Ryan F

Cory did a tour with a guy and he was using the lid from a take-away cup or something like that. Slide the airline hose through the straw hole and have it float right at the water level. It did a great job of suppressing the splashing.

No, I switched to natural driftwood. We use an epoxy called DP100 and DP270 by 3M at work that I suspect would be safe. I would use the DP270 as it set slower and generates less heat. DP100 cures quickly and might melt your decoration. When either hardens it's a glass/acrylic like texture which I think would be aquarium safe.

Coarse gravel should not be able to support large amounts of H2S. It's not able to "cap" the gas. I use a turkey baster (great tool to have for tanking in general) to blow around my gravel a bit. Break up anything that might be sitting around...unlikely as that may be.

I had a fake tree root that was filled with water. I took it out to scrub some algae and it dumped its contents. A mass of foul smelling white slime. It flooded the tank. I sucked a lot of it out and did a large water change. And did another the day after. and again after that. If your decoration can't breathe (vent and circulate) that's what can happen. It's no different than having H2S gas bubbles build in your substrate. I would ditch it, or fill it with epoxy. YMMV.

Albino corys, I have 4, are nearly blind. I think the best they can do is sense light and dark. They rely heavily on their sense of smell. They have scent organs/glands/spots on their barabels. (the little whiskers) They use those to hunt for food. Don't ever treat your tank with salt or salt based meds. They are incredibly sensitive to salt. I learned the hard way. They also spend a lot of time resting during the day. They will be more active at night. Which is not to say they wont be active during the day, but they can be lazy.

Is that your logo? The waves with the sprocket? Looks good particularly in that raised layered format.

Why buy 10 cherry red shrimp from aquahuna when you can buy 20...knowing full well that they will likely breed and make many more for free. The impeller on my HOB is rattling so I'm debating buying a whole new filter instead of a replacement impeller. That said the replacement impeller is $17 while a whole new filter is also $17.

I would think pouring boiling water should be plenty hot to do the job. Just be careful as the bucket might start melting.

These are fungus covered eggs. Most eggs will develop fungus if you don't treat the tank shortly after they are laid.

I'm with the "cook it" crew. If you take it out and let it dry that should kill a lot of the nasties. Cooking it will kill anything that survives a dry out. You might have to "re-log" it after a dry out. But those two things should make it plenty safe for a aquarium.

A little rubber bumper on the bottom edge, would create a high friction pivot point that would maximize the holding power of the magnet at the top edge. Shifting the hold points for the metal tools to the sides to keep them close to the pivot would also help reduce the leverage that those tools have on the magnets.

Not without testing. At work we have magnets that hold file holders to the side of the metal desk. The smooth metal lets the file holder slide easily if the magnet slips a little. But a little rubber or a drop of elmers glue even will provide enough friction to stop the holder from slipping.

PLA is safe, especially food safe PLA, but also biodegradable. It will break down in water if it's not sealed. As always caveats apply flex and glow and "wood" PLA are not safe. Natural white ABS may also be aquarium safe. Research anything before putting it in the aquarium. The magnets will work better when paired with a bit of rubber or even "post-it" adhesive. The glass is too smooth to have the natural friction with PLA needed to have good holding capacity.

So this is roughly what I had in mind. I originally wanted the hooks to curve a bit more...but that was beyond my quick and dirty skills. Anyway I think you can see the idea now. A velcro like device for weaving stems and roots through to hold java ferns with a suction cup on the back...bottom...non-plant side. Could also work for mosses, anubias...any of those plants which I currently forget the name of. The scale seems a bit off too. The base is 1" and the "tines" are 15mm. Might work on this a bit more later. Or maybe riff on whatever you come up with, if you are interested.

