CT_

When I went from 5g to 15g I was able to slide the 5g around on my table while full. I did drain it about half way to carry upstairs though. I think a 5g is light enough and strong enough that you can just man-handle it and it'll be okay.

Oh I forgot to add I also tested the API master kit's nitrate readings. It's color table is off by a whole shade (so, a factor of 2!) for me, so 10 looks like 5, 20 looks like 10 etc. My ghetto spectrometer shows my tank water is very close to the 20ppm standard.

@Cory I have an update. I did some more testing with nitrate standards. and made solutions of 50,40,25,20, and 10. The strips worked well for 25 and 50. 10 came in a bit dark but close. I did notice that when dipping and holing the strips level the stick isn't hydrophobic enough to keep the water that's stuck to it from touching neighboring pads and that can really effect the colors you get, especially hardness, which explains my original 300 reading from gh 7 water. For this test I only wetted the tip of the stick. IDK why but in my hands its pretty easy to contaminate neighboring pads, same is true with API strips it turns out. For pH, yesterday I was spot cleaning with H2O2 so I think that dropped my pH a bit today. The API liquid test shows 7.4-7.6 now (I think, see photos). and the test strips show <6.8

Ken linked what looks like a polypropylene (PP) bucket. Thats similar to the plastic totes people use for quarantine and fry grow out. If you want more clear You'll probably have to go to poly-carbonate (PC) containers. They can be brittle but with the right plasticizers (PBA worked great! "BPA Free" usually means a more potent bisphenol instead.) they can also be indestructible like the nalgene bottles everyone loved in the early 2000's https://www.amazon.com/Rubbermaid-Commercial-FG632200CLR-Storage-Container/dp/B000R8JOWK

Wow. Thanks Irene! In link 2 this post (#12) explains a lot. Though it raises more questions to me that I'll have to look into. The TLDR of that post is that carbonate hardness (KH) is very important for dissolved CO2 in water and that's something I'd never heard before. This may influence my algae issue too.

Internet says pretty much every number. I've heard everything from 2-6ppm and one video a guy claimed to have 15ppm in his low tech no-co2-injection planted tank. From the Henry's law constant for CO2 is 29 ATM/(mol/L) and there's ~400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere so .0004 ATM /(29(L ATM/mol)) *44g/mol = 0.6mg/L = 0.6ppm Do fish really breathe that much to have the co2 so far out of equilibrium? I feel like I must be doing the math wrong here. Can anyone clue me in here?

I saw this guy in my rice fish tank this morning just swimming around with 3 eggs stuck to his face. fertilization gone wrong? failed attempt to eat the eggs? backwards ovaries 😛 ?

Thanks guys. They came from ACO so they did get the trio. I believe they were wild caught. This one is one of my widest/fattest cardinals. Would a paracite cause him to get skinnier? Any other signs I should look for? He still eats and will school up if disturbed. He's also been hiding since day 1, or at least a cardinal has been. I can't do much about my ph so if that's the case i may just have to accept a certain percent won't make it. I did get 4 tank raised over the weekend to replace losses. Compared to the wild ones they got their color back way faster after their trip to my house. I may just have to be mindful of age and source now when I shop for tetra.

This is the 64k$ question. After talking to the ACO employee and lots of googling it sounds like it is a tough thing to do without CO2, which I don't want to deal with right now. It sounds like the small crypts can work but they grow really slow and you'd have to plant a lot of them.

I've had a loaner (ie likes to hide by himself) cardinal since day one when I picked up 11 about 5 weeks ago. I've since lost 4 (like gone presumed dead) and I took a closer look at my loaner today and it seems to be gasping. I'm not sure what to make of it. I have an airstone and the other cardinals, guppies, shrimp and otos are all happy and doing their thing. Could it be sick? what would the likely culprits be? He's a video of the gasping so that its clear what I'm describing parameters are nitrogen: 0/0/20ish gh 7 kh 4 ph 7.8 temp 24C

well, here's another update. Its been a day or two and now I'm spotting baby shrimp everywhere. I've noticed the tetra try and take a bike but the babies can "jump" away REALLY fast and I think they're too big for tetra mouths now, perhaps that's why they've become brave. I think maybe my two batches of "blue dreams" came from two different lines because I'm getting all kinds of colors. Here's some photos, the leaves there are montecarlo (except the last photo) with hair algae to give you an idea of scale and the gravel is green-pea sized.

we need a half laugh half sad emoji response for posts like this.

So was 'the back' the quarantine room or something else? I wasn't paying close attention but I thought he went past murphy to get them.

Ah okay 🙂 I thought you were explaining the difference between 7.0 and 7.8 being co2. I meant to share that 7.75 number to demonstrate that its in agreement with the 7.8 API liquid test kit. the "PH high" kit from API has color bars at 7.4 7.8 and 8.0 so I'd really accept any reading between say 7.6 and 7.9 and in good agreement as I'm reading the liquid ph test with my eyeballs and not a spectrometer.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't CO2 absorption lower the ph? so 7.75 would be a low estimate (I don't inject CO2 and always sample at the end of my photoperiod). I sampled the water into a 50ml conical all the way to the top and filter sterilized the water to make sure no microbes would change the water while I transported it. I don't recall the model but the meter I used was calibrated and was expensive. And to be clear, I also believe that both can be right in the sense that they're accurately reading the water they're exposed to under the conditions they're in. I'm not too concerned with pH so I haven't thought hard about which was right (in the sense that it actually represents the conditions of my water in the tank), but always assumed it was the liquid test & meter. I am curious though what else would cause the difference in readings. Could the large volume liquid tests absorb co2 much slower than the pad and since i have low kh the test strip ph gets lower?

