gardenman

The eyeball test is your best bet. If the fry look big enough to eat baby brine, then plop a few in and see what happens. If they eat them, they're big enough to eat BBS. As long as you've got other small organism colonies to feed them, there's no rush to transition to baby brine. If they have to eat ten pieces of infusoria to equal one BBS they'll eat ten pieces of infusoria. BBS are just typically easier than other cultures to raise and maintain. If you've got other cultures up and going well, there's no need to rush to BBS.

I have a HydroFarm Active Aqua air pump on my fifty gallon tank that I would have recommended without question up to a few months ago. It's quiet, powerful, and seems relatively bulletproof. I liked it so much I bought a second one to use on my twenty high and thirty gallon tanks. Pump number two is very, very loud however. (I've completely disassembled it trying to find the source of the noise, but no luck.) It's now been demoted to a spare air pump should the need arise at some point. Both pumps appear identical inside and out, but one is whisper quiet and the other is far from quiet, for no apparent reason. And trust me, I've really looked for the source of the noise. nothing is loose, nothing rubs, everything appears identical from one pump to the other, but one's nearly silent and one deafens you. Both move a lot of air however, so there's that.

Copper pipes shouldn't be an issue. Solder/flux residue could be an issue in brand new work. Also if your water has a lot of fine particulate matter those particles could scrap off copper as they transit the pipe (copper is a fairly soft metal in general and the flexible copper pipes are especially so) and some wells tend to pull up fine particulate matter. In general, I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you start having trouble, it's a good place to look for a problem, but I don't see it being a major issue for you. Many/most plumbers will still argue that copper pipes are the best option for water supplies. PEX (cross linked polyethylene) is becoming the new standard, but many/most old-school plumbers still prefer copper. It's been around forever and has largely stood the test of time. Municipal water supplies can be more than a bit iffy. Many still use lead pipes at one stage or another. You just don't know what the water has gone through getting to you. It's also possible some idiot along the route has bypassed the check valve and is back-flushing something harmful into the water supply. (A story idea I have for a future novel. Water meters tend to have the check valve built-in and are often inside a residence. A person with bad intentions with access to a powerful enough toxin could contaminate a whole city's water supply once it's left the water treatment plant by simply bypassing the check valve and back-flushing the toxin into the water supply line.)

The water clarifiers tend to act like glue and clump small stuff together until it becomes big stuff that then settles out of the water and either goes into the gravel or into the filter. Because it acts like glue it can also glue stuff to the gills of the fish making it harder for them to breath. My best guess is it's the Accuclear that's causing your current issues. The good news is it should resolve on its own over time. Check your tank temp also to be sure it's not too warm. Warmer water holds less oxygen. The first symptom of an overheated tank is often the fish having difficulty breathing. Water clarifiers can be useful, but I wouldn't use one too often. Nearly all water clarity issues will resolve on their own with patience. It may take a few days to a week or two, but most water clarity issues resolve on their own.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos on wild caught fish and fish farms (one just today titled "Lumbini Aquaria Sri Lanka") and it's always amazing to me that any fish survive everything they go through to get to us. It's not an easy life being a fish. In the Lumbini video I saw today the fish are bred at their main facility, then sorted and bagged and shipped to one of a hundred farmers who then raise them from the fry to young adults. At that point they're netted up again and transported back to Lumbini. There they're sorted again (often by spoons) and flicked off into nearby containers. Then they go into a seven to fourteen day quarantine before being netted yet again and sorted again. Then bagged. They don't bag them in the water they've been raising them in though, they use water from a deep well to bag them. Then they're boxed and hauled to the airport for distribution around the world. Before those fish ever get sent to market they've been in at least four different waters. First, the water at Lumbini where they're born. Then in whatever water the farmer who raises them to young adults uses. Then back to Lumbini again for their quarantine period. Then into the water from the deep well that they use for bagging the fish. Along they way they've been caught and handled multiple times. They've been bagged and trucked there, there and everywhere. Then they take a long flight on a plane. It's pretty impressive that any fish survives all they go through to reach us.