Just as a suggestion. Punch holes in the sides of the cup to allow airflow for faster drying of tools (helps reduce risk of rusting) This will also make it lighter and reduce your costs. Keep the bottom solid to catch drips. But a waffle pattern to keep the tool up and water from beading on the tip where it contacts the bottom would help. Same for the tray, punch holes in the side. If you are really slick you get make one of the holes your logo, cause branding is the first step to marketing. Maybe some inspiration for another product. A java fern holder. A suction cup with small hooks attached to grab the stem and roots of a java fern to hold it on the glass of a tank. Maybe I can throw something rough together in sketchup...

I was browsing in Petsmart and saw Marineland has a new line of HOBs the Penguin Pro series. These seem to be an evolution of the Penguin series and I really feel like they should have called them, "Penguin 2" or something like that. They have a couple new features that seem okay and some that make me question the nerms at marineland. Anyway it got me thinking what features would make it into the ideal HOB filter? I'd like to constrain the dream features to things you've seen on other filters and could fit into an above average price range (it's got everything you would want you're okay spending 50% more on it compared to a regular old HOB) *I started looking around and saw that Danner makes an awesome filter that includes a port to plug in a gravel filter. *mind blown* that is something I had seen talked about but never implemented. It's not how I would have implemented that feature. I'd have a valve just below the water line on the intake with a hose barb attachment and you'd plug your gravel vac on to that then turn the valve and it would block the regular intake and draw water through the gravel vac. *Another nice feature I've seen is a media basket that you can pull out and clip the lid to the bottom to catch drips as you take it to the sink for clean out. The whole media basket concept makes for great flexibility in how you treat your water. You could completely fill it with floss or bio rings whatever you wanted. *Another feature in the same vein would be customizable cartridges. Give me a little sled that I can pack with floss, foam, or a carbon sack to "build it my way" *Pothos holder? *Thermometer. A little digital thermometer that clips into the side(so it can be replaced if it dies) *Flow indicator and control. *Over filter over flow. The biggest problem I have with my HOB is that when it get clogged with junk (because I can't get the water to flow evenly through the floss.) would be to have the filters set up so I can stack them such that when one filter gets clogged the water flows over and still gets filtered by the next filter in series. I saw this once on youtube (maybe even a co-op video) where they were using these ultra course foam filters between large floss filters. When the first filter clogged up the water would flow over the top of that filter and cascade through the ultra course foam and still pass through the next layer of floss. I think this was in a pond filter or a sump for a giant tank. I'd like to have that tech in a HOB instead of just releasing the overflow back into the tank. *Low velocity output. Either a grate or pattern that results in the water returning to the tank at betta safe speeds. *Flexible intake pipe that lets me put the intake on the other side of the tank rather than right under the return. Ideally with a standard sized tube that I can find at the hardware store so I can replace it or change it later. *intake sponge. I don't think this needs much more explanation on these forums. That went a lot further than I thought it would. It's way past my bedtime now. Let me know what you think. Once I got going the juices started juicing. Like a feature? Have something else? Does this homer-mobile already exist? Really interested in making a dream hob? Let me know, I'd be very interested to help facilitate an open HOB. Maybe the Co-op can piggyback and use their sources to "do it better."

The Petland that moved in by me I would compare to a small petsmart from 15years ago. Down to the selection and quality. Their focus is not fish or aquatics. They did have some different stuff but mostly plastic plants and decorations. No live plants and a pretty small selection of fish. Maybe the Canadian branch has higher standards. Their focus was on puppy sales. Thankfully the petco and petsmart are better with the former being pretty nice and the latter being okay and both partnering with the local shelter for cat and dog adoption. The LFS finally locked up their pet dinosaur (aggressive macaw) and remodeled substantially. I'll be going back more often.

I got a zoo-med betta hammock and the paint started peeling off the face of the leaf after about 2 months. Very unhappy with that. Not sure why. I now have a floating betta log. Initially he wanted nothing to do with it and decided he'd rather wedge himself in some plants. But the other day he started sleeping in the log and I see him in it frequently now. especially after he let me feed him in it a couple times. He's generally not too happy with me being nearby, unless he's hungry then he'll swim right up front for food. I'm a sucker and feed even if it's not feeding time when he does this. I used some old heater clips to hold some smaller java ferns near the surface which he enjoys resting in and feeding around a lot. I just bought a betta mirror too so we'll see how that works out.

