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StephenP2003

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Everything posted by StephenP2003

  1. StephenP2003
    Got me some of those Google mesh wifi routers - two pack second generation. Still have yet to set them up, but I'm hoping it will fix my issues getting a wifi signal in the back yard.
  2. StephenP2003
    I have a been running several orlushy heaters for the past year. Dirt cheap on Amazon. They have even survived my dumb mistake of draining water past the heater coils and seeing smoke. They keep the temperature super consistent. I also run the eheim yagers, and they're great as well, but really long.
  3. StephenP2003
    I have a range of corydoras (from pygmy to emerald and all sizes in between) on a range of substrates -- nice smooth aquarium pea gravel, finer flourite gravel, eco complete, and the chunky, jagged flourite red. It hasn't been an issue. As Cory mentioned above I do feed wafers to make sure they have easy access to food.
  4. StephenP2003
    I've got 60-ish chocolate and albino bristlenose pleco fry in a 0.5G fluval/marina breeder box -- it hangs outside the aquarium and has a constant trickle of aquarium water. The fry are about 2 1/2 weeks old and ~0.75" long. I'm giving them basically unlimited access to zucchini, green beans, and a repashy mixture of Community Plus, Soilent Green, and Morning Wood. Every evening, I use a turkey baster to remove all the waste from the bottom of the breeder box and feed new food. The tank it's attached to (my live bearer/shrimp tank) gets a 50% water change twice a week. Ultimately, I think I'll need to get these to 1.5 to 2" before selling to my LFS. I would prefer to maximize the time they spend in a breeder box. - When do I need to start putting them in a larger tank? - How big do I need? Or what's the smallest I can get away with reasonably, and what would I need to do to make that work optimally? - Would it prolong their allowable time in the breeder if I divided them into a second similar breeder box? (I have the ziss one from the co-op now).
  5. StephenP2003
    So cool. I want to do a super long aquascape, but I would need to throw away the couch to have enough wall space 😞
  6. StephenP2003
    It seems like it would mean replacing the filtration/membrane much more often, but not sure if it would be cost prohibitive or not.
  7. StephenP2003
    My care package included some of the new coop towels (can never have too many towels), the ziss egg tumbler, and the ziss breeder box. Ziss breeder box is really interesting, definitely an improvement on a regular net breeder. I might even like it more than the marina box.
  8. StephenP2003
    I'm wondering if it's cool if we share what we got, or if everyone got the same thing. I'll at least say I'm excited to throw away my old walmart net breeder box.
  9. StephenP2003
    I wrapped various clumps in fishing line and stuck them on a driftwood bonsai. Now, full disclosure: two months later, it's not the beautiful lush green that it was previously. It gets hit with a lot of direct light and had started developing a bit of purplish cyanobacteria. Trying to find the right light and nutrient balance in the whole tank. I'm afraid lower light would make the bacopa suffer even more than it is now. But anyway, here's a pic today:
  10. StephenP2003
    Yep, high light and good CO2 are the main requirements, and strategically low nitrates, but that's not necessarily a good thing for the other plants in the tank.
  11. StephenP2003
    Does your city publish a water quality report? Might give you an idea of highest ranges.
  12. StephenP2003
    Any idea how much? Just curious how it compares to here, which is around 1ppm chloramines, 120ppm KH, 0ppm GH.
  13. StephenP2003
    A few I took with a cheap clip-on macro lens.
  14. StephenP2003
    The school you see are green fire tetras. Also has sunset honey gouramis, a pair of guppies, a platy, and pygmy corys.
  15. StephenP2003
    I only have fake plants in my daughter's tank -- her choice. It has live plants, too, and the fake ones aren't meant to look like any real aquatic plants (she was going for a fantasy theme). When they're clean (after I give them a diluted bleach dip), they look great for a few weeks: I cleaned them in July, and this is what they look like 7 weeks later: (Also, the water sprite died back a lot as you can see -- bioload had gone down, and I was still changing water at the same schedule and barely fertilizing. Trying to turn it around now.)