To some extent the speed of the swing probably matters more than the extent of the swing. A twenty degree swing over 24 hours isn't so bad. A twenty degree swing in an hour is not good. I'd try to focus on fish more from small streams/ponds than those from the deep waters of the Amazon. Smaller streams and ponds are more prone to major temperature fluctuations than larger bodies of water.

I can assure you the snails are producing ammonia. It's just being used up before it registers on your test kit. That's what you want.

Rain water should help your pond. Assuming you're legally allowed to divert rain water from your gutters to your pond in your location. Rain water is typically pretty much mineral free and typically a lower ph. If your pond is in the ground (as most are, unlike mine) it's pretty easy to divert water from a downspout in the direction of the pond. The easiest method is to simply roll out some plastic from the downspout to the pond and then put something under each edge of the plastic to help guide the water to your pond. Pool noodles, a few 2X4s, the dead bodies of the rainwater police, anything can be put under the edges of the plastic to help form a channel for the rainwater to move down towards the pond. Roofs can collect an absurd amount of water in a rainstorm. I have two 110 gallon troughs, and 60 gallons of trash cans collecting rain water and all were empty about ten days ago and all are full now and we've just had a little rain in that time. It's pretty impressive the amount of water that comes off our roofs. The 110 gallon troughs were empty as the PVC pipe I used to connect them didn't survive the winter this year. If you've never seen shattered PVC pipe before, it's pretty impressive how extensive the damage was. They were fine last winter despite many days of sub-freezing weather, but this year, they decided they'd had enough. They've now been replaced with some new fittings and a garden hose that's supposedly rated to survive minus 40 degrees. If it gets that cold I'll be dead, so I don't think I'll be worried about the hose surviving.

I have two now. My first one came on January sixth and has done nothing. It hasn't rotted, but it's done nothing. The Coop sent me a replacement that came with a tiny pink shoot already and it's grown great! The first of its leaves just hit the top of the tank and it's great! I'm just leaving the original until it either rots or grows. I'm more expecting it to rot than grow at this point. I may move it outside in May and see if the sun motivates it to sprout.

The "starting point" isn't the problem. You can start for next to nothing with homemade CO2. Some water, yeast, baking soda, and sugar and you've got CO2. A couple of empty 2 liter soda bottles and some airline tubing and you're injecting CO2 into your tank. Even if you have none of that to start with $10 will buy all you need. Then you'll get tired of having to change out the yeast solution each week and decide that maybe buying a CO2 system is better. "I can get one for less than a dollar a day!" You'll then be happy for a bit, but hear about CO2 dumping and decide to invest in an even better regulator that promises not to dump CO2. Sure, it cost more than the whole system you'd bought, but it'll be worth it for the peace of mind. Then your plants will find they're not getting enough light to use all of the CO2 you're now injecting, so it's time to upgrade the lighting to take advantage of the CO2. Hmm...the "right" lights for the CO2 you're injecting cost $500 each? It'll be worth it though. Oops! It seems your plants are sucking up the nutrients faster than you're replacing them. You've got to increase your fertilization rate. Maybe a dosing pump would be helpful? Yes! I'll get a four channel one that I can program to give just the right nutrients all the time! It's just $400! Now with the "right" lighting and the "right" CO2 system, and the "right" nutrients, your plants are taking over the world and need constant trimming and maintenance to keep the tank from becoming an overgrown jungle. You go away for a few days and find you can't see the fish through the plants when you get back, so you go in and weed whack your way through the jungle to get things back in check. Then the power supply on the expensive lights fail and you find out you can't buy just the power supply, so there goes another $500. Oh, and that regulator you bought that prevents CO2 dumping? There's a new, even better version out now for just $800. Before long your planted tank cost as much as your car and takes nonstop maintenance to keep it looking good. But on the rare occasion it's not overgrown, or has freshly cut stems looking ugly, and everything's just right, it looks great! Is it worth it? If your goal is to impress aquarium plant snobs with your ability to grow really tough to grow plants, then maybe. If your goal is to simply have a pretty aquarium that's not insanely hard to maintain and keeps the fish happy, probably not. Most people looking at your aquarium might think java fern and anubias are nearly impossible to grow. (They're not.) They'll be impressed that you have such a beautiful tank even if it's filled with the easiest to grow plants in the known universe. A wall of vallisneria swaying in the current in the back of the tank, some anubias and java fern in the midground, maybe some dwarf chain sword as a foreground plant and you've got a gorgeous aquarium that takes little maintenance. (Thinning out the val from time to time is about it.) No CO2 required, no special lighting, and you've got a beautiful tank with healthy fish. The starting cost is not the problem. It's like any other addiction. The price to get in is low. The long-term cost is what kills you. "There's a new cultivar of the sword plant that's just so beautiful! And it's just $750 each! Wow! I've got to get one! Maybe two!" Uh, no. For most people, the non-plant snobs of us, there's no "need" for CO2. You can make a beautiful, healthy tank without it. If you want to impress the aquatic plant snobs of the world, go for it. Just be forewarned that there's no upper limit on how much it could cost you.

