Odd Duck

Just what I was thinking! I was most definitely well past “kid” when that came out. I was graduating vet school that year and I took 7 years off between high school and college, and college for me was 7 years. 😆 It sneaks up on ya!

I wish I had some super reds ready for you! I’ll have more of the L519’s (pigmented, and honeycomb pattern, don’t look naked 😝) ready fairly soon. They need to grow up a smidgen more. They also stay smaller overall by quite a bit compared to other bristlenoses. They max out at 3.5-4” vs the 6-7” of an adult male BEL, or super red bristlenose. @nabokovfan87 Remind me what size tank you want them for and what type fish to go with? Pic of a couple from the first clutch of L519’s.

I have no idea why I was so lucky, maybe because the second I learned about them I signed up to be notified when they come in stock. But for whatever reason, ACO sent me one of the new upgrade kits last week and I’ve been meaning to post this review. I had wondered if the very top, curved piece fits the old nano size sponge filters - yes, it does, but it doesn’t have the air collar, of course since that only fits the other sizes and the newer nanos starting in 2023. You can put either end of the very top, curved piece into the older nano filter tops. I’ll attach pics below. It is a bit large and I’d like to see ACO sell just the curved bit as a retrofit for older nano sponges. I can cut them off clean to the length I would want so they would be less awkward and obvious in my 2 x 6 G cubes and the 14 G cubes (I’ve got a double stacked nano in there because I wanted the smaller footprint) - I would buy 3 immediately. My 2 G is too small for a top piece at all unless I cut it waaay down to barely more than the curved part. I don’t have any of the new nanos (I need to rectify this) so I can’t speak to how it would fit but I assume it fits the same as the other sponge filters. It comes in a nice, small box, so minimal packaging waste and shipping cost while being sturdy enough to prevent the tubes from getting crushed by anything short of a stupid degree of shipping damage. It has several parts and can make a very tall outlet to go across the surface of the water for better surface agitation and water turnover. The air collar produces equivalent air to a Ziss adjustable airstone that’s been tightened down to get fairly fine bubbles which is how I usually adjust mine. I don’t have video or an easy way to measure how much air was produced but it appears very equivalent, your mileage may vary. I used the exact same air pump - one of the ACO nano air pumps so things would be as equal as possible for comparison. The lower 3 pieces above the air collar are the same diameter tubing so you could easily remove one or two sections if you didn’t want it as tall. You can also remove anything above the air collar if you have an extremely short tank. You would lose the benefit of the curved piece that directs the flow across the water for move surface turnover. Here’s the pics. First - box, second - pieces in box (riveting content, right?), third - all assembled (if I was smart I’d have put a ruler by this), fourth - comparison of curved top to old style nano sponge top piece. Fifth - air collar and top 2 pieces running on a medium ACO sponge (lower piece of the top 2 is slid down as far as possible to make it easier to keep it all in frame), sixth - a new, Ziss adjustable airstone running inside the same medium sponge as usual, seventh and eight - the curved top piece fits into the old, pre-2023 nano sponge top piece on either end. Because of how tubes like this are bent, it may not fit readily if you were to trim it off too close to the curved part. Bending tubing often puts it slightly out of round at the curved part so DIY’er beware if you want to trim the length to be smaller to fit on older nano tops.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I put chili rasboras, ember tetras, and kubotai rasboras back in the tank when I was netting out duckweed when I had an outbreak in my 100 G nanofish tank. 🤦🏻‍♀️. It’s not nearly as bad when I use a comb to get the duckweed out and I seem to finally have it under control in that tank, at least. I still have it in 4 tanks, controlled and nearly gone in 2, still heavy in one, and still out of control in one because I will have to reset the tank for that one. It’s all in the pearlweed in there which is so rampant it’s growing out the top and has consumed the HOB filter. I also have a ton of susswassertang in that tank along with some mosses I’d like to rescue. That’s actually going to be one of this week’s projects, hopefully. I’m bracing myself for that one. I’ve got to get plants out of a couple buckets before I can even start to tackle that tank. Ugh. I keep telling myself, “It’s only 10 gallons, it’s only 10 gallons, it’s only 10 gallons.” And, “It can’t be that bad, it can’t be that bad.” 😝 It’s going to be even worse, I just know it. 😂 🤣 Forgot to mention, the 2 worst tanks are FULL of guppies and fry. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I sometimes wipe biofilm off the rhizome but I don’t try to dry it. Water sets the glue faster. If I’m having trouble getting something to stick I will scrape the wood a bit with the top of my fingernail to clear off some of the biofilm, especially for older wood pieces, or pieces that have been soaking a good while. Then glue specks applied to the rhizome, plant held in place whether fingers, tweezers, or glue cap, and drip a bit of water on the glue site but holding the plant and object very still! I want the glue to set faster once I have it placed or I know I’ll be reaching for the next plant, or my water bottle, or something, because I apparently have the attention span of a gnat when I’m holding plants on the glue. 😆

