StephenP2003
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Posts posted by StephenP2003
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1 hour ago, Angelfishlover said:
Can you send it to me to please
Me too!
I loved watching the evolution of this product in just 24 hours.
And people should be talking more about that fluval 3.0 extender!!! Fluval 3.0s really perform best at a slight elevation because of their light spread, and the elevated mounting options designed for it are practically nonexistent.
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I live in the Baton Rouge area but haven't had the opportunity to visit New Orleans fish stores yet. My wife has good things to say about Jefferson Feed but hasn't been in many years -- it's a local chain around the Jefferson, Metaire, and New Orleans area, so I'd call and see which locations still sell live fish if any.
A good friend of mine also recommends Causeway Pets, Rose Garden Center in Marrero, and 50 Fathoms in Metaire.
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3 hours ago, Rory Waliser said:
Do people generally put any sort of supplement in the water with their fish when they mail them? Do i need a heat pack? How many fish per bag? (1 month old mollies) Would putting carbon in the bag with them be a good idea?
A piece of poly-filter in each bag to absorb ammonia is all I put in the bag with the fish and water. I prepare a 5-gallon bucket of fresh water at the appropriate temperature with dechlorinator and use that water for all the shipments that day. I've been shipping fish for a few months and have had success shipping endlers, guppies, and platys, and bristlenose plecos, via UPS 2-day (Was using USPS but they got really really unreliable). I was having success even before I started using the poly-filter, though, so it's just added protection.
72-hr heatpack when it's going anywhere with night-time temps below mid-60s since UPS doesn't store packages in climate-controlled buildings. A month ago that was everywhere in the U.S., and in the past couple weeks I find myself using heat packs about half the time.
How many fish per bag is still a big question for me, too. I've been using about 8 fl. ounces in a bag with about 6 to 8 endlers or small guppies. Plecos go one per bag. Air is super important. About a 2:1 ratio of air to water has worked for me. Luckily UPS doesn't care as much about weight as it does dimensions for air shipments, so I've just been winging it with the water volume (going over) and making sure it all fits in a reasonably sized box. You want something insulating the inside of the box. I use 0.75" thick foam panels I get at Lowes to create a foam box within the box, and then wrap the fish bags in newsprint paper, and stuff the boxes with paper surrounding the fish bags on all sides.
I open and let the heatpack breathe for 30 minutes to an hour before I pack the box to make sure it's going to get warm. I then put the heatpack in a brown lunchbag, tape it to the inside of the foam box lid (stripe side of heatpack facing out), and tape it all up.
Oh, and I fast the fish for 24-48 hours before I ship.
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The trimmed leaves usually die back anyway as new leaves are growing, so when I do I trim, I just go full teenage boy "f- it, let's go full buzz cut." Funny how they call it "dwarf' as it towers over some of my stem plants.
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1 hour ago, anewbie said:
If they are dead take a picture before you open the bag and the seller can file a claim with the post office.
I don't think you can except for express shipments. Priority never has had a guarantee, but used to be very reliable before 2020. I reported the half dozen packages that were extra late a while ago, and all they said was "sorry cuz covid".
Hell, in February they even temporarily suspended their Express guarantee, and they made the suspension retroactive by a few days. 😂
I think all of UPS air shipments are temporarily "not guaranteed" as well, but I've had better reliability with them so far.
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Kind of looks like bubbles, and yeah a lot of undissolved co2 can make a tank look like a big vat of sprite.
I think I see a spray bar, so would that mean you have a canister filter? If so, consider getting an in line diffuser for your co2. Will help get more of those bubbles dissolved before they reach your tank.
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I've been selling fish for a few months and had several USPS packages arrive annoyingly late -- shipped Priority on a Monday and arriving on a Friday or in some bad cases on the following Monday or Tuesday (8 days!). I've had 99% success with fish (guppies, platies, endlers, BN plecos) being alive for the 5-day transit times. When it goes into the weekend, you start to see variance in species survivability. Endlers about 75% survived, plecos 50%, and with guppies and platies 100% survived.
I'm shipping hardy home-bred fish that can tolerate temps in the 60s and low 70s, though. Rams, I feel like those would benefit from overnight, but I'm surprised UPS is going to be so late. I got tired of USPS being so consistently late and switched to UPS 2nd Day Air a while back, and those have been 100% on time.
Hopefully your seller is reasonable enough to accommodate DOA due to delay? Most everyone seems to only refund the fish cost and not shipping. Personally, I reship. Kills my profit on that sale, but I'm then more motivated to do whatever I can on my end to make DOAs rarer and rarer.
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1 hour ago, darkG said:
I found sculpting and glueing styrofoam, then painting / spackling with watery fast setting concrete, similar to Stephen's #2, really doable. I would do it again. I didn't use a coat.
That's a great effect and similar to what I was going for with the concrete. Where I went wrong was being scared away by people who say it will raise your PH for a very long time. My PH is already 8.0 out of the tap, so I wanted to prevent this from happening. I coated the background with flex seal, and the gloss finish ruined the look in my opinion.
This is what I had before I screwed up and coated it with flex seal:
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3 hours ago, Lifeisgood said:
How did you make these two different 3-D backgrounds?
The first one is foam board as a base, then cover it with great stuff foam. Immediately top with a crap-ton of sand, and I mean basically make a sandcastle on top of that foam. This will sort of prevent the foam from expanding too much, and the sand will imbed itself into the foam. Alternatively, you can go lighter on the sand, and let the foam creep out above the sand, and this will create a more cavernous look in the end. I didn't do this because I keep small/medium fish and didn't want anyone to get stuck somewhere.
