Ken Dyer

I bet your shrimp love the garden!

Great to hear a hose change improved the flow. And I think you may come to prefer the aqua clear for the ease of maintaining it over the canister. Solving problems seems to be part and parcel with fish keeping 😁

The symptoms sound like internal parasites for the male, especially the slowly getting skinny leading to death. Can you get dog dewormer at a local pet store? A lot of dog dewormers also have praziquentenal as a main ingredient and you may be able to use one of them and math out the dosage. I have only used salt for bacterial, fungal, and ich so not sure how effective it is for internal worms.

My 75 is adolescent emperor tetras and a few 1-2 of retirement age rainbows (threadfin/praecox) and some shrimp. It runs on 3 medium sponge filters and a lot of plants (no stems). Water quality has been great but it is stocked fairly lightly as I am hoping the emperors are going to spawn in there some day and round out the numbers.

Welcome Larry! Sounds like some great tanks and a long history of fish keeping. Glad to have you here.

No advice on the mbuna as I only ever had yellow labs, but congrats on the molly fry! Love me some baby fishes 😄

Awesome! Always love it when plants make more 🙂

I have never had any issues with planaria hurting my snails or shrimp, as with all internet advice your mileage may vary. I do find that a lot of dwarf cichlids or anabantoids find them to be a tasty snack and will keep the numbers down if you are a habitual over feeder like me 🙂 Yours look different than mine, but that could easily just be the picture.

Should be fine, I typically want to deworm twice for many kinds of fish anyway. Like any meds they can be hard on your fish so I wouldn't want to keep adding fish and deworming each time in a community tank but 1 course of deworming following the directions on the package shouldn't be too much.

One of the many reasons I love air driven filters like the Ziss or sponges, way less to go wrong with them. Sorry to hear your canister is being a pain in the butt, I hate it when an expensive item gets finicky 😞

looks like your tap is almost RODI to begin with, I would definitely just go tap to tank 🙂

My suggestion is to plan the rack around the tanks. The "beauty" of the cinderblock and 2x lumber rack is that it is modular and can be sized to what you want it to be. My first rack I tried to span 6' between cinderblocks with 2x4's and I wouldn't ever do that again. 6' was too much and led to a sag, 5' was marginally OK but still sagged, 4' seemed to be the sweet spot to span with 2x4's. The last two I have built I have used 2x8's and I like them a lot more personally as they are more rigid with zero sag/deflection. When planning expect the tanks to be bigger than what they list as the rim extends and also plan so that the tanks don't butt up against each other as it can make lights/cords a pain. Also I definitely recommend ample space between the levels so that you have room to add hardscape, net out fish, etc. So a good 8-12" between the top of the tallest tank and the bottom of the shelf above it. If you have any specific questions just holler and I am happy to measure what I have done or tell you what else I did wrong and hated 😉 Or how many days/hours it takes to drain all your tanks, move them all, re-set them up, move them all again, and set them all back up a 3rd time to determine that 6' & 5' gaps are "too saggy" to let me sleep at night.

Yup, that definitely looks like a flower bud!

What a pretty flower! I wonder if it needs to be emmersed growth to flower. Now I may have to give it a try 🙂

Not that I have seen, but it does grow from the top so the buds just may be the new growth. If it does flower take pictures though, I'd love to see it 🙂

This tank has been unchanged for about 5 years now (I change tanks around too much). Since the Kerri never seem to stop spawning their tank gets left alone minus trimming the dwarf sag 😁

Hopefully half was enough to give to the LFS...

I wonder do the plants "prefer" to take in ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate first for food? I always wonder if a heavy plant load allows a tank to "cycle" faster but actually disrupts an actual "cycle" by the plants taking up a lot of the ammonia before the nitrifying bacteria get much of a chance. Though I would assume your charts would show this by ammonia levels dropping but nitrite not rising? As always enjoying following this!

So far they are receptacles for daily doses of Easy Green. But I "need" some CPDs in my life (and in two of the upstairs tanks) so likely at least one will be a CPD breeding project. The other two, not positive yet. I always like to have at least 2-3 tanks up and running to grow plants and house fish at a moments notice if the LFS gets in something amazing 😉

So..... Tore the multi's home apart and took about half to the LFS along with all the scarlet endlers. I wanted to move the multies back into a 20 long but at eye level on the new 3' rack. Setup the 40B with some eco complete and some spare crypts I needed to get planted before they died. Moved the furcata rainbows into the tank and may look to try and spawn them. Back is now sore, and still need to go to Home Desperate to get lid materials for the 3 new 10s.

I would say two (one in each corner) is probably better, but (always that word) I don't run two sponge filters in any of my 20's. Two sponges would theoretically create less dead spots, would allow you to rotate cleaning filters, leave you with a "spare" cycled sponge to swap into a new or hospital tank. There are a ton of benefits. But I don't do it because I only have so many sponge filters, only so many air drops, etc. So while awesome in a lot of ways, not so awesome that I feel it is critical to do so. I keep 3-4 "spare" sponge filters in a 40B with my shellies so already have that part covered and the circulation difference isn't a big enough deal to me to lose any sleep over. My 2 cents, Ken

Any of those are possible. I know some fish will go after each others eyes if they get hungry, and I have had fish damage their eyes on decor like driftwood when spooked. I wouldn't think 160ppm of nitrate would be enough to do such direct damage, but different species definitely have different levels of sensitivity so it is not outside the realm of possibility. I do know while out fly fishing I have caught one eyed fish before, so at least game species can survive and make do in the wild with a single eye. My best advice would be clean water and make an effort to ensure your little buddy is getting to eat. I would likely scatter food across the top and make an effort to target feed in the area where it is if it doesn't seem to be getting food.

Yay! That's awesome! So glad to hear it turned out to be a painless fix 😄

Don't I know it! I just setup a few more tanks and was quickly reminded what a bacterial bloom looks like myself 🙂

Sorry @quirkylemon103 I was teasing @Daniel about the hardships we aquarists face and how our trips to the fish store are so much harder that the trip is up hill both ways, and often in the snow... 😉