MattP

"But we do get nights that drop down to 55F to 60F those nights, I open the windows wide to get fresh air flowing and cool down the rooms. The heater will kick on during those nights. " wow sounds like some pretty big temperature swing. I don't worry a ton about temperatures becusse I primairly have goldfish but two of my other tanks have tropicals. I try not to let their tanks get below 60f. Again that's nice thing about the inkbirds. They are able to set the temp of the heater to 60f.

"Boy, is it loud and hummy" this seems a little different from my experiences trying canister filter but Ive never used a sun sun hw-303a. To me it seems the canisters are pretty quiet. I'd describe is as making less noise than a hob. But most the rhe noise from hobs comes from the waterfall. I have recently added a few diy waterfall diffusers to my hobs to quiet down their waterfalls. The nice thing about caniisters is their output can be placed right below the water the make it nice and quiet. Perhaps the impeller on the sun sun is just a little louder. I've always wanted to try one of those sun sun canisters.. perhaps it will get a little quieter after it's filled up with media. right now I have an old hydor pro 350. I used to have a 450 size too but that ones kaput. Hydor is a defunct company now but that 350 size canister is still going. It's doubtful I'll be able to get a new gasket for it though.

I have a few canisters which are placed in a plastic bins as a safety measure should they spring a leak. I don't use a lid though. Some of the bins I've used were selected to nicely fit underneath the aquarium stand but also spacious enough for the canister to sit in. When it's time to clean the canister I just disconnect the hoses and jank the canister out of its bin. When my canisters have leaked in the past it's always started as a slow leak and slowly filled the bin up buying me lots of time. One time I ran a leaky canister filter for several months and just used my water changer hose to drain the bin before it got too full. Eventually I replaced that canister. Currently I don't have any leaky canisters which is nice. The bins are there should the inevitable day come when the gasket start to fail. There's sand substrate in my aquarium which has got onto the gasket before and caused slow leaks. the sand can destroy those gaskets too so it's good to be careful and avoid it getting onto the gasket.

I I have three of those inkbird ITC 308. I like inline heaters if I can incorporate them but they require some sort of canister filter. I have two of those. One is an old 300w hydor inline heater which has worked reliably for years. The other inline heater is an Amazon special called Datoo EH-300. It's a Chinese sort of no-name brand which likely is available though various branding. That one has lcd display readout. Both of those get along fine with my inkbirds and dont seem to quit working. I believe the inline heater is just a robust design. The inkbirds are nice because I can set the temp lower that the lowest default settings of the heaters themselves which is 68f. I keep my goldfish in an unheated room and set those inkbirds as low as 47f to put those fish in torpor during our frigid north east winters. Those inkbirds also work great for cooling. I use one to control a window mount air conditioner with analog controls for cooling in summer.. the inkbird controlled AC keeps the room and all the tanks in there no hotter than 74f in summer. I used to let them get crazy warm (85+f) but I didn't think it was great for the fish or the room. It reduced evaporation too. The other heater I've had good luck with is the topfin H series submerged filters. They are not the topfin CH series. Those ones are junk. The H series heaters are at petsmart. Select the appropriate wattage. They have Grey colored rubber caps and internal color. These just seem to last even after I've noticed a little moisture ingress inside the glass tube.. these topfin H series heaters have outlasted many other glass tube submerged type heaters I've tried so I've kept going to those for tanks that don't have canisters. All my heaters get taken out of service during the summer months when the ambient temp alone keeps my tanks warm enough. This probably helps them last longer too.

It looks good. Does a yone have it?

This sounds like a great idea. I'm looking forward to seeing your 3D printed design. I've been thinking about my sling hanger and have noticed a potential failure point. It's the tubing hanging down off the pump. If these were to fall off they could fall down below the waterline and potentially start to siphon. Perhaps your 3D printed design could incorporate a tubing holder so that the tubing cannot fall down. To remedy mine I'm just going to use some string tied to the tubing which is attached to the wall.. in the event that vibrations cause the tubing to fall off it will be unable to fall down too far. I had some green yarn and used a whipping knot to tie it to the tubing. I just hung it off the same nail as the air pump. Now I can rest easy knowing those cannot possibly fall down. Later I moved the green yarn behind the pump.

