gardenman

I kept freshwater clams in my water garden once, but it's been years ago. Knowing if they're dead or alive is a challenge. In a water garden or pond setting a dead clam isn't a big issue. In a fish tank it can be. Given their reproduction rate, they'd be handy to keep if you were raising a Mbu puffer. The costs of feeding those guys can be onerous, so raising your own food would be wise.

That "lily seed" looks more like a lotus seed to me and it will outgrow your tank in a hurry. Lotuses want to be planted in big containers (really big containers) and are typically grown in ponds. Water lily seeds are very small while lotus seeds are very large and look like yours. I'm pretty sure you're growing a lotus.

You should be fine. Concrete blocks are insanely strong in compressive strength. A typical 75 gasllon tank is four feet long and the weight will be spread out fairly evenly along those four feet.

Ambient lighting shouldn't be an issue as fish experience full moons on a fairly regular basis. A full moon can be pretty bright. The ceiling lighting may even be beneficial. I've had some crazy goldfish who would try to swim sideways if a room light was on in a dark room thinking the light was the sun/moon and where the light was where the surface was. They'd roll onto their side and press against the front glass. They were pretty, but not all that smart. The first few times I thought something was wrong with them but as soon as I turned on their light they'd go back to normal. They just assumed where light was coming from was up.

It kind of depends on what you mean by meanest. Female guppies will eat their own fry and do so happily. That's kind of mean. Some cichlids are known to stake out a territory that's six feet in diameter and attack anything that enters, whether it's something big and aggressive like a caiman or a tiny tetra. Wolf fish, gars, snakeheads, and lots of other fish tend to be a bit vicious. Piranhas are killing machines. I had a silver arowana that I had to keep a net between him and my hand or he'd attack me everytime I went into the tank. In my experience, Oscars and Jack Dempseys have been okay fish to keep. They're aggressive, but not crazy aggressive. At least the ones I've kept. There's the Eye Biter from Lake Malawi that's been known to attack a fish by eating its eye, then crippling the fish and either eating what it wants or leaving it to die. That's kind of mean.

As a rule, Super Reds get more uniform in color as they age. Very young fish tend to be more mottled but turn red later in life. I'm not actively breeding them now, because I've got around sixty of them now from previous spawns. They're a neat fish.

Fluval seems to be sucking up a lot of smaller companies these days. They're on their way to becoming the 800 pound gorilla in the aquarium hobby.

There is a freshwater version of Miracle Mud. It's pricey as heck, but it's out there. It's about $25 for 2 pounds. Miracle Mud is one of those products that has some "true believers" who swear it's a miracle product, and then there are the others who say it's just dirt and you can get similar results (maybe even better) by using bagged topsoil (around $3 for a 25 lb bag) in a freshwater refugium. The Miracle Mud marketing claims sound a bit "snake oil" like to me. They claim it reverses hole in the head disease, enhances fish colors, and is the most comprehensive filter medium on the market. Eh, okay. It's 80% ocean mud and 20% something else they add. I don't necessarily buy their marketing. If I was doing a freshwater refugium, I'd be more incluined to go with top soil. Oh, and they want you to replace 50% of the Miracle Mud on a yearly basis also. In a 40-65 gallon tank they recommend ten pounds ($125 worth) and then replace half (5 pounds) every year.

It does make you wonder why they're so expensive to buy in fish stores when they spawn like rabbits. Raising the fry is absurdly easy also. Local petshops sell Super Reds for around $30 each for little ones (give or take a bit.) I've got about sixty (or so) now from various spawns. They're easier to raise than nearly any other fish I've ever raised.

I've seen purple bettas. Some guppies are purple-ish.

Back to the insulation for a minute. Wet insulation (fiberglass, blown in, etc.) is a very bad thing. In a wall cavity it tends not to dry out once it gets wet and it loses much of its insulating ability when wet, so keeping it dry is wise. For a fish room build, I might invest in having spray foam insulation applied. Wet insulation against wood or drywall will cause the wood/drywall to fail over time. Foam insulation is virtually moisture-proof and retains it's insulating properties through its lifespan. That upfront cost can repay itself several times over if you stay in the house for long. A fish room will have high humidity and that humidity, even with a vapor barrier, will find its way to the insulation. The sprayed in foam eliminates that worry.

They eliminate some of the variables, but you still have to follow the directions which mean waiting 30 seconds to read the results. Once again if you wander away for a bit and come back, the reading could be wrong. Or if you dip and read immediatley the results will be wrong. All of the tests will give you an general idea of your situation when the directions are followed. A lot of people don't follow the directions though. Some barely dip a test stirp in while others will leave a strip in the water for much longer. Some dip and read immediately without giving the test time to develop. Is one type of test "better" than another? Not really. Just follow the direcitons carefully and you should get decent results from any of them.

By and large, inline diffusers are made to fit canister filter hoses. The hose in a Fluval Flex is significantly smaller. Fluval makes several different diffusers, but none seem to be made specifically for their Flex series tanks.

