Will Billy

To me, I think @Brandy sorta hit on something in another post. I find its more about balancing your system for the best quality of life i can give my fishy friends. I only have the 1 tank and i actually enjoy my interactions with my wet pets, water changes and all. However i must confess i am a bit of a tinkerer. Every time i look at something I think how can I make it better. With my tank, I have to be careful sometimes and ask myself “is this better for the fish, or for me?” I dont want to remove water changes completely, but as i learn and try things that improve my water quality, i end up with a system that could go with smaller water changes or less frequently. My goal was for a better water quality, reduced water changes was a side effect of my original goal.

Congo tetras are quite a looker. Rummy nose get more and more fun the more that you have. I like their schooling behavior. In the end, I know they have been done to death, nearly everybody has kept them. But i just love neon tetras. They are sorta like a great song that just got played out. It’s not the songs fault for being great. Yep you will hear it on the radio till it gets burnt out. But i still love a school of neons darting around.

Ah! The feverish dream of any aquarist. To establish a 100% completely self sustaining ecosystem that cleans and maintains itself indefinitely. A lofty yet noble pursuit, and quite necessary research should we wish to colonize Mars. It is possible to create a virtually self sustaining, balanced ecosystem, through Walstad techniques and newer high tech equipment, or combination there of. I find the study of a no water change tank quite the humbling experience. What would take us planning, technique, knowledge, equipment, and effort to accomplish what mother nature has done for millions of years, puts in perspective how amazing our very own fish bowl (planet Earth) is.

Catching shrimp you can gently syphon them with a large diameter gravel vac into a waiting fish net on the other end. In regards to raising your hardness i have seen people use tums antacid tablets. Im not sure how many you need, or how well it works. I would imagine 1 tablet should be good for 55 gallon. Maybe someone else who has tried this can chime in.

Hmm.. you got quite a bit going on there. I would start with @Kirsten’s suggestion. Detox your ammonia first, with water conditioner or API ammo lock. Then boost your bacteria with API quick start. Continue to test everything. If your KH is low it could be causing PH swings, compounded by CO2. Seachem Alkaline buffer can bring up your KH and Equilibrium can bring up you GH. I would continue your CO2 as normal but i would refrain from adding anymore Excel. At night your plants will off gas CO2 as well and warmer water doesn't hold as much oxygen as colder water. At night you might be getting a triple combo of plants off gassing CO2, while your CO2 tank is running, plus Excel liquid carbon. If possible you may want to quarantine your fish and shrimp to a hospital tank while you detox the ammonia as water conditioners also reduce oxygen in the water. Your plants should be fine until you get your water back on track.

Whats your water temperature, and what do you use for aeration? I noticed you are running CO2, and dosed the tank with 35 ml of excel liquid carbon. Im curious what your oxygen content might be. Im not sure if thats the smoking gun, but thats my first thought trying to pick apart your problem. I agree with @Kirsten, about your ammonia. That may also be an indicator of oxygenation as aerobic bacteria need oxygen to metabolize ammonia and nitrite.

Please let me know about this issue. I agree with and understand the purpose of the surface skimmer but have yet to find a way to keep small pets out. Maybe i should revisit the idea and think a little bit more outside the box. Any advice or suggestion is welcome as that is my only concern with what should be a perfect hob

I went with the fun loving dojo loach as my centerpiece fish. They are amazing animals, full of energy, constantly moving, unique shape and face, they predict bad weather (hence their other name weather loach). Super friendly (mine lets me pet them from time to time during tank maintenance and i can feed them by hand like a koi) will definitely dig up all substrate tho. Not recommended for root feeder plants. If you dont mind floaters and rhizome plants they are my favorite fish of all time.

From my research bacteria mostly consume carbonates. Plants also do too as every living organism on our blue dot called planet earth is a carbon based life form. Bacteria are the first ones to the smorgasbord, followed by fungi, then plants, then animals, all the way up the food chain. All life consumes and uses carbon wether directly as bacteria does or through eating things that consume carbon, such as me eating a steak that came from a cow, that ate the grass, that pulled carbon from the atmosphere in photosynthesis, that was produced by a dinosaur burp etc... carbon is the building block of cellular growth. If it grow in your tank it uses carbon.