The cap of the superglue is my friend. I use it to press the plant into place on whatever object and oddly enough, it hasn’t gotten glued to the plant or the object, nor the plant glued to it yet (knocking on wood). I’m using the Loctite brand but I don’t know if that matters other than the top of the cap is smooth, and the glue tip is very small giving me better control of the amount of glue and placement of the glue. The cap hasn’t glued itself onto the bottle, yet, either, and I’ve gone through at least 10 bottles so far over the last 3 years. 🤷🏻‍♀️

My tiny tank is loaded with pipsqueaks, both shrimp and snail.

If yours never got bigger than 3/8” they probably aren’t MTS. They are likely to be another species since MTS easily get to 1” and rarely even to 1.25”. Might be Tarebia granifera which stay much smaller but are a cone shaped snail a bit chunkier built - wider relative to their length vs. MTS and stay much shorter - that 3/8” sounds exactly right for their average size.

Do you have some pics?

Lights came on to this new excavation by the rowdy, big boy, blue eyed lemon bristlenose plecos in the 100 G nanofish tank. Yes, that’s spent fertilizer granules dredged up from the depths of the substrate. What a mess! All the sand that was under hardscape is piled up on either side instead of where it belongs. You can’t even see his nose in the pic he’s so deep under the hardscape. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I just put the tiny (compared to them) watering spikes / caves back in this tank yesterday to see if they might transfer back to the caves instead of digging under the hardscape. I filled in all the dugouts yesterday when I put the spikes back in. They barely fit in the spikes but they don’t seem completely happy with caves the next size up. I can’t even tell when they’re on eggs or fry when they use the spikes. All I can see is pleco tail when they’re in the spikes. 🤷🏻‍♀️

It can be a trick to balance enough fertilizer for your aquatic plants vs excessive growth and stealing nutrients by the emerse plants.

The tiny, bright green Cryptocoryne parva, or the algae, or the Crypt. jacobii ‘Pink’ at the back? I’m guessing you might mean the algae since it’s so different looking here. I think it’s dust algae and I love it. It’s even prettier in person than in the pic. It has a very velvety look with a lot of color depth from bright to deep green depending on the viewing angle. Dust algae is a pain to get off glass (can be very tough to scrape off) but I’m very OK with how it looks in this tank on the sand and the rock that the Anubias nana ‘Petite’ is on. I don’t have any burrowing snails in this tiny tank so the sand doesn’t get stirred in that area at all. I’m not completely sure if it’s dust algae or something else. I thought shrimp would eat dust algae, but they don’t pick at this that much. If you mean the tiny green Crypt. parva, I love it too, but it’s got to be the slowest growing Crypt ever! I lost a few of them a while back but they’re recovering now. Believe it or not, that’s 3 pots planted over a couple years. They’ve done better at times, but mostly do OK with my somewhat sporadic plant maintenance and fertilization schedule. I don’t think the dust algae is helping them but I like the look of the algae so much I’m leaving it. I can buy more C. parva but you can’t buy the algae growing like that. If you want a full carpet of Crypt. parva, you’ll need to buy a LOT of them. They’re so small they will not hold up to much in the way of snails, especially burrowers. I pull the biggest ramshorns out of this tank at least every other, to every third week, so it mostly has only the tiniest snails. This is my favorite little tank most days but it took me forever to figure out its balance. I had a piece of wood covered in Buce in there that was really neat but just too big and put too much organics into the water. I had horrid hair algae issues until I finally pulled it out and did several water changes and mostly left it alone and ignored it for months except for the water changes. Fairly recently tried some shrimp again since it seemed to finally be stable and it’s done well (knocking vigorously on wood). New pic from a few minutes ago, last pic was from Oct 5. Need to clean the glass and thin the snails, but the algae is spreading a bit more, which I like. Some of my new hatch of shrimp look a bit pale and might need to go in the cull tank next door but I’ll give them a couple weeks to color up before I decide. The C. jacobii ‘Pink’ is settling in (had just added them shortly before the last pic) and looking pretty good. And I plopped a frogbit in there about a week ago since I don’t want the algae to get too crazy. I took about 30 shrimp of mixed sizes out of this tank 2 weeks ago to go in another tank. I don’t want the population to get too high in such a small tank.

