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walruseggman

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Everything posted by walruseggman

  1. Hi, Wondered if anyone had both an Aquarium Coop light and a Finnex Planted+ 24/7 and would be willing to determine the WRBG settings on the Planted+ that most closely emulate the AC light's colors? I need a new light and am confident the AC light is great. But i've never had a non-color-adjustable light and just wondered if I could get a sense of how the light would look before ordering and potentially disliking the color. Thanks!
  2. Just for posterity, here there are, doing fairly well in the frigid pond today. Understand that this is a fairly common plant and everything, just that this is my first encounter with such a cold tolerant aquatic plant, and so I thought it was worth showing. 😃
  3. Thanks guppysnail! Agree with you, I didn't think it was densa, I did take a look at all the New England aquatic plant guides I could find. After broadening my search, I think I've found the correct identification: Elodea canadensis, aka Canadian pondweed, Anacharis canadensis, or waterweed, and close relative to the elodea/anacharis densa. Various sites confirm it thrives in cold water, with some suggesting it stays green and over-winters under the ice. Neat! I think this will make a great summer tub plant. If anyone is interested, I'll keep track and relay how it does in the various temps and conditions.
  4. Pulled this out of the water near the shore at a local pond last week here in New England, USA. The ice had not yet covered it up, but it was doing fine. The pics here in my 10 gallon blackworm tank are 2 days after I had pulled it from the pond. (That's A.C. airline tubing for scale if needed) Looks like it wants to grow immersed here, not sure if that's because of the shallow water depth, but it was just under the water surface in the pond. The tan "stems" (more like runners, almost) and white hair-like roots are part of the plant. Figured it would be a great plant to get a summer tub up and going even earlier in the season this spring, but I like to know what my plants are before doing something like that. Best matches I can find are perhaps some sort of elodea or anacharis, but nothing I find seems to look exactly like this. Any input greatly appreciated!
  5. Can you explain this a bit more? Why without a doubt? Does metabolic activity stop or slow too drastically?
  6. Was thinking of keeping my summer tub fish, White Clouds and Rosy Barbs, in the basement over winter, which stays in the mid-50s F. I've seen and heard the anecdotes about them surviving with ice over the top of the water, so my question isn't so much "can they tolerate that temperature", but more "how will they do at that temperature for 7ish months?" I don't see much out there on the internet discussing long-term cold-ish water, so was hoping some of you had some practical experiences; how they did, if they still laid eggs, how much less food they ate, etc. etc. It may just boil down to that "one stress factor" they can tolerate and still be fine that Cory often mentions, but would appreciate anyone's actual experiences. Thanks!
  7. I know what this was sold to me as, but it looks pretty dis-similar to others of that species I have. I don't mean color, but body shape and fin shape. Ive had him about 3 months, and he's roughly the size of an adult male Platy, maybe 2 inches. That's a pretty giant moss ball in the pic, hopefully that doesn't skew the scale. Not mentioning the species it was sold to me as for now, just to try to avoid an up front yes/no answer, but I can certainly say.
  8. Would you mind mentioning what hardiness zone or equivalent you live in?
  9. Bricks can and do work, assuming you know they are inert or you don't care if they aren't. But bricks are also relatively heavy, which may be a consideration depending on how many you are using and also what kind of stand your tank is on. Lava rock is nice because in addition to the possible nitrate removing bed, it is also inert and pretty light for both its volume and its strength.
  10. For elevation below substrate, I've used Lava Rock from hardware/home improvement stores (Lowes, etc.) with great success. Looks similar to what you linked to, but slightly larger chunks. But still, marketed as for outside fire pits. If you do end up with larger chunks, you can either break it up pretty easily (though this creates a fair amount of dust), or just fill the gaps with a smaller gravel as you build each layer of elevation. I like doing the latter, but I have no demonstrative reason why. I've also seen other aquascapers say using that much lava rock to build elevation also allows for a deep bed, anoxic zone for nitrate breathing bacteria, thus lowering the frequency of water changes needed to manage nitrates. I've never experimented side-by-side with that, though. I'd be interested if anyone had some data.
