gardenman

Just a heads up on lighting a tank from the bottom. You may see some behavioral changes in your fish. I had a nightlight under a goldfish tank and the goldfish tried to swim upside down thinking the light was up, as all light in nature is. The sun, moon, and stars in nature are all up, and my goofy goldfish assumed the light coming up from the bottom of their tank was up and they tried to orient themselves to the light. If you notice your fish swimming weirdly at night in a tank with bottom lighting, don't worry too much. The fish are probably fine, just confused as to which way is up. Their swim bladder says one thing and their eyes another.

The easiest option is to secure an inverted container of some sort in the tank and send the CO2 into that. Where the CO2 and water meet, gas exchange will take place adding CO2 to the water column. I think it's the San Francisco aquarium store the Coop has shown several times that uses that method with success.

What you mean by "1 or 2 fish" matters a bit. If the one or two fish are full grown arowanas, or other large fish, you'll get one answer. If they're cardinal tetras, you get another. Realistically, if you put the new filter in the old tank for even a minute, it'll pick up some good bacteria. The longer the new filter media stays in the established tank the more bacteria it should grow up to its maximum capacity. You don't just want your bacteria in the filter though. You want it all through the tank. I'd be inclined to run the new filter in the old tank for a day or so, then move it and a handful of the gravel from the old tank to the new tank without rinsing or washing the gravel. That might give you enough bacteria to handle a small bioload immediately.

Can they live without filtration? As is often the case, it depends. Bioload matters a lot. The length of time the aquarium has been set up matters too. A single betta in a 120 gallon tank won't care if there's no filtration. If you have a school of twenty full grown Oscars in a 120 gallon tank, things get a lot trickier. A planted, decorated tank that's been up and running for years will have good bacteria growing everywhere, maybe more than what's in the filter, and will be fine for a bit. A newly set up, bare bottom tank with nothing but fish and water in it won't have lots of bacteria established. Just keep an eye on things and if the ammonia starts to spike or the fish look "off" a water change can help restore things until the filter is fixed.

Common goldfish can reach twelve to eighteen inches in length. The pond supplier (now called Waterford Gardens) in Saddle River NJ sold giant goldfish back in the seventies/eighties. They had some monster sized ones for sale back then. And they were real goldfish and not koi. The biggest Koi I've heard of was a British one that was over four feet in length and weighed more than ninety pounds. Think of it as a German Shepherd in fish form.

There's also gas exchange at the water surface. Not as much with still water as moving water, but there's still some and enough to accommodate a small fish load. And there might be more water movement than expected with terrestrial plants poking up. Any air movement will have them moving and agitating the water to some extent. Not a lot, but some.

Obviously you don't want large South American cichlids in a no filter tank. You'd want to keep such a tank lightly stocked with smaller fish used to living in ponds where there's little water flow. (Depending on the size of the tank. A really large unfiltered tank could house a few larger fish.) Why do it? Why not? In the video it's not just some sword plants. The terrestrial plants (spathiphyllum, spider plant, and others) appear to have roots into the water to remove nitrates and ammonia. It's largely a replica of how nature works only on a much smaller scale. A filter-less tank solves the issues of the filter breaking down. It's a silent tank if noise is an issue. Once established, there's not a lot that could go wrong. If you do "normal" maintenance on the tank (water changes, etc.), it's doable. Many fish live in small ponds, even puddles (some killifish), in nature.

Water Sprite is a great floating plant.

Most common Orchids are epiphytes. They grow on trees, using the tree for support and protection. That means they largely survive on humidity and an occasional rain. Submerging the roots in an aquarium will kill them. And orchids are typically slower growing and don't need/want intense fertilization. To pull nitrates from an aquarium you want a hungry, fast growing plant. That's not most orchids. Even if you could get an orchid to survive, you'd get minimal benefit from it in terms of nitrate removal. To really pull nitrates from the water, you want a fast growing weed-like plant. If you can provide adequate lighting, marsh plants would be ideal. Cat tails, phragmites, etc are naturals in that setting and will grow quickly and rip nitrates from the water.

Miracle was a brand that was around in the seventies/eighties if I recall correctly. I think I had a few of their things. Lots of aquarium companies have come and gone through the years.

Just be advised that paint durability on glass isn't the best. Even chalk might wear off the paint pretty quickly.

