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StephenP2003

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Everything posted by StephenP2003

  1. StephenP2003
    I dry dose in my CO2-Inject tanks, but I buy the individual compounds. And the only reason I do that is to customize my ratios since I dose most often in those tanks -- some of the tanks make more nitrate than others, and my tap water has phosphate already. I also stopped mixing it into a liquid solution, and instead just mix up the powders that work out to a 1/4 teaspoon of powder per 20 gallons. For all my other tanks, easy green all the way. With the premixed powder you have, I'm not sure what advantage it would have over any all-in-one, other than cost savings -- and that would certainly be significant depending on how many planted tanks you have.
  2. StephenP2003
    Not to mention it was my first attempt at building a tank. That's why I used glass thick enough to not require bracing but still used bracing, and I leak tested it outside for a couple months. It's been running for a little over a year now.
  3. StephenP2003
    Thanks! I'm not even sure what the standard dimensions are for a 90 gallon. I custom built this to fit within a specific space in my room, so it's 55"L x 17"W x 24" H (it's more like 97G based on the outer dimensions, but with the half inch glass I'd still say 90).
  4. StephenP2003
    My favorite tank is the 90-gallon that lives in our bedroom; it's the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning; love to watch the light ramp up along with the rainbowfish morning spawn frenzy. All that algae on the back rock wall is BBA. It looks purple when it catches the light, and the clean-up crew keeps it short. I think this video shows every species, except for the pair of fat old Siamese algae eaters that mostly hide, and the red cherry shrimp that have colonized the dwarf sag and the tree.
  5. StephenP2003
    I have an FZONE and a CO2Art, and both are performing well. The CO2Art has a little better needle valve for fine-tuning low-CO2 injection, like 1 bubble every 2 seconds. I have a fluval spec 16 with CO2 injection, about 1 bubble every 1.5 seconds, coming from a 5lb CO2 tank. It's gonna last a while. It's just not worth having to buying replacement cartridges or constantly refilling stuff. A 5lb tank is $70 brand new, maybe cheaper, and the fire extinguisher place I go to charges a dollar a pound to fill tanks.
  6. StephenP2003
    I try to trim initial stems as low as possible, because they do branch off at the node once trimmed -- pretty sure there's nothing you can do about that. But trimming it short makes those two branched stems start lower to the ground and leads to bushier growth, especially as you can continue to trim and stems branch. But eventually, unless you are blasting it with light from multiple angles, the bottoms are going to lose leaves and get leggy. So every few months or whenever I feel like refreshing the scape, I will trim several inches off the tops and actually pull a lot (or even all) of the bottom portions. Then I'll replace those leggy bottom stems with new fresh tops. Ludwigia grows so fast that there's really no fear in doing that kind of restart. It'll need trimming in a week or two anyway. I prolong the need to pull out leggy stems by planting dense medium-height plants in front of them, like crypts, to hide the scraggly crap.
  7. StephenP2003
    That doesn't look like BBA, but maybe there are different incarnations of BBA -- I'm used to seeing BBA start as dense little tufts of fine dark hair. Kind of looks like a staghorn or even diatom algae (though it's a little furry). But anyways, otos eat soft digestible vegetation as well as biofilm, which is probably among the hair algae. I've seen them eat BBA once I've killed it, though.
  8. StephenP2003
    Yep, trying to take a good photo with a smartphone just takes too long. At least for photographing fish, you can take the time to make sure you have ample light and the settings just right, and the shutter speed cranked up. So then the biggest challenge is focusing. I pretty much have to use auto focus unless I'm shooting a more stationary fish. And I still don't have a lot of control over how saturated the color comes out on some of these.
  9. StephenP2003
    I took these with my phone (OnePlus 6). My goal is to max out my abilities with manual settings on my phone before I determine whether or not I can justify the cost of a DSLR -- if it would really somehow make me better at this.
  10. StephenP2003
    Yes, you got it. But I tend to replace the "cut" portions with the newly cut tops in some of my lower light tanks after a few months -- the bottom portions tend to get leggy. If you want to trim rooted plants like swords/crypts beyond just the bad leaves, just trim the outer leaves first.
