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Shmaty

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Everything posted by Shmaty

  1. I have a lot of plants growing out of my tank and historically I test 0 across the board for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. My aquarium plants stay small, while the emergent plants suck up all the nutrients. That's why I was considering this as an alternative way to add natural ferts into it. I definitely understand garden≠aquarium. I want to test it in a small batch. See what happens. I only have one aquarium and it's 180G so it should allow me to buffer any spikes very easily. I just wanted to see what Volcano's experience was.
  2. Wanted to bump this. I was just wondering about this as an idea and upon googling if people did this, I found this feed. Have you had any success with this? I found a "recipe" for how to convert their poop into a powder and then place that in a capsule. I am curious why not just bury it, as-is? I definitely agree with the whole taking the freely dropped ones and not those found within the litter box. The urine is potent. Any further thoughts? Curious the implications of long term use. I also don't know that I would consider this off topic. Seems this would be more suited for the plant section or the experiment section. Just my opinion. I use the bunny compost in my garden regularly. Their hay, bedding, and poop make a wonderfully rich compost.
  3. I'd wager someone created those subtitles rather purposefully. The auto generated ones are legit. Googling pancrab is...interesting. Curious what the story here is. *put on my tin hat* To go further, it says it was posted 30 minutes ago, yet has comments from a year ago. Seems someone is trolling the old man!
  4. Yeah her normal hiding spot isn't going to move, so picking her up with it, is a no go. haha I think I will employ the trap idea. Never seen anything like that. I like the idea of the tunnel trap too. Will have to see if one fits in her normal area. Originally we caught her with a net when moving houses but she's in a 180now and it would probably be a circus trying to chase her into a corner. Thanks all. Also love the Pokémon stuff!
  5. I have an adult bristlenoose pleco that I want to relocate. Any thoughts how to catch her? The only method i'm aware of, is to lure her into a bottle overnight. Unfortunately, I recall people talking about the oxygen content inside said bottle becoming depleted and people loosing their fish. Does anyone have any experience using any other method? She's pretty enigmatic.
  6. Forgive my ignorance, I dont recognize those tubes with the bubbles. What are those? What's their purpose? Also, Welcome! *wave*
  7. My neighbor and I, have an unspoken garden rivalry. Haha Fushias are probably my favorite flower. Sadly they don't do well in my summer heat. Before this, we lived in the city. My "garden" was a crowded apartment balcony large enough for 2 lawn chairs. North facing even. The cars in the parking lot reflected an absurd amount of light onto the balcony. I wanted to see if it was enough for plants in spite of no direct sunlight. Sure enough, we still managed to grow herbs and a few tomatoes. Was mostly a proof of concept type thing. I wanted to see if it was possible and it was! The black widows here are pretty uncommon and i find they are usually hunted on. It's ironic that I managed to find one devouring a preying mantis, one of their top predators. The widows are pretty shy. They tend to be run away...but the brown recluse are a whole different story. I kill on sight. Not something I want to piss off. Wolf spiders, fishing spiders and grass spiders=cool | brown recluse=not cool
  8. Quick entry These are my plants currently. The one philodendron has mostly recovered but my peace lily continues to struggle. 🤔
  9. So many wonderful pictures on this thread! @Minanora sent me via my journal. My wife and I have wanted to have a garden for years. 2 years ago we moved into a nice little corner and thus began the garden adventure. How it started Spring Summer Year 2 Looking forward to our third season! Two harvest pictures I experimented with flowers this year too. Never thought I would love them so much. But I think my favorite part of the garden is all the critters I see. I live next to a river and get all sorts of wildlife. I will spare you the deer photos, they annoy me more than anything. I swear they think this garden is their buffet. The bees are plentiful, though only the carpenter bees ever sit still long enough for me to snap photos of them. They love to sleep on these flowers They are so well behaved! And then there are my spider friends. They get fed all the pests, like hornworms! My wife is a huge spider fan! Then there are my more coldblooded crew.Box turtle! BABY!!! Mud turtle! By the end of the year I had even managed to get my first resident hummer. I love nature. It's really fun being it's host and allowing(minus the deer and racoons) to roam the property. Working to restore the wetlands behind my house as well. Fortunately it is not "protected" so I can actually do stuff, but I am working to restore natives and remove invasives. Thanks for letting me share with you guys! Keep the green thumbs coming! *Edit: Cant believe I forgot these guys!
  10. There are currently 5 vining species growing out. 2 philodendron, 1 pothos, 1 fern and 1 monstera. The one Philodendron is sadly not doing well. It was weak when I got it, not sure if it will recover.
