Daniel

Hornwort has always been my go to plant.

For me one of the easiest, hardiest, compatible with everything pond fish have been rice fish. These are baby rice fish. The adults breed like crazy consistently all summer here in North Carolina.

My fishroom is backed up by couple of large APC UPSs and in my experience they don't last long enough. For blips and outages of less than a few hours they are fine. For long outages I use a generator.

The intake, the overflow and the 2 returns are all visible in the photo above. But they are positioned so that your tend not to notice them. The overflow is the most visible. It is the tall gray pipe on the left side.

I sometimes sell angelfish to the Fish Room in Raleigh and it has always been a good experience. Most of the employees seem to either have undergraduate or graduate biology degrees. Mike, the manager of the Raleigh store watches the Aquarium Co-Op YouTube channel and even participates in the chat sometimes. Instead of making your own RO water or salt water made up from RO water, it can be cheaper and more convenient to just buy it at your LFS. I too saw a steady steam of customers coming in to get water.

I have a tank in the middle of the room viewable from 4 sides. Like @Griznatch says, the bottom is drilled and all the plumbing comes in and out through the bottom of the aquarium. And as @Nirvanaquatics suggests, the ceiling can be used also. I have my lighting plugged into the ceiling.

Porter and my youngest son dug the ditch through our backyard for overflow pipe from my big fish tank.

I always liked the music from 'Destruction Derby' My neighbor Porter Robinson does some nice EDM inspired by Gaming music, especially DDR (Dance, Dance, Revolution).

I haven't posted to the thread for last few months (but I should). Here is the link:

For the first few months running 3 identical setups, the dirted tank, the Eco-complete tank, and the tank with normal gravel all produced about the same results.

According to CaribSea's website it made from "basaltic volcanic soil". I believe it is inert.

There is an entire book on the Walstad method titled"Ecology of the Planted Aquarium", so obviously there is a lot more to it. But for me, if I put in an inch of garden soil and put some gravel or sand on top, I feel I like I am doing (at least in spirit) what she intended. She was/is a member of our local aquarium club and I what learned talking to her was to be patient. In her tanks and mine all the nutrients that come in with the soil can easily cause an initial green water bloom. This bloom will last until the excess nutrient are used up which can be weeks. After the that, the water stays very clear and the plants are happy. Case in point is my 1930s aquarium which has 1 inch of garden soil covered by 1 inch of gravel from my creek. It sits in front of a South facing window with all day full sunlight. Yes, it was green for a while at first, but since it has cleared, it is very clear. The Vallisneria which are heavy root feeders are very happy. I am not an evangelist for any one method, but her methods are inexpensive, easy to implement, and produce good results. I don't have an airstone in this aquarium, but having any airstone is almost always a good thing. I usually put plants and fish in any aquarium I setup right away, dirt or no dirt. I have always used soil from the woods or garden when I needed soil.

Looks like a leech.

Indiana - 4

A poll sounds like a lot of fun!

Illinois - 7

I shot this video earlier in the spring. You can see “reverse-pitch semirotary helicopter blades” in motion.

In theory, practice and theory are one and the same. In practice, they are not.

In theory, there should be algae here:

My aquarium with the least algae is the one in direct sunlight. Ironic.

Do you have plants in the aquarium?

One of the easiest ways to deal with nitrates is plants. Substrate too will not only provide an anchor for more plants, but it will also create more surface area for beneficial bacteria to live on.

Congratulations on the Kribensis fry, those are so much fun! Blackworms are pretty small. Even medium sized fry can eat them. And at least for the purpose of keeping the 1930s aquarium authentic, it is sort of live food that is easy to collect in the wild. We have mud flats in the flood plain of a local reservoir that has tons of tubifex worms, probably, literally hundreds of tons of tubifex worms (which are similar to blackworms).

I kept the temperature in this Discus, rummy nose tetra, Corydoras, cardinal tetra, and blue ram tank in the mid 80s. All sword plants loved it. Most stem plants loved it as did the hairgrass and java fern. The substrate was Nature Aquariums Amazonia, but I suspect course sand would have worked just as well. If you look closely, you can Discus, rummy nose, cardinal tetras, and hatchet fish in this photo.

The angelfish are breeding again today. The temperature in the tank is lower than I thought would promote breeding. I don't use a thermometer but the house is about 70°F and when I stick my hand in, it feels like about 70°F. But nature finds a way. I think this recent round of egg laying has been prompted by upping the amount of blackworms I am feeding them.