Hello there. I’ve been lurking around for a while and finally decided to share my journey through this hobby. I am a bit of an introvert. My shell is safe and there are no judgmental stupid people there. You all have been such a blessing to find and follow and chat with time to time. A great community full of awesome people. I have only really been in the hobby for a few years. I kept bettas for about 10 years but I don’t count that time as really in the hobby. I came across a betta video by accident on you tube one day. After that I fell in head first and haven't come back up for air. Currently I am at 11 tanks, 2 year-round tub ponds and 1 temporary tub. I’ll quick summarize the beginning then post tank progression one tank at a time. My first fish was a rescue betta. When I was around 17 I went to hang out with a friend. She had a fish bowl on the bathroom counter that you couldn’t see in to the water was so gross. I had known her about 6 months and the bowl had always been there like that. One day while washing my hands something hit the top off the water. I called her in and her response was “Oh, Rupert’s alive? I haven’t fed him in months, thought he was dead.” With no cares to give that beautiful blue veil tail betta went home with me that day in a clean bowl. Based on what she said he was close to 4 years old and with me he lived another 4-ish. I fell in love with him and got a couple females. I kept them in gallon or more bowls and pickle jars, cleaned them out with hot water every week or so, and had good luck with their health and longevity. For Christmas about 6 years ago my husband upgraded my 1 betta from the bowl to a 3.5-gallon cylinder tank. We called it his condo. That’s what got me thinking and tinkering. Never thought to look online. I was from the old school teachings of you feed the fish regularly, maybe and clean the tank once in a while. If it dies it was a bad fish... Couple years later while scrolling through you tube there was a betta video by Rachel O'leary. So I clicked it. When she mentioned live plants the gardener part of my brain pushed my guilt aside. Mind blown- real plants AND tiny red freshwater shrimp! Down the rabbit hole I went. Discovering my local mom and pop fish store has been a big help too. I still have that tank and all of its parts. It has been through a lot of fish, shrimp and other projects since being replaced by a used 6-gallon semi hex. Pictures of Ruperts' days might still be found on Myspace... Yep, I said it. After recently being used for quarantine, the cylinder currently sits around the garage looking sad with no life and old tannin-stained water slowly evaporating. Most of my old pictures are on an old laptop that I am too lazy to drag out or on a missing micro sd card. But I did manage to find one of the cylinder when it was new. Picture 1 with Moonstone is from January 1, 2016 Picture 2 with Gilligan is dated April 24, 2019 Picture 3 (Gilligan and shrimp friends are in there somewhere) is dated June 29, 2020. The upgrade to the used 6-gallon semi hex was on the 14th. It pretty much still looks the same. The java fern now takes up most of the tank, dwarf sag is alive but never took off, a floating betta log, one lucky bamboo sticking out the top and the inhabitants are 6 pygmy cories and a few cherry shrimp. Stay tuned for the train wreck that is the evolution of my used $20--20 gallon tall craigslist score.

Oh no, so sorry. Guppysnail beat me to the meds question lol. Could something in your tank be leaching a sap or heavy metal? Are you sure they were dead? Maybe they were sleeping or scared? This is a tough one. Outside of sending a water sample to the lab for testing and an autopsy this one's a stumper. Then there is always the possibility that the dead snails had an internal illness, hit the end of their natural life cycle, or just couldn't handle the stress even though everything was right on your end. I hope your other lil fellas keep going. If they do they should have no problem making more for ya. Just takes what feels like forever for them to grow full size.

I make sure the birds have fresh food in the feeders and clean water in the birdbath. I put river rock on one side so the insects can get some too. I didn't enclose either tub pond so the neighborhood foxes and kitties can always have a water source in dry hot suburban heck. The top of the 110 is deck level so if smaller animals can get up there they're welcome to drink too. I also secretly put out foods once a week or so that are supposedly good for foxes. Extra sharing in winter is based on hard freezes. There's a new house being built next door so don't know if I'll be able to do that anymore. A fox family made a den just off my property in the ditch a month ago so I've been watching for construction workers to warn them. Dozer guy was all for leaving them alone. Hopefully the others will feel the same. Poor things keep getting run out of their homes to make way for new houses. Pest control said the neighborhood has a rat problem and I laughed. We have snakes of all kinds, foxes gallour, at least 3 species of owl, and multiple cooper's hawks. Haven't seen a single rat in the almost 4 years we've been here. Unless you count opossums as a rat.

Wow, thanks. I wasn't expecting such a fast response. 😁 Yall are great.

Any chance one of you awesome people can i.d. this plant? A lil back story. I picked it up from a vendor at a car show last year. The girl told me just put it near bright light and water it every week or so and it'll be happy. She was half wrong lol. This planter also had other plants that died within a month. This is the only only survivor and it barely made it. Come to find out this plant likes wet feet, not drying out in between watering. Since I couldn't find it online I started watering every couple days. Figured what the heck it's dieing anyway like everything else has. After a couple weeks there were new leaves. Took 4 months to go from almost dead bare stem to what it is today.

40 gallon is doing fantastic. The brazilian pennywort is flowering and creeping over the sides.. The 110 gallon looks super sad but the flag fish survived winter and are happy and thriving. Set up a temporary one (maybe 20-25 gallons?) to try and breed my stubborn dwarf neon rainbows. They're expensive and I can't find just females. So I'm taking a chance and putting my last 2 females and 1 of 4/5 males outside. Yanked the plants from the 40. There's a bunch of hornwort floating and a few yarn mops in the bottom with river rock. Still a few tweaks left to make it look nicer. How's everyone else's tubs and mini ponds going?