I'm actually on the east side south of Bellevue. According to this Seattle and Edmonds get west point treatment plant and I get south treatment plant. Still low gh/kh water though. co-op strips agree with the API strips too but the liquid API kit says 7.6(or greater) on PH low and 7.8 on ph high tests. last week I brought my water in to the university and tested it on a calibrated lab PH meter. I got 7.75. My master kit was purchased January this year and has an expire date of 09/2023 and my gh/kh kit expires 09/2023 also. I'm more confused by the nitrate. I'm going to test the strips, and my api liquid kit against a high quality standard solution later this week and see what's what.

I picked up the new test strips today. And I love how they are more nitrate sensitive 0,20,40,80 wasn't great especially when 20 was really hard to see, so 10,25,50 seems perfect to me. I thought I'd share my experience with the new coop test strips, since they're not quite working for me and maybe someone has a solution or knows if there could be something about my water that interferes. The strips are reading a bit funny for me though. According to my API test kit (directions followed exactly, even spending a *** minute shaking the second bottle and tube after mixing) i had 5-10 last night so i dosed 2x easy green (that should add 6ppm nitrate). Today I measured again expected to see 10-15 nitrates, so a 10 or 25 on the strip and it came out a perfect color match for 50. So I got out my API kit again today and using the api kit I got 10-20 (<40, I can't tell 10 and 20 apart but it was under 40 for sure). The nitrite read 0, no surprise. The GH read 300ppm(!!!) for my seattle water with a small dose of equilibrium. My API titration test puts me at about 7 degrees ~= 125ppm. I'm not shocked though since the API test strips didn't work at all for me. KH came out in agreement with the API test 4degrees/drops on the api test 80ppm on the strip. The api test strips always gave me garbage readings on kh. ph came in between 6.8 and 7.2, API strips always say about 7.0, but API liquid always comes in at 7.8. So no worse than the other strips but still a head scratcher to me. I've never tested chlorine before so it was cool to have it. I got 1.5 out of my tap (and 0 in my aquarium) which seems reasonable probably means I can use half the suggested amount of prime which is nice to know.

I was just there a few hours ago and they didn't have any on the floor, so to speak. but an employee said they had 3 or 4 in the back which surprised me (I didn't know there was a back, other than the quarantine room). I bought three. I'm not sure if that's just a tactic to ration otos right now because they're a bit hard to get or if the ones mentioned in the original post are still in quarantine or all sold.

I may have done the same thing. my first batch of 7 (5 after the tank move) were all female and a month or two later i bought a dozen more from a different local breeder. They're all dark blue so i don't know if they're dreams or velvets, but I just found my first babies last night and today I saw a tiny bright red one zip by and then hide. Still the majority I've spotted have been pretty dark blue. In my dream scenario you could cull just browns and keep getting interesting mixes like light dark red, blue, rili, spotted. that would be so fun, but I hear you just get more and more brown without culling for one specific color.

I'm still having a hard time getting them to lay in the mop(I've given up) and I don't yet see anything in my water lettuce but I found a group of 5-6 eggs in my mop today (was just checking it over before I threw it in the garbage) and I found that 2 of them were fertile and the others were gross looking. I separated out the two good ones in a petri dish and moved them to my empty fry tub that I hide under my desk. If these two guys make it they'll be the most watched and pampered rice fish fry ever since they'll be my first babies. Anyway, I thought I'd share a photo of the eggs, with some thread stuck to them from the mop. It's hard to see from this angle, but face on you can both eye spots really well. From a random paper with photos I found I'm guessing these guys are about half way done before hatching.

Thanks. I actually got a chance to sneak out to aco today for some fish and the employee talked me out of it. Can you elaborate on clover. I'm not sure I've heard of an aquarium clover.

A flow rate adjustment knob would be nice. It actually takes extra power when you use a valve to lower flow. I rigged mine with a cheap motor speed controller.

Thank you for the heads up on regular failure and I'm really sorry about your fish! I had no idea dumping co2 was a problem with some regulators. At work they always just work. I guess that's why we pay 500$ each.

I'd just put a new one on and bleach the old one. Odds are good you can go without the bacteria on there.

I'm getting ready to give up on my montecarlo and am considering dwarf hairgrass. I have a gravel substrate with most pebbles being roughly 3-5mm across. From what I've read dwarf hairgrass likes sand and soil with lots of nutrients, which doesn't sound like a good fit. Is it that much harder to grow in gravel? would root tabs help? should I root tab closer than every 6" in this case? Also will it really carpet like the photos if I'm a mere mortal aqua-scaper? I've only seen photos of insane lush carpets and day 1 planting online. I've got medium light, ph 7.8 gh7 kh4, low nitrogen and phosphate that I'm still working on getting higher.