  11. Honestly, that's pretty scary. I wonder if that's one of these things where the left hand didn't talk to the right hand. Like the team designing the stand didn't necessarily realize that all 4 sides needed to be load bearing? 🤔
  12. I had two big hurdles to overcome before I could even do anything with plants. I had done research on Riparium and Paladarium plants and had already sorted through my house plants looking for suitable ones. Issue 1: Humidity Issue 2: Lighting One of the biggest issues i've had with this tank, is that I purchased the wrong cover at the LFS. I didn't realize it at first. I had the aquarium for some time before first attempting to put the cover on. Now I have lids for a completely different brand with no way to return/exchange and every time I have gone back since, they've been sold out on the appropriate lid. It's a non-issue now. I made DIY covers out of green house roofing. They were cut to shape but i've not yet cut them out to fit the plants. I want to make sure everything works where they are first. They should help raise the humidity inside and cut down on that dreaded evaporation issue. Arguably the larger issue was how to provide light to the plants. My Fluval lights sit above the lid by another 5-6 inches, but that wasn't going to cut it( I got these risers from Etsy, can provide more info if anyone needs). I decided to use some spare grow lights I had. They were backups just sitting in their boxes so it was a perfect match. Sort of. I used strong magnets to find the nails in the ceiling so as to locate the beams. Unfortunately, they weren't really ideally located where I'd want the lights to hang, so I had to hang the lights both between two beams each. I ran rope between 3 eyes and hung the lights from the rope. After that, I discovered an unforeseen issue. These lights are bright! Surprise, not sure how I forgot that bit... They are meant to simulate daylight, after all. So once again I had to improvise and diy some kind of shade. Used some extra landscaper fabric and folded it into 4 layers. I stapled it together and hung it from the light's small shroud using Gorilla tape. Look I know this sounds ghetto at this point haha It's kinda comical. I have a lot of spare garden supplies sitting around. It worked though; keeps the light from flooding the room and out of your eyes. I used the scrapper as a handle to move the magnets from one area to another. The paint is really thick but the neodymium magnets still found their target. Find two nails on a beam and you have a line. To someone doing something similar. For me the ceiling beams were all offset right of the wall studs, so if you have a studfinder or know where your studs are, you know approximately where to look for a ceiling beam. Dont assume though. Dangerous game right there. For me they were on the right, may be left for you or centered? I'm not a architect. *shrug* Those little shrouds weren't going to help much from this height. Prepare to be amazed at this shocking transformation! TADAHH!!! These only have two settings: Off and Blinding. Meh, It works. Also, a guest appearance of the DIY covers. The emergent plants have been in their spots for awhile but i'll probably wait a few days more before posting about them. So far, most have acclimated well, but two are struggling. I'll go more into it.
  13. Thanks for the advice here. New phone takes all photos in 4:3 but when I crop down to 16:9 that seems to resolve the issue of them flipping. This was probably a week after my wife's adventure. For somewhat obvious reasons, I dont have a before photo. Water was still quite low and dark. Even so, I'd wager there was still 70+/- gallons . We had just gotten some new plants that were acclimating in the forefront-left. I was also playing around with some additional hardscape on the mountain. One of my biggest bummers in designing this tank. I really wanted a high point on the aquarium. High enough that I could have a volcano of pothos spewing out of it. I actually had that for awhile but it didn't look good underwater. Just looked trashy. A big part of that came from one thing I couldn't have really gauged. I knew the substrate would move and settle over time. I underestimated by how much. The "scaffolding" of egg crates was showing it's ugly face at the top of the mountain. I couldn't keep it hidden. Fast-forward and now the surface of the mountain was exposed. I figured, if I am going to restore this tank, I may as well find a way to fix the eye sore, too. I broke what some would consider a cardinal rule. Never mix hardscape. Wood or stone. Yea, I'm sorry but that's hogwash, imo. The stone bit is quite a bit more understandable,. Wood, hmm? I'd challenge anyone who thinks otherwise, to go to a creek/lake and find an area with a single species of wood on it's shoreline. Wont rant, just my opinion. Anyway, I was messing around and I realized I could bring the wooded area to a level that was similar to that of the Poth-o-carry boxes. Shout out to @Matt_AKA_Poth-O-Carry. He's very helpful. So yea, queue my thoughts of bringing emergent plants into the aquarium. The question on my mind; What to grow and how? Next time, on Dragon Ball....oop!
  14. I'm trying... I seem to be having issues with my photos. They all want to post upside down. I have tried editing them to be actually upside down, on my pc, and they still want to post upside down. I looked through the forum a little and found others but the common issue seemed to be related to apple phones. I don't have an apple phone haha So yeah, I haven't been able to figure out how to post them right-side up. If this site allows me to edit them, I have yet to figure it out.
  15. *sigh* My only regret. I constantly forget I have a tattoo. It's one of those things where I'll be walking and someone asks about it, and every time-without fail, I am stuck with this surprise Pikachu face "Oh! I forgot I had that..." Yeah, it's probably the lowest thing on my list of to-dos,
  16. Please tell me that is a back tat! But honestly, that was pretty inspirational. I have a single tattoo as well. Symbolic in a similar fashion I suppose. It's a man walking into the gates of hell with a massive demon screaming out at him. Foot injury-2 years of military medical fumbling about. I told myself that I would get the opposite calf, with him walking back out, dragging the demon behind him, once everything was healed. Years later, and for better or worse, I still haven't allotted the funds to accomplish it. haha
  17. Hold up, did you somehow magically take replies( you two talking about stargate) from my post and make a new post?! I never knew such a power existed...wild. Also Stargate has always been a huge part of my life. I remember the original movie like a fever dream. I watched and loved all the movies and both SG1 and Atlantis. I did not watch SGU though. I never got into the drama of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and all I saw was comparisons of the two. So it didn't appeal to me.