Set up another mini porch pond. This one is for breeding a trio of dwarf neon rainbows. The cherry barbs in that tank have no issues breeding but the rainbows won't get on board so trying this route. I put in plant trimmings and pond snails from the 40 gallon tub after the picture was taken. Bacopa caroliniana, brazilian pennywort, black magic taro, hornwort, and maybe creeping jenny. Tomorrow I'll deal with planting them in floating pots. Also tomorrow the flag fish I bought at Aquashella come out of quarantine so they will be moving to the 110 gallon tub. Which gives me an empty tank for the baby rainbows. 2 empty tanks if I bring my brother in law a ton of guppies.

They're not weeds, they're wildflowers - Free gifts from Nature. When every plant you buy dies no matter what, try letting the "weeds" grow. It's really amazing what youll find. Every flower is considered a weed when it's where you don't want it. Here in the U.S. we get plants and seeds from nurseries and garden centers that come from all over the world and many are considered weeds in the gardens of their natural region. There are so many great plants here that people just don't know about. Why are our native flowers, trees and such not cultivated and sold in abundance? The bees, birds, butterflies and other wildlife would be much happier. In turn we would be happier, right? I was super happy to find a surprise rain lily flower in my yard last week... Till the lawn guy mowed it down while I got my stuff to dig it up... White flowers in the picture I believe are white sweet clover. They smell amazing and bees love them. The purple-ish ones are spiderworts. I also have blue eyed grass(?) all over my yard. Daily flowers even after mowing. Nature also gifted what I thought was blackberry plants but now know they're dewberries. Still edible 😋

It has been a hot minute since I've been around here. Life just gets in the way. Update on the 40 gallon- the white clouds and flag fish have survived 2 winters and have a resident frog. I unplugged the pump for the spitting frog for winter last year and never plugged it back in. Should probably get around to removing it from the tub lol.

Some people seem to have more problems than others with these. I hate mine, but thankfully the rattle is not constant. Every other week or so it'll get going. I give the lid a tap and it stops. I put up with it because I've spent too much money already trying to find a hob that will fit over the rim of my 75 gallon. Makes a similar sound as the air pumps which also drives me nuts so it blends hahaha. Marineland and aqueon aren't everyone's cup of tea, but the only thing I ever hear from them is the sound of water flowing. And they self prime.

Mostly just been doing regular fishy maintenance lately. Killed more house plants. I give up on them. That's all I'm gonna say about that. The mollies are ecstatic about their upgrade. Being in my garage they still need the back ground and insulation put on aka cardboard and styrofoam. Upcycle for the win haha. Only took a whole week to get all the guppies and fry out of that 20 gallon. The poor plants... Sooo many fry.... Female guppies are temporarily in a 10 gallon with some of LRB's blue neos that I picked up at Aquashella Orlando. More on the way this week along with some mosses. Cull guppies are separated from the good males and fry. Don't know what I'm going to do with them yet. Also waiting on a small Coop order. It should be here tomorrow. Yay new plants. More pictures coming soon somewhere in forum.

Have you tried selling some? Depending on where you are or your willingness/ability to mail them you could make at least a few bucks profit. Always keep the best ones for yourself though.

Thank you. I may just do that for my other plant corner. I caved under pressure and impulse bought a light. Turned out to be a good buy. No finicky internal timer to worry about or bypass, the build quality is good, lamps stay put, the bulbs are replaceable, and each light has it's own power switch. So if you don't need both you don't have to waste any power. When the plant collection grows a lil more I'll get a tank light and save myself some hassle.

@Odd Duck Florida 😁 Thank you for the i.d. Now I can google it and find out which of the weeds I call flowers they are attracted too. Quite a few of these have picked that spot on the house to emerge the last couple of years so am curious as to what makes it so special. It's not sheltered and is right next to the water spigot.

Raccoon at Dunk Donuts chowing down on the stray cats pile of food. Oh and new a butterfly in my yard.

For those who have the wifi timers from Aquarium Coop, kasa also makes surge protectors. I bought the small on last month and so far so good. The usb ports are not timer capable, but the actual outlets are and can be programmed individually. They also have a bigger one that has a couple more outlets.

I know many people who have tanks also have a houseplant obsession. I somehow kill all indoor plants I've tried, until discovering anthuriums. Either there's too much sun/heat or not enough in my house. So I have been trying to find a good full spectrum clip light to expand my houseplant collection. But it has to be compatible with the kasa smart power strip I have. So far I haven't found one that reviewers say comes back on with an external timer as most of what I saw have built in timers. Ideas? Do you have the magic answer as to where to find one? Or know of one that will turn back on if you don't use the built in timer?

Flowering plants need red light to do their flower thing. I don't know about lilies but some terrestrial plants can take a year or two to mature enough to flower. I do know that if the plant has to spend all it's time making new leaves, then it won't put energy towards flowers as it's already putting all it has into new leaves and/or roots. Plants also like to take ya by surprise. Hope for the best and with proper nutrients and light one day like an anubias, poof there will be a flower 🙂

On accident once. Hahaha. Was doing a tank swap and left a few inches of water in the old tank for like 6 days. Went to finish emptying it and found baby fish in the vacuum bucket. The trick is to remove the eggs or remove the parents. If they are well fed and water is clean, then they are probably spawning already but someone keeps eating the eggs or maybe the filter flow is impeding the fertilization. You could try a spawning mop so you can just move it with the eggs still attached to raise up the fry for a couple months. They are extremely slow growers. Aquarium Coop fry food and very finely crushed flake brought mine up just fine. As long as they are well fed and there's lots of hiding spots they don't seem to predate much on fry. At least mine haven't gone after the cherry barb fry yet. Good Luck!!

Small spider and some wild turkeys in the suburbs.