The moss is showing some nice new growth, so that's a good sign. I think I see some smaller healthy looking leaves in the background on the Java fern also, so that's also a good sign. Plants need time to adjust to our tanks. Some do it well, others struggle. I've got four planted tanks that are seemingly identical and plants grow differently in each one. I never know what will grow where, so I try something in one tank and if it does well, great. If not I know not to try it there again. I think your plants will do fine though. The moss is clearly putting out new growth and dieback is not uncommon in mosses when moved.

If you watch a lot of YouTube videos on discus breeding you'll find that many/most breeders keep their breeding pairs in very small tanks. This gives the fry less room to wander off and get lost, but also seems to suit the parents who happily breed in such conditions. A 40 breeder should be fine for a small group of younger discus as long as you're able to maintain the water quality. As to maximum size, growth seems more controlled by food than tank size. If you feed them they will grow. The more you feed the harder it is to maintain good water quality, but food more controls growth than water volume. Those who wish to raise monster koi (or monster fish in general) tend to "overfeed" their fish to get maximum size from them. Some koi fanciers rig up self-feeders for their koi where the koi simply needs to nudge a bar or float and pellets will be dispensed. These people grow monster koi. They need massive biofiltration, but that's how you get big fish. If a fish is eating it's using the food for something and that something is typically growth. I raised a baby arowana many years ago (maybe 40+ years now?) and I gave it unlimited food. (500 feeder guppies were put into its tank before it got introduced and then later endless feeder goldfish when it got big enough to take them) and it grew like crazy. Within a year it was over 18" long and still growing like mad. I treated a butterfly koi similarly (just not feeder fish, but nearly endless other food) and it was easily over 18" in ten months. Food controls growth. More food equals more growth. The only issue is more food also equals more waste and more potential water quality issues. If you can handle the water quality issues, then feed the fish like crazy and you'll get the growth you want. Some "experts" say people overfeed their fish. Nope. Not in most cases. Wardley had their Sandman filter a few years back and it had filter pad issues. When talking with one of their engineers/designers about the issue they were shocked that I was feeding my fish three and four times a day. According to them, the filter was designed to handle one small feeding every two to three days and anything more than that was overburdening the filter. When I pointed out their own fish food said to feed three or more times daily they had no good answer. As a rule, especially with younger fish, more food equals more growth. If you keep your discus well fed, they'll grow to their maximum potential size regardless of what size tank they're in.

Most LEDs are rated at lasting 30,000-50,000 hours. If you use your lights ten hours a day for 365 days, that's 3,650 hours per year, so a good LED light should give you ten or so years. Power supplies tend to be a bit iffier, but in my experience, they either work 100% or they're dead. There's typically no middle ground with them.

TDS stands for "Total Dissolved Solids." To test it you buy a TDS meter. The meters range in price from around $15 to God knows how how much depending on how accurate you need to be. (Hint: for an aquarium, you don't need to be all that accurate.) They most often used on tanks holding delicate shrimp and fish that are very sensitive to water quality.

And if you're raising bettas, you're going to be holding them for a while as fish stores only want more adult bettas rather than juveniles. And the males need to be separated fairly early to keep aggression down, so they're not the ideal fish to raise if you've got limited space. Fish like guppies, mollies and the like can go from babies to sellable fish in a month or two without needing to be separated. Bettas you're more looking at four to six months with each male in a separate container. They aren't the easiest fish to bring to market size. Simply Betta on YouTube has done lots of shows on bettas and betta breeding.

