gardenman

I last kept marine fish many years ago (back when Nektonics was the king of marine aquarium products) and the old Nektonics undergravel filters had a protein skimmer cup that attached to the uplift tubes and worked great. While those filters are long gone, you can buy air driven protein skimmers these days that are essentially the same, just without the UG filter attached for much less than the price of an external protein skimmer. There are a few hang on back filters that include a protein skimmer also. Coralife makes one, but I'm not sure how long they'll support it as while it's still available at multiple retailers for a good price (under $50) it's not listed on Coralife's product page which means they may have already discontinued it. That could make getting replacement filter pads, and parts tricky. (I have about ten old filters that you can no longer get parts or pads for, so I speak from experience here. When you look at a filter, check the manufacturer's web page to be sure they're still supporting it.) As to fish, I have to agree that anything in the damselfish family is likely going to be overly aggressive to clownfish. I love Mandarins in a smallish marine tank. They're a stunningly beautiful little fish that hugs the bottom of your tank, but can become very friendly and even eat from your fingers. I've had two and both were amazing little fish. "Experts" these days say they're hard to keep and feed, but mine ate bloodworms, brine shrimp and even flake food that found its way to them. Both lived well over a year.

I have two of the Penn Plax Cascade 1500s and they're fine for me. I've been using them for almost three years with no real hiccups at all.

The plants arrived an hour earlier than anticipated which is good. By and large they look pretty good. I was a little surprised to find no heat pack or insulation on an order shipped to NJ in January. That's a bit risky. The plants were between 58 degrees and 60 degrees though upon opening the box, so that was good. I'd prefer them at seventy, but anything above fifty is usually survivable. The dwarf Sagittaria and Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus looked the best of the group. The only plant I'm somewhat worried about is the Cryptocoryne Tropica. That came through the worst, but it should be okay. Assuming the plants didn't get colder at any time than they were when I got them, things should be okay. I would have really preferred there to be a heat pack or insulation of some sort though. It's about 39 degrees as I type this and if I hadn't grabbed them immediately they would have gotten pretty chilled in a box without a heat source or insulation. They'd been packed for about 117 hours (one o'clock Friday to ten AM Wednesday) so all things considered they came through okay.

When you say a wave maker, are you talking about just a circulating pump/powerhead, or a real wave maker? A real wave maker is typically two or more pumps operated by a controller that cycle back and forth creating waves in the aquarium. Wave makers are more typically used in reef tanks to simulate nature where you have waves breaking over the shallow reefs. with the constant back and forth waterflow. Many/most freshwater fish come from slow moving streams, ponds, and rivers where waves are less of a natural occurrence, You could just end up stressing out a freshwater fish by putting in a wave maker. Freshwater fish, when they have any current at all, it's typically in one direction for hours at a time and not a constant back and forth as a reef fish experiences and what you get with a wave maker. The exception would be something like Hillstream loaches. They thrive in a high current, but once again, more of a current and less of a wave. I saw a really neat Hillstream loach setup once where they'd siliconed in a false bottom open on either end and had a Gyre pump under the false bottom pulling water in from one side and expelling it out the other side under the false bottom. They had sponges preventing the fish from getting pulled into the intake (and serving as a Matten filter) and screening preventing the loaches from swimming into the outlet. They'd lined to bottom with stone and pea gravel and had some carefully placed caves. Their Hillstream loaches were in heaven. It was a brilliant recreation of their natural habitat. The plants in the tank were largely growing sideways due to the current and I'm not sure how happy they were, but the fish were happy. Fish like Hillstream loaches don't typically even find the current changing direction. Water coming down a hillside seldom turns around and goes back up it. They don't mind a unidirectional current. It's how they evolved. A wave maker in a freshwater tank is likely just going to stress your fish out and achieve nothing positive. Most freshwater fish never encounter continuous waves (unlike reef fish) and would not be equipped to handle it. Now if you're talking about a single powerhead to just create current/circulation in the tank, that can be fine as long as it's not overly powerful. A single powerhead can even be beneficial in helping to keep detritus moving so your filter can better remove it. They come with all types of openings from quite large (dangerous for smaller fish) to quite fine (more easily clogged by plant debris and what not.)

