Jump to content
Watch our video on the rules of this forum.

Brandy

Moderators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,760

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    24

  • Feedback

    0%

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Brandy

  1. Brandy
    I dream of having a big tank that is hooked to an aquaponics system, and runs the sump thru plants AND a fish food culture at the same time. This will not be happening in my current apartment. 🤣
  2. Brandy
  3. Brandy
    I have that generator system. I have filled the bottles with reagents once, and with passive CO2 I think it is going to last me a looong time. I made a pex J hook that I slip under the floating CO2 chamber, and I am filling 2 pint containers daily. One thing you will notice with this system is that some of the air you get at first is not straight CO2. You will have whatever room air was in the bottles when you filled it to get rid of, and at first you will fill your container and half will dissolve into the water quickly, but then the rest will just sit there. Burp the container and refill with CO2, and you will be rolling again.
  4. Brandy
    I am going to just link to this here for future reference. This is what I very much needed to hear, and I think what many people need to hear--that if you really have checked your water and are treating, there is an element of this that is beyond anyone's control. Guilt and feeling stupid are terrible things that make people want to quit. I don't think this video can be linked to enough. Thanks @Cory for this, and thanks @Daniel and @MickS77 for saying it before the video dropped.
  5. Brandy
    Cholla took a long time to sink for me too. I finally stuck a small rock in the middle of the largest piece to help hold it down. Regarding pH and coral/argonite. Depending on the starting pH and hardness of your water that can be a slow shift. Be patient there. The mechanism is that more acidic water will dissolve the coral/argonite and as it does will raise the pH and GH/KH, and the process will slow. If your water is fairly hard with close to neutral pH it will take longer to have an effect. This is a good thing, as sudden shifts are harder on the fish. If you keep adding more and more you may blow past your target. How long has the argonite been in there?
  6. Brandy
    I am looking forward to watching this progress, I think it will be really cool... but you lost me at historically accurate food and maintenance methods. That sounds like WORK. 🤣
  7. Brandy
    So, I am new and I don't know much, but I have a planted tank with guppies and sponge filter, 3 planted tanks with integrated internal filters that take a space behind the rear "wall", and a planted tank with a canister filter. I think your plants don't need a filter at all and the shrimps probably LOVE the sponge. What the internal filters (which function a lot like a HOB but are just more hidden) really do for a planted tank is: add some flow (something you probably won't want a lot of for shrimp) that can theoretically keep plants freer of certain types of algae. improve water clarity by adding a high rate of mechanical filtration (if you add filter floss or a polishing pad) I do like the ability to collect debris conveniently and whisk it out of the tank. But I don't honestly think my plants or fish or shrimps care. It is a little like a roomba for your home. It is convenient. A broom also works. The sponge should keep the tank water healthy with appropriate stocking and water changes.
  8. Brandy
    I have seen this at big box home improvement stores.
  9. Brandy
    So, I just used their first pad to cut myself a perfect cardboard template, and will cut all my future filter floss. Then I used some biorings, purigen, their coarse sponge that came with, and their floss. I reserved the carbon filter bag for a future use, as I don't want carbon unless I am pulling meds from the water on purpose. It doesn't seem impossible to cut your own if you make a template first, but it might depend on how perfectly you feel you need the hole to match and how hard your media is to cut. I think you could cut an x or a square and then just stuff some floss scraps around there if you are not feeling crafty. There isn't an actual tube--it is just a part of the filter basket. So it doesn't have to thread thru after it is stacked.
  10. Brandy
    That is awesome. To dose a smaller tank you could just dilute the easy green...Some day, when we all start traveling again, I foresee this becoming an important tool in my house.
  11. Brandy
    In other news, I need to make friends with a Seattlite who owns a pea puffer....
  12. Brandy
    Hmmm... @Cory Interesting that you would say that, since those just magically appeared in my tank after receiving plants from Aquarium Co-op! Lol, thanks for the bonus. (It's not a bug, it's a feature!)
  13. Brandy
