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ChefConfit

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  1. ChefConfit
    If the info in the aquapros video is accurate then the infestation originates from a single geographic location. Most of the farmed moss balls apparently come from there but not all. We'll most likely see a rise in the price of moss balls until the problem is fixed or the other areas that grow them increase production. It's also likely that aquatic plant regulations will be revisited because of this. Who knows maybe this will lead to a rise in domestic aquatic plant farming. That could be a good thing.
  2. ChefConfit
    @Janelle I get the same thing on my display tank. I think it means our GH is above 300ppm
  3. ChefConfit
    Airline tubing works, or what I usually do is put the fish in a container with the water from the bag and leave it next to my tank. Every half hour to an hour I take the small metal condiment cup (it's a 1 oz stainless steel cup) that I use to thaw frozen food for my fish and fill it with tank water to dump in with the fish I'm acclimating. If I start in the morning then by night they are ready to go in the tank.
  4. ChefConfit
    Thank you! They really are a great product. I love the larger strips and wider opening in the bottle which make them much easier to get out, which means I'm more likely to test before I have a problem. And the laminated chart is actually my favorite part because I've had the paper charts ruined by spills and/or wet hands before and had to buy another bottle just to have a chart to use.
  5. ChefConfit
    @mgudyka I have a 29hex with 5 otos, 5 corys, 11 neon tetras and 1 angel. All of them are soft water fish in the wild but my Gh is over 300ppm (the highest my test strips goes) and KH is around 100ppm. All my fish are doing well and I have had the corys spawn several times (2 batches of eggs were removed and the fry raised then sold and I had a few fry survive in the original tank too). Stability is far more important than chasing parameters. That said taking a fish out of very soft water and dropping them into very hard water or vise versa can cause osmotic shock. That is why drip acclimation is particularly important when bringing in fish that are used to different water parameters than your tank.
  6. ChefConfit
    @JaredL the ammonia test pads need to be in the water longer and develop for different amounts of time compared to the pads on the multi test strips. It would be convenient to have them all on one but every single company that makes test strips does ammonia separate so I'm assuming the isn't a cost effective way to make it work. @Cory do you know what the shelf life is of the strips once opened? I'd imagine it's basically indefinite while sealed, but moisture in the air will eventually impact accuracy at some point after they are opened. Obviously there are factors that would impact the shelf life such as how often you open the container, how long you leave it open and the amount of humidity in the air when you do open it, but is there an amount of time it's recommended to use them before or replace them after? I rarely use ammonia test strips so am hesitant to purchase such a large pack of them because I'd take such a long time to use them up that I'd worry about accuracy. You mentioned the possibility of getting them in foil packs of 50 inside the tube and I think that's a great idea for such a large quantity, especially the ammonia strips which I feel a lot of people use less often.
  7. ChefConfit
    I've only had mine for a few months, but my Gh is about 309 in that tank and it's doing fine. I have a ton of crushed coral in the substrate of that tank that I will probably remove next time I rescape it because it's now only housing south American species that generally prefer softer water, but I've had corys breed in this tank as it is now and all my fish seem happy and healthy.
  8. ChefConfit
    Thanks! I actually saw another baby just now when I went down to feed my tanks in the basement after work. The only reason I even saw it was because it was riding a baby snail on the front glass. Also the brown blotches on the one shrimp are almost completely gone now.
  9. ChefConfit
    You can go as big as you want the only catch is you need good flow. Adequate plant load and flow will keep water prestine in most cases even without a filter. Most tank especially planted ones will benefit from an air stone or two though and if your running an airstone you might as well put it inside a sponge filter. Look at @Cory and his indoor ponds. They all run off one sponge filter each (I think he uses mediums) and they have never had a water change.
  10. ChefConfit
    I think a dedicated thread for help with dirted tanks would be awesome. Honestly it would be cool if all of the specialized types of setups had their own support threads (outdoor tubs, filterless tanks, Micro tanks, ect...) actually Summer tubing and/or ponds could probably be its own topic.
  11. ChefConfit
    So a few things I got questions about, not all breeding related but my biggest concern is that I haven't seen any babies since I saw 2 almost a week ago. First I have a shrimp that has brown patches after molting. I posted on a shrimp specific subreddit and everyone seemed to think it wasn't a concern for the health of the shrimp but I wanted another opinion. It's been a few days since this picture was taken and the brown seems to be going away. Before molting the brown areas were very very dark blue almost black. Second concern is about babies. I had 2 berried females for 3-4 weeks then I noticed they were no longer carrying eggs. A day or 2 later I saw 2 small shrimp that hadn't gotten any color yet but that's the only time I've seen any babies and it was almost a week ago. Third is a dead adult I found yesterday. I checks water parameters with my new coop multi test strips and nitrates were between 10 and 25, nitrites 0, Gh was was even more purple that the chart goes, Kh was 80, pH was 7.2 and chlorine was 0. Did a water change just to be sure. It's a heavily planted 10g with a nicrew light, medium coop sponge filter, and a mix of aquarium sand and crushed coral for substrate. I use easy green and easy root tabs. Here is an older picture of the tank it has grown in more since.
