daggaz

In the early days of the internet, Johnny, the webpages were all white text on black background (or like IBM blue) and you just scrolled down and down and down, there werent really much buttons or inner pages or tabs or whatnot. Also normal people with like 2% computer skills were making them, so they just included every cheesy 1992 computer graphic you could get, all 16 ugly cgi colors, flashing colors, hundreds of different fonts and font sizes, all on one page like Word just got real sick and horked all over the place. It was a dream come true. It was hell on earth for epileptics. It was internet, 1992.

Meanwhile the big advantage is the majority of tanks will trend towards acidity due to the typical chemical reactions that are occuring in them as food and waste are broken down.. having a bunch of crushed coral or similar substrate means your buffer levels are automatically replenished, more so the lower your tank dips, and dipping is simply made harder because of the buffer in the first place. So in a tank where you dont do a lot of water changes, or where any replacement water is carefully pre-conditioned, its generally going to be a good thing to have in there. (I used seashells and some chalk-bearing flint hardscape collected from the local seacliffs, as well as lime buried in the substrate). You just can't use it like a crutch, giving no thought into what is changing in your tank. That said, my tank is maybe a little wee bit too high in pH and I wonder how it would look if I could nudge it down just a smidge.

Ooh, never even thought of mold. That sure is interesting!

Wait.. the slime comes back? 🙃

Your AOB is alive and well (keep feeding it or it will eventually die back if ammonia is all gone for too long), your NOB is still getting established just takes some time. Remember that once you are "cycled", it's only enough bacteria for the current waste levels, so add new fish slowly at first and wait for things to clear before adding more. Also, prepare yourself for the coming algae wars. Your pirate shipwreck is going to look fabulous, covered in slime. 😅

Im gonna make a website that scrolls down infinitely as you add content, with a black background and flashing colors and at least 15 different font sizes, because they exist.

When I google some question about our hobby, I get a TON of websites popping up. Some of them I know are established and trusted forums (like CARE), but the vast majority seem to be copy/paste AI garbage or at best, just really cheap commercial sites with very little depth, set up only as a bait-n-switch platform for a gross number of popups and other ads. Is there any kind of list for this, or can we build one? I really need to set up some filters, I am tired of getting internet-herpes every time I look at a fish. 😷

Also, if you managed to breed otto's, you would be pretty lucky. They are exceptionally hard to breed in captivity, apparently. (or is it even possible? my understanding was that it wasn't, but there's a bunch of contradicting claims online that it can be done. )

Curious why you include "all the plants" in that.. Plants are a filter, both in removing nitrates and trace minerals from the water column, but also as a huge surface for bacteria to colonize. Having more plants means you could get away with having less filtration, at least to a point.

Having any bacteria in the water column, in large enough quantities to be visible, is not a good thing. "Good" bacteria, the ammonia and nitrite eating types, colonize surfaces. If they are up in the water column, they will be landing on your fish's skin and gills and your fish now has to pump out extra mucous and put its immune system on overdrive to keep healthy and clean. That stresses the fish. That's true for any bacteria, by the way. Getting those good bacteria in the water column is also not very likely, if you didnt just dump your filter bioload into the tank during a cleaning. Its far more likely to be other types that feed more directly on food waste. In this case, it indicates you need to cut down on the amount of nutrients (food, rotting plants, animal waste) in the water column, and/or you need to increase your filtration.

There shouldn't be any alcohol in the discard, you need anaerobic conditions for yeast to produce alcohol. That alone will kill your worms. I doubt the pH would be an issue, either, this isn't a strong acid by any means. Strongly suspect your worms succumbed to something else, and oxygen supply would be the very first thing I would double check. Dumping an abundance of yeast into an aquatic environment, in the absence of aeration, will quickly deplete O2 (but not so much that you produce alcohol -you will get acetic acid in any open container over time). In the future, if you just heat the discard and kill the yeast before hand, it would make perfect worm food.

I posted my journal describing my first tank, and how I built an isolated undergravel filter into the dirted substrate. So far it's working fantastic!

Kuhli loaches are largely nocturnal. The other fish aren't. Try dropping the wafers etc in when the tank is dark and "sleeping", which will also let your loaches feed under more natural and less stressful conditions.

I like the sketches immensely. ☺️

[doubt intensifies]

Oh definitely. I'm not making light of that, I hope you understand. I'm pretty sure we're all on the same continuum.

my pH is about 7.5 or so and my plants are rocking.

Good news, everybody! I've invented a new device that can measure feelings!

Ultimately, even tho its nothing like I imagined, I love how the tank ended up visually. It is divided (hard to see in this picture compared to real life) into a light and a dark empty space (left and right sides), where the right hand side of the tank is heavily shaded by the lily, the algae that I let grow thickly on the otherwise sunlit tank side, and the floaters that get pushed into that corner by the powerhead. My catfish LOVE this area and patrol it regularly, hiding in the midplants when necessary. The left hand side is kept clear by the powerhead and so has full lighting, and is dominated by the school of CPD's, who do not hide at all. The two amano shrimp just cruise all over the place, as do the siamese algae eaters. We love our tank, and television is a rare thing on worknights. Just relax, cuddle, and talk while looking at fish.

