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CT_

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Everything posted by CT_

  1. CT_
    The calcium in crushed coral will raise your gh. to answer the question in your subject: I'm also in WA with soft water and don't add crushed coral. I did notice that even know dragon stone isn't supposed to change gh it did raise mine by 2° or 35ppm. this only happened after scrubbing it to remove algae though so I think it's in the dirt that's trapped in the stone. if you're being pedantic then the "real" dragon stone is only found in one or two places and you and I may have a different stone with different composition. To me if it looks like a duck then it's a duck at least as far as cool rocks go.
  2. CT_
    A few weeks ago I got 11 cardinals. In the first couple days I lost one. Like it just disappeared. Then I lost another after 3-4 more days. Now I lost a third one yesterday. The tank is in the kitchen so if they jumped I'm pretty sure I'd find a body as there's not a lot of places for a body to hide. I do have a lid but it doesn't cover the back 2". I've not seen any nitrogen spikes, my nitrates are 5 before fertilizing. I don't have pets other than fish. Is there an explanation I'm missing?
  3. CT_
    I'm not sure how much you want but this is what I used to make my brine shrimp strainer. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07MTSRR51
  4. CT_
    I'm so jealous! That's awesome! Were you feeding them anything? I'd post them on CL and on your local FB group if it exitst. I'd pay top dollar for local otos. Even fry.
  5. CT_

    Lost shrimp eggs?

    CT_ replied to CT_'s topic in Fish Breeding

    They can tell?! 3 guppies and cardinal tetras 8ish
  6. CT_
    Diatoms arent stringy like that. If it were me I'd just pull out what I can. It won't hurt your cycle.
  7. CT_
    I'd consider trying different eggs. maybe borrow a couple spoonfuls from someone to test. or you could ask someone to try out your eggs in a working setup. I do exactly the same as you but at about 1/3 the scale. 350ml water 1/2 table spoon (8.5g) half a "scoop" (1.7ml/scoop) of eggs the same eggs as you (from amazon). I'm not experienced to know a good from bad yield but i see lots of junk floating to the top, presumably egg shells, and what feels like a lot of BBS when I'm done, (I harvest starting at around the 18hr mark and then keep harvesting throughout the day and freeze the rest). Or if you're less stingy than I am you could just throw out what you have and blindly order a new batch of eggs (maybe from ACO or another reputable distributor).
  8. CT_

    Lost shrimp eggs?