Let the foam under the sand pile dry for a few hours. Then dump all the excess sand on your floor unless you were smart enough to prepare a tarp first.
Coat with a polyurethane - I used oil-based minwax brand. Or, you can use krylon fusion paint to add your own custom colors first. I used a bit of black, beige, and brown to add some depth.
Let it cure for a comfortable amount of time. I waited a couple weeks.
Second one, it's randomly cut up pieces of styrofoam topped with concrete that I dyed various colors. Not something I would repeat.
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Dose with an all-in-one fertilizer. The hornwort can't live in a 0 nitrate tank very long, and as far as I know, root tabs are not a source for immediate nutrient uptake.
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Approaching Perfection in Design:
- Self priming
- Either no skimmer or a skimmer than can be completely disabled
- Large, deep media basket with a normal rectangular shape
- Wide range of flow adjustment
- Adjustable/telescoping intake tube that easily accommodates a basic sponge prefilter
- Lid that's designed with noise dampening in mind
Basically, a Seachem Tidal with an Aquaclear media basket and optional/no skimmer.
Nice-to-Haves/Aftermarket Options
- Adjustable output direction/height, or readily available baffle attachments
- In-line heater/thermometer
- IoT enabled with flow monitoring, clog and temperature alerts, etc.
- Super easy impeller access, or better yet self-cleaning impeller
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I've seen my amano shrimp grab a whole wafer or repashy cube and scurry off to a hiding place. No doubt they could swipe some eggs.
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10 minutes ago, Patrick_G said:
Do you re mineralize at every water change?
Yep. My GH is 0 out of the tap, and I have to change the water in this pleco tank 3 times a week nowadays.
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6 hours ago, Daniel said:
One of the places I frequently find baby shrimp hiding in is mulm.
Definitely, and mulm is the key to jump starting a shrimp colony, all that microfauna for the babies to feast on.
I have attempted to colonize cherry shrimp in all 9 of my tanks. Only 2 have been a fail because of the fish - my daughter's 20 gallon, with honey gouramis and green fire tetra; and my living room display tank, with large corydoras, zebra loaches, and rainbowfish.
By far the most successful colony is in my pleco growout. Tons of vegetables and repashy fed several times a week, loads of pleco poop.
The secret is poop!
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It's good for wedging into places, unless you have larger fish that will pull it out in search of food.
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47 minutes ago, Jennifer V said:
@Lifeisgood @StephenP2003 do you know if you can glue süßwassertang to hardscape? I just impulse purchased some and am now trying to figure out the easiest way to attach it to what I have in my tank.
I would use fishing line, doesn't seem like it would cooperate well with glue but I could be wrong.
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37 minutes ago, Patrick_G said:
Is the Cabomba the brushy plant on the left?
Yep
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40 minutes ago, Fishdude said:
That is absolutely gorgeous. Do you use anything special like CO2?
Yep, a little bit. 1 bubble every 2 seconds. But that was to help out the cabomba and scarlet temple, and of course it just makes the pearlweed grow almost annoyingly fast. Needs maintenance badly.
Before CO2, it was still looking good:
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23 hours ago, Brandy said:
I think ACO sells plant weights...might be your only hope.
Absolutely. I take 3 or 4 stems of pearl weed and clamp them at the bottom with a quarter-piece of plant weight and shove that sucker deep. In most cases this works splendidly. But it does not work in my live-bearer mosh pit. Platies and guppies are even crazier than corydoras when it comes to scavenging. They eat at all levels of the tank and 50 fish will pile up on a morsel of food in the substrate. Delicate stem plants do not stand a chance.
But pearlweed is carpeting nicely in my betta tank (which also has 20+ pygmy and habrosus corys):
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I added a Current Serene Background Kit to my living room display and did a review of it.
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Dragon Ball Z in my teen years (and now, to be honest). My Hero Academia... and Death Note was great. I just don't watch a lot of TV or else I'm sure I'd enjoy a lot more of them. I just like how the bar for total wtf-ness is sky high in anime storylines.
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1 hour ago, Ben_RF said:
Would an angelfish work with neon tetras and honey gouramis?
Neons and angels, as long as the angelfish are small enough to give the neons time to reach adult size, no problem. Honey gouramis are awesome but shy, and really the only issue with keeping honey gouramis with other fish is whether that other fish is going to be too dominating or intimidating to the honey gourami.
As for filtration, I have an FX6 on my 90 gallon which seems to be very far from what you're looking for.
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8 minutes ago, MDoc said:
@StephenP2003Does your subwassertang actually attach to your tree, or is is just kept on purely via fishing line?
Kind of not really lol. I tied fishing line around clumps of it initially, and it grows out and around the branches and stays on pretty well. But I have rainbows and a pearl gourami constantly picking at it to pull out trapped food, so pieces of it get all over the tank. I don't mind it, because it allows it to propagate in multiple places, so I can accumulate and sell the excess.
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19 hours ago, Lifeisgood said:
I am experimenting with:
As well, (can’t figure out how to get the correct font). It is very cool looking and I am hoping that the little bit I was able to get will grow so I can create something with it. So green and useful for everything that a moss can do but maybe it will endure better?
I can't get moss to grow very well, but the subwassertang is doing well. This is my tree now (see before pic in early post above)
All my tanks (display and breeding) - May 1 Update w/ new FishTube video
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
I did some DIY to add more dynamic lighting to the Current Serene background kit, just uploaded a video on it. This time, I'm on camera at the beginning and end of it. Also, I bought a green screen and simply cannot take it seriously.