There are 2 schools of thought, in my opinion both are correct. One way is to acclimate your fish to your water, the other is to acclimate your water to your fish. #1 we don’t know the chemistry of you LFS water, but we do know yours. So lets start there. It is far easier and cheaper to acclimate fish to your water. This can be achieved by adding small amounts of water over time to the store water in the bag as you float the fish in the bag to get water temperature right as to not shock the fish. You are doing the same thing chemistry wise as you are temperature wise to gradually acclimate the fish to your water chemistry by squirting a tiny bit of tank water into the bag every 5 minutes or so. After 30-45 minutes of spiking the store water with your tank water it should be fine to release them to their new home. #2 knowing your water chemistry it is usually best to research fish that thrive in your water parameters. I see that your water is perfect for guppies, but not so much for discus. It will be far easier to acclimate guppies from RO water from your LFS to your water than discus would be. #3 if you knew the chemistry of your LFS water you can spend time, money, energy, and patience to match your LFS store RO water. That is assuming that your LFS store is more similar to your wet pets preferred water parameters. The later being ever more time, money, energy, and patience consuming with every water change and tank maintenance until the end of time. Not to mention the possibility of getting your chemistry wrong and redoing your water change sequence all over, or worse getting your chemistry wrong and not noticing and continue with a water change that may shock your fish. In the end the latter method is most preferred for the fish and more complicated for the owner. The first method is easier for the owner and less preferred by the fish. Either way if you dont have fussy hard to keep fish they will survive, and to greater and lesser extents thrive. My experience so far with the numerous “easy” category of fish, and furthermore as i am not actively trying to breed them (if they do = bonus points), but keep them as simple wet pets. Stick to acclimating them to your water parameters so long as they are fish that prefer your similar type of water chemistry.

My deepest condolences to you. I understand where you are coming from. My wife does not understand my hobby or the happiness and joy it brings. She only sees the dollar sign of what i monetarily spend on the hobby. Although she doesn't understand why this hobby brings me such joy, she does understand that it does make me happy. It may seem silly to others why we get emotional over our wet pets. But the joy we strive so hard to give them is hard fought compared to the joy they seem to bring us with such grace and ease. As i type this a bit bleary eyed from your loss, it dawns on me why i dont understand my wife's fascination with sad movies that makes you cry, and yet worlds apart your story has moved me, and made me teary eyed. Again my deepest condolences, and thank you for sharing your story.

The pictures you posted, along with your latest post has provided me the clues needed to solve the case. #1 i see from the pictures you have quite a small bioload. That being said said, there is actually a caveat to bio media. You can have all the sponges, bio rings, pumice stones, lava rocks and so forth in the world, but your bacteria is sorta like pest snails. They only grow to the amount of food source provided to sustain them. #2 your plant growth is quite advanced for such a low bioload. This is leading me to believe that your tank is cycled, albeit with a small bacterial population. I would hazard to guess that it is probably fine to start introducing more fish, but as always i would do it a little at a time so that your bacteria grow with your increasing bioload.

When it comes to HOB’s i prefer 2 undersized, like the 2 aqua clear 50’s. Having 2 HOB increases redundancy should 1 or them clog up, fail, or break. Also having 2 spreads out your water flow to wider areas of the tank vs dumping heavy flow in one spot. Having 2 HOB in my opinion increases the volume for beneficial bacteria vs 1 large one and you can alternate HOB maintenance between them as to not stress your bacteria. On the flip side however, 2 HOB costs more than 1 bigger one, both in upfront cost, and media maintenance. As far as Tidal vs Aqua clear, both are good filters, that are easily customizable. In my opinion (please take with a grain of salt) i prefer the Aqua Clear as I am not a fan of the surface skimmer feature on the Tidal. Just my 2 cents, especially for fry and shrimp that can get stuck in there. Good luck to you, and if you have anymore questions, feel free.

2 things to think about. If you are going by nitrate levels to determine your tank is cycled, #1 you were talking about your plants. Are they live plants, or fake plants? Live plants will reduce your nitrate level. #2 are you following the directions precisely on the nitrate test? I always, always ask this question to everyone, im not trying to pick on ya. The reason i always ask this question is because it is the one test out of all the rest that can give a skewed result if not shaken properly. By design the nitrate test has the greatest margin of operator error compared to all the other tests. If you feel there is a possibility of error you could see if your LFS can test your water for you. Not all, but many LFS can do this free of charge and you can compare results to your test. p.s. have you been ghost feeding your tank? Bacteria need food to populate, to start converting ammonia and nitrite.

