PatrickB

I've recently taken a bit of a leap in the hobby and built a ~600 gallon outdoor pond. I've always been interested in Koi and am super excited to get going down that journey. I'm quickly learning that a pond is at a completely different level in terms of filtration and water quality. There's so much to learn. I've noticed that a lot of the Koi hobbyists seem to be in the UK/Europe, and likewise most of the hobbyist market seems to be geared in that direction. It can be hard to find equipment in the US, so DIY is important. I'm curious where Koi/pond people hang out online in North America to share ideas. If you know, please share!

It's just the Tetras is there. No plans for additional fish just yet.

Hello, I'm establishing a small school of neon tetras and would like to get away with not using a heater. It's a rimless tank & without a lid is runs around 66f during the day and perhaps slightly colder during the night. I've acclimated them and after about a week they seem to be getting along just fine. They are active, hungry, and showing good color. My question to the group is for those who have more experience with these fish. Is this an acceptable temperature long-term? Thanks!

Sorry to hear that. It sounds like if you just had a filter installed the day prior, it was something to do with that. What kind of filter did you have installed? Is it a reverse osmosis system? If that's the case the pH might be much lower than what the fish are used to.

Unfortunately the goldfish died yesterday. The infection was steadily clearing & he was more energetic, but in the afternoon I suddenly found him motionless on the bottom. Fishkeeping sucks sometimes! Worse is I don't even know what it was. I tore the tank down completely, threw away all the plants & sterilized everything with bleach.

Just a quick update, I've had him soaking in Erythromycin the past 3 days, as well as General Cure for the past two. He seems to be slowly pulling through. Really nasty infection. I'll definitely be dosing with the trio a couple of more times to make sure whatever this was is gone for good.

Yeah it was cycled. It's just him in there with plants & he hasn't been eating. That along with the water changes I imagine is why I'm not seeing any Nitrates. I was able to get some Erythromycin and started him on that this afternoon. He is a little more active this afternoon after another ~30% water change + 1 TB of salt earlier this morning.

pH is 7.4-7.6. Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate are all at 0. The tank is fairly heavily planted for it's size. The Ich-X was used because I know it works for some other external "stuff" and this fella is going downhill pretty rapidly. He also hasn't eaten in 4-5 days.

Derpy is a Black Moor that we purchased from a chain about a month ago. Unfortunately he went downhill fairly quickly. He has developed some kind of white coating with a pronounced streak down his side. I've been battling this for the past four or five days. I've added salt at a little over 1TB/gal and given three treatments of Ich-X with small water changes. He doesn't seem to be improving. At this point he is very lethargic. Water parameters are good. No heater, so water temp fluctuates a bit from 68-70. I don't have access to an antibiotic currently, so I'm not sure what else to try. More salt & hope for the best?

Generally with photography you want lots of light and the highest shutter speeds you can manage. There's lots of little tricks to learn with photography, but one is the use of "depth-of-field" or how much of the image is in focus. You want a "shallow" depth-of-field when photographing an individual fish for instance, so that the background is softened by being a bit out of focus, placing the emphasis on the picture's subject, which will be in perfect focus. Having a deep depth of field where the entire image is in focus including the plants, decorations, etc. can look "busy" and doesn't give the eye anything to focus on. There's a few ways to get a more narrow depth of field: wider aperture, and longer zoom. So, if you try using your lens more towards the 105mm long end but stand farther back away from the tank, the depth of field will be more shallow and I'll bet you'll get some cool pictures.

Since it's not really intuitive, I'll mention it here that reducing a pump's flow actually reduces it's power draw and load, not the other way around. Don't worry about using restrictions to reduce flow on your filters, it won't damage them.

According to Aqua Huna, 14 days in transit for shrimp is no problem. Not sure about snails, but I would imagine they'd be fine as well. I can say their stock is very good quality, and healthy. Chances are you'll be fine.

That under cabinet setup is pretty sick dude. Respect!

I think @Frank mentioned it first, but a 5ml glass serological pipette with a rubber bulb is probably top 5 most used tool. Need to do an API test w/ 5ml of water? Bam. Need to dose Seachem Prime in a 3.5 gal tank when the rate is 5ml/50gal? The pipettes are 12" long in graduations of .025ml. I can add exactly 0.35ml easily. They are for lab use, so even the cheap Chinese ones are pretty darn accurate. They are glass, so inert and easy to clean. The rubber bulb just pulls right off, so you can dry them out. The one in this shot I got in this multi-pack: Amazon Can't recommend them enough

@Cory What backgrounds are you using there?