  16. StephenP2003
    It doesn't snow here (well, one day every 10 years or so), but I didn't know that was a thing (adding more chloramine and salt in the winter). Water quality/content seems to stay within a narrow and safe range. The TDS is almost all attributed to Calcium Carbonate -- my KH is about 120ppm out of the tap. Strip tests show around 1.0ppm chlorine in my tap water; since I have chloramine, that likely means I also have about 0.2ppm of ammonia (based on my Googling that chlorine and ammonia are usually mixed 5:1 to make chloramine, but my water tests never detect it). My city's annual water quality report says the range of chlorine detected ranges from 0.63 ppm to 2.2 ppm at its worst (I think they pump regular chlorine through every so often to clean the pipes). Since I do 50% water changes and dose a full tank's worth of prime, I assume I would be covered by a small spike in chlorine from the tap. I also assume, maybe incorrectly, that dechlorinator dosages account for chlorine levels a little higher than mine (Google says as much as 4ppm is safe to drink, and 2ppm is not uncommon). All that said, my decision to dose prime while filling instead of pretreating certainly isn't based on any of my own scientific knowledge. I saw lots of youtubers doing it that way, so I started doing it too. If something catastrophic ever happens related to a water change, I'm sure I'll revisit this method.
  17. StephenP2003
    I recently upgraded my old roomba (no wifi, no mapping, one room at a time) to a Roborock S5 Max. It maps the house and mops while it vacuums. I don't even care how much data it's sending to China. I will sell my soul to automate my life.
  18. StephenP2003
    I was frantically typing an email to Candi because I got an order confirmation from the store and thought my account got hacked! Glad I decided to check the forum first. Thanks so much, all! Loving this forum, and so many of the members here are truly inspiring with their ongoing projects and setups.
  19. StephenP2003
    I use the python system straight from the tap. I usually do 50% water changes, and I add a full tank's worth of prime right before or during the fill-up. I've never had any problems. My tap water, according to my city's quality report, has as much as 2.2 ppm chloramines.
  20. StephenP2003
    Boiling it several times helps. I've boiled pieces 8 or 9 times and made tea out of it each time, so I don't know how many times it would take. But for the little that leach out in the aquarium, seachem purigen takes care of it easily.
  21. StephenP2003
    I've still been testing. Always 2.0 ppm. The shade is just a hair lighter out of the tap -- more than 1.0, a little less than 2.0ppm. I also feed flake, so phosphates come from that. I think the test is good, and phosphates are just not the problem. @Bentley Pascoe helped me out by looking at some pics of my struggling plants and suggested dosing trace, or that it could be nitrogen or magnesium deficiency. I'm always at a good nitrate level -- the tank in question is sitting at 40ppm right now actually (getting close to waterchange day). I dose Potassium Mon/Wed/Fri, and Trace and Iron Tues/Thurs in all my tanks. They are seachem products except the iron. I dose per the volume suggested on the bottles, and I'm starting to think I've just been dosing too little for my plant situation in this big tank. It's a 55-inch tank with plants practically end-to-end/front-to-back -- heavily planted. And seachem products seem to be more dilute than necessary.
  22. StephenP2003
    Yep, good point. Slowing the air/water down to a trickle does alleviate the sound (and the water pump silences it completely) -- I tend to get overly annoyed with certain sounds. Years ago I spent a grand on custom water cooling in my gaming PC just so I wouldn't hear all the little fans ramp up. Right now I have pleco fry in there, and they never stop eating, so I just had it in my head that I need lots and lots of flow in there to keep the water relatively clean.
  23. StephenP2003
    This is what I heard on mine:
  24. StephenP2003
    I rinsed them well per the advice of someone at my LFS. They didn't seam that dirty to begin with, but I didn't have issues with floaters. I did see some of it go gray and die off shortly after, because I used a bit too much super glue. The moss balls have grown noticeably in the past 11 months.
  25. StephenP2003
    My bristlenose are having babies again, so I decided to be proactive about it this time. I pulled out my marina (now branded with parent company fluval) breeder box, and boy do I remember why I put it away in the first place. The air lift is so obnoxious with the constant gurgling. There are a few solutions online to cut down on the noise, but for me, the path to silence was to ditch the air completely and use a submersible pump. The perfect solution turned out to be a cheap USB powered pump and 1/4 inch tubing. The pump flow is sufficiently weak, and reduced further with a piece of foam in the outlet. Now, considering this is a white label product and very inexpensive, reliability will be a consideration. Fingers crossed it keeps running. Surely another company has a better design for this type of box? I can tolerate some noises in the fish room, but this thing was bad.
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