Dandy Pearl

The colors and goodies of Christmas 🎄

Have you tried frozen foods? I had not used them and just started this year. The fish LOVE THEM. I started with San Francisco Bay Brand Freshwater Frenzy and Baby Brine. I have added mini-bloodworms, brine (full size) and Freshwater-Multipack to the rotation. For everything except the Baby Brine, I drop the cube in about a 1/2 cup of water until the cube sinks then drop it in the tank. I just drop in the baby brine. The smaller fish love the smaller foods while the bigger fish like the bloodworm sized foods. I like this mix as it covers the bases of carnivore and omnivore equally well as bottom feeders. I also feed a combination of flake, algae pellets and Vibrabites. It's a little pricy, but most if not all of my fish are what I call specimen quality photogenic a.k.a. they are beautiful with amazing fully developed color. Pick one food, try it out for a while to see how it goes and repeat until you find something your tank likes. Have fun with your fish!

Nice, I just got my second type of Killifish between Christmas an New Year. The first was a single Golden Wonder from my LFS. The second was 2 pair of Aphyosemion Australe's bred by a fellow club member! Have fun fish keeping!!

I have a tank with traditional inert aquarium gravel and is planted. Stem plants which feed from the water column and plants like Anubias and Java Fern should all do well without needing root tabs. You will also avoid the spikes from enriched media harming your fish. This is the the route I would go. Even if you go with enriched media, eventually it will run out of nutrients and you will have to add root tabs. By using the above mentioned plants you can get that established before moving to root feeding plants and root tabs. With the inert gravel approach, you can drain the tank down 50% add substrate. wait a month do another 50% water change and add plants. Another idea for plant is to use the Co-op's easy planters. These make it much easier to add root tabs to if you want root feeding plants sooner rather than later. There are many ways to do it and non really wrong, but you definitely want to save that bacteria!! Good Luck!

Time for another update. I have ripped out all of the Hydrocotyle tripartita 'Japan' as it was starting to take over the tank. I was an amazing 'carpeting plant' but it was taking over. I did move some of it in my other tank, If I ever want to bring some back. I thought I've been suffering from low light. I ordered a 15" Fluval 3.0 Plant from the Co-op to see if it would be a candidate to replace the 24 inch. Sadly 2x 15" does not equal a 30" light. My issue with the 24 inch light is that it does not cover the ends very well causing dark spots on each side of the tank. I did a bunch of research and thought the Hygger HG-957. It was a 30" light as opposed to a 24" light. Sadly it is dimmer at max output than the 24" Fluval light. I think ALL LED light manufacturers cheat when they give light lengths. There is Always and 1-1/2 to 2 inches at each end of the light that doesn't have any LEDs. This contributed to the dark ends of the 24" light. To solve my problem and get the amount of light I deserve, I cheat the 24" past one side of the tank, and add the 15" light cheated off the other side of the tank. This arrangement puts LED's actually from edge to edge of the tank. The funny thing is, if you look where the inner edges are between the 2 lights, they actually line up!! 15in light with LED's lined up with the left inside edge of the tank. 24inch light with LED's lined up with the right inside edge of the tank. Overlap of both lights, top view Actual overlap of the lights - None / perfect alignment! This actually lights up the tank properly. (The color was changed to take the pic) Shows the measurement of the 15in light fixture. The overall measurement with the brackets is 15inches. 14 inches is what could be lighting your tank. This is the control end. Notice the loss of 2 inches!! Here is the other end, you're getting ripped off 2 more inches!!! Being an engineer I can understand how you need to lose the 3/4 inch at each end to provide a mount for the edge bracket rails. However, 1-1/4 could be made available for LED's. The same thing could be done at the controller end by 'remoting' the control electronics some by some means. This was a design choice for the product to have every thing self contained an symmetrical, at the expense of a great loss of light at each end of the fixture. The 'throw angle' of the LED's should account for this, in theory, but it doesn't. You can easily see where there is light when the fish swim in and out of the beam, especially closer to the top of the tank. My new setup is clunky, but I get full left to right coverage AND intensity AND spectrum AND controllability. I guess I'm just to needy. 😕 😃 Happy Fish Keeping! 🐟