  11. StephenP2003
    I'm kind of wondering how far from "family friendly" I can go before any shred of broad appeal goes out the window. My sense of humor easily slips into the gutter.
  12. StephenP2003
    I was excited the first time I saw a snail appear in one of my tanks. It was a pond snail.
  13. StephenP2003
    I did another tank tour, this time with my kids' tanks. Starting to get the hang of video editing and even a little bit of stop motion animation.
  14. StephenP2003
    Awesome, and it looks like they've grown well. The other day I happened to find two panda cory eggs on a java fern leaf, so I put them in my ziss tumbler. Checked on them today:
  15. StephenP2003
    CO2 tabs can be an OK passive CO2 system if you use a bell. Sera makes a kit where the tabs dissolve quickly to fill it. The dissolvable CO2 tabs from China are worthless. But from my experience using the sera kit, the cost of it adds up very quickly. It's also not enough CO2 to grow high-tech plants. Better off doing DIY CO2, or just biting the bullet in terms of upfront costs and going with pressurized CO2. The costs for me weren't that bad. The FZONE regulator is decent at $65. Then another $60+ for a 5lb cylinder, CO2 itself is dirt cheap. And if you want to go with tiny bit of CO2 anyway, a 5lb cylinder might last you a year before you have to refill.
  16. StephenP2003
    Agree with others about making sure it has plenty of nutrients and to trim the bad leaves as you see new growth... However, aren't those dying leaves simply emersed grown leaves that are destined to die back anyway?
  17. StephenP2003
    I have stolen so many of my wife's kitchen supplies (tupperware, measuring spoons, cups, pots, etc.). I end up buying her a replacement; I just don't want to wait for stuff to arrive to do the thing I want to do right then.
  18. StephenP2003
    The algae based ones are a little pungent but not unbearable. My guppies haven't met a repashy they didn't like.
  19. StephenP2003
    Any fish that isn't compatible with edge to edge live plants. The noodly loaches. Snakes kind of freak me out, so I couldn't imagine lifting a piece of driftwood and having a cluster of little danger noodles scatter everywhere.
  20. StephenP2003
    Anyone else use enough plant weights that you wonder whether the Aquarium Co-Op warehouse staff are judging you? I use them enough to notice the day the Co-Op increased the price 😡 (only a dollar or so, really). Guess it's the result of being into both fish and plants equally, so I've got fish of all sizes and temperaments plowing through stem plants and playing water polo with tissue cultures. Eventually roots take hold and the weight just becomes part of the substrate. If there were ever a question of fish safety over time with these plant weights, pretty strong anecdote here that they're safe.
  21. StephenP2003
    I use AquaVitro Mineralize. AquaVitro is a seachem brand, but it's reserved for retail stores only, so you can't buy it online. Luckily my LFS carries it, so I just get the 4L container of it for 80 bucks and it lasts me a little less than a year (and that's with me doing weekly water changes to 9 planted tanks, with 0 GH out of my tap). Save one of your empty co-op easy iron/carbon/green bottles and dose it that way. It only adds calcium and magnesium, in some sort of magic ratio that's supposedly good for planted tanks. If I couldn't get the AquaVitro brand for any reason, I'd order the NilocG regen, which is basically the same thing but only available in the 500ml pump bottle.
  22. StephenP2003
    I did say the latter (Equilibrium) has potassium.
  23. StephenP2003
    I shoot for "the presence of phosphate" with a goal of keeping it below 2, as the Internet says a deficiency or overabundance of phosphate both cause algae. I only worry about this in my CO2-injected tanks. My other planted tanks have matured and balanced over time and don't seem to be affected by fluctuating levels of nutrients, as long as the nutrients are there.
  24. StephenP2003
    This is why I stopped using Equilibrium. I do pretty frequent water changes (weekly, and twice weekly in my guppy grow-outs), so I have since switched to liquid GH boosters with a pump top -- even easier than the scooping, and no powdery residue. Another difference between wondershell and Equilibrium is potassium, which is in the latter but not the former I don't think.
  25. StephenP2003
    Honey Gouramis are super shy. When I got just one for my daughter's tank, I would almost never see it. Adding a couple more to the tank seemed to increase his confidence to display a little more. Not sure what kind of set up you have, but if there are tons of hiding places, expect him to use them a lot.
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