    CT_ replied to CT_'s topic in Fish Breeding

    That's a bummer 😞. I didn't even do a water change but, I've been trying to get my nitrates up and more steady for plants/algae. maybe the dosing of easygreen was too fast? I tried a triple dose to get from 5 to ~15. I'll spread doses out next time i need to make bigger changes.
  9. CT_
    I noticed about 10 days ago my biggest shrimp was berried. she disappeared for the last 2-3 days and I found her again today but with only 4ish eggs left. She's been with 4 other females until the 27th of feb when I added 12 more shrimp, presumably some male. It seems unlikely the eggs hatched given the time line. Does anyone have an idea what happened. my temp is 24C-25C depending on the thermometer, nitrate 5 (up to 15 max when i dose ferts) gh 6-7 kh4. here's the best photo i could get of her
  10. CT_
    If you're worried an air stone would fix it, unless its floor to ceiling duckweed. 😅
  11. CT_
    thats rough. 😞 I can probably make it up next work week so maybe I'll check back the day before and hazard a trip out (with the understanding that someone could buy all the fish in the store before I arrive).
  12. CT_
    Get some oto's they'll make quick work of that! And when they're nice and fat you can send them to me when you're done 🙂 Also, I've read a lot of conflicting stuff about nitrites nerites laying eggs. The only consistent "story" from all the reports I've read is that they only have to mate once and carry sperm and then lay for a long time after that. But if you get them young and unmated and one of each species (turns out each type is a different species) then you can have all females and still no eggs. Just something to noodle on.
  13. CT_
    If you don't make an account when you set them up then they aren't controlled by external servers. If you don't trust their firmware you can firewall them so they can't talk to the outside, or even anything but an old phone. The KASA plugs keep their timing schedules onboard so once setup they don't really need internet for anything but time, so I guess you'd have to make an exception for time servers. IMO the best thing to do, which is what I do, Is have an iot wifi network and a personal network. Saves a lot of headaches.
  14. CT_
    @Robert The 3 oto's I got from you guys are doing great and I'm thinking of getting 3 more, but I haven't seen them come in in the last two week's list. Do you have any more or are they unavailable right now? Also they're listed as "Common Colombian Otocinclus" in your lists. There are at least 2 species that I see called the "Common oto" and most look very similar. Are these O. macrospilus ?
  15. CT_
    OHHH this is great. I'm very curious to see how the ph gh kh look. My brand X strips show a mix of two colors (not like half way, but the center is one color and the edge is another) on kh gh and then fade away and it always reads ph7.0 when the liquid test reads 7.8 I'm also very curious to see how much chlorine my tap has. but have been hesitant to spend more money on strips. A Also, thanks @Streetwisefor your photo. the customer photos I saw on the store site made the 0 and 10 ppm nitrate and 0 0.5 ammonia look the same, which made me unsure if I'd be able to read these strips.
  16. CT_
    In case you're wondering why its unlisted there's a thread about it. The TLDR is that they're a victim of their own popularity and they can't properly server their in store customers while the phone rings off the hook.
  17. CT_
    I suspect the lavarock has mostly stagnant water then, thought it may be acting like a plenum if there's enough space between it. You'll have to look up aquarium plenums because I don't get why they're good or bad or how they work. I suspect you can't have too much filtration but there's appoint where there's not benefit for the cost. I suspect most of us are past that point, which I don't think is bad, but more fear of under filtering.
  18. CT_
    Ah it says +/-0.2C but that's still great for the price and Thomas is a brand I trust.
  19. CT_
    I don't fully understand the reasons why, but measuring temperature accurately is hard (aka expensive). @Daniel Is your nist traceable thermometer affordable? I've been looking for something good under 100$
  20. CT_
    Interesting link with information I hadn't seen before. Most of my hair algae is on patches on my rock/substrate and on the original montecarlo leaves which I cut back a bit to take the algae out. The thing about nutrient spikes in interesting too. I wonder if it means spikes above a threshold or any fast upward change. 0 to some is definitely a spike. This sentence makes me question the author a bit but he's probably just either confused or plants do something really weird that I didn't know about (I'm constantly find this is the case; I spent all my time in grad school with prokaryotes so anything with a nucleus is a mystery to me): Between this and what @Brandy said I think my plan is to monitor nitrate/phosphate (because those are thing things I can test for) and dose as needed to keep them up for the next two weeks. If I find my plants are eating too much and I have to dose like crazy I'll lower my light again and shrink down the "floater zone" to house less floaters.
  21. CT_
    I've got a siesta for my own sake so I can see it morning and night. I'm running a nicrew classic plus. Supposedly par 70@12" but IDK given the Chinese brand. I think is about 14" from the bottom. I've turned blue down one click which I think means 80% on blue. 2 hr in the morning and 6 in the evening
  22. CT_
    I wanted to be lazy and thought I might be able to hatch my BBS under a grow light I have going already. I was going to ask if anyone has done it but then I found this paper [1] that showed that yield was pretty good but not as good under blue vs white. They didn't test red+blue vs white but it looks like color does play a factor (even when controlling for the number of photons). I thought someone else might think its interesting too so I'm posting it. [1]: https://academic.oup.com/jcb/article/36/4/515/2735716
  23. CT_
    It depends on the widget but I have DIYed A LOT of stuff. some exist, some don't work exactly how I want, some don't exist (like a proper brine shrimp hatchery heater for something smaller than the ziss). If I can't fiddle with it it's not fun!
  24. CT_
    I'm getting increasing green hair algae. Right now its confined to a few spots in the aquarium and it likes the glass but its slowly growing out and spreading. I'm doing what I can to manually remove it but that's not a long term solution. I read it can be from an overabundance of phosphate so I bought a kit and I have 0 phosphate 5 nitrate. When I add ferts, I've tried 1 and 3 squirts of easy green per 10g, it grows denser and spreads out the next day. If I let my phosphates go to 0 it stops growing but then I assume my plants will be deficient. I've already dropped to an 8 hour split photoperiod. should I go shorter? I'm trying to grow a montecarlo carpet and after a month I'm finally seeing some new growth (I started with a culture and I assume it wasn't adapted to submersed life), so I'm afraid to lower intensity and kill my carpet. Other solutions I've read are lower the pH (not gonna happen) or raise co2 (i don't do co2 injection, and I'm not keen on starting). EDIT: parameters are: ammonia: 0 nitrite: 0 nitrate: 5 (before dosing easy green) phosphate: 0 ph: 7.8 gh: 7 kh:4
  25. CT_
    In terms of chlorine why not just give the plant a scoop of aquarium water then you don't even need to fill a can.
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