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The instructions say to premeasure and mix into a 1L bottle of water, but that's too complicated for me. I have a 0.5ml spoon (just under 1/8th teaspoon) that I take a level scoop from and add it for each gallon of water in my bucket. It's a pretty small amount so it dissolves okay in my bucket that I use add water to my tank. There's always a little that doesn't dissolve in the bottom. I suspect its some of the iron in there. If I'm only changing a gallon (out of about 11) I sometimes just put the water in first and dump a spoon full directly into the tank. I'm afraid to do that for larger water changes because of hardness swings, but IDK if that is a legitimate fear or not. I arrived at the 0.5ml scoop by calculating how much I needed and guessing at the density (its actually about 1g/ml if you shake the can first so the powder is somewhat loose) and then tweaked my dosing a bit over time based of off empirical measurements. In truth I don't think exactly X GH is critical though.

I'm another equilibrium fan. Its got a lot minerals plants want beyond just mg+ca to up GH. Some people don't like the effort of manipulating their water but I only have a couple tanks so its a non-issue for me.

I was experimenting growing moss in a tub and added way too much easy green and light. I ended up with a gross goo matt of moss and bga. I threw it all in my shrimp cull tank and they cleaned it all up in about two weeks. Idk if this is typical but 30 neos in 5g can clean up a lot of soft algae. Now if they'd only eat staghorn...

Do you mean inside of the living BBS there is a black spec, or you see black specs with the shrimp? They do have two eye spots that look like black specs. I think if you have unhatched eggs that's only a problem with fry and that may just be a myth (might be an interesting experiment for someone with too many fry). Also WRT your initial problem low O2 levels will make BBS darker because they produce more hemoglobin to compensate. less air or more eggs can lower O2 levels.

wow that looks so nice. I'm not starting with a "bonsai" so there's not much to tangle into. I'll thread it on and use a bit of CA gell too then. thanks for sharing those photos

I've read conflicting things online. Some say it never attaches to things, others say it does. Seems weird to have a moss that won't attach though. Does anyone have experience tying it to wood and having it stay? My plan is to use cotton to tie it down to make a "tree" canopy, but if it'll just fall off obviously I don't want to do that.

I have dwarf water lettuce and salvinia and for me the water lettuce grows faster. I keep them both reigned into a corner of the tank though so i don't have (as much) problems with plants getting stuck on my arm.

Clearly Cory's secrets go deeper than we thought.

That's close to right. Assuming the rating on the power bank isn't an outright lie, it's probably the battery capacity and not the capacity at the output voltage. A lipo is ~3.7v and gets boosted to 5v at about 85-95% efficiency so I'd scale that estimate by 3.7/5 * .9=2/3. so maybe 200h. An honest power bank probably has 90-100% rated capacity. The dishonest ones can overstate 10x or more. One last thing I think the pump is 1/3 watt but it's got a 51ohm resistor in parallel which uses another half watt. You can see my post about it here

I like this one. I'd love it if everything was 12 or 24v dc. It would make automation easier and be safer too. Maybe heaters would be the one thing that needs ac. Going DC would probably make some things cost extra that otherwise wouldn't need a power supply eg HOB or heater.

Ive never heard of this but a bunch of tannins from wood and leaves (like catappa) would work and be possibly beneficial. Or you could encourage a green algae bloom to get green water.

Wikipedia says TiCl4 on MgCl2 support is used as a catalyst for making PP. Leaching out enough to get to 3ppm in a tub seems like a lot though. But idk how much catalyst finds it's way into the polymer.

Reading through the "fish for profit" article it recommends three options: stores, facebook, and craigs list. I have some stock I want to get rid of to keep populations down but the local facebook buy and sell group stopped allowing "animals" to be sold because its against FB policy (it has been for a while apparently but they just got in trouble for it last month). Craig's list similarly has a bot that insta-flags any animal sales. lastly, the local fish club isn't doing in person stuff because of covid. I think my LFS will take what I have right now, but I'm wondering if people know of other ways local hobbyists can buy/sell/trade. Also now seems like a prime time to get that forum trading feature launched 😉

Will pea puffers attack above their weight class? Amano shrimp are pretty "big" right?

Oh, my understanding with the drop checkers is you need to use RO or DI or Distilled (close to pure water) then buffer the kh up to 4 and add the ph indicator. I think green indicated with your tank water would be something crazy like 150ppm co2. EDIT: or just buy the premixed indicator water, if you want the easiest way.