I sorta use the 1 inch rule in an augmented way. Hear me out tho lol. I know the 1 inch rule is wildly inaccurate. But i do use it as a baseline in an attempt to pre calculate my bio load. Understanding the flaws of the 1 inch rule and adjusting for that flaw gets me to a good ball park idea of what my bio load “should” look like. However thats all i use it for, is to help establish a sort of imaginary baseline, that i can change as my observations reveal whats really going on. For example my mystery snail has much bigger 💩 than what i thought he would leave, or that i use 2 hob filters and 2 sponge filters in a 55 gallon. In short yes the 1 inch rule is junk, but if you know what you are looking for it can be a helpful tool understanding bio loads. The flawed design of the 1 inch rule sorta showed me the difference in bio load from 20 ghost shrimp compared to 1, 4” golden dojo loach. The flaw forced me to observe my tank inhabitants and determine that 1 dojo without a doubt has more bio load than 50 ghost shrimp.

I think i finally landed on the box filter optimization i am gonna go with. I took out the second set of sponges and went with more pumice. Pictured below it is 3/4 full of pumice. Also in my research on anoxic and anaerobic bacteria it seems they need carbon to metabolize nitrate. Other experiments ive researched showed a 40-60% improvement in metabolism when activated carbon was introduced. So i have seeded my biomedia with activated carbon pellets. Initially there will be some chemical filtration until the activated carbon becomes saturated. I am not planing on removing the activated carbon at that point as it is only there for purposes of assisting the anoxic, and anaerobic bacteria. To conserve as much valuable space as possible i filled the center of the bio rings with the carbon pellets. That picture is included too.

My brother had Jack Dempseys, let me tell ya, they are a fun fish. Smaller than an Oscar, but bigger personality. If i ever go ciclid route again, Jack Dempsey is on my list. Do some research on them though, they are quite aggressive, but with the right tank mates they do like having friends.

Cleaning your filter too often can reduce your beneficial bacteria colony. You will want that bacterial bloom to settle in your filter and call it home.

I too have a large piece of wood that i was unable to boil. I have a 17 gallon tote that i converted to a hospital / quarantine tank. I would boil the water and then carefully pour it into the tote with the drift wood.

Woo Hoo!!! I get excited every time @Lizzie Block announces a new care package. Congrats to @Maggie, @James Black, and @Betsy, im excited for you guys, and cant wait to see what yall get.

From my research and experience, I do know that banana plants have a winter hibernation mode. Its sorta the reason why they have those tubers to store nutrients. Although i have never done it myself, some people claim you can trick banana plants into go in winter mode, by changing water temperature and lighting. Thats the claim anyways. So far my experience with them has been little bangs and busts. They sprout leaves, shoot runners, and eventually the leaves wither a way, and then repeat. Im not sure if thats just what they do, or if i am doing something wrong. Other claims ive seen to get them to grow is put root tabs under them, and use CO2, both of which i havent tried yet. I do know however that i have had banana plants that have no leaves just like yours, and with enough time and fertz they do eventually sprout leaves again. It did take them quite a while to decide to do so (a couple months as i recall), but i have witnessed first hand bare tubers like yours sprout new leaves. i hope this helps. Im not a banana plant expert, just a guy with 4 trying to raise them the best i can.

I searched my phone in hopes of finding a picture of my red mosaic dumbo guppy male. Alas i couldnt find one. He was the star of my guppy show, before he passed a few weeks ago. He sired quite a few mutt babies, but none looked quite like him. He was like a teacup betta. A quick google search produced images of others that sorta looked like him, but not quite. I wish i had took a picture of him. He was my favorite guppy.

I rinse my hands with hot water going in, and use soap when im done. Im more worried about zoonotic bacterias coming out than in. FYI dawn is great for dogs fur and skin. My lab has sensitive skin to most of those smell good dog shampoos. Since switching to dawn she doesnt itch anymore, and her fur has a healthy shine. I then rub her down with gain dryer sheets if i want some fragrance.

Instead of a up down, up down method what about a continuous flow method from right to left. Force water through each media phase. At the intake i would include a sock filter for mechanical filtration. Just a thought. See what you think about it.

Any time man. Keep me posted on how they are doing. I hope to see those fat little cheeks swimming around happily in their new home. Gosh, they are so darn cute, i cant stand it lol! I keep scrolling up and down the pictures to pick my favorite.