  11. (Not my personal knowledge, but input from a professional crafter): Decorative Sea Glass is typically glass that has been tumbled with acid and/or other compounds to achieve that "frosted" look. This is sometimes even done inside of re-purposed cement mixers. The color of the glass can also be altered with chemicals during this tumbling process, so as to get large batches of uniformly-colored glass. Real sea glass is frosted by years of tumbling naturally in saline waters. The artificial tumbling also smooths out the glass some, but usually nowhere near to the extent that real sea glass has been smoothed. (End of relayed knowledge) So, thus likely the warning. I'm sure there's something in that "frost" that's harmful to animals, which the manufacturer is openly acknowledging with the warning and the "decorative" label.
  12. One of my tanks has just 3 female neocaridina in it. I was going to grab a couple males from another tank, but I started to wonder - is there any negative health effects on the females to repeatedly not have their eggs fertilized? Understanding the basic neo reproductive cycle and that it's different than fish, even still, something like egg bound female bettas crossed my mind. Would some invertebrate-version of something like that occur? Or would the repeatedly unfertilized eggs be benign and the females would otherwise live a normal life? I get breeding neos is half then fun, and I do breed them. Just a curiosity of how the females would be impacted. Googling turned up little, so I was hoping someone could share some practical experience.
  13. Hi all, Thanks for the input. I'm just doing Easy Green, and have been since the shrimp have been in there, for months. watching the nitrates to keep them 20-40 ppm Solution! My KH strips were faulty, reporting ~3 dKh. API liquid test showed KH below 1, e.g. the first drop stayed yellow. So KH could have been zero. I dripped in sodium bicarbonate dissolved in some aquarium water over a day until the KH was between 3 and 4. success! As soon as KH was 2 or so, Amanos started behaving more normal. Within 20 min of getting back above 3, they were chowing down on the algae that has been building up. PH went from 7.0 to about 7.6 during the drip too, I'm fine if it holds steady there. Have some of Cory's crushed coral in the tank now,will watch KH to keep it in the 3-4 range. Hope this helps someone else!
  14. Hi, setting up a fully-planted standard 29 gallon (30in L x 18in H x 12in W). I want to experience raising platy fry, but not necessarily looking to raise up 100 babies a month; just a handful of fry a month would be fun. I've kept male platys but never both genders. Looking for either a single "centerpiece" fish, or a small school of hunters to cull some platy fry; neither that would would harass/nip the adult platys, and needs to be plant safe. Just as an example- if I had 6 pregnant female platys, I wouldn't mind if I ended up with 0 to 10 juveniles from those pregnancies all combined. I'm guessing a betta and maybe an angel fish would be on the list of recommendations, so also curious to here others' experiences in using those fish in a role like I've described. Likely tank parameters: Temp: mid-70s F Gh: 6-8 dGH Kh: 3-4 dKH Ph: 7.2-7.6 Thanks in advance, looking forward to hearing from this forum.
  15. Hi, I've had four amano shrimp for the past 6 months, raised from juvenile to full size in my tank. 2 male, 2 female, based on dot pattern. Parameters, pretty steady since I got them, tested with API liquid drops: Ph: 7.2 to 7.6 Gh: 9-11 deg Kh: 3 deg Ammonia, nitrite: 0 Nitrate: less than 20 Temp : 78 F The past three weeks they have been extremely inactive, mostly piling together, sometimes on top of each other, doing nothing more than fanning swimmerettes. Typical behavior in the past has been constantly scouring the tank for food and algae, rarely interacting with each other, just in passing. Now hair algae is left untouched, and they only seem to eat the occasional shrimp pellet if I drop it right in front of them. And even that is nowhere near the ravenous frantic eating I'm used to seeing from them. They have always molted fine and appear to be continuing to do so, but going back to the lethargic behavior after. Nothing is harassing them, they aren't hiding most of the time, no new tank mates, nothing breeding in the tank. There are also neritie snails in the tank that seem to be their normal selves with normal behavior. I tried a dose of General cure and 5 days of maracyn both per the boxes; their behavior has remained much the same as described. No visible signs of anything unusual on their bodies. Video that shows their typical behavior of the past three weeks: https://imgur.com/gallery/KPOvtd0 Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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