My school of 100+ baby Super Red Bristlenose Plecos are now between three-quarters and seven-eights of an inch long and eating like crazy. My plant order from the first is due to arrive today after being delayed a few days. We'll have to see how they've handled the cold as a 72 hour heat pack is likely a dud by now. It'll be about 117 hours since they were packed at one o'clock on the first, so we blew past the 72 hour mark a while back. (Mail typically arrives here around 11 am.) It's not horribly cold here now (39-ish degrees) so I expect they'll be okay. I'll take their temp when they arrive. Anything above 50 degrees and they should be okay. Below that, things start to get a bit iffier. Plants are generally pretty tough though and I'll bring them in as soon as they arrive. I'll have to see what happens with them.

Frozen is better for me as I'm very allergic to the freeze-dried ones. If I open the freeze-dried ones I start sneezing within seconds.

With well water you can have wild swings, especially in shallow wells. My well is only about twenty feet deep and the water quality can vary wildly. If you've got a deep well in a very large aquifer you'll experience fewer fluctuations, but even then there will be some variation. My well water has a very high iron content, low ph, high ammonia, and nearly no calcium hardness. I keep aragonite in my tanks/filters to add calcium hardness and boost the ph. I store the water in plastic jugs (old kitty litter bottles) and the ammonia goes down there. The plastic also absorbs a bit of the iron as over time it turns orange from the iron. I keep my tanks heavily planted and the iron is good for the plants. I can't do large water changes or I'd kill the fish, but this system works for me. My nitrates are always high, but that's good for the plants. In tanks where I want snails I'll add cuttlebones (the things used for pet birds) for the extra calcium. It works for me. The good news is no chlorine/chloramine, no fluoride, and I've learned how to manage the water.

If/when you get the fry and they're big enough to remove from the parents, there was a YouTube video a few years ago of a professional breeder who raised his fry in very large tanks (150 gallons I believe) but kept all of the fry confined in a very, very small part of the tank. He wanted the large water volume for optimal growth, but had found they spent so much energy searching for food in the big tank that it slowed their growth. By cramming the fry together in a very small portion of the tank he was able to get substantially faster growth of the fry and get them to market sooner. He had something like fifty, one inch diameter fry confined to a space about the size of a ten gallon tank. It was funny seeing this huge, largely empty tank, with a mass of fry all confined in one small part of the tank.

You're correct, the color should be green for an optimal level. Blue is too little, yellow too much. And the bubble count is how you adjust the level. As to diffusers, there are many, many options. A diffuser's job is to expose as much surface area of co2 to the water for as long as possible to give the water the most time to absorb as much co2 as possible.The simplest is an inverted jar type diffuser. Your co2 goes into the inverted jar and then the water absorbs the co2 where the two meet. The amount of water surface area exposed to the co2 controls the concentration. There are ball diffusers where the co2 has to pass through balls where the co2 bubbles collide with the balls, slowing their rise. There are spiral diffusers where the co2 has to spin its way upward to the surface. There are zig zag type diffusers where the co2 has to traverse a series of slightly diagonal obstacles to reach the surface. The diffusers that create the smallest bubble possible are typically what's used these days as the small bubbles tend to give you the best result. A whole lot of very small bubbles gives you a lot of surface area.

Java fern would likely survive under those lights. It's an absurdly tough little plant. It wouldn't thrive, but it would live and grow.

Water sprite is arguably the easiest plant in the world to propagate (other than floating plants which self-propagate.) Simply break off a leaf and let it float and it should spawn lots of baby water sprite plants from that one leaf. A rhizome (you're likely talking about the java fern here) will have dormant eyes/buds just waiting to spring to life. Just plop it in the tank and watch it and it should take off and grow.