It shouldn't assuming you didn't use tap water in your drop checker. I'd try to move it closer to your co2 source just as a test to see if you put it in a stagnant area. Also I'd think you'd want to keep the highest co2 location below the supposed 30ppm limit not the furthest area, but I'm not a co2 guy so maybe that's wrong.

I've been afraid to ask anyone this question because maybe I'm a terrible person for even asking, but is it okay to ask to net a fish out yourself? Is it different at a LFS vs bigbox? When I was probably about 8yo the local pet store would let me net out my own feeder goldfish for our fish pond about half the times I asked, but I was cute and they were 10c fish. These days I want to ask because some times I want "that" fish or "those" fish but sometimes when I ask they say okay and then just net whatever. I'm mostly talking about cheap (<4$) fish like neons, mutt guppies, etc. I assume if I'm buying a 40$ fish they'd take my which fish request more seriously and I'd for sure correct them if they got it wrong. Is this common at fish stores? Is it something employees hate to be asked. I don't want to be that guy.

How long does this bugbomb last? I think sealing it in a bag is not a bad idea. You could also add an airline and air pump coming from outside to put fresh air in the bag under positive pressure to ensure nothing leaks in.

I think that's the best description I've heard. Anyone know what that smell actually is? nitrates? My quarantine/cull shrimp tank which I've "neglected" horribly but has the most healthy plants and clearest water and happy cull shrimp.

Just in case you didn't know, you can power the co-op usb air pump off of one of those USB battery packs for quite some time. some of the bigger packs can in theory (if accurately rated) run one for days. (Disclaimer: I haven't tried this) If you want something pill-like you could try to fill up one of those old-style contact lens cleaners with hydrogen peroxide and drop that in the tank. It has a platinum catalyst that converts the h2o2 to oxygen and water so it would give you pure oxygen bubbles for some amount of time. I've also heard of people adding hydrogen peroxide to tanks during an emergency (I know you can add something like 1-3 ml/gallon safely) though I don't know under what circumstances that's actually warranted or how you diagnose a hypoxic fish though.

I have a LFS that I do like but they're very dirty. The front glass of tanks is dirty, filters are dirty and tipped over, their display tank I can tell was at one point magnificent but is now all algae. They also sell plants but a lot of them are in really rough shape. In a lot of ways, I suspect they care a lot but just their initial presentation really makes me think they don't care. 😞

I was feeding BBS and flake while they were in the house. They're looking better today too. It may have just been a really harsh transition to pond life. I gave them flake and pellets today and they got curious and ate and spitout the flakes and eventually one of them actually ate a bit. so hopefulyl they'll have it figured out this week.

It's a half barrel. I'm sure wood tannins are leaching but my understanding is that okay. Theres mosquitos and other weird things living in there and I've now changed enough water that it's clear as it was murky before. The fish still aren't eating flake but they're hanging out mid water near the lilly pads which I think is a more healthy place for them to be I think and they're a bit more active too which is encouraging. Hopefully something bad fell in there and now they're recovering now that it's washed out.

What plants do you guys think would look good in this shrimp tank, and where should i put it? Its a 200mm cube (just under 8", 2gallons). I've added a USB drive at the front for scale. I'm running the small ACO filter at half height. Ideally I'd like to hide it. I have a tiny anubias nana petite that I'm probably going to glue to the rock. I plan on lighting it for ~6hr/day + ambient light from my window (no direct sun, but it is south facing). I guess the challenge is that even a small plant will look pretty big here. Ideally I'd like to hide the filter a bit more and just have some nice looking plants to keep nitrate low so I don't have to water change much.

Can you overfeed BBS? I mean in terms of harming the fish directly not by spiking ammonia/nitrate. I'd think so but I heard an offhand remark on an ACO YT video that you can't and I'm not sure how serious that remark was. I'm trying to grow up some whitecloud's to mosquito eating size as fast as possible so they've been getting BBS 2-3x/day. There's only 6 of them and they're smaller than my neo-shrimp right now so I'm feeding what I think is a half day's worth of food at a time but i could be way off because I don't really know. They're getting pretty fat bellies now, almost like they have a little yolk sack, so now I'm starting to worry I'm over feeding.