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RovingGinger

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Everything posted by RovingGinger

  1. Personally I don’t like canister filters. I have one running in a 40 breeder and another I tried to get running but always had issues with in my 75. I like the one I have running but I’m a little afraid to maintenance it because it’s working now and I don’t want to have water all over my floor again. Cost and potential for painful failure just feels too high for what to me ends up just being aesthetics. I’m also not reliant on super heavy filtration cos plants help out, so that probably shifts my opinion a bit - and I only have experience with relatively cheap canister filters.
  2. Endlers, sparkling gouramis, puffers. Bettas and honey gouramis are close. I would love to try scarlet badis or tiny sunfish but first I need to perfect my brine shrimp game.
  3. Got a new phone and some new lenses so... had to have some fun with the 75 gallon.
  4. I have no experience with killifish sadly so can’t advise there. Maybe try frozen bloodworms - if you have to get a small siphon to spit out small ones so that they move right past his stubborn face. Like I mentioned above, I did eventually rehome my gobies. They were charming but I struggled to find tank mates that worked with them and I was always stressed about them getting enough to eat. They are a charming fish but I wouldn’t say easy.
  5. the smaller lord of aquariums (on the right) stole the pictured filter cartridge from the box in a cabinet and has determined it belongs in this box instead. Why? I do not know. Neither does other, larger lord of aquariums. Animals are wacky.
  6. Yeah, the online meetings and auctions are great. I am an hour or so away but I can participate if it’s just drop off and pickup. The online auction platform has been awesome.
  7. The Tamed Water rays are gorgeous, I got to check them out a week or so ago. Are you in the MN Aquarium Society?
  8. Hey, what's wrong with red hair? The tanks that confuse me the most are my livebearer tank and cichlid/loach tank. They're right next to each other on the same light timer running similar lights (NICREW). But the cichlid/loach tank has zero hair algae, not sure I've ever spotted it in there, while the livebearer tank has quite a bit and grows more very quickly. Livebearer tank was started with guppy grass. Cichlid tank was started with mostly red/brown crypts and what I think is brazilian pennywort. Now it sports a wide variety of plants, lots of reddish options. All plants present in the livebearer tank are also present in the cichlid tank, but not all plants in the cichlid tank are also present in the livebearer tank. Notably, there is extremely little guppy grass in the cichlid tank - I only ever put in a few strands and it never took off like it does in tanks where it's the dominant ingredient. This is where I think maybe allelopathy pops in? And where the approach of diversification of plants seems to in practice trump the approach of one main plant in a tank.
  9. I have a variety of fish tanks. For most, the primary plant is guppy grass because it grows voraciously in my water. But in all the tanks where guppy grass is the primary plant, hair algae is also ruling supreme. The two go together like gin and tonic from what I can tell. Tanks are all different but somewhat mediocre lights, same water, some on timers and some not. None of these seem to correlate. Tanks that do not have hair algae do have other types of algae. One has carbon and guppies and no algae like ever which is also weird to me, maybe I should just try more carbon in more tanks. One has cichlids and loaches and lots of red plants and grows a sort of patina algae but never hair. One has grown mass staghorn algae but rarely any hair algae, and also sports a higher percentage of red plants. Another only has moss growing, fairly crap lights, and no hair algae. I’m guessing my water has decent nutrients and in the tanks where it’s just guppy grass, the grass is leaving too much over and boom, happy algae. When the guppy grass grows under high light it turns bright red easily; other plants retain red well even with crappier lights. Is it possible that in tanks with redder plants they’re absorbing more iron that would otherwise help hair algae thrive? or, should I just pony up and get timers for everything and go from there? I clearly want the answer to be more red plants. Far more fun to buy and install.
  10. I am not actually sure I know of a plant that can grow in water (emerged or otherwise) but isn’t aquarium safe? I’ve heard weird myths about dracaena false bamboo, but that’s about it. Are there some that should be avoided say if you have munchy fish?
  11. I feed my pea pond snails and whatever else he decides to eat in the community live bearer tank. Mainly I harvest snails from the other tanks and pop them in every few days to make sure he always has something to hunt.
  12. I work at a marketing firm as kind of the top troubleshooter. Went from website design to weird solutions to managing finances and IT and service tech stack. Like others I chalk the hobby up to “mostly cheaper than therapy”. It’s nice to have some low-stress things to tweak, optimize and manage and watch thrive.