There's a variety of ways commercial plant growers grow aquarium plants, and not all are grown emersed. Many growers in tropical areas grow plants underwater in vats or natural ponds and harvest them from there as needed. Jungle val, hornwort, anacharis/elodea, and others are often harvested from vats or ponds. Some plants still get pulled from wild stock. Stock will get pulled from a vat, pond, lake, river, etc, rinsed, the roots get wrapped in rockwool and stuffed into a pot. The big commercial growers like Dennerle tend to grow plants emersed and in greenhouses in vast quantities. Due to the quantity of plants they sell their production cost per plant tends to be quite low. A plant you buy for $11 might have cost them fifty cents to produce and ship. Dennerle has given many tours of their greenhouses and a search on YouTube for "Dennerle greenhouse tour" will bring up multiple videos to give you an idea of the scale of your competition. We had a little mom and pop fish store locally that had old bathtubs in their backyard where they grew plants during the warmer parts of the year. Their production costs were essentially zero as the sun provided the lighting and rain provided the water. They were given the old tubs by a plumber friend. Sellers on places like eBay, Etsy, and Aquabid often sell stuff they grow in their tanks. (Though commercial retailers are prevalent there these days also.) It's a competitive field to enter. Could you make a profit? Maybe, but it wouldn't be easy. And shipping plants in water can be tricky as water movement can be abrupt in a bag and break more fragile plants.

Aquarium Domain has a very neat channel. His lumber and fish food budgets must be insane though. His homemade shark tank is very impressive, though the sharks will be getting moved to what is now the 3,000 gallon Amazon tank once those occupants move to the new 4,500 gallon tank. I think he over-builds his tanks a bit, but better safe than sorry.

They should do fine in shipping. Bettas are pretty tough little fish and can breathe air which increases their survival chances. Many wholesalers ship the bettas in very, very little water. Check out some betta unboxing videos on YouTube. Bettas are often packed in very small bags with as little water as possible, but oxygen to breathe and they do fine.

It's hard to clog a UG filter. There's so much surface area that clogging it is pretty tough. Portions of it can clog, but to clog the whole thing is challenging. You don't need a lot of flow with a UG filter. Media contact time is something of a factor with biofiltration. Slower water flow gives the bacteria more time to extract the nutrients from the water. The most efficient forms of biofiltration tend to have slower flow and more contact time with the media.

I've used polyfill for years with no trouble. I'm not sure I'd label it a water polisher though. The old Vortex Diatom Filters were the best water polishers ever made. In a half hour they'd have any tank sparkling.

For cost effectiveness, not much beats a 2X4. Plywood (real plywood, not particle board, chip board or other sheet goods) has certain advantages in terms of stability. It can be a bit harder to work with though.

The tanks were working perfectly up to the end of December when I had to shut everything down due to an eviction. When I get my new apartment (late June, July, I was seventh on the wait list as of May first) I'll probably be a bit limited in the tank size allowed due to lease restrictions, but if they let me have a ten gallon tank, I'll probably restart the matten filter project again. I might try a one inch layer of aquarium soil over the filter to help the plants more. (Well, to help me plant the plants more easily. Getting them into the slits in the foam was annoying.) I think any new setup will be a shrimp/nano fish setup. They won't need massive biofiltration, but in my vastly overpopulated tanks, the filters worked great. If I'm forced to a smaller tank (3-5 gallons) I'll probably just go with a normal sponge filter. Everything fish-wise is in a holding pattern for me for now. Once I get the new apartment, things will resume.

Yeah, supply and demand plays a role. A good narrative can help also. I'm convinced that you could take a common platy, invent a story of how they only exist in one small body of water and only two are allowed to be harvested each year, put a $10,000 price tag on it, and a few hobbyists would be lining up outside your door to get it. People want the rare, exotic, expensive stuff and the right narrative can sell anything.

The easy way is to just use heat to bend some PVC pipe into the curved shape you want then simply drill a hole in it near the bottom and slide some airline in and attach an airstone, or just use the bubbles with no airstone. They're just gently moving water, so they don't need to be overly fancy.

You can notch out that thin little piece of plastic on the inside of the top trim in a place or two to make the hang-ons fit. It's not structural and is only there to give the lid a place to sit. A few strategic removals of that lip would let your stuff fit perfectly. A sharp knife is all it takes to score and remove the lip.

I was just in a Petsmart today and they had mostly empty tanks. They did have the smallest baby Oscars I've ever seen for sale. They were about nickel sized. I almost didn't recognize them.

Marine substrates help to buffer the water to keep the pH stable. Live rock will often help achieve that also if there's enough used. A fish with live rock tank isn't drastically different from a pure freshwater tank. You have to top off evaporation with freshwater as the salt stays behind. Water changes are obviously done with premixed saltwater. Keep an eye on the salinity and try to keep that as stable as possible. It's pretty much the same thing with just a few more variables tossed in.

Regarding aphids specifically, I've had them on lily pads in my pond before and dipped the pads underwater and my goldfish ate the aphids without any issues. It's the world's easiest aphid control.

There are differences in wells. A deep well typically delivers pretty stable water quality while a shallower well can lead to some pretty wild fluctuations. If you've got a deep well, odds are your water from the well will remain pretty stable. If you've got a shallow well (mine was about twelve feet deep) you can expect some pretty big swings in water chemistry. If you've got a shallow well, frequent testing is advised. I might go slower on the water changes as long as the parameters allowed it as going from 8+ to 6.5 is a pretty big swing. A 25% change weekly might be a tad stressful for the fish. Smaller, more frequent changes might be safer. (5% every other day?)