Cheryl P.

I've got a ton of extra tubes from Easy Flow upgrade kits. I'm wondering if anyone has come up with some creative uses for them. I saw someone glued some together to make hides for small fish/shrimp. Any other ideas?

Thanks for this! I've ordered around 40 Easy Flow upgrades since they've been release and I've noticed a few from the first ones I got were getting clogged. I use oxygen to pack my fish, so I hooked up the airline and blew a quick burst through them. Now they are good as new!

Greetings fellow nerms! We will be vising the San Diego/Los Angeles area March 15-21 and I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations on fish stores, aquariums, events going on, ect. We're also into reptiles so if you have recommendations for them as well, that would be great!

First, let me say that I understand that the EL means End of Life and that's just an indication that the heater has been in use for a year and doesn't mean that the heater is malfunctioning. So I've reached a point that a couple of the OG Coop heaters are starting to flash EL. The heaters are still working and I'm not particularly worried about them but the flashing is kind of annoying. Has anyone come up with creative ideas on muting the display? I could just turn the heaters around, but then I couldn't see the temps.

I noticed this on one of my platinum angels this morning. Any ideas of what it is and best treatment options?

I have a group of Corydoras duplicareus that spawn pretty regularly. They don't make it easy to pull their eggs since they tend to drop them in the substrate instead of on the glass or in a spawning mop. Because the eggs are really sticky, the substrate sticks all over them. My question is, should I be removing the substrate from the eggs and risk damaging them or should they be ok? Also, bonus picture of a snail cruising around with an egg on his shell. I was tempted to leave it there and see if he hatched it 😄

I need to vent a little to people who will feel my pain! 😏 On Friday, I started smelling a burned plastic smell and immediately took up a search to find the culprit. I found one of my tanks, a 65 gallon, had started a slow leak and an ill-placed surge protector was getting water in it. Luckily, the leak had just started and we were able to salvage everything without much of a mess. A bit of good luck! We just bought 2 new 75 gallons on April 9th from Petco. They had substrate and water in them but I was waiting on an order from the Coop with supplies to finish. It hurt my soul a bit to break down the well planted and established 65 gallon but I managed to get all the plants, fish (2 discus and 3 angels), and decor nicely settled in the new 75. I had planned on working on summer tubs this week but I was now resigned to resealing a 65 gallon tank. We had bought it used so I figured it was just one of those things. Today, I was upstairs doing some maintenance and feeding fish when I heard my husband yelling. I rushed downstairs to find the brand new 75 gallon tank that I had just set up for my leak refugees absolutely hemorrhaging water out of the bottom. W.T.F. We scrambled to moved everyone again and do damage control. We had to bust out the shop vac and towels to keep the water from traveling too far. At least we still have the second (hopefully non-leaking) 75 gallon to use. Unfortunately, my smaller discus was injured in this move. I've put him in a hospital tank with salt for now but I don't think he's going to make it. I'm not sure, but I think a rock may have fallen on him while he was trying to hide. 😔 While doing a post mortem on the 75 gallon I found a 10 inch slit down the middle of the silicone on the bottom of the tank. I'm not even sure how that happens! I think it was only easily visible because some of the black gravel got stuck in it. The tank should be easy to take back to Petco and swap it out for another but to add insult to injury, we don't have a car that can fit the tank. We originally rented a truck to pick up the 2 we bought. I'm hoping a friend can help us out with transport. I am so grateful that this happened while my husband was home. He's due to fly out for work tomorrow. It would have been so much worse if I had to do this all by myself!

Yeah, I am a bit worried about a pump for the waterfall sucking up fry. I was thinking of maybe building a sponge "box" around the pump sort of like a prefilter. I don't think I'll need a large pump so I'm hoping it won't be too much of a problem. I have a really great idea for the waterfall that I want to try my hand at.

I'm going to do my first summer tubs this year and I'm pretty excited about it! I picked up a couple of 110g tubs that were on sale. I plan on doing custom waterfalls in each tub. Anyone have any feedback on a good brand/type of pump to use? Also, what type of filtration (if any) do you typically use? I have some platinum rice fish and WCMMs that I'd like to put in the tubs. Would putting them in the same tub be a good idea or should I stick to one species per tub? I'm hoping for a lot of babies and I'm not sure if predation between the two will be a big problem. I'm planning on bringing in/selling most of them in the fall but I want to leave some out over the winter to see if they make it. We live in Western PA. Any tips for a first time summer tubber?

I went to one of our local club auctions in Youngstown, OH today and what do I see? A trio of Vienna Guppies! They came up at the end of a very long day and I managed to score them for only $6. I wasn't really looking for guppies but how could I pass them up?

Ok I finally got around to doing more testing. It's definitely the light that is making the heater's display fluctuate. I took a video of my very scientific test 😉 The T8 light and the heater are plugged into different circuits. I start out with the heater in a bucket and it's working fine. When I move the bucket close to the light the LED goes nuts. Moving the bucket away makes it go back to normal. So @Cory, if you ever see this issue again, have the person check their lights!

