Brandy

That's great! I have RCS, started out with 8 females, one male, and 2 tiny newborns that I didn't expect to even survive. They made it though I didn't even see them for 2 weeks. Recently EVERY female was berried, now all but one are saddled again, and I have tiny shrimp evvverywhere! So much fun! Also, that tank is now immaculate. I can't wait to get them a little bigger, so I can shift some to other tanks that have fish.

I had planned to make a small dish brine hatchery out of bits and pieces. Since I work in a lab, @Daniel's Imhoff cones were just too cool. Since I work in academia, they are also too expensive (though you can bet I will be haunting surplus). I found a hanging cone shaped vase on amazon that I hope will work, pack of 2 for $15. I will let you know if they work out. Thanks for all the fun ideas!

One thing I have found with passive CO2 diffusion is that the greater the area of interface between the water and CO2, the higher the rate of diffusion. I have little tanks, so I started with a little bottle--a 50ml conical vial actually. It diffused (I kept refiling it) but I couldn't see a appreciable increase in the dissolved CO2 in the water (using a drop checker) no matter how often I filled it. Then I switched to a wider mouthed container--a one pint gelato container or a half pint takeout sauce container, and bang, drop checker shifted to green, plants started pearling. The down side is I have yet to rig a slick way to keep the container neatly in the tank. I have a fishing line bridle holding it into a corner, but some of my tanks don't have tops and keeping it "down" means wedging it partially under a light or something. I need to engineer a better bracket.

Finished with the plants for now. I will probably raid the small tanks for some more christmas moss to put on the driftwood, and hydrocotyle tripartita japan, but I don't know where exactly to put that yet...I hope my vals get happy enough to fill across the whole back!

My kid came home from dad's, took one look at the tank explosion, and said, "I want one in my room." So back we went for one more. 😋

I also use free rocks--I am living in the land of basalt, and that is pretty safe stuff. I am a crazy/lucky person though, and found a beautiful maple driftwood root ball at the beach. It took forever to scrub, but since I am confident of what kind of wood it is, and willing to wait to stock with fish until everything sinks and settles, my hardscape was free. It is a risk of course. I could be wrong about the species of wood. I could bring in some horrible bacteria, and I wouldn't add it in an established tank. But there you go. I am sure some people would argue that I am insane, and they are likely right. Please don't use me as a role model. 🤪 On the other hand, wood and rock from stores was outside once too. There are lots of discussions of how to safely select and prepare it available online.

I am brand new to the aquatic plant world. I decided that I would like to have mostly low maintenance tanks in the long run, and I am trying to choose plants that don't NEED CO2, but I don't want to ONLY have anubias. I still see the value of a boost at the beginning, something I remember my LFS used to do in the late 90s, to get some of them them rooted and rolling along. So my super cheap low tech way to handle it was using diy 2 liter CO2 bottle system and passive diffusion like this Aquarium Co-Op video I saw of the Ocean's Aquarium fish store in San Francisco. Yeah, that means my tanks have a floating plastic container. I tell myself it is temporary. 🙂 I will try to embed or link the video...sorry if this doesn't work.

What if this was a 29 gallon? The thunderdome is exactly what I was afraid of. I was planning on a single angel adult and a trio or so of rams (only one male), with a school of smallish tetras. I would rather have more of both rams and angels, but I was worried about territory crowding in my limited space. I also considered just keeping one or the other, with the schooling fish. I like the juvenile idea, and I could move a few out to another tank--it would be a repurposed 10g QT though, so a temporary solution at best. Rehoming fish worries me...

I woke up to guppy fry!

More plants in the new 29 gallon... with a bucket more to put in. It got late. I love the bucelphelandra much more than I expected to. Somehow a photo just isn't catching how cool it is.

Yay, Seattle!

Hahaha, you went to the beach! This looks like more fun than the contortions I will be doing tonight, I just got some plants from Aquarium Co-Op!!

Lol, I might have considered the soda stream in the beginning myself! Love it. It sounds like it is just a bit of fine tuning for you then!

This pandemic has obliterated most of my life plans for the year, really hard on an overachieving control freak like me. I think the timing of my fish obsession is a coping mechanism--a pretty healthy one. Before this I was starting to drink like it was a sport. Fish>Whiskey.