If they quit messing around and actually give me some I will!

Wow! Those are massive for festivums! I’ve read they can get that big but never seen one that big, so good job growing them up! I know they can stinkers to each other but wouldn’t have thought they would be that aggressive towards other species. Should have known they’re still cichlids. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Agree on size and location, but they might have been drawn into the filter if that’s the only water movement in the tank? Looks most like ostracods to me, size, shape, and they like sponge filters.

I said all this about my festivums just yesterday and today she bit me on the arm 3 times while I was cleaning the tank! More startling than anything else. It left no mark whatsoever, but she’s such a stinker! Festivums are usually so peaceful but they’re still cichlids and she’s sassy!

Cats. What can you say? They love to be contrary. Just because.

Nope. Fiddled around for a while, cleaned leaves. She even partially dropped her tube. But nothing yet. They still act like a pair, but I’ll probably need to switch them out with my BSP pair that hasn’t done anything since I moved them to their own tank. They’re in the process of cleaning some new leaves now. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yep. Been there, done that! 😆

Had to look up what a “chi” tank was. That just looks like a really bad design, especially that lid. ”Hey, folks, let’s make a cheap, acrylic lid, then put a pump, filter, and light in the middle of it and we’ll hide all that stuff inside a weird black box!” “It will look like the box is floating, really!” 😆 I suppose it is a very minimalistic, clean, Feng Shui look, but bound to fail sooner rather than later. I don’t even have to touch it to know it’s too cheap and gimmicky to last. It definitely does not look easy to maintain like their ad said.

Festivums are generally very peaceful cichlids, seem content as solos, and are much more top water to mid water. Striking angled black stripe and some varieties come in soft or deeper colors. Not crazy bright colors, but not only the “normal” white. They only get to about 4”-6” usually (some say males get to 8” but I’ve never seen one even close to that big). They are peaceful enough to keep with much smaller fish since they also have a fairly small mouth. One would be a very striking centerpiece fish in a 46 G. I have a pair and the larger female bullies the smaller male even though he was rehomed for bullying the previous owners angels. He bullies no one nowand she only bullies him, although she has become the tank boss over the extremely wimpy 9” and 10” Jack Dempsey pair. She doesn’t bully them at all, she just doesn’t give ground if they try to push her away. They’re both visible in this picture - him on the left, her on the right above the silver dollars. Ignore the BBA on the lucky bamboo, I do. 😝 I should get an SAE for this tank. 😂

Where did you get the bleeder and valve? Can you please message me if posting a link would violate forum rules?

I think it’s a bit of both. I’ve had a Marineland 12 gallon (same square footage as a 10 G, but a little taller) that I bought in 1999. It hasn’t been in continuous use since then, but I’ve never resealed it and I didn’t hesitate to pop that puppy into place when this 10 G sprung its leak. I just pulled it back out of service last week because I got some 10’s from a guy that were only 3 years old and barely used. I’ll be replacing other geriatric tanks over the next couple weeks because I don’t want another leak. I’ll keep the 12 G for emergencies, but it’s too tall to be handy for the rack. Glad everyone seems to be living it up in their new digs!

My peas have never even considered eating anything dry. They wouldn’t even eat wingless fruit flies. I can barely get them to eat anything frozen. They may be spoiled but they only eat live foods. A steady diet of only frozen bloodworms is not sustainable health wise for them. They need more variety. I’ve started cultures of no less than 10 different types of live foods to be able to raise pea puffer fry and satisfy them through all life stages. They don’t need 10 different live foods, but you’ll need to find at least 3-4 different foods they will eat if you want them to stay healthy.

Watch them closely to see if any move. They look like they could be ostracods - seed shrimp? If they move under their own power, they are definitely not eggs. I can’t tell from your picture but they look a little oval. Fish eggs would be perfectly round.