  13. I took the 6g previously containing shrimp and sparkling gouramis and have been playing with it. I layered probably half an inch or so, maybe an inch in some areas, of black diamond blasting sand. Then I dug up some moss on dirt from my backyard and set it on top. Let that sit for a few days or a week with plastic seal, then filled with water. Then I eventually planted with various leftovers from other tanks, etc. Now I have it as home to some n-class endlers (m,2f, unknown number of fry) and 4-5 baby blue shrimp that hatched out in another tank, along with mts, bladder, and ramshorn snails. circled - moss from yard. It grows much more vertical under water. Valliseria gone red at the tips, assume stress from high lighting and probably high iron in the water. papa endler and hard water stains. plant shot.
  14. I have found this to be kind of uncanny except the answer I seek is usually in the podcast version I’m listening to as I fall asleep and the chances of me remembering it are roughly 50/50 😐
  15. I can’t take credit here. That one my sibling found and sent to me. She’s ashamed of my puns but encourages my passions.
  16. 75 gallon tank A derpy moment in the 40 breeder community.
  17. When I add a species I try to visualize two things - color mix i want to end with, and size balance. You’ve honed in on size. Color, I’d cue into your existing rainbow fish, other and future animals, and the plants, decor, background, and substrate colors of your tank. Look for colors that complement or are analogous to the colors already dominant in your overall aquarium setup from landscape to livestock. Of course now I am constantly on the search for vibrant blue fish to add to the orange and green mix. And of course you are limited by compatibility with your existing setup. This just helps me decide between multiple choices. What do your rainbow fish look like? What species? And what color are the shrimp?
  18. Fish in the wild live a more varied life, dominated mostly by eat or be eaten. So do most wild cats, cows, lizards, chickens, etc. For that matter, when you keep a houseplant you’re cutting it off from basically an interconnected plant network - fungi that connects trees and plants and bacteria and send signals to others or even nutrients. My personal take on it is that manipulating nature and our environment is one of humanity’s core adaptation tactics, for better or for worse. At this point it’s pretty impossible to separate the manipulation from the nature whether it’s natural ecosystems overpowered by invasive species, landscaped changed through human intervention and cultivation, turning trees into houses, grafting a rose or a fruit tree, or buying a fancy goldfish. It’s kind of up to the individual to define a moral compass within some of those complexities. However, in my experience, my fish are at least as smart (cichlids especially) as my mom’s chickens, and therefore I submit that pescatarians are unfairly biased.
  19. If your filter doesn’t already have a sponge or other very fine blocker on the intake I would invest in one of those for raising guppy fry. Otherwise the little guys can go for a crazy ride. Guppies seem to like to have a flow to play in from my experience. Usually your tank has more peaceful water away from the filter when they want it.
  20. I’d keep trying for a day or so tbh. Mine did not eat every day. I tried to keep scuds and snails in the tank as a source of food too which I think helped. Depending on your guy’s size bloodworms may need to be smaller.
  21. That will be an awesome, movement filled aquarium with some great variety.
  22. I think some of us are downright nostalgic for a good old forum. With cool 2.0 things like reactions and embedded video and gifs that don’t crash your dial up 👵🏻 But there’s also just a ton of merit in having community wisdom in a more indexable way. Discord to my knowledge wouldn’t lead to the same discovery via search (Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing etc) for specific problems.
  23. Showing off a wide variety of attempted skills is not really a match for showing off a mastered skill, to @Daniel’s point. But I kinda like my patchwork resume, and I usually bring bits and pieces with me even after I’m not obsessed anymore. I don’t know if this fully falls under hobby, but I was briefly part of a community devoted to figuring out the healthiest hair care for long term growth. That community had a term I think this one would resonate with - “benign neglect”.
  24. I tend to flit from obsessive hobby to obsessive hobby like an ADHD butterfly. I’d say the constants are doodling, jewelry making, and ecosystem experiments. I have a laser cutter I do fun stuff with, I crochet and knit, have whittled, have done some other art and sculpture, calligraphy, terrariums, vinyl embellishment, etc, etc. But in general I like visual storytelling, design, and putting together tiny worlds.
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