daggaz

I think you should call the crayfish "Pinchy McMurdershrimp".

Hmm. I used cotton in my hardscape project, and the thought did cross my mind that it is biodegradable. But it's getting coated in superglue... How long until my underwater construction projects collapse?

They're not the most active fish, even at night they just kind of hunt around on the bottom for the most part, until they find some food. Then they sit there and eat all the food. Then they poop. A lot. They "sleep" pretty much all day. I just realized that my teenaged son is in my aquarium. 😩 The filtration will be the problem in a 20long, if there is a problem.

I meant, I didn't buy any yet. Most of my fish are nano or just have small mouths, so violence is at a minimum. Including violence aimed at food. The biggest daphnia enjoy apex grazer status, and can row around the aquarium with not a worry in their hearts. So I didn't buy any mosquito larva yet (other than the bloodworms once), as I don't want to have a swarm of them emerging from the lid one night.

Yeah I've got some "tanks" going with various microflora infusoria cultures going in them and some jars with green water culture off to a good start. I was really hoping that daphnia would be able to establish a living culture in my tank, but alas. My fish are too hungry and the water is probably too clean.

Limnophila sessiliflora is attractive, easy to propagate, and grows like an absolute weed. Other than the frogbit, it's easily the fastest growing plant in my tank and needs pruning at least once a week.

Your fish would eat ALL of my fish 🤣. Beautiful!

After a discussion here about crushed coral, pH buffering, and KH ramping, I decided to go buy a KH parameter kit (i'm slowly collecting these things, fun!). My tank is heavily planted, and has about 60 fish of 7 species and 13 or so shrimp of 3 species. It's a low-tech dirted tank with a UGF inset in 20% of the tank bottom. Everything is thriving now. pH is around 7.5, CO2 is surprisingly bouncing between 12 and 20 ppm despite no CO2 injection (I have rotting woodchips in my heavily organic substrate). And now... the drumroll please.... KH if I may have your envelope... ... KH is 16. So the really funny thing is, I went and checked my tapwater too. We used cold water straight from the tap to fill this tank (no chlorine thank you wonderful home country!) and I knew it was hard because it hates my coffee machine. But I also have a lot of gardening lime and a small amount of seashells + chalk-bearing flint rocks in the tank. So I had to look... Drumroll please.... Tapwater KH, if I may have YOUR envelope.... .... LOL my tapwater KH is 18. Yes, I was very careful with the dropper and the volume measurements, as well as rinsing everything before hand in the liquid to be measured. I might repeat the titration with a proper uL-precise lab pipette, but I am fairly confident the measurements are relatively accurate. So my tank, if its true, has actually lowered the KH a little bit. And my fish and plants seem pretty happy now! I might need to build a cichlid tank... Anyhow, the adventure continues. I'm happy to hear any comments or concerns. I am admittedly new to this. And yes, I will keep an eye on the KH and see how stable it is.

Yarrrr, thar she goes, tha great inhaler!

I always amaze my eggs.. 😛

Yeah sounds like your iPhone isn't accepting cookies for this site, at least.

Sounds like a good plan to go terrarium with this one. For the matter, does anybody have a link to a good guide on DIY aquarium building, that also details glass type and thickness?

Did you give him the chair??

It's from the barr report forums, the full description is posted in some aquaculture journal.

My local fish shop guys told me, and I have been doing since with zero problems: 1. Poke 3 to 4 pinholes in the bottom of the bag (be careful not to stab fish, you can tip the bag). 2. Float the bag with the holes down; the oxygen remains trapped above and keeps the bag inflated. 3. Wait a good hour. 4. Clip open the bottom corner of the bag (again carefully), and gently scoot your critters out. This works with shrimp, and my tank is a filthy filthy naughty swamp who keeps lighting the grail shaped beacon and must be punished, but I digress.

PS none of my fish died. Great success!

So I bought bargain bin old superglue (cyanoacrylate), made in China, and we pieced some stuff together. I couldnt get the gel stuff, so it was the good old drippy drippy glue your fingers together stuff. I found that putting a small dab on the hardscape in the areas where I knew it would be in contact, then applying a _small_ amount of cotton fluff, then dripping that one or two more times, and then applying the next piece with only minimal pressure before letting go, worked best. For clean up, I just pushed the exposed cotton in with the tip of the superglue dooter, putting a few more drops in, and then covered with sand. Amazing how well this works, I never in a million years would have guessed!