  18. Nearly a year later I'm revisiting this. Guess I'll briefly fill in that void in time... Where as many prople may only show their ups, I feel like I can't give you a sugar coated version. This year was unkind. Lost a lot of friends and family. Even lost a few pets, my dog being the hardest. Transitioned out of the Navy, as well. Everyone thinks their ready but that transition is rough. Just been a hell of a year. I have some really unfortunate anxiety and depression issues and I'd been struggling badly for months. My wife, (coincidentally, she also had just transitioned out of the navy, though a lot more smoothly) has recently rekindled my aquarium love. It's really hard to maintain these beautiful tanks when the world feels like it's a train wreck. Anyway, enough doom and gloom history. I've had this wonderful 180 set up for almost 2 years now. Stocked with a bunch of small critters and loads of plants. Despite my lackluster care over the better part of a year, it's was doing rather well. The water had heavily evaporated and the taller plants were really starting to suffer. Maybe 5% of my fish had died, but my shrimp population boomed. Regardless, it wasn't fair to them. I left their home in shambles. My wife, bless her soul, had been trying to nudge me into working on it for awhile. It would give me anxiety attacks just looking at it. So one day, a few months back, she decided she'd try and help me. I discovered one weekend morning, that she had gotten up early and did a bunch of maintenance on the tank. Mind you, she doesn't do aquariums..at all. I was blown away. She had done so much. I panicked briefly. I worried she may have accidentally bombed the aquarium. All was well. Crisis averted. Several shrimp and 2 tetras died. Far fewer than I feared. Ever since, I have been working to reinvigorate the aquarium slowly. Trying not to add or change to much at a time. Everything had survived this far- and I owed it to them to restore their home. I have done a lot to really refurbish the environment for them and us. I think it looks great and I hope you do too! I'm going to start sharing some photos and stories as well as various projects I'm working on. Should be a lot of updates throughout the future. There'll also be a newly set up aquarium sometime early next year...if not 2. Look forward to chatting with everyone!
  19. These tanks are stunning! Outstanding work.
  20. Cool! Really? I figured I'd just delete the post and start a fresh one, but I'm not entirely sure I would know how yo do that either haha How do I edit?
  21. So I'd love to start a journal/blog and I just can't decide if it would be right or not. More specifically, I would love to do a journal of my aquarium doings but I really want to be able to talk about my plants/garden and maybe plug in my bunnies once in awhile. Hah There isn't really a guideline on journals, at least not that I see. My aquariums have always been planted and I use my aquarium water to feed the garden and to propagate cuttings. To me my garden and my fish are one big disfuntional but happy family. Both hobbies started up at the same time and now it's got me looking at aquaponics as a future. Would people prefer If this blog/journal was in the unrelated subject? I just want to connect with people and share experiences. This community is a good thing. I think we expect a lot of Cory and his crowd but he's awesome and they always go above and beyond. I've gotten so much good help here in the forums. Where should I post? Some pics of interests The 180 layouta 40 breedera pothos growing out of 180gpart of the gardenMy corner of joy, house plants next to my 180g(I don't know why it flipped it)
  22. Yea, there is a light. It's a generic light I got off amazon. It worked but wasn't as Ideal as I would have liked. Hopefully it's easier to see in this picture. Pros: It was bright and made the leaves face inwards towards the centerline of the tank. It just looked good. It was also very adjustable and I could move the lights when needed. Cons: It was nearly inaccessible once installed. The light's clamp hooked onto the side of the glass, that meant part of it was "inside" the tank-the entire power assembly was above the water but....it was an potential risk. The toggle button/power cable also hung behind the glass. I had to reach up through the bottom of the stand to turn it on/reprogram it's timer, anytime the power went out-which happened all to often at the old place. In the It worked, but there was probably a better way to do it. Definitely looked good though. Yo, for sure! This thing had massive leaves. At least, compared to my pothos growing in dirt... I thought I had a picture of my hand next to it, but apparently not. This is the best I could find. Most leaves were the size of an adult's hand. The also have a richer green than my potted ones.
  23. At my old house I had a 40g breeder with a beautiful Pothos vining out the top of it. I have a similar setup slowly growing out of my 180g. It's not as grand but it's new...so, yea.
  24. Hey y'all! Maybe I am crazy...But I WANT to let my lotus flower. I want a bunch of these...just not exactly where this one is. I want them on the other side of the tank from where my current one is planted. I would also like to collect the seeds for use in my other tanks as well. Any thoughts on how best to do this? How to collect the seeds that is... Has anyone ever let their flower bloom/ turn into seeds? Speaking of which, do they need pollinated? Can they be self pollinated or do they need a different plant to cross-pollinate? I'm a big gardener so this is pretty cool to me. I love these lily pads. My fish love them too. Hard to see why people dislike them so much. Thanks!
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