looney_trout

This the other tank in the living room. 10g. Old incandecent hood using cfl lights. Safe T Sorb substrate. Started out with an Aqueon HOB filter with an intake sponge as well as a second sponge filter running off of air. Same air pump as the 45g. Sat pretty much empty for a while. This one (as well as my other 10 I'll be posting about ) have always had black beard algae problems that creeped up. This one got it the worst Below pic Is one of it's better days. The next pic below is what it looks like now. I am going to work on it but there's a good chance It's going to get switched out for the 20g tall in my bedroom and use this 10 for more propogating plants. Might start trying to sell/trade off some of my extras to fund the hobby as I hate having toss out plant cuttings. Probably won't end up a very interesting tank. No pic unfortunately of what it looked like when I started hacking out a lot of the BBA but it was pretty bad. i'd clean it up or cut it out and it would keep coming back. Since hacking it back a couple weeks ago, I've had a diatom bloom. It's had some ramhorns in it the whole time. I added 5 or 6 more ramshorns from another tank to start combating the diatoms. Left sponge filter was removed and allowed to dry out to kill the BBA. Been back in for 2 weeks. My other knock off Ziss aiar stone has been running on the right side for a while. The CFL bulbs had become quite old and were looking a little dim. I had a couple household 5000k led light bulbs I switched out in the. Did brighten it up. Have to see how it goes. Bulbs didn't quite fit so had to find a longer screw to get the plastic cover over the bulbs. Added a few more cuttings of blue hygro and a stem of wisteria to start getting some more plant life in there. The bronze crypts have been in there forever and have never done anything other than exist instead of growing. Stuck a couple root tabs under them and still haven't done anything in like 3 weeks now.

I quite like the look of 2 substrates together after staring at it for a few days now. I'm still not a fan of this pea gravel. it's the vigaro from home depot if I remember. I have about 3 or 4 non chain landscape/garden stores around me. I'm going to hit up in the next week and see what I can find for potentially another type of fine gravel and or some stone to put in there. Time being I'm still going to switch out the whole substrate and then go from there. I can always take some out.

