Ken Dyer

How fun! 🙂 I like the splitting rocks!

Welcome aboard!

I have no loyalty to any brands (or at least try not to). I find that my fish go bonkers for both the Extreme krill flakes and the mini pellet so I feed both commonly. As I can't get either locally when I slouch on getting my Coop order in I'll feed Omega One (what my LFS carries) and my fish are happy to eat that as well (just not as fast, it actually makes it to the substrate). All in all I stopped focusing on x of y ingredients and started focusing more on do my fish look healthy, do they take to the food? So my suggestion? Listen to your fish, they'll tell you what they like and show you what works for them by looking healthy. Ken (the one guy who had little success with Vibra bites) 😉

Odd, I thought I had done an introduction post but not seeing one anywhere so must be my memory going on me 🙂 Howdy all, I am Ken from Lewiston Idaho. I have been into fish keeping since a young age after discovering my parents old tanks/gear in the family basement. I have made several mistakes over the years (an Oscar and a 12" black shark in a 29G) and have even learned from a few of them. I took a several (20+) years hiatus after joining the army and then after working a job with a "Cory" schedule and a 3 hour round trip daily commute. Now I have a "part time" job (only 40 hours a week!) and find I have way more time to actually enjoy the finer things in life, time with my family, fly fishing and aquariums! About the time my daughter left for college I found myself with space and the itch to get back into the hobby. What started as a "trust me honey, just one 29 gallon tank" somehow managed to grow to around 30 tanks and taking over the old family room downstairs. While trying to figure out how to get more tanks crammed into the family room I stumbled across a random fish nerd on youtube that was showing how he was setting up his fishroom. Cinderblocks and 2x4s? I can do that! Once the room was setup I was headed to Bellingham to visit my daughter and figured I may as well stop in and visit that youtube nerd's store in Edmonds. There we picked up Gerald the Schoudenti puffer, after that my wife's only rule is at least one tank always has to have a puffer in it 🙂 Gerald has since passed away after ~5 years in my care (I will always hope it wasn't my lack of skill). I enjoy keeping mostly smaller peaceful fish, a few guppies/endlers but mostly kerri tetras, rasboras, white clouds, and such. I have met some very nice folks along the way and love the community that Cory has built, turns out a lot of us get along well with that randon youtube fish nerd 😄

The Ziss will tumble more as the media ages, but to me it sounds like you may be just at the border of having enough air to drive it. I would make sure the hard airline on the side of the filter is well seated and not sticking up to much, that the twist valve is fully open if you are using it, and then give it a week or two to see if the media tumbles better once it gets more established. If after a week or two it still isn't tumbling as much as you want you may need to upsize your air pump. (never hurts to have a backup air pump in a pinch so the current one wouldn't go to waste)

Thank you both very much, and yes @Nick Ythe 120 is my rainbow/roseline shark tank upstairs with sterbai cories in the living room. Maintenance is very easy on that tank with ~monthly 25% water changes and about quarterly canister cleaning. The intake sponge on the canister makes all the difference and gets cleaned each water change. So maybe an hour a month to clean and then another 15-30 minutes if I tear the canister apart. The rainbows are not "high quality" (several are from PetCo) but I love them as much as any pure strain 😉 One thing I would add, the 120 used to be a 150 tall, I definitely did not like maintaining a tall tank! I am not a short man but trying to plant or clean the gravel in a tall tank was a "never again" experience for me. I definitely prefer the 120 over the 150 tall in that footprint 🙂

Expensive plants 😉 My mascara barbs loved their anubias snacks i fed them!

Coming right along! You will be so happy you did things the right way instead of rushing to get it going before it's ready (ask me how I know) 😆 Following your build out closely!

For me I will get algae on anubius leaves from a few of the following: too much/long light period, too little flow, too little tank maintenance. The things that have helped me are: a circulation pump or good aeration, lots of shrimp, ottos or hill stream loaches, water changes, and or lowering the light intensity or length turned on, adding more stem plants. With the barbs shrimp would be hard but maybe something else from my list may help you? Nice tank and enjoy the journey 😊

Beautiful fish, golden white clouds are definitely one of my favorites!

Beautiful growth from the top, excited to see the lower tank update!

I find bottom tanks are great for confident fish. For me any shy fish struggle on the bottom row, but a lot of live bearers, bristlenose plecos, schools of tetras or white clouds thrive down low. I am always a fan of planted tanks, but also a huge fan of shellies so mine just have java moss that they move around all the time .🙂 If you don't have shellies in your fishroom, you could definitely do a lot worse than a 20G full of Multies! I originally started with 5 and have given hundreds away over the years and would never go without my colony of little rascals

Cumo (the goldfish) is visiting the guppy tank upstairs to help with a duckweed outbreak. I swear duckweed never goes away 🙂

very pretty guppies!

The upstairs tanks, 2 55G and a 120G. Plus the Coop sign I got for Christmas a couple years back 😁

Off to a great start! 🙂

Also an Idahoan! (Lewiston) 🙂

Looks like plenty of room to add the most important accessory... a chair to sit and watch your tanks. I like it!

I work in IT and have for the past ~25 years since leaving the army. Worked for almost 20 years at Microsoft in IT management and now am working a much more relaxing job as a helpdesk technician. Way more free time to spoil my fishy friends 🙂

Beautiful setup! I can't wait to follow the progression! 🙂

I don't have a lot of experience with the SeaChem line as the 1 bottle per nutrient isn't my style, instead I would recommend an "all in one" especially for Java Ferns and Anubias as it takes a lot of the work out of it. I also tend to supplement with a few root tabs under any rooted plants if they start to look unhappy and always under bulb plants like lotus/lilies. I use Easy Green, but on your side of the pond I would look for a similar option (there are quite a few on Amazon but I have never used any of those to recommend any one). The tank is really coming along nicely and I love that piece of wood you have, so much character!

Thank you @Ruud the benefit(?) of having my daughter grow up and leave the house was a room that I could take over for my hobby 🙂 Plus the added bonus that it stopped me from adding yet another fish tank in our living room. The Mrs. was OK with the first 3, but I think a 4th would have been a hard sell.

June, Sprocket, and Libby. Our trio of rescue chihuahua mixes 🙂

Looking great and congratulations on the babies!