Happy Holidays Update! It's been a while and since I have the time, I thought it would be good to update you folks on my progress. The CO2 valve on the regulator seems to be working okay. It is still extremely touchy, but I've got it dialed in to a 'good' amount of CO2 as demonstrated by the Dennerle CO2 test from the Coop. Most of the plants are doing okay, but I seem to be struggling with a few of them specifically the swords, dwarf hair grass and Ammannia Gracilis. The Scarlet temple doesn't seem to be growing, but at least it still looks good and is not dying. If I had to pick the plants that are doing well, it would be the Hydrocotyle tripartita 'Japan', Corkscrew Val and Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus. The Octopus seems to grow in any tank, so I'm not doing anything special there. This is a full view of the front of the tank. It is certainly much more full than the pics above. You can see how the H. Tripartita has taken over the bottom of the tank. I expected the Cory's I put in there to root around but apparently the Betta I have in there loves to 'tunnel' around as well. This is just a fun shot of my Betta and Honey Gurami playing around. They are definitely tank buddies. In this shot you can see the stem of the octopus on the left. I needed a tall green plant to look at instead of the black walls so, back in it went. You can see the Scarlet Temple just to the right of it. It's not doing badly, but it's not thriving either. I see roots sprouting but no real new growth on top. I'm suspecting this is a lighting issue, as I have some water lettuce up top shading this area out. a bit combince with a 24" light which is 3 inches short on each end. Next to that is the Ammannia Gracilis. It is not doing well. I'm suspecting a calcium deficiency, but I really have no idea. If anyone has any ideas, please help me out. Maybe this has to do with the light as well. The Java Fern seems to be doing okay, but not thriving either. This is the same plants with a little closer shot of the same plants. This is roughly the center back of the tank. The crinum seems to be doing okay, but the tips of the leaves are brown. I've given it at least root tabs, but it still doesn't look like it's thriving. You wouldn't know it but there is a sword plant just to it's right not doing well at all. The Anubias Nana Petite I glued to the rock seems to be very happy there and so does the octopus growing from behind the rocks. Tucked down in to the left of the Crinum is a Cryptocoryne Tropica which seems to be doing quite well. It has very dark green to olive colored foliage. There is a very sad looking Ammannia Gracilis to the left of it, which you can't really make out in this pic. Here is another Cryptocoryne Tropica from the same pot clustered closely with an Anubias Coffeefolia toward the front of the tank. The Crypt seems to be doing fine. However, the Anubias here seems to be some green spot algae growing on the leaves and some other unidentified dark spots. The front of the tank was covered in green spot algae before this picture was taken, I had scraped it off the glass. I'm not too worried about these plants. This is the only Ammannia Gracilis which seems to be recovering. It actually has some new growth at the top. This is what is making me believe this is a light issue. I had a lot more water lettuce in the tank recently, but pulled out all of it to get rid of some duck weed. I put some back because I like it, and I want some place for the Beta and Gourami to hide. I may need to get rid of it all together if I want my plants to grow. You can just barely see one of the red melon sword leaves where there is a white 'stem' passing over it. For some reason, swords, are not doing well in this tanks. I've put a couple root tabs in this area as well to help the Crypts the sword and Crinum. In this pic you can also see some sad dwarf hair grass. I've tried this plant in two different tanks so far and I have yet to crack the code. This shot is more on the right side of the tank now with on stem of Ammannia Gracilis showing signs of life Yay! There is a stem of Scarlet Temple next to it doing the same as the others. You can kind of see, on the Gracilis, the brown and 'shriveled' leaves. It is not very photogenic at the moment. I purchased this Cork Screw Val from a LFS and it is doing amazing. It was 1-1/2" tall when I got it, It's now 18" tall! I think this is the best example of how bad the light is on the edges. In this pic you can see the 18" val right next to val that is 3/4 tall. This val came from the same pot planted at the same time. I think this speaks volumes where a plant 4inches away is not thriving as much as the one getting more light. Now for some details. I have the CO2 coming on at 6:30AM shutting off at 5PM I have the Fluval 3.0 light start coming on at 6:30AM to full on at 7AM shutting off at 7:30PM with full off at 8PM. While on, it is on 100% all 'colors'. Temp: 25-26C pH: ~7.0 dips down to ~6.8 due to CO2 injection Ammonia: 0 Nitrites: 0 Nitrates: ~20-30ppm Phosphate: 1ppm Potassium: 15ppm (just started dosing supplement to boost from 10ppm) CO2: ~20ppm 'Good' according to 'checkers' Due to the low'ish Nitrate level, I just dosed Easy Green 4 squirts for the 37g tank. I have not been using Easy Green because all parameters were 'in the green zone'. Maybe there is a Micro nutrient deficiency? I have a 15" Fluval 3.0 light coming from the Coop for a Quarantine tank (over kill I know) to see how two of them may fit on top of this tank. The plan would then be to purchase a second one for both lights in tandem to better cover the width of the tank. If I still don't have enough light, I can put the 24" back on and really put the shine on!! Is all this necessary for this depth of tank??