Got back into aquariums pretty heavily a little over 4 years ago. Grown to 5 tanks. Since about 6 months ago they've all become a bit sad and not great looking. Big need of a rehab. FInally motivated enough to get started on it. Been cleaning them all up good and starting some plants over since the beginning of the year. They all look the same now with all the same plants and I want them all to look different. This post center arounds the 45 In the living room. 36 inches long, 12 inches wide and 24 inches tall. Same foot print as a 30 gallon but it's 5 inches taller. Biggest challenge is the lighting with it being so tall. Current inhabitants are 1 upside down cat, 15 endlers, couple ember tetras, couple neons. I know the embers and neons need a larger group but until I get the tank back on track, I don't want to add any new fish. Until I get my 20l and 40b started, I don't have a quarantine setup. Been setup with a HOB, pea gravel substrate, T5 lighting of a SunBlaster fixture with a Geiseman Power Chrome Super Flora bulb. Also a Tetra AP150 air pump running sponge filters on both tanks. Corey's vids always talking about running air stones for years got me back into running air stones. I was always using undergravel filters til about 10 years ago when I got a canister filter and started phasing out air. The filters on all my tanks are needing impellers or replacement so I'm converting to all air and sponges. Best pic I could find. I never took a whole lot of pics of this tank. September/2020 which the following pic. Fast forward to March 12, 2023 and we have the pic below. Not a pretty sight. Although I am impressed with the Java moss. LFS put a small piece in a bag for shrimp to hold on to. Shrimp ended up not making it but I got the moss to grow. I pushed it out of the way in the pic but I have an entire bottom of a 3 foot tank worth of Java moss. Going to try and trade off the majority of the moss and incorporate some into the redo of the tank. I didn't completely remove the HOB but I turned it off and took out the intake. I'm leaving it attached to the tank. I'll just be using it a couple times a month for a few hours to polish off the water. I added one of my DIY sponge filters. When it gets established, I'm going to replace the left side sponge because it's huge and takes up too much space. The tetra ap150 puts out a ton of air. I added just an air stone in the middle. The right side has a knock off of the ziss no clog I found on amazon. Not near as nice as the ziss looks but it works great and now I know I can order a bunch of the ziss ones. Impulse buy and no shipping which is why I grabbed them. The knock off isn't weighted nor does it come with any extra discs. Has to be hidden considering it's bright blue. 3/23/23 I started switching out the substrate. Never really liked the pea gravel, it was just cheap and before I started using Safe T Sorb in all my tanks. Way back in the 90's I would use a blasting sand with my oscars. Can't remember the name but there's a good chance I used the same Cemex stuff Corey uses. heard that name in a vid and googling it , looked darn near identical to what I used to use. I've always wanted to use that stuff again in a tank. Couldn't find it locally and the freight made a 50lb bag like 150 bucks with shipping. I have a cemex concrete plant locally to me and I couldn't get them to answer an email or call me back if they could get me a bag. I found a local abrasive place that sells to the public. I paid 5 bucks for 100 lbs of a course blasting sand called "Alabama Sand". They do coal slag blasting media as well (like black beauty) so there's some bits of that mixed in. Looks almost identical to Caribsea Carolina Creek. pic for comparison. Looks nice in the tank. Wish the brown and tans would show through better. Pretty white looking. But it's grown on me and the upside down cat seems to like rooting in it. I'm sure it will darken up some as it ages in the tank. I only pulled out half the original substrate to avoid a crash in the cycle. About 10-14 days, I'll pull out the rest. I may incorporate some of the pea gravel back in down the line or hunt down to more interesting looking stone. Carolina Creek from Caribsea Alabama Sand In the Tank The above pic is with my 4ft hydrofarm t5ho light I've had for like 10 years and was on a 55g that was my first serious dive into planted tanks. Brought it with me when I moved from Denver. Wanted to see with a different color temp. Dawned on me to turn on the color enhancing bulb also. Looks pretty nice with the 2 bulbs. Pic below is with the 2 bulbs. Might be on the lookout for an led in the red spectrum but I think I might be taking a page from Reefing. Have a hybrid t5/led setup with the color bulb and a couple 6500k led strip lights in a simple canopy. I came across a thread on plantedtank (I think) where someone made reflectors using aluminum roof flashing that comes in a roll from lowes/hd. I love DIY so I'm going that route. Works out on this tank then I'm going to adapt it to at least a couple of the my other tanks as this approach will be about 10 bucks per fixture. The above pic is the newest photo. I've divided up that java fern. It was mostly one clump that grew across the substrate. There was one little Java Fern Trident plant mixed in with it but isn't visible in the photo. Moss is filthy from pulling out the old substrate. Water change tomorrow and i'll try to vac it. How it's going to look for the next couple weeks. I want to get it to where I'm getting plants to grow decent again before I think about really any sort of scaping.

Yeah after seeing corey's video recently about how to actually use a TDS meter properly, I want one. I'm pretty stoked if my well water is actually good. I'm not burned so much as bored and this definitely brings my interest back. All my tanks are cookie cutters (i don't toss plants when I thin them out) and I want to do them all different. Otherwise I should probably take some down. When I get closer to at least being able to redo the lights and substrate on my 45, I was going to start a journal of all my tanks. I even have a 40b and 20L I bought 2 years ago sitting with the aqeuon cardboard still attached I haven't got to yet.

I can't find the paperwork on the well that said how deep it was. I want to say it was about 30 feet which is assume is still considered shallow. Good to know that I should be testing more often if I want to go this route. I have a 3g cube (no fish, just snails and plants) that's my tinker tank and will actually go ahead later and change out the water to the well to see what happens over a couple weeks before I start doing anything to the tanks with fish. I did do a test a little while ago straight out of the spigot after letting it run for a few minutes since it hasn't been ran in months. little to no gh and kh which isn't surprising to me being on the gulf coast. Going to have to add some crushed coral or something it looks like. Ph was around 6.5. got some aerating right now to see what happens overnight.

Ok cool. good to know. got a sample bubbling away and will test tomorrow to see what the results look like. I'm curious about trying to breed some fish like apistos and everything I read says high ph they either won't breed or the hatch is super low to none.

Thanks. I know test strips aren't the most accurate but the colors on the strips correspond pretty spot on to what the water report says. Tap water after 2 days with an air stone doesn't shift the ph with how high my kh is. Everything I like to keep plant and fish wise all really do want a lower ph. New world cichlids (my favorite fish) have never really lived very long in my tap water and same with a lot of plants despite having decent nutrient levels and adequate to even higher light. Only thing I can think of is the whacky tap water I have may be a factor. Fish and plants are adaptable but it's worth a shot. And I only plan on doing this on 2 tanks to start with before I go all out on all 5 (soon to be 8 haha).