Water Sprite is a bit temperamental. I haven't grown Guppy Grass so I can't speak for it. Hornwort is typically pretty indestructible though it might shed like crazy for a bit and look like its dying only to bounce back. Patience is important with hornwort. It tends to rebound even if it goes down to bare stems. If you poke around online at sites like ebay, etsy, and aquabid, you can often find floating plant bundles that contain red root floaters, frogbit (my personal favorite floater), salvinia minima, dwarf water lettuce, duckweed, etc. and those bundles typically sell for under $20 often under $10, so it's a great way to test out various floating plant options. You might only get three to six of each plant, but if there's one that likes your water/lighting, you'll be weeding them out before long.

I recently mail-ordered some ludwigia that was supposed to be 5"-10" tall. It was more like 24" tall. I cut it into more manageable lengths and was left with some bare stems. I went ahead and planted them anyway and they're growing very well with multiple shoots emerging. Also roots are emerging so those bare stems could be made into multiple new plants if I needed them. Ludwigia is a pretty tough little plant. Photo below of one pot that was mostly all just bare stems when I planted them with no leaves. As long as you leave a leaf node where a dormant bud is lurking, you should see new growth.

Pond snails are small enough that when they die they either get eaten by something else, or just disappear. You'll just find empty shells on the bottom of the tank. A few years back I ended up in the hospital for 15 days with no one feeding my fish and the pond snails nearly all got eaten by my swordtails during that period. The swordtails don't typically bother them, but given nothing else to eat, they ate the snails. I came home to tanks with lots of empty pond snail shells. The population rebounded once I started feeding the tanks again.

Most of the "pest" snails are the pond snails which are okay in that they stay pretty small. In the tanks where I have ramshorn snails they're outcompeting the pond snails and the number of pond snails is decreasing while the ramshorn snails have grown in numbers.

My new lily is behaving exactly the same as yours. It's growing great and reaching for the top. The old lily bulb is still just sitting there and doing nothing. I think I may try drying it out now. It's been in water since January sixth and has done nothing, so maybe drying it out for a bit will motivate it to grow. It's not rotting which is good.

I'm definitely on the pro side of the question. I like snails. I bought 12 ramshorn snails a while back (3 months ago?) and I've got a lot of them now. I'm very happy with them.

You can't really overdo it, so put however many you get in. mine came in a two pack so I put in two. If you just get one, just put in one.

Yeah, aphids love frogbit. The good news is aphids make great fish food. Just dip the affect frogbit in the water and give it a swirl to dislodge the aphids and any fish in the vicinity will get a nice snack.

Most CO2 regulators rely on a needle valve to control the flow of CO2 and they work okay as long as the pressure in the atmosphere and the tank stay where they were when you set things up. When the pressure on one side or the other of the needle valve changes, so does the release rate. This results in CO2 dumping which as you've discovered is a very bad thing. If it was a bright sunny day with high atmospheric pressure when you installed the CO2 regulator and then a big storm front swept through with very low atmospheric pressure, it would alter the flow rate of CO2. There's a regulator called CarbonDoser that uses an electronic valve that opens and closes many times a second and isn't reliant on the pressure on either side. It supposedly eliminates the risk of CO2 dumping. It's a bit pricey at $400, but if you're going the CO2 injection route, it might be a worthwhile investment.

The thing with bettas is they tend to have a short life of two to four years from birth and most are a year or older when you get them as it takes them time to develop the colors and finnage that people want to see. In some cases they're even older than that and you're buying a geriatric betta. They've been nearly all raised in captivity (there are very few wild bettas sold in the hobby) so they're used to some sort of domestic food, it's just a question of figuring out which type. I've never had an issue feeding a betta, but mine are typically put in a community tank and just follow the lead of the other fish. The other fish go up and gulp down the food so the betta goes up and gulps down the food. A lot of the problems people have in breeding bettas is they're too old by the time the buyer buys them. A young, healthy male betta in prime breeding age typically hasn't developed the long flowing fins and vibrant colors that buyers want, so they don't make it to market until they're older and look better, but by then they may be well past their prime.