Smaller tanks are more prone to wild swings in chemistry. It's often hard to know if a snail is dead or alive, so a dead snail or two could be causing your ammonia spikes. It's also possible you're getting bad test results. If you're using the API liquid test make sure you've got the timing down. You're supposed to wait five minutes for the final result. If you wait longer than five minutes you'll get a higher reading than what it truly is as the color continues to evolve over time. You want to read it right at the five minute mark. If you're reading it too soon, or too late, you're not getting an accurate result. It's pretty easy to start the test, wander off and get distracted then come back fifteen minutes later and see a huge ammonia spike and panic. Uh, no. If you'd read it at the five minute mark it might have been fine. Water testing is one of those things where you can have five people test the same water and get five somewhat, to very different results with the liquid test kits. Some shake the bottles and tubes more. Some lose count of the number of drops and guesstimate. Some give it too little time to develop, some give it too much time. Different people even interpret the color charts differently. What's clearly 0.5 on the chart to one person may be 0.1 to another. Test strips are a little better but even those are open to interpretation.

Just be forewarned, when you're looking at five to ten years out, there's a good chance that someone somewhere will have figured out a way to churn out whatever you're thinking of breeding in huge numbers and the price will crash. Zebra plecos right now retail for around $200 each, so buying ten to create a breeding colony will cost you close to $2,000. Then you have to care for them for three, four, five years, or more before they'll breed. With them being that expensive a fish now, breeders all around the world are likely frantically trying to find the magic formula to let them churn them out in big numbers. If one succeeds (and one or more likely will) the price could crash fairly dramatically. That $2,000+ investment you made may end up with baby plecos that are selling for $10 each. There are lots of Asian Arowana farms out there these days churning out Asian arowanas in huge numbers. Zebra pleco farms might be coming soon. Now, if you're the guy/gal who figures out how to churn them out in huge numbers you could get very rich. But there will be lots of competition with many/most fish farms trying to raise them in large numbers.

I've had aphids on my floaters before and I just wash them off into the tank and let the fish have a feast. When I do a water change I just pour the water over the floaters and the aphids hit the water and the fish's bellies.

Ramshorn snails do the job for me. They eat everything. They do tend to overrun the tank over time, but they help out with maintenance a lot.

Bulk Reef Supply is good, but they often focus on reef tanks which can be a bit more insane (and expensive) than a fish only tank. If you're going fish only, or fish only with live rock, it's not much different than a freshwater tank. A different substrate (typically crushed coral, coral sand, etc.) and marine salt, but the rest is pretty much the same as freshwater. I like Aquarium Domain on YouTube and he does both fresh and saltwater fish, but he's not so much a how-to kind of program other than building big tanks like his Predator Bay tank that he just finished building. A lot will depend on what you're thinking of keeping. A video search of that category (fish only, fish with live rock, reef, etc.) will likely pull up lots of interesting stuff for you. Mark's Aquatics on YouTube does a bit more how-to stuff (both freshwater and marine) on some of his older videos. If you're doing fish only or fish with live rock, you can pretty much just use "normal" freshwater gear. If you go with live corals in a reef setting then you've got to be pickier about water parameters, feeding, and lighting.

Freeze-dried tubifex worms are loved by my swordtails. Be careful with freeze-dried bloodworms. Lots of people get allergic reactions to them. (Myself included.)

It's a very happy and healthy plant right now. I say right now as val has an annoying habit of just melting away for no apparent reason, but for now, it's happy, growing a half inch a day and developing very nice red leaves. The red coloration was a pleasant surprise. I like it. I'm not sure why it's doing it, I'm not sure it'll keep doing it, but for now, it's neat.

There is a red variant called v. 'gigantea marmor' or v. 'gigantea rubra'. Since mine had just had green leaves until recently I'd assumed it was just a "normal" jungle val, but now it's looking more and more like one of the variants. I don't know if it waited until it was established to show the color, or if the leaves that have reached the surface are getting more light and feeding the parent plant more, but it's kind of neat. I like it. If you Google "Red jungle val" you can learn more.

I've had this jungle val for about six months now and for the first three months it largely just sat there and did nothing. About three months ago it started growing and it now grows about a half inch per day in my thirty high. The longest leaves have reached the top (24"), grown across the tank (another 24") and are starting back across to where they started from (maybe six to ten inches so far). It hadn't put out a runner until a couple of weeks ago but now the new leaves and the runner are putting out red leaves. I've included a photo of the base of the plant below, but the red doesn't come through well on camera. The red is much more vibrant in person. I'm pretty impressed with it. I'll have to see if the red fades as the leaves grow, but so far, it's pretty intense.

I would lean more towards a few days at 80 degrees. The typical time is 3-5 days and at 80 degrees, you're more in the three day window. Once hatched they'll typically just cluster together in a mass of fish until the yolk sacs are absorbed (3-4 days) then they'll spread out and leave the cave.

As to curing time, wait until there's no smell (silicone smells like vinegar) and then wait a day or so longer and you should be good.

Use French-style green beans for the little guys. The outer skin is a bit tough for them on the full or cut beans.