Have you cleaned out your filters and given the tank a thorough look over to be sure nothing dead is hiding anyplace? Weird stuff can happen. A mouse can fall into a tank, drown and fall behind something and not be noticed. If you're using plant fertilizer, it's possible that's leaching ammonia into the water column. If you have a cat, it's possible your cat has taken to using the fish tank as a urinal. Cat urine is pretty much all ammonia. Something caused that spike a month ago, and while current readings can be off because of the chemicals used, that original spike had a cause that could still be in play.

CaribSea makes a Rhyzomat for planted aquariums that's designed specifically for plants. The negatives you cite "making plants impossible to pull and replant" is the benefit of it. Lots of people have problems with plants coming unplanted and floating. By putting something like a Rhyzomat or poly fill under the gravel, you give the roots something to grab hold of and to help keep them in place. Once the roots penetrate the poly fill or Rhyzomat, they anchor the plant in place and make it hard for a fish to uproot it. I've seen big cory cats uproot a plant to try and get some speck of food they think is hiding under it. If you prefer a sand substrate and use fine sand, keeping plants planted can be a real challenge. A layer of poly fill or something like the Rhyzomat makes that possible. Once the plants get their roots in that layer, they're pretty much glued there and no matter how hard a cory or other fish tries to dislodge them, they can't.

I keep some of my own tank raised swordtails in my quarantine tank that haven't been exposed to anything as far as I know. If a new fish arrives with anything it should show up in the swordtails fairly quickly. Some fish carry diseases with them that don't affect them. They've built up immunity to it. You can watch them forever and they'll look fine. Put them in your big tank though and everyone else could get sick. By keeping a few expendable non-immune fish in the quarantine tank I can hopefully prevent that type of a disaster from happening. If I add new fish and the swordtails suddenly get sick, I know the new fish have something that I need to treat, even if the new fish look fine. Keeping a few swordtails in the tank also helps to keep the tank cycled and gives me something to watch in the quarantine tank. The swordtails are currently sharing the tank with twelve (or so) ramshorn snails that I just got a while back. One snail died, but the rest are fine and the swordtails are fine so I don't think there's an issue with them. I'll start redistributing the snails to other tanks in the near future.

When I think of a "seasoned tank" I think of a tank with established plants, and a diverse biome that's in some sort of balance. Lots of life finds its way into our aquariums over time. Some visible, like pond snails, detritus worms, etc., some less visible. A tank that's been set up for a few months/years will have lots of life in it. That extra life tends to live in around sponge/mattten filters, the substrate, plants, etc. It gives any baby fish a source of some food when they're very little. Now, some people raise fish in nearly sterile conditions and have success. Kudos to them. As long as you give Multies shells any reasonable conditions they should spawn for you. Raising the fry will be more challenging in a more sterile tank. There won't be much naturally occurring stuff in the tank for them when they get the munchies, but it's doable.

To say there's a diversity of opinion on how best to acclimate fish is an understatement. If you're buying fish online or in a store, ask their preferred method. Some will void any warranty if you use a different method than they recommend. Document how you did it also so if any question arises later you can prove how you did it. A video or photographs are wise during the process to prove you followed their recommendations. I've been successful with the plop and drop method as long as the fish are at the same temp. If the temps are different and the fish are in breather bags I'd recommend hanging the bag in the tank so only a third to a half of the bag is in the water so air exchange can still take place. If you don't let a breather bag breathe you run the risk of suffocating your new fish. The temps will still equalize and the fish and bag can still breathe if you just dip part of it into the tank. Your best bet is to just do what those sending you the fish recommend and document what you did.

I don't think there's a specific answer out there. One plant is better than none. Two is better than one. Three is better than two. You could just plant the corners of the tank and then add some easy to remove/contain floating plants like frogbit to help jumpstart the cycling process. (Avoid duckweed. It's not easy to remove.) The frogbit will pretty quickly grow and spread but can be removed easily once your tank has fully cycled.

