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Eric R

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Everything posted by Eric R

  1. Eric R
    Something like this for lighting would probably work fine for growing low to medium light plants, if you have enough room over your tanks to get sufficient spread, probably use 2-4 bulbs/tank, depending on dimensions: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FGLZJOO/ There's a local fish keeper that has a sizeable fishroom in his basement that uses all 10w daylight LED flood/spotlights with good results.
  2. Eric R
    Wow! Thanks for sharing. You could also try feeding Hikari vibra bites, fake blood worms but nutritious and my fish like them. They are probably pretty similar looking to the freeze dried/frozen variety, and it doesn't look like blood worms are an ingredient from the ingredient list.
  3. Eric R
    @Fishdude excited to follow along! Have you also considered electrical needs for the fish room? Also, depending on where you live and what temperature the basement gets/whether it is finished or unfinished, how about heating? And I'm with you two on the 33 longs, I wish those were something I could get at the $1/gallon sale!
  4. Eric R
    Inkbird has temperature controllers that have low-temp and high-temp outlet plugs and settings, so that you could hook a heater to one plug and set the low temp limit, and fans or circulating pump system to the other outlet and set the high temp limit, and it will control your heating/cooling automatically. They are relatively inexpensive as well, and serve as a nice fail safe in case of a heater failure, to keep your tank from cooking.
  5. Eric R
    Yeah it's slightly less than 20ppm to 1 degree (17.85 I think). A lot of people (a lot of Americans maybe?) report tests in dkh not ppm. I should have guessed that.
  6. Eric R
    Is that ppm instead of degrees for kh and gh?
  7. Eric R
    @Fish Folk, do you keep any of the rift lake cichlids, or just South American? I haven't watched your videos yet.
  8. Eric R
    I've personally never kept discus. @Daniel has a discus thank however.
  9. Eric R
    From the picture, I'm guessing the room has 10'-12' ceilings, which probably also makes it look smaller!
  10. Eric R
    Also, cichlid-forum.com has a subforum dedicated just to Lake Malawi species, with some very knowledgeable cichlid keepers on there. I'd recommend asking there as well, they answer a lot of stocking questions on that forum.
  11. Eric R
    What are the tank dimensions? How many of each fish (total and m/f)?
  12. Eric R
    https://www.aquariumcoop.com/apps/store-locator https://auction.fish/clubs/
  13. Eric R
    Local aquarium club auctions can be a good way to get fancy guppies for affordable prices. Some clubs even specialize in guppies.
  14. Eric R
    Hang on backs work great, there's the aquaclear 110 and tidal 110 for larger tanks. And like sponges you can always run 2 instead of 1. You can also add a powerhead if you want more circulation. Sponge filters are simple and effective, they take up tank space but are very reliable. HOBs take up less tank space. The tidal has a pump in the tank, so it will self prime if the power is interrupted, unlike the aquaclear.
  15. Eric R
    Fwiw, my store gives me 1/3 the retail price they sell items for in store credit when I bring them fish/shrimp/plants.
  16. Eric R
    Yup, should be good.
  17. Eric R
    I got a few of these when I first setup my tanks. I found them to be off so much as to be fairly unreliable, even when compared to each other. I have inkbird controllers on a few of my tanks, which act as fairly accurate thermometers but also good heat controllers, and provide some peace of mind against a heater failure.
  18. Eric R
    Many fish actually prefer ph less than 7.0 and softer water. Test your water a few times over a week or two to see how consistent it is, and what the exact values are, and find fish that work good for those values. Stability is always key here, if it's unstable that can be problematic. If you're on a municipal water supply, there should be water test results available from your water provider that you can get. Silicone is pretty resilient. I'd visually inspect the seams as well as do a water test somewhere where you don't mind if it leaks and let the water sit in it for a day or two.
  19. Eric R
    I should think that you should be fine to reuse the sponges. What sort of biological media? If it's rock rubble or something that's made of calcium carbonate, you could run into an issue with it raising the ph levels.
  20. Eric R
    You can do fine without CO2, if you want to search for it more it's called low-tech setups. Fertilizers, either liquid or root tabs are useful though. If you're going to use a sump, I'd recommend one of the kinds with multiple overflow pipes so that if one gets clogged you don't end up with a flood and a dry sump. There's also a type of overflow made by MAME which looks like lily pipes that some folks have had good experiences with. They do make inline heaters that you can connect to canister filters and achieve something similar to what you're talking about, though a sump is probably easier to maintain in the long run. If you want to look at setting up a sump, I'd research nano reefers that have diyed sumps by siliconing glass baffles into place. You'll need to drill your tank if it's not already drilled for the overflow.
  21. Eric R
    What are your nitrates at currently? What species of fish and shrimp? In general though, I don't see any reason why a 10ppm level should have an impact on most fish or most of the common, hardier varieties of aquarium shrimp (like Cherry shrimp). I don't think that fish are generally as sensitive to changing nitrate levels as they are to other things like temperature, ph, or water hardness.
  22. Eric R
    I wouldn't add pure oxygen to an aquarium personally. I believe that if the oxygen levels in your tank are higher than that in the surrounding room, the oxygen in the tank will end up dissolving in the air. If you have sufficient flow and agitation at the surface of your water to encourage gas exchange, and it's not way overstocked, your tank shouldn't really need it. I think you'd gain most of the same advantages of adding extra oxygen into your tank simply by running air from the room through an airstone into the tank, without depleting the oxygen in your breathing tank a lot faster.
  23. Eric R
    What light are you running and at what strength? People seem to have good results with midday siestas, though I personally don't do it.
  24. Eric R
    I agree with @CT_ and @Mmiller2001, either a home RO system or buying distilled water from the store, depending on what size/how many tanks you want to setup and how often you want/need to do water changes and whether you prefer buying distilled water or the upfront cost of the RO system. Walstad method can work well for planted tanks that if properly balanced and stocked don't need very frequent water changes. I'd recommend covering your tanks to reduce evaporation as well. Mix the distilled/RO water with your tap water until you get the kh you want. Partly that will depend on what fish you want and how sensitive they are to ph/kh parameters. If you need to lower ph further, you can try adding botanicals to the tank, but this won't do much unless you have a really low kh (0-2 dkh). If you want to give your plants a good start, you can also try out dry starting your tank. As far as specific questions and recommendations involving nutrient deficiencies for plants, I recommend checking out plantedtank.net, they have some very knowledgeable individuals on planted tanks on there.
  25. Eric R
    A few questions might help me suggest something for you. What's your ph/kh/gh? Also, are you looking to keep a couple large fish, or do you like a tank with a lot of color, or a lot of action, or...? I've heard that common plecos tend to be most active at night, though it seems like it can vary by fish and by tank, but with just those two fish, you'd have a big, fairly low action tank. Are you specifically interested in keeping frontosa or plecos or why do you want to get this fish?
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