AdamTill

Yeah, that’s been my experience too. Never worth the money. The best setup I’ve seen is green aqua uses a spare canister filter to do it (returning the water to the tank), but that’s not exactly portable and rechargeable.

Yup, exactly. It’s worth taking the time to break them down clean. Having an overflow and auto water changes is SO worth it. I miss our fish room, and if I was maintaining more than one tank right now I’d totally set them up that way again. Tanks are made so inexpensively nowadays that they’re not overbuilt, to put it mildly.

The biggest challenge is keeping lubrication water on a vertical surface. You’d also have to be careful that you catch all the bits of glass that break out into the inside of the tank as the bit goes through. My nightmare would be what happens if you crack a thinner tank with livestock inside. That would be really terrible. If it’s a 55 or bigger not really likely, but on a 20 or smaller the glass is pretty thin. I’ve only broken one in 30+ tanks, but there was that one. I also don’t know if there’s less margin for error if the glass is already under a water load (as opposed to empty).

Clever gizmo! I’ve been tempted to knock together a conductivity probe and sender to feed back into my home automation controller, since I record pre/post/clean water tds every week anyway. I personally do all my automation through Home Assistant and Alexa, including on off on all devices and a SmartThings leak sensor. Works well. I added a vibration sensor recently on the air pump just in case. I wrote an Alexa skill to let me record water readings as I took them, but never really used it. Was a fun software project at least, and I use voice routines for control a lot. I also have voice routines which in theory will wake me up if something lets go at night, and sends push notifications if I’m not at home. I remember seeing RPi builds years ago on plantedtank.net, and even bought the bits, but it was a little fiddly at the time. Neat stuff though. If I needed something now I’d probably take the time to learn enough Python to write an extension for HA: https://www.home-assistant.io

Technically adding small amounts daily may result in better growth since the plants will usually have some fert available, but practically just don’t let them run out. Lots of people dose weekly or even longer. Do what works best for you

It would be a lot of work to host duplicate videos on another gated platform, and Cory doesn’t seem to suffer from a lack of things to do. He moved away from Patreon which was basically that arrangement. Ps - I don’t think my earlier comments were political, but I removed them in case they were. I like this forum too much to get banned for something like that.

I’m working on a river tank and wanted something for my fx5 that would be easy to clean but not clog up too quickly. I’m also not in the US so can’t just order an intake sponge easily. Therefore, DIY intake guard with cleaning union, accepts an Aquaclear 110 sponge.

Removed - don’t want to cross into taking politics

Sorry, I just can’t see this thread not turning into a train wreck @Daniel

Pvc spray bars are easy to make, but wouldn’t likely be all that much cheaper than the Fluval one by the time you have all the bits. A spray bar would definitely disperse the flow a bit more. You lose the surface skimmer effect a lily pipe has, but that’s not the end of the world if you set things up properly.

Super useful. Slightly “harder” to clean than sponge filters but you can run almost any media if you want (ie, filter floss to polish the water, purigen etc). Arguably slightly less fry safe in that really tiny fry could get trapped.

I don’t know of them well enough to provide much info, and frankly, you don’t want to be wrong. The antibiotic treatments you have to take if you get it arent a joke.

The Tidals have that fry chewing surface skimmer if memory serves, plus a basket that’s harder to diy foam to. Plus they’re often more expensive than aquaclears