Goodluck with it.

Just give the fluval 307 a clean... nice filter. What exactly was your problem again? Algea isn't bad per se. It can actually help to filtrate nitrates. How many gallons is the tank? I don't think you have to sweat anything man..

Hmmm 🤔 Theres a lot going on in there with the plants, tadpoles and tannins. I don't think the foam is anything to worry about but it's a little unsightly. I used to use these surface skimmers from ali express but honestly I never had a great experience using it. They become clogged and stop working eventually. After they're cleaned they work as intended. the whole unit is suctioned cupped into the back of the tank so cleaning it was little annoying. You gotta jank the whole thing outta there and wash it out. Sometimes the suction cups would give way and it would go down into the tank. I used a little fluff of polyfill in them and also a tiny bit of carbon pellets. It works better just with poly-fill. There isn't exactly a ton of room for filtration media in those. I never bothered using them with the little bubbler thing. That's the part attached with tubing. It did work, it just wasnt great to deal with. Later I started using top fin pro hob filters. These have a handy little surface skimmer built right in. I like this better because I get a surface skimmer but also get a whole filtration system. I still have the JY-03 skimmers but have abandoned using these in favor the the top fin pro hobs pictured to the right. So to summarize the surface skimmer will mechanically filter some of those excess proteins making it to the top of the tank causing the bubbles.

The water change is fine as long as you temp match. I use an infrared thermometer. If you have city water you'll want to use water conditioner with the water change.

Need I say more?

OK I was messing with this again last night. I wasn't crazy about it hanging from the power cord. Later I changed it with some paracord from dollar tree. I made a sling thing. So it's a French bowline knot. I was sorta lucky it worked with the specific of my air pump. That wouldn't work as well with a pump that has a rounded shape on the bottom. I did this with another pump and used some tape to hold the cord in place. It's possible a different knot could be used entirely for different shaped pumps. The nail is angled upwards similarly to what you'd use to hang a picture.. picture hangers work too. I'm pretty confident that this setup won't fail.

I have inkbirds too which I use to control a few heaters in the winter but this summer I decided to employ one the inkbirds to control an air conditioner in my fish room. I found a window mounted AC with analog style controls used for $30. It's a very plain style of AC which just a switch and potentiometer for control. its not the type which uses an lcd display with digital control buttons. I didn't think the digitally controlled AC would cooperate with my inkbird controller cutting the power on and off. Anyway, I have it hooked up to the inkbird and regualte the temperature that way.. I just set the probe out near the middle of the room somewhere. It works great. It just kicks the little window mount AC on and Off automatically. This setup is only for keeping the room and tanks cool during summer however.. its set to 74°f. All my tanks are staying about this temp for summer. I suppose I could set it higher should I want to run the AC less and maybe save some electricity. I'm not sure about what your exact requirements are though OP.

Bummer. Sorry to hear of your tank troubles.

The tank looks good! The substrate is an excellent home for nitrifying bacteria. I think trying to cycle without fish is too hard. The issue of trying to cycle a tank by dosing ammonia alone is that it's not continuous. The bacteria needed to maintain the cycle will collapse in a domino effect once the source ammonia is depleted. With the fish-in method you have continous ammonia to feed the cycle. But you gotta keep the parameters good enough so it doesn't, youknow kill the fish. The first one is always hard. The aqarium co-op store has the most excellent testing strips to make easy work of testing your params. So I would do intermittent water changes and doses of water conditioner so it get too spicy in there for em. Let the cycle set in nice and gentle. As for stocking options you could do like 10 neon tetras or something to start. Or 5 for a more conservative number. Those are great in a 20 long. They also look pretty cool in a planted tank like that.