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Brandy

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Brandy last won the day on June 11 2021

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  1. Dosing in food should ease the amount of kanaplex getting to shrimp and snails, but could you possibly catch a portion of the invert population and put them in a container of any sort? If they need the exact water that your tank has you could even put them in some floating breeder boxes and just feed them separately. Insurance against total losses. Alternatively, I've used a sort of tank within a tank trick to treat just one fish, and avoid dosing a giant tank. You do daily water changes with preconditioned tank water and the temp is stable... Anything water tight that fits works. I've used a 1 gallon pickle jar before. Not with the lid! It stuck out of the water. Not sure if this will help, just a way I have gotten around incompatible dosing.
  2. Arguably if your sponge is slightly bigger than your tank you can also just cram it in there and it will stay. But it's hard to get it as straight and pretty.
  3. Hi! So I still have the fry sorter set up and what I did originally was overly complicated, because the matten sponge I had didn't fit my tank. However I have a second matten filter in my 125g, and there I did what I probably should have done the first time. I cut the sponge mat to the place I wanted it to go, then I cut 1 inch strips of plastic and siliconed them into the tank. The plastic I used this time was black "starboard" leftover from a boat project, but previously I used white PVC trim from Home Depot that I spray painted black. Thick glass would also work. The idea is to glue in some "tabs" to hold the sponge in place. here is the tab from the front: And here is a terrible pic from the side thru the glass. Blue arrow pointing at tab Hope that helps! Also, just so you know, you WILL NOT need additional sponge filters. The matten is plenty.
  4. Photo update. Well established mts colony. Added plants, mostly grown by me in other tanks. The long grass is actually dwarf sag that came in my coop care package last year.
  5. The substrate is a range, very shallow (1in) at the front to a couple of inches at the back. I have the acaras in a 40 breeder for now, which has 2 inch substrate. I was just not really able to get them established in that tank. My hope is to have a large population breeding away in the 125 before I begin the massacre, and maybe they will be able to cover the losses. The ramshorns don't have a chance.
  6. They will eventually move to their own tank to breed at maximum warp. Right now, the angels are eating fry as fast as they arrive. The big tank was supposed to be an acara display tank, but my dear adult kid "gifted" me with teeny tiny angels so, I gave them gentle tank mates rather than throwing in the acaras immediately. I have to admit, the fact that the acaras will not suffer a snail to live is really frustrating. I have been seeding the tank with MTS as fast as I can grow them, but I hold out little hope that they will survive once the acaras move in. They are beautiful fish but messy eaters, and something needs to clean that up. I have corys, ottos and a Synodontis for a reason. The plan is a display for the acaras and angels, and the beloved Synodontis. The rest are just there to clean up! fortunately, the Acaras have shown little interest in chasing the spiny otos or corys, so fingers crossed that it continues.
  7. Yeah, my understanding of pressurized tanks is that the output pressure is plenty high, controlled by your regulator, and a manifold is not that hard, but what would you need after the manifold? I assume you need to be able to balance your flow rate at each tank like with any manifold. Would you just time bubbles per second or something to balance them? Some (non-aquarium-related) systems I work on have complicated mixing valves that will give you precise flow rates of different gasses in deciliters per minute. But I understand pressurized systems for aquariums don't require that kind of precision.
  8. No matter, we all have opinions. I don't run it, but I like learning about others who do. Let's focus on the OP question. I too would like to see PHOTOS OF SYSTEMS. Get cracking people. Pics or it didn't happen! 😆
  9. What about splitting those? can you run co2 on multiple tanks with a simple manifold?
  10. AAAnnyway. Everyone has their favorite system. I had nano tanks and I originally used a very cheap diy system like the video @xXInkedPhoenixX posted. I found that I prefer low tec for nano tanks. Maybe some day I will go for a gorgeous tank like @Mmiller2001, but for now I feel like nano tanks are easy to plant without using high maintenance plants. Does anyone like the little fluval systems? I always thought a clever person might be able to rig that to diy co2 and break the dependency on canisters.
  11. Yeah. The other fish were eating them so fast I had less than a minute to get them moved. It was a bit of a rodeo. But I've got free swimmers this morning!
  12. So update, the tank is coming along.... You will notice I've broken with all my plans... There are breeder boxes in the corner and despite my best intentions I have live bearers in the tank. It's temporary! I swear. However, I needed a place to grow them out and I needed something to help eat the first wave algae... Stocking list is currently: 12 otocinclus 4 angels 7 albino Corys 12-ish platies 1 Sysdontis eruptus (I love him so much) a billion snails Angels are getting bigger... And just for completion: the resident fry Platy babies Cory babies (lost many eggs to fungus, may have been infertile):
  13. Interesting, I kinda love air. Why don't you like it? Aesthetics or something else? I would run every tank with sponges or matten filters if I could. I like the simplicity of no moving parts. My 125g is running with a corner matten actually, but it's powered by a submersible. The flow rate for air was just too low on a tank that long.
  14. How do you even see CPD fry? I'm hatching Corys for the first time in the ziss, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anything so tiny that was a multicellular organism. Yet I am fairly certain they cannot get out through the mesh. However that may have to do with their egg yolk sac. Hmmm. I may be in trouble. Edited to add: I may also need glasses. 🥸
  15. I think I have really pushed the envelope on this lately. My tanks tend to be plant crammed, and when I moved my ambient temps went down. I have a lot of unheated or lightly heated tanks, and they are cold now. Plant growth has slowed waaay down, since I also slacked on fertilizer. Except I have floating plants and sometimes terrestrial plants growing out of the tanks (tradescantia, pothos, begoinia maculata) and those are all growing like crazy. I also produce shrimp and snails from those tanks. I pull "waste" out in the form of feeder snails, and duckweed. Now that I have a duck and chickens, I never have to put it in the compost. Water changes keep inorganic salts from building in the water, theoretically...Unless your tap water is super hard and your plants are actually effectively using all that--then you might be adding salts. Or, like me, your tap water is basically DI water, and you want every mineral you can get to stay in the tank! I scored a free tank covered with hard water stains--years of them, you could not see thru the glass. My solution was to fill it with water and stock it with snails. They are gone. I mostly top off until the mulm gets swirly and annoying. However, that is not going to stop me from drilling about 15 tanks this weekend for my future auto water change system. Because laziness is not just a philoshopy, it is a way of life! And carrying buckets is less fun than watching fish.
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