Sorry you’re going through this, and sadly I do have experience. In my case we had two of our senior breeder ranchu die in quick succession, with only the barest of notice. It was a case of “uh oh, my spidey sense is saying something is off” one day, dead the next. Not a good sign. After the second died we took it to a vet for necropsy, and they passed it along to the university lab. We all feared the same thing, and were correct...TB. All the organs were super infected. We had a two month old baby (human) at home at the time, and in light of the possibility of human transmission, the vet asked us to destroy all our livestock. In our case that was 35 tanks of fish. We were maniacal about quarantine to the point of having dedicated equipment and a separate room, and used heavy hitting meds on all newcomers (Clout and a few others, basically the nuclear option you can’t even get anymore). Still made it through. We eventually traced it back to fish we’d had for 6 months or more. They were the last in, and both succumbed in the same way. So it had made it way past our 3 month regular qt, and into general population where equipment was mixed etc. Since it’s super contagious and untreatable in most cases, my family went to the relatives and I spent the worst two days of my life destroying all our fish in respirators and protective gear. I wanted to try to save some equipment, but my wife didn’t want to risk it. The spores can survive a long time even on dry gear, and we were terrified it would survive in the seam of an aquarium etc. Everything has to be cleaned with alcohol if you do want to try, TB is bleach proof. We paid a company that did restorations and basement clean outs (sewer backs ups etc) to come in and clean out all the tanks etc and take it all away. They were equipped to do it. Many, many thousands of dollars. So that’s my experience. Basically, it sucks. I contacted the vendor who sold us the fish to warn them (who I knew in person, had visited in California etc) and they have never to date returned any of my communications. I wasn’t even blaming them, but they just went silent. Dont mess around with it if you’re even a little unsure, and good luck. I can’t advise beyond this.

It’s good to know what the reality of your water is. At high pH, it’s SUPER important to make sure you never expose your fish to high levels of ammonia and nitrite. It’s extremely toxic at high pH. Likewise, some fish probably won’t do as well. Cardinals raised in hard water have been necropsied and found to have calcium deposits in their kidneys. It would logical to think that affects their health, but lots of people keep them at high pH with no issues. The worst thing you can do, as said, is fight the pH using chemicals. That’s pointless, and will harm the fish. Some people choose to cut the water with RO to have a lower (stable) pH, but that’s a lot of work. Far better to pick fish that will do well. Goldfish, cichlids etc will be super happy.

Honestly, I don’t think you’ll see much difference. In a planted tank with healthy plants, the filtration system mainly has to efficiently move water around the tank. The plants themselves do most of the work. I’m not even a slight fan of the Biowheel filters, but replacing 1 to 1 with Aquaclears won’t really do very much. You’ll gain about 25% on the gpm flow rate, but the filter media effectiveness is sort of moot since it’s not doing much in a planted tank. Your best move would be to add one to have three, honestly. Most 125s are sort of three sections/lids, and HOBs only really effectively filter the water in front of them. So one per section would be great, with the sponge mainly for aeration.

Good luck with your search! I’ve had them before and they’re fun fish. Since I was able to breed o.vittatus these are back on the list of breeding projects for “someday” too.

Sorry, yes, that’s it

They’re hard to find because they’re only exported (from Columbia I think) during the high water season. That tends to be soonish, I think. But it’s why everyone has them sometimes and they’re rare as hen’s teeth the rest of the year. Never seen a report of captive spawning, though many have tried. I saw them on the Aquarium Coop list recently that was posted here on the forums.

Need a second needle valve too, they will want different bubble rates

Yeah, diatoms aren’t easy to culture. This is the only reference I’ve seen to doing it consistently, and it’s not simple. https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/12-tank-journals/1270281-flow-go-style-stream-tank-oliver-knott-inspired.html#post11050473 Some people do the rock in the sun thing, and that seems to work, but generally for green algaes. Personally, I’ve never not been able to train them onto Repashy Soilent Green and veggies.

The food is good. The only med I’ve had success with is Kanaplex. He doesn’t have Ich, does he? The fins look unhealthy. Either Ich or fin rot, but the photo isn’t super clear. The other issue you’re facing is that he’s not structurally well balanced. So it might not be a problem you can solve. External conformation issues don’t guarantee internal conformation being an issue, but it doesn’t bode well.

There are bacteria that convert ammonia compounds to nitrite, and those that convert nitrite to nitrate. By the definition commonly used of cycling, those bacteria must be present. You can have ammonia, nitrite and nitrate introduced from fertilizers, absolutely. Ammonium is a common component of a lot of fertilizer products, which is why aqua soils leach it and things like diy root tabs must be used carefully. Likewise Easygreen contains nitrate. I don’t know what the Tropica tabs are made of sorry.

Howdy! Calgarian here in fact 🙂

What do you feed? Is this the tank with the nitrite issues?