I am new too, but I am a long time gardener, so I am new to fish, and the plants seem more intuitive. Personally I don't think it is possible to have "too many" plants, the plants are actually what led me here to aquariums. 🙂 I may be biased. I think plants can get overgrown and shade each other and cause the lower levels to die, but that doesn't look like what is happening in your tank. I wonder if your plants are getting enough fertilizer? You don't mention any, but if they are growing, then I would say that is a good sign! They must be getting some from your fish at least. I have struggled with fertilizer. I have found a test kit is really helpful for that. I have really heavily planted tanks, with low fish stocking (working on that!!). I literally never seem to have more than 5ppm nitrates and I am dosing with Easy Green. Most of the time nitrates are reading at zero. At first I assumed I had algae because I was fertilizing too much. Then I got a master test kit, which indicated that I actually may be fertilizing too little. If you think of algae as weeds, I think it helps--weeds are adapted to less than optimal conditions, and thrive in a crack in the concrete. Not so much your prize roses. On the other hand if you have lots of nitrates and your plants can't eat enough then the algae could grow too. I think it is a bit of a balancing act, so I have been keeping records, and it is helping me dial it in. I do use passive CO2 temporarily to boost some plants in some tanks, just to help them get established. I think of it like using row covers or tree supports in your garden, just boosting the babies until they take hold. I notice my plants happily pearling when I do that, so I know they are actively growing faster. I do get algae, but I think as plants fill in, they will begin to out-compete the algae, just like a mature landscape out-competes the weeds while a new one is a weed farm for a bit while you get everything going. Hopefully, someone with more aquarium experience can chime in. I would like to hear more suggestions too!

I just had to show my guy that the container of daphnia "milkshake" was not for consumption, or throwing out... 🙂

I don't know, they were in the tank when I got it I think, but I recently moved some floating plants from that tank to my new cycling 29 gallon and watched a few tiny worms drift off the roots. They seem to like it there, and if I move floating plants to my guppy tanks they go nuts pecking the roots for about 15 minutes. I thought at first that they were eating the plants but now I suspect they can see better than I can.

I think I like projects like this, because even though I can afford another tank I hate to waste the one I have. It's a sickness, I know. If you cut the space open with a dremel or similar, you can probably remove the silicone/glue and plastic remnants from the glass pretty easily with a razor blade. Assuming there is glass behind the gray. I think it is a case of slow, steady hands, and patience. You can do it! ... Then again, I sometimes have to remind myself that just be cause I CAN do a thing, doesn't mean I should. The number of times I have reinvented the wheel when $30 on craigslist would have solved my problem in half an hour...Let's move on. 😝

Ooooh, I do love those, but I think they wont fit with my low current warm water plan. Maybe I need ANOTHER tank...lol.

@TheDukeAnumber1 You have just solved a huge mystery for me...Unfortunately, I guess. Not sure eradicating snails is even an option for me anymore.

I don't know anything, but I feel like the sloshing in a car could be a problem in an open tank. When shrimp were shipped to me once, they bagged them with a bit of hornwort. It gave them something soft and safe to cling to. They came thru safe and sound.

These are beautiful and again I am jealous--mostly this forum is just generating massive tank envy, well played Cory, well played. Not that I am anywhere near having racks, but these all seem to have low clearance from the top of the tank to the next shelf...How much do you need to be able to reach into the tanks for maintenance or catching fish? I am sure that varies, but is there a rule of thumb?

Also stocking a 29 gallon soon! It looks like we had a similar idea with the wood decor! I will be adding a lot more plants in the next week or so. Short term, I might throw some juvenile guppies in there to get things rolling. Long term, I would like to try German rams. A school of neon or cardinal/rummy nose tetras. A few Otocinclus. Then I have been wondering about the wisdom of squeezing in a Leopoldi Angelfish, which I just discovered were a thing, as a centerpiece. I really want an angel, but I don't want to create an amazon basin tank in so much bloody reality that they eat the neons--hence the possible schooling fish options. Plus I have seen otocinclus school with rummy nose, and that was super cool...

Looks great! Let us know how the guppies do with the shrimp--depending on what size you are planning on. I have RCS, and I have been worried to throw adults in with guppies until my plants really fill in, pretty sure the shrimplets wouldn't have a chance. But I have put a few guppy fry in the shrimp tank successfully while they were under 3/4". My guppies are possibly piglets crossed with piranha....They root through the plants and peck everything. Testing a half grown juvenile shrimp with Pseudomugil gertrudae this week...so far they ignore him. Holding my breath. 🙂

Thanks!