And fast forward to 5.5 weeks... I introduced some shrimp as soon as the nitrite stabilized at zero and the plants got the nitrates down to about 10 ppm (about 4 weeks) and they flourished, so I started to repopulate with fish. I lost a batch of chili rasbora (still not sure exactly why) but otherwise, everybody did well. I'm keeping an eye on things and will start to monitor the various cations (I have hard water and I dont do regular water changes at all), but honestly it's night and day as far as how things look in there compared to before. The water is yellow from tannins and the light coming thru the proliferating floaters, but my parameters are extremely stable and organisms are absolutely thriving. I have added blackworm and tubifex worm cultures, and had hoped daphnia could also manage to hide and survive, but my fish eat them in no time. I am culturing various microfauna in a tub now for further ecosystem culture introductions : detritus worms, anthropods, isopods, copepods, etc.. I have currently 3 siamese algae eaters (small), 2 hillstream loaches, 1 chili rasbora, 20 CPD's, 12 neo cherry shrimp, 2 amanos, a nerite snail, and 5 glass catfish. All thriving. I'd like to get a bristlenose catfish (possibly), some kuhli loaches (definitely), some hatchet fish, some more chilis, and I am looking at a pearl guarami possibly as a stand out fish. I would love some murder beans but I am not sure if I want to risk it. I also want to get some of those red and white ramshorn snails, but I want to make sure I have some fish that will keep them in check, first. Kuhli loaches? Murder beans, definitely...

aaaand then it crashed. RIP, Casper. The main problem was my powerhead got blocked in the outlet (there was a plastic crosshair in there for absolutely zero good reason) and this killed circulation and so oxygen saturation. But I was also resisting water changes because I was incompletely informed (high ammonia/nitrite levels are going to stall cycling) and I had no idea what was happening to my plants (emmersion melting). It all came together fast tho; we had huge slimy brown strands of diatom hair algae growing on everything including the glass, and the water was primordial, and the pH went super high (from the excess lime I am sure), and the water temp went thru the roof and things died. I did a 95% water change, and these picture are immediately before this. Well. I hit the book and started thinking about what was going on, learned some more about my plants, and quickly realized the error of my ways. I bought lights, a timer, got some fertilizer, and I bought a LOT more plants. I added a small airstone (might take it out eventually but im super cautious, now). The tank actually "cycled" shortly after the crash (about three weeks in), but gradually over the next few weeks it started to just flourish...

2) The mistakes. I made three big mistakes at this point. a) I forgot to add a layer of crushed charcoal and potash. Impossible to go back now, but I wont forget next time. This mistake is minimal, however. b) I did not immediately add enough plant biomass. I was stressed and going too fast. c) I did not immediately purchase stronger lights and put them on a timer. b+c are where I should definitely have spent more time, before researching fish, on researching PLANTS. Here as well I would have realized I should probably use some fertilizer. Anyhow, we got off to a fair enough start, a short bacterial bloom on day three, but it cleared right back up again and we swam easy for a good two weeks. At this point I have 10 zebras and 10 chili rasboras in the tank.

Then the second "hybrid" part. I put down a layer of about 1 mm lime, and added a stratum of heavily decomposed woodchips found under a tire swing in a local forest playground (guaranteed in my country to be be organic ie free of chemical additives), and layered this with a healthy pile of dry oak leaves from the previous year, also recovered from the same forest floor. I added some more mineralized lakebed soil for good measure. The tank constantly trickles out CO2 from the bed as this material decomposes. Then I covered it with the forementioned sand, and added hardscape: rocks and branches from the local beach, didnt bother washing them except the for the rocks found in seawater, which were lightly scrubbed under fresh water. After adding hardscape, I added about 5 liters in all of fine sand, water, and living mulm, recovered from a local high-clarity lake in my nordic region of the world. We added a scattering of seashells from the same beach, then we filled the tank.

Then I fill the substrate accordingly. In this case, I made my own rather than purchasing from around the world. For the soil, I used mineralized lake bed soil, a peat-moss/potting mixture with high pH and some added ferts designed for blueberries, gardening lime with chelated iron and magnesium, blood meal, bone meal, and some osmocotes randomly distributed. For the sand, I used at this point a mixture of washed beach sand (course moraine with some minimal seashell components) and a finer silica-heavy sand from a local playground at the uppermost level. For the gravel, I used a variable sized (but fine to small) washed pea gravel, again from our playground.

Hello everyone. This is my first tank. I wanted to emphasize low maintenance and high biodiversity ("natural self-sustaining ecology") because I love complex systems and because my own life is one of them, with 4 kids and a high impact job.. So I went with a dirted tank, heavily fertilized ala Father Fish, to potentially overcome the short term problems with conventional Walstad tanks, with an eye on having a beautiful garden in the living room that requires pruning more than regular high volume water changes. But I also let myself be influenced by David Bogert of Aquarium Science, who makes rather strong points about the importance of filtration surface area and how easily accessible UGF technology is to a beginner in this regard. Other notable favorites in my literature search, where Cory from Aquarium Co-Op (why I am here) and Alexander from Fishtory. But ultimately, I went with my own intuition and understanding, based on my background in microbiology and chemical engineering.. 1) UGF in a Dirted Tank? Impossible? No. (but lets see how this evolves) I start by finding a suitable plastic tray to sit in the substrate, which will isolate the UGF from the surrounding organic and fine particulate materials. I've got a 100 cm x 40 cm tank bottom, I think this tray worked out to around 20% or so of that surface area. I wanted to end with around a 3 inch substrate level (FF 1 inch soil 2 inch sand), so I cut it to about 2.5 inches in height.