Reportedly, all young swordtails have both sexual organs/gonads and then absorb one or the other becoming either male or female. Some late blooming males have reportedly had one or more spawns delivering fry before absorbing the female gonads and becoming male. Males can't become female once they've made the switch, but a supposed female, even one that's given birth, can become male. It's an interesting phenomena. Based on my very limited experience (I don't generally try to stress my fish) I suspect stress (24 hour a day lighting and no food for two weeks) can provoke the change. With fully developed male swordtails having more market value, it could be an interesting experiment for a fish farm or research facility to conduct to see if they could stress supposed female swordtails into becoming male or prompt late developing males into developing sooner.

Mine love freeze-dried tubifex worms pressed against the front glass. Every afternoon around four o'clock I'll plop three or four cubes there and they swarm to them. They swim right around my hand as I'm pressing the cubes in place. Suffice to say they get so distracted by the worms that you can very easily catch them. You can also make a simple fish trap by putting something like an empty water bottle with some green beans or other food they love in the tank. They'll find their way into the bottle and the you can simply remove the bottle and fish together. You can condition them to eating in the bottle without removing them first, then remove them as you need to.

Yeah. Nothing good happens leaving a package exposed. I've ordered plants in the winter that were shipped wrapped in damp paper towels in a Ziploc bag with no heat pack or insulation that were fine, so I don't worry about it too much. As long as I get them inside quickly, they're fine. I find cold packs for summer shipments to be more troublesome. I had a big order of tropical fish arrive in August where a cold pack had the water temp in the bags between 48-52 degrees. Some were already DOA and the rest died shortly after arriving. Those fish would have been better off being shipped at ambient temperature. The packer had the fish in the bottom of the box and the cold pack on top, and the cold air settled to the bottom overly chilling the fish.

They were ordered from the Co-op. I've never had a problem with plants from other sources either though. I don't leave them in my mailbox (for mailed plants) or on my porch if they're shipped by other carriers. I track them. Follow them to my house and get them inside as soon as possible.

Just be advised that with swordtails, some of the presumed female swordtails can turn into a male. I have a large breeding colony of neon swords and have smaller colonies of selected swordtails in other tanks in case my big colony collapses. In one of those tanks I had a lone male, so I selected a large female from the big colony for him. He did the spawning routine with her, and I was waiting for fry. I'll be waiting a long, long time as "she's" now developed a gonopodium and is starting to develop a swordtail. "She" was about twice the size of the male and slightly older than him, but either changed sex or was a very slow developing male. I had the misfortune to spend fifteen days in the hospital a few years ago and a tank with eleven swordtails had no food and their light was on 24/7 for those fifteen days. When I went into the hospital I had three males. When I came out there were nine males. It appears that when stressed female swordtails decide to become male swordtails. Male swordtails sell better than females, so there's probably a way to stress them enough to get more males, but I've never heard of anyone doing it commercially.

I just ordered eight plants today and they're already packed and shipped. I live in NJ, so they've got a ways to go to get here, but things are moving pretty well right now. I would expect them here sometime between Monday and Wednesday. Maybe sooner. Heat packs are typically either 48 or 72 hour heat packs. Monday would still have a 72 hour heat pack going strong. The plants should be fine a day or two past the expiration of the heat pack also. I'm experimenting with plants I can't find locally. It'll be interesting to see how they do.

Air pumps are quirky. I bought one from Amazon a while back that was very powerful and quite quiet. I bought a second one of the same brand and model that's the loudest pump I've ever owned. I've taken the loud one apart to try and figure out what the heck is going on, but I can't find the issue. None of the usual tricks work for quieting it, so it's now my spare air pump and unused unless an emergency pops up.

The 6500k shoplights can be a good option for a four foot long tank. You can get six four foot long, 6500k, 20 watt, 2200 lumen T5 shoplights for under $50. You'll want a reflector of some sort to secure them and direct the light downward, but a lot of people use a length of gutter as a reflector. Six lights at 2200 lumen each gives you up to 13,200 lumens. That's more light than you probably need. It's a cheap and efficient option. I'm using six of the two foot long ones to light my 50 gallon tank and they do a good job.