I've read that kuhlis don't reach breeding age until they get 4 years old. I'm not sure if that's right as there is not a lot of info out there on them. They are one of my bucket list fish to breed. Let us know if you have any success!

Congrats! I recently got a group of 7 pygmys and put them in a well planted 20 gallon. I'm hoping to see babies one day. Let us know how they do!

I put a picture in my original post of the only info that was on the lights. They are older style 48" T8 fixtures that came with the tanks when I bought them. We did replace the original bulbs with Phillips brand LED ones.

Ok, I'm glad I'm not the only one confused here 😆

A mercury what? I'm a bit confused as to what you are referring to. If you are talking about a thermometer, the heater is malfunctioning and is not stable. A thermometer isn't really going to help the situation.

After some more testing, I've narrowed it down to definitely the light fixtures. When they are both unplugged, the issue doesn't happen. When either of the light fixtures are plugged in, the heater goes crazy, regardless of which tank the heater is in. The fixtures must be putting out some bad juju that's messing with the electronics. I don't think it's stray current as there isn't any way I can tell that current could be getting from the top light to the bottom tank. Weird stuff. This might be an excuse to order more coop lights 😏

Last year I bought an old store display that came with all the equipment. I wanted to replace one of the heaters, so I busted out a brand new Coop 100W heater to add to the top tanks in the display. At first everything was fine, then in the morning I saw the heater acting all wonky. The LED kept jumping around to different numbers. Assuming it was a fluke problem, I emailed customer service and got a replacement. In between the issue and getting the replacement, I decided to use the top bank of tanks for a few species of goodeids that don't need heaters so I didn't use the replacement in these tanks. Fast forward a few months to last week. I realized that my room temp dropped a little lower than I wanted so I decided to put a heater back in the tank to bump up the temp. I grab a brand new Coop heater from my stash and plug it in. Next day, BAM!, wonky heater issue again. Ok, so now I'm confused. I still had the original heater that I had this issue with (because, you know, I'm a hoarder like that) and I put it into a 5 gal tank in my kitchen. It works fine. I take the new heater that had the issue and put it in a 5 gallon bucket and plug it directly into the wall outlet instead of the surge protector I was using on the big tank and it was fine. So I was thinking maybe the surge protector is off. Just out of curiosity, I moved my bucket-o-water over to the tanks and plugged the heater back into the same outlet on the surge it was in before. Again, it works fine in the bucket. Now I'm really scratching my head! I decided to give a different surge protector a try. Switch everything out, put the Coop heater back in the top bank of tanks and plug it back in. Immediate wonkiness. For science, I moved the heater to the bottom row of tanks and plugged it in. Still wonky. So to clarify, in a 5 gallon bucket on the floor, both heaters work fine. Put it into either of these tanks and they go nuts. The only thing I can think of is that the light ballasts might be interfering with the heater? We replaced the bulbs with LEDs when the originals burned out. Also, the standard 100w eheim heaters that came with the display work just fine. Thoughts? @Cory have you ever come across this?

Yeah, that's how I have always seen RRFs growing before. I was so disappointed when I saw what was actually in the bag! It's a good thing I only paid a dollar or two for it.

Hey everyone! I'm curious as to what this plant is. I bought a bag of it at auction labled "red root floaters". I didn't look at it before bidding but when I received it, they were way smaller than any red root floaters I've ever seen. Any ideas? They kind of look like the giant duckweed I have in a different tank except for the red undersides.

I only use instant ocean for my brine shrimp. I started out using Fritz aquarium salt and the shrimp were hatching and then dying right away. I switched to the instant ocean and now they survive until I harvest them. We have a water softener in the house so I think that was the problem. The instant ocean replenishes more minerals than regular aquarium salt.

I'm filling out paperwork for my local club's AHAP program and I'm not sure what type of crypt this is. They have been in my tanks for years. I'm not great at plants but trying to get better 😊

Oh man, I totally forgot about those! I even commented on that thread 🙊 It looks like I need to go shopping for some containers. I have everything else I need for the setup. I'm thinking the people that had M-blue crash the cycle used it in the whole tank. I didn't know you could just dose it (or H2O2) a few times in small amounts. So much good info. Thanks a ton!

@Fish FolkI do have methylene blue but I read it can crash a cycle so I haven't used it yet. Is it best to move the eggs into a different tank? I just assumed that the water they were spawned in would be best for them. Should I not use a tumbler? I've not heard of using peroxide. So many questions! The good thing is that they spawn easily in my 220g so as long as I'm faster collecing eggs than the other fish I'll have another chance. I'll get it right one of these days.

UGH! My silver dollars spawned on Wednesday and I was able to collect hundreds of eggs and plopped them in an egg tumbler. It's the first time using the tumbler but everything was looking good. Last night I forgot to sort out any bad eggs. This morning I woke up to a moldy mess! It seems that the screen on the Ziss tumbler got clogged up with moldy eggs and stopped tumbling. No bueno. Most of the eggs were a total loss but I did find a handful that looked decent and had already started to hatch. I'm hoping they make it. You better believe I will never go to bed before checking the eggs again! 😔