Well that was fun! We built a few houses, ultimately had to pick carefully because what with all the plants, there just isnt a lot of room for new homes (and I didnt want to fill all of the in-between spaces with rocks, catfish gotta have comfort, too!). I had an old "house" that was heavily favored, but it was a piece of crystal and only had room underneath for one or two fish assuming they didnt fight. We pulled that out, and replaced it with the pics from above. I was trying for a somewhat natural look, and I gotta say, despite the extra floors/layering, it really just kind of melted into the tank. Our hillstream loaches moved RIGHT in, but first they had to fight some shrimp out of the way. I also pieced together some bits of driftwood, and made kind of a hollow box with some different openings and some stones to hold it down. Hoping the kuhli loaches will move in so we can actually see them -they rapidly disappeared into the jungle after day 1. I also tucked another big flat piece of wood in on the back, connnected (not glued) to the big rock house. Its got a big area for sucky-fish to suck on, for my fan shrimp to stand around and harvest, and underneat lots of room for whoever likes to live in a narrow gap between stone and sand. The walls are just lots of plants, so I like to imagine this will make an number of fish friends happy and comfortable. Here are some pictures (I kicked up some substrate putting them in). BOY! Gluing hardscape together is FUN! My kids have a new hobby, and want to glue everything together now. Good thing we collected a huge bag of rocks and I bought a lot of extra glue. 😄

Then how do plants grow completely submerged? Clearly that's not true (they bring oxygen down to their roots). Dr. Barr of the Barr Report is a renowned expert on aquatic plants, and is the one who developed and ultimately published the method. It's both, so don't go too low or ammonia will spike. I think 6.5 is often mentioned as a safe lower limit, but don't quote me on that.

Not sure if you know but I am guessing from your post that you arent familiar with dry cycling. It's developed by a field leader in aquatic horticulture, and the point is that you do fill up the tank but only to the lowest point of your substrate. One on hand, this lets the bacteria start building up (I believe Barr uses ammonia additives), but more to his purpose, it allows slow growing plants like crypts to develop their root systems and create a proper carpet, before you flood the tank and their growth is then hampered by a sudden lack of CO2. In a high tech tank, you can just amp the CO2 levels anyhow especially if you start fishless, but this is just a cheap and easy method that can be used if you have a couple months to let the tank sit and season in the first place. When you finally do flood it, the bacteria and the carpet plants are well established, and everything should be fast and easy from there.

honestly dont know how i read past that. I am too tired to operate heavy machinery today, apparently. but honestly, if the tank is clean and stable, they had food to eat (not just the little algae growing on the glass and rocks), then its probably not your fault. fish just die sometimes.

Hillstream loaches would look great scooting around on the rocks. Ottos would love those big leaves.

You sure about that? Will depend on what kind of soil he used, most of it is fairly close to neutral unless its from a pine needle forest or peat swamp (acidic) or full of clay and chalk (basic). Walstad tanks work in jars, after all. Otherwise its just changing the water on occasion if needed, which is made easier by the small volume. But yeah, if you are getting down towards 6 pH, you need to waterchange. I did read past that detail: low pH stops ammonia oxidizing bacteria from working.

Well, if you like the "big rock" tanks, and you like the flowing river idea, why not combine them? Put in an undergravel filter with the uptake and a good powerhead in one corner, then build a rocky streambed with some big pieces in the back wall, and let the flow bounce down the entire length of the tank before returning up the otherway along the bottom. Put in some hillstream loaches and other fish that can enjoy a bit of a current. Bonus points if you disguise the uptake/powerhead in hardscape.

So dirt will definitely help advance your cycle. You don't have fish so you don't have to worry about nitrates so much, your plants will just eat it. The 100 ppm is a rough safety limit because eventually too much of it will affect the bacteria growth as well (nitrate is the waste product of the nitrite oxidizing bacteria) so as you can imagine sitting around in too much of their own waste isn't advantageous. This will also help restrict algae from taking hold in this stage as anything that is plant food is also algae food. Having too high of ammonia can affect nitrite oxidizing bacteria as well, and while I havent seen clear literature on it yet, having too high of nitrite will probably affect the ammonia oxidizing bacteria, too. When you do a 50% water change, assuming your tapwater has no ammonia, nitrite, or nitrates (well water for example often has nitrates in it), then the ppm's in your tank of those substances will be halved. It's not something to sweat about, you can get away with never doing a water change or only water changing on occasion, they are just shooting for optimal conditions there. Ultimately, the bacteria are going to come to a healthy balanced population and your tank will be cycling nitrogen, it just takes time. As far as your plants melting, results vary. I've had air-raised plants totally melt, and others get going without a hitch once submersed. My own experience with littorella is that it doesn't really melt, but it's slow growing. My eleocharis completely melted, but new grass is coming up from the roots. Dr. Barr developed the dry technique, so you gotta assume it just works if done correctly. One thing you are probably going to want to do is get some fast growing plants in the same day you fill the tank, and a lot of them. You can take them out later if you want, but they will help keep your tank from algae crashing by taking up nutrients. Get some floaters there, too, excellent and easy to maintain for this purpose.