    yeah, a little acetone/rubbing alcohol or similar can help clean up the places you want the silicone to stick to. Something volatile so that it goes completely and leaves a squeaky clean and dry surface behind. I actually received a cracked tank from amazon. They refunded the money and didn't want me to return the tank. I siliconed the crack and it is fine. It was a tiny crack on a tiny tank, but for a free rimless tank, I decided to risk it. It was actually really pretty quick.
  14. Brandy
    I have read that hair algae can mean excess iron, but you probably aren't dosing extra iron. If you are I would cut that bit back a little. For my tanks I fave noticed 2 kinds of "hair" algae. One that is green is very strong...like actual hair when you touch it. One is brown and shreds if you touch it and feels slimy. I don't think the brown is what is meant by "hair algae"? But I am not sure. Anyway, the brown seems like it grows crazy fast, but I kinda thought it was just a new tank thing. I am trying to be patient. The green showed up in a 1 year old tank and seems to grow very much more slowly. I just manually pull it out and it is not a problem.
  15. Brandy
    I wish you lived nearby, I would be happy to host! 🙂
  16. Brandy
    Possibly, you just have a few amanos and a few neos. The bad news is the neos will breed, and of course, the amanos won't. I would understand if you got a few bonus shrimplets of the wrong species from a hobbist who had a mixed tank couldn't be bothered to get the hitchhikers out of the sale bag, but selling one species as another is rotten.
  17. Brandy
    So, I think I have passed the danger zone. No more losses, everyone eating well. I ended up with 11 out of 15 as a survival rate. Just going to plug keeping that quarantine trio on hand at ALL times! I will wonder forever if I would have saved any had I started treatment the MOMENT I saw a fish not eating. I did use the full recommended dose of Paraclense and Maracyn, given the symptoms.
  18. Brandy
    Guppies. I like other fish, I really do, but nothing seems so happy as a guppy, and they fill almost all the roles in a tank.
  19. Brandy
    +1 on the cascade for cheap. I have only had mine about a month, but seems to do the job. Chewy has them cheaper than Amazon at the moment. super quiet. the suction cups that hold the (optional) spray bar in place are a little whimpy, but otherwise great
  20. Brandy
    today I discovered that in addition to the Nerites, bladder snails, and mini ramshorn snails, I have the full sized version of ramshorn newly introduced to one of my tanks. Given that that tank is in need of algae help I am not remotely dissappointed.
  21. Brandy
    I have both rimless and framed tanks. This time around I was originally VERY pro rimless. What I really like about the rimless tanks is the ability to plant above the water line and have unbroken visual flow. But the price is a big detractor, and if you need a lid you might as well hide the water line behind a frame anyway. If I was doing it over, I would actually buy/build rimless in larger sizes to really maximize the paludarium opportunities, and keep the nano tanks cheaper. But I had to try the little ones to see how and when it really mattered to me and when it really does not. I do have some neat clips that I got on amazon that makes a sheet of glass into a lid. But for my case that defeats the whole point.
  22. Brandy
    I was sick. The school nurse had a 20g tank in the resting room (nap cots) FILLED with randomly breeding guppies, and a billion little dark rams horn snails. She saw I was fascinated and explained that they kept having babies and that was why there were so many. She said, "I should take some of the plain ones out so that I would get more of the bright ones but I am too busy" and in that moment I was hooked on fish, genetics, and selective breeding in the same lightning bolt. My parents were not at all excited about any of this. It took me a long time to get my random guppies. Along the way I bred a lot of mammals, and kept a many fish. But I never put the two together until now.
  23. Brandy
    It is a sickness, not being able to just keep things simple. 🙂 Like who even am I if I just follow the directions mindlessly? The nice simple, EASY directions, on EASY Green. That I bought. Because it promised to be EASY...
  24. Brandy
    I do not think this is the store's fault. AT ALL. I agree with Daniel, this is just the breaks of it. I have considered having them shipped direct to me, in a massive number, just to shorten the chain by one step. I was talking to my kid and we agreed we have never seen robustly healthy tetras in a store, anywhere, in 3 states, unless it was in a "display tank" they don't sell out of. Over the years I have bought them from mom and pop stores, and big box stores, and everything in between--a glutton for punishment I guess. My survival rate is usually 60%, but after that, you are right, they are rocks. I never tried treating them in the past, but lately it has been worse and so I am trying harder. Mostly just increasing my cost per unit fish apparently. Lost 3 overnight, but the remaining fish are all active and eating. Fingers crossed. It is what it is.
  25. Brandy
    Seems to be my luck lately too. Maybe they have COVID-19. Sorry, that may be insensitive. Please pardon my gallows humor.
×
×
  • Create New...