@Schwack and @quikv6 are correct. Aquarium silicone is only good mechanically for long flat wide surfaces like joining the faces of the glass. It is not good for short, narrow plastic. Even if you use epoxy, I would not use it alone, I would use a reinforcement patch over the crack to give it extra mechanical strength. This could be a temp fix until you can afford a new tank.

I purchased a 24" light for a 30" tank and am disappointed by the lack of light at the edges. I should have purchased 2x15" to go edge to edge. That said it depends on what you plan on doing with your tank. Do you want 2 lighting zones or 3? Do you want to manage 2 lights or 3? Good luck with your tank!

Your biggest challenge is going to be your temperature / heater controller. This can get tricky if you are not handy. Good luck with your project.

I'm not sure of the size of your tank, but if it is big enough to have a center support I'd say it's a good size. I had a 72g bow front crack in exactly the same manner and shortly thereafter it broke entirely. Nothing catastrophic happened, but I did replace the tank within the week. That center support is in there for a reason. It's not just there to support a top or light. I would replace the tank as absolutely as soon as you are able. The longer you wait the more you risk a major failure. I have not heard of anyone successfully repairing something like this. Well, anything that is worth looking at. If you drill it for an added support brace, you create a stress concentration where it will fail. You could epoxy a piece of plastic over each crack with at least an inch over lap on each side of the crack. You will of course need to clean the area extremely well to ensure good adhesion. The problem is your lids will no longer fit unless you do this repair from the under side. It should go with out saying, but I'm going to say it any way, This type of repair will be horrible for fish if you perform it with fish in the tank. If you think soap is bad, how about fumes from epoxy xxxx for fish!!! That's why I'd simply go with a new tank. Less risk of death or other catastrophe. I wish you luck with your situation.

Take it as a lesson learned the hard way. Those lessons are often the most remembered...

I'd be more concerned about the soap residue than the rust. ”Back in the day” people used to bury nails in their tank gravel to supplement iron. Wipe the rust away with a new scrubbie reserved for your tank with some water and keep them dry between use to help keep the rust from coming back. Have fun with your tank!

I agree with @Jack.of.all.aquariums.@Jack.of.all.aquariums. you can keep the media where it is if you like it. If you still want to swap it, keep the gravel submerged in tank water when you make the move to keep the bacteria alive. Don't rinse it when making the transfer. Good luck with your tanks!

You got it. I've found that on my tank as well. Consider it a sign that you are doing something right!

Unfortunately, like the folks who broke in, there as some inconsiderate and not so nice people in the world.