My city water has almost no hardness and high ph (over 8 ). Test strips confirm this. Water report says they add sodium hydroxide (very high kh) to raise the ph. I'm in coastal Alabama I do have a well and want to switch over to that for the fish. I won't know til tomorrow how much lower the ph is on the well but it runs around 6.5 if I remember right. Pipe cracked over the winter during a freeze and just now fixed it with the weather warmed up enough. Is my regular water changing schedule (25 percent or so once a week) fine for getting the fish used to a lower ph? Currently I'm keeping endlers, pristella tetras, cherry barbs, upside down cats, neons and ember tetras. I'm only asking because all the fish I currently have have all been in 8+ ph for a long time (some 3 years) and curious if I should go slower or not.

2.5 gallon tank filled weighs like 30 lbs and 10g have very thin glass. 10 probably would not hold that much weight on top. Even if it did, I'd bet the seals would fail down the line. Adding in some dividers on the 10s would be a better option. Dont' know what your setup looks like in order to offer any better advice. Pic would be helpful. with approximate dimensions. like heights of the rack space between the top of the 10s and the bottom of the next shelf up.

I saw they have those battery pumps now. I was planning on picking up one or two once hurricane season starts in a couple months after I get everything set up and going. When Sally (or Zeta maybe) came through and I was on a generator for a few days, I just ran the filters about 8 hours a day and the lights on each tank in 2 hour shifts. No plant or fish loss. As the other reply says, I have the Whisper AP150 running the 2 in the living room. Has tons of air to spare running 15 feet apart and have to bleed off the rest. Why I think the 300 might be enough. It still looking like 2 pumps is probably best. I haven't used a lot of pumps but used them since the 80s. Up until I got out of the hobby in the mid 2000s. They never wore out, minus the diaphrams, so I used the same Whisper Challenger (pre tetra brand) pumps the whole time. Kick myself a little for selling them off when before I moved down here. But I had switched to all hob or canister in about 2012 when I got back in. I'm going to build the racks from 2x4 and enclose them so HOB or canister isn't going to be fun to maintain. I'll have 8 tanks running so simple and easy is what I want. Then I don't get lazy.

Originally, I was going to do 3 tiers to my rack but the top will so tall I have to get a ladder out. Which translates to me not wanting to do maintenance unless I force myself once the newness of the setup wears off. 2 tiers I can just use a step stool If I have to do anything major with the upper tier. I run a whisper AP150 on 2 tanks in the living room. A 45 (24" tall) and a 10L. They are about 15 feet apart and I have to bleed all the excess or it just boils. 2 sponges on each. I run hob as well but I'm going to take those off. They also need new cartridges and one needs a new impeller as well. I'll just throw the hob on for a while a few times a month just for water polishing. Considering how the 150 performs, I figure the 300 model might be enough. I had planned on pex instead of pvc since I can get much narrower pex. Less volume to pressurize and drive the sponges. Or just using the pipe as a sheath to run the airline through for a cleaner look.

Currently have 3 in my bedroom. 20H, 10L, and a 3.5g cube. 3.5 is going to get moved out to the kitchen. My filters currently (canister, hob) all need replacement or parts like impeller and media. I've got an empty 40b, 10g, and 20L that I want to put in here. I'd rather just run them all off of sponge filters for simplicity instead of fixing/replacing my current filtration. One side of the room will have a 40b, 10L and 20L on a rack. Other side of the room will have 20h and 10L on another rack. 100g total for tank volume. Like to run a air drop type setup. There will be about 20 feet between the tanks running the line along the walls. I'm thinking the whisper AP300 will work. There's also a brand pawfly that has a big one that seems sufficient. I don't know how well a large diaphram pump will work using an airdrop type setup. If a single diaphram pump isn't up to running that length of lines I can go with 2 pumps. Piston pump is way overkill in this situation. This setup would simplify my life in a power outage. Live on the gulf coast and after going through 4 days on a generator, a single plug to power all the filters would be way better vs several extension cords and pieced together power strips.