Can confirm your shrimp are eating your tetra bodies. I have a tank with NTD and Amanos. I can't do anything about the NTD but give them their best life, but I haven't had to scoop one out despite my population dwindling from 9 to just 6. The shrimp (and probably the cories) are just too fast to clean up the bodies. That and I have a heavily planted tank so a "hiding" and "dinner" tetra are difficult to distinguish. The good news is that it doesn't sound like anything in your tank is hunting your tetras just disposing of the bodies. Fishy bodies can also be really good at hiding. I once found a nearly completely decomposed molly between two anubias leaves. Scared the dickens out of me when I was cleaning and it finally popped out. It's grim, but this is what these animals do in the wild. It's what they are going to do in our tanks.

I've heard that mixing bettas and guppies is an issue. Bettas see the long fins of the guppies as being like themselves and will be very aggressive towards them. YMMV. Depending on the type of molly, same thing. Most mollies should be able to outswim the betta, but any guppy and molly fry would be betta food. Depending on your tank, you might get away with adding the shrimp to the 10g with the Betta. There's no reason you can't mix those two. Given ample hiding room. Your betta should be quite happy with any plants you could add. The lots of plants would give your shrimp lots of places to hide.

Joey over on DIY King just revealed in his last video that he's been running his 120s with just HOBs. Just to prove that you don't need a sump or canister to filter a big tank. He was short on details but a pair of HOBs (for redundancy) rated for 50G tanks should be plenty for a 90G. It's fun to experiment but, if you want to stick with what you know, you can. Bigger HOBs are easier to hot rod as well. They usually have bigger compartments allowing for more flexibility in the filter materials and since you might be running two you could focus one on water clarity and one for biological filtration. In the case of marineland filters you, which have two compartments you could do each side differently. But that might result in some flow balance issues. Point is there are a lot of options.

How old is your air pump? To me it looks like maybe there is an oil or maybe the diaphragm is decomposing and that is releasing small amounts of oil or rubber into the pumped air. Which then gets caught in the floss. Do your run your airstone 24/7 or does it run on a timer? If a timer it could be that it's some sort of algae.

If I had to guess I'd say the sponge is too fine. It's not exactly clear in the photo how dense the sponge is but it looks pretty dense. It's offering too much resistance to the limited pull of the bubbles. Try running it without an air stone. The larger bubbles will be louder but have a stronger pull, thus filtering more water through the sponge. If you are still unhappy you can hook it up to a power head. You could also take it out and give it a good squeeze to see how much it's actually collecting. My bet is that the interior is full of a lot of very fine mulm.

I've had good luck with my Finnex lights. My first was a fugeray planted+ which is very bright, but not programmable. I got the planted+ CRV after that. It's a little dimmer, maybe 85-90% at full power but programmable. On my 20G I have the CRV set to about 60% for 3pm and 6pm (it fades in and fades out in the 3hour block before and after the on cycle) I'm experimenting a little bit because my java ferns are showing signs of light burn. I had it at 100% at 6pm. Trying a lower and slower approach. Plus it's spring so the tank is getting more natural light. The fluval 3.0 is a good choice while it is a "high" light it too is programmable so you can tone it down.

@MJV AquaticsHas the professional approach. And the one that would probably be the most bulletproof...waterproof. They do make glass glue. I used it on my bathroom mirror. It's basically a rapid setting CA. Not sure how well it would work in this setting. @FrankI don't think adding a film would help. Silicone bonds really well to glass. Adding a plastic may reduce that bond's effectiveness. The plastic may also absorb water depending on the type and degrade or lose cohesion with the silicone over time.