darkG

I took a look in the sand and found new animals; a stiff kind of roundworm, like a big nematofe but not wiggly. And a water mite. And copepods, I think I saw them before but not this evidently. Finally, an unknown critter in the sand, first I thought it might be newly hatched shrimp, they are a bit crustasianesque, but it's not. It doesn't look like stonefly larvae either (no overpowered legs, not significantly pigmented). Small (~ 1mm) unfortunately no pictures; two straight prongs (not long bristle-like, more rigid, a little like female earwigs cerci but not as sturdy) in the back, ca half of the body size long. Bristle-tail or springtail energy, eyes glowing pink/orange. Not a lot of pigment overall. Antennae short, banana shaped. Shrimps were treated to veggie salami, and they enjoyed it. Another funny thing, I spotted a planaria worm - I decidedly don't love them - and couldn't get at it. So I took out the small driftwood it was on and put some salt over it. Then I rinsed it and put it back and the shrimps really assembled on it. I wonder why. I dropped a cup of salty water into the tank once, and shrimps seemed to get excited. Either they enjoy the salt or they are just curious (opportunistic). That's my guesses. Most plants are struggling. I don't really feed them.

I recently found hitch-hiked neo shrimps in a bucket of moss. I have been briskly water changing, at least 90% with maybe 50 degrees tap water from a sunstricken maybe 86 degrees in the bucket. 😄

I keep moss in buckets (can't bother to sell or give and too cheap to throw away). Today I changed some water in one of the moss repositories and Hey, there's a shrimp! I don't know how long since I removed the moss from the tank, but I'd say quite a while. She seemed OK, allthough it is hard to tell for sure. I'd like to think she'll do just fine back with her [s] brethren[/s] sistren. See, I usually put in new water from the shower, as cold as it gets and not too gently. This small bucket is by the window and probably Hot in this current heat wave. Respect.

#1 is probably a Tiger lotus. The bulb should not be fully buried.

Do you have nitrite in your tap water? A general tips is to sit back a little and do nothing but observe, we tend to get a bit excited in the beginning. And mess things up by doing too much 😄 But I really don't know a lot about those startup bacteria products.

The new generation of Orange Sakura shrimps (bought as, at least, I wouldn't know) shows some variation. A few has this bright band on their back, one in particular, shown here.

Maybe you can cut a little wood with the Anubias? I'd hesitate to take too big risks, they do grow rather slowly and larger specimens are so expensive ☺️ Moss on the other hand, just pull some out I reckon!

Here is my Hygrophila pinnatifida, and also above it another, less showy (but more coloured), Hygrophila. I don't recall the actual species. Edit: it's H. araguaia.

Yeah, it often doesn't show up in lists of epiphytes! I also find the "golden" Anubias varieties very pleasing. I have the golden nana. The golden coin is possibly even prettier. I like the ordinary coloured Anubias too.

Hygrophila pinnatifida should also be mentioned, I think.

Technically TDS is usually too involved to meassure (evaporating water and weighing the small residue) so conductivity is measured instead. TDS can then be estimated by applying a guessed conversion factor.

In my mind, 5.5 gallon is perfectly safe. The solid wood will distribute the weight nicely and wont mush up from spill. The front-center position would be the weakest, and that's where you'd never want it anyway. For extra credit, I live close to Arkelstorp! Similar desks may have a less tough surface, or be a bit unstable side-to-side.

Also, moonlight isn't blue 🙂

The hitchhiker shrimp is doing very well, so I put another young shrimp in the small tank, and it seems to be happy too. I have planaria worms in the big tank, they seem to be gone in the 15-gallon. I believe I saw two of them penis-fencing today.

Animals seem to have little (no) ability to imagine or reminisce, that is, "mental time travel". As far as we know, they won't regret nor hope. (Many may recall or anticipate.) Therefore, many aspects of emotion that we are familiar with are simply unavailable. We dwell an awful lot in the past and in the future! While it is probably impossible to know (or even describe?) how animals feel, I am convinced that there are certain limitations to the range and depths that are reasonable to assume. One way to talk about this is to distinguish between affect and feeling / emotion. I think that will make things a bit clearer. Affect being a hard-wired "biological" mechanism.

Yeah, various elements and compounds + light is "food" for plants. Tap water, substrate and hardscape also contribute. Newly planted plants may not be super "hungry". 🙂

Magnesium is the other vital mineral. Chances are you don't need to add anything, your water (and food) may be providing it.

The low KH means there is no buffering capacity; the pH may plummet and crash in short time for little reason. A decent KH (4?) will push back and hold the line to mitigate fast swings by neutralizing acids. I have not had to deal with this myself. You'll probably have to consider KH in conjugation conjunction with pH.

Good. I only learned of it recently myself. I think the parasites, a few mites (?) if that is what it is, wouldn't manage to do so much damage. But unfortunately I have no better idea. Maybe it is the after effects of the low GH as suggested. I hope things get better!

Magnesium is as important, but Seachem Equilibrium has got some, as has cuttlebone. Are there many males? I hear that this may stress them out, leading to failed molts.

I did a weak rgb (day and) night light thing set to blue, but I suspect it may have triggered cyanobacteria! I switched to green... I think a dimmer won't work for you, but I don't know. Myself I have three led tubes and three timers, but I haven't set it up yet. Still manually turning them on and off, all together.

The accidental small shrimp and the three MTS and some physa are surviving, so I transferred one berried shrimp to the small tank some week ago. Today I found her dead, not sure why. The Taiwan moss, supposed to attach better than the weeping moss, doesn't.

Some flatworm or other, people use to say Rhabdocoela but in my feeble attempts to teach myself I shot for Catenulida. They are not likely to grow much bigger and are not parasitic, so no worries, I'd say. (Mine were somewhat predatory, but they are small.)

There seem to be different ideas about the realness of the problem. While hydrogen sulfide is rather unhealthy, indeed many people use thick substrates of every kind with no ill effects ever. If it is a real problem, the related anaerobic bacteria are not worth it. I agree the conventional wisdom is that fine grained sand is the problem. I think maybe the worry is that a big bubble is released all at once, trapped under compact substrate, while an orderly slight outgassing is ok? I guess a not totally clogged substrate won't amass dangerous levels, that's me guessing. (Additionally, maybe a tight lid can be a problem, the gas is a bit heavier than air and maybe can linger as a cap, leading to problems?) Finally, we detect it at very low levels, so we possibly overestimate the levels.

Oh no! They will keep us on spruce sprinkled concrete slabs and feed us a nutritional mush of chicken and licorice. If we look sad they'll shower us in moist THC. "Humans are actually very adaptable. They've been to the moon so you don't really need air". And, finding out about our pets, they'll probably put a lot of wolves in with us. They'll try to breed us with other apes too, for sure.