  12. ChefConfit
    The forum has shown me that there are almost as many viable ways to keep fish happy and healthy as there are aquarist. Even when talking about one style of tank such as dirted tanks I've seen at least 6 completely different approaches to how to set one up on this forum and all can be successful. It's also given me confidence to try new stuff I though was only for more advanced aquarists. It's given me great ideas for future projects and shown me several fish that are now on my bucket list to own. Since joining the forum I've successfully bred corydoras, I've got shrimp that are breeding, I'm setting up a summer tub(build journal/what should I pit in it post coming soon) and I've got plans for a small for a small rack system with 8 tanks.
  13. ChefConfit
    I didn't have any trouble with the pads falling off during use but I did find what may be pads loose in my bottle. They seem thinner than the pads on the strips though and I haven't found a strip missing a pad yet so could they be scraps from manufacturing somehow? Took a picture of 2 of them but have found several more.
  14. ChefConfit
    https://sg.news.yahoo.com/man-sold-siamese-fighting-fish-home-fined-085849233.html Had to triple check that this wasn't in America cause I'm hopefully going to be selling quite a few fish when tub season is over
  15. ChefConfit
    @Streetwise mine came today as we! Used 2 immediately and like them quite a bit more than the ones I was using. They cost less and just all around feel like a better product.
  16. ChefConfit
    Honestly either one would work well. If you truly have no preference I'd go with whichever one there is a better market for in your area. It might make you a little more money in the fall when you sell off the excess from summer breeding and help fund your hobby.
  17. ChefConfit
    @quirkylemon103 then I'd recommend doing the membership. I really enjoy the members only videos and would continue my subscription even if they were all you get with it. I actually originally became a member in order to get access to this forum. It was members only for the first month or two in order to work out the kinks, then iirc it was available to anyone invited by a member, then it was opened to the public. I'm usually one of those people who refuses to pay for a premium version of a free service, but once I saw the added value becoming a member gives you I'll probably be one forever.
  18. ChefConfit
    99.99% sure the answer is no. Sales have been asked about before and they usually don't happen. The pet industry runs on insanely tight margins that leave very little room for discounts unless you are one of the big box stores, and even they lose money on some of their sales like the dollar per gallon. Also are St. Patrick's day sales a thing?
  19. ChefConfit
    @quirkylemon103 it's probably not worth it to become a member if ordering this a little earlier than everyone else is the only thing you're interested in. It's something we probably all already use or at least should have on hand but with some improvements. It isn't that what is already available is bad either. The current products just could be improved. I already know from the product description that they fixed the one thing that actually makes me angry about the currently available version. That said I do really enjoy being a member of the channel. You get member only videos, sneak peeks at projects before publicly available videos are made, and every once in awhile they do live streams where only members can ask questions for at least part of it. Sometimes members even get a heads up about restocks for products that sell out fast. There's even a way to make your membership free by using Google opinion rewards(i just remembered that this was a thing and had to stop typing and set it up before I forget). It's an app where Google pays you to answer surveys. Android users get credited to their Google play account and ios users can get it deposited to PayPal.
  20. ChefConfit
    @Streetwise I placed my order on Saturday I've been waiting for them to come out for awhile and am way more excited for them than any normal person should be. The timing is also perfect because I'm just about out of them and didn't want by to buy more of the ones I've been using because I knew these were coming at some point. I'll add that it's something Cory has talked about in the past that we've known they're making for at least the past year or so.
  21. ChefConfit
    I'm stopping at tractor supply after work either today or tomorrow to pick up my container they have a 25x14ish plastic barrel planter I think it holds just under 25 gallons. I change my mind on fish every other day but am leaning towards some variety of white clouds right now or maybe CPDs but I don't know how well they'll breed in a tub. As for plants I'm thinking either a dwarf Lilly or tiger lotus, a random assortment of stems and floaters from my tanks. I might try crypts because why not, and I want to find something that will grow up out of the water.
  22. ChefConfit
    I'm a little late to the party as I've been very busy lately and haven't been on the forums in a few weeks. I had some issues a few months ago after rescaping my tank that were similar to yours. I've found success in managing similar issues in a new tank using a method I learned listening to George Farmer's podcast. It's essentially a simplified version of ei dosing. I use easy green (George Farmer uses tropica all in one) at the recommended dosage but rather than adding it all at once I dose it throughout the week. I have a 29g so I do one pump Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then on Sundays I do a 50% water change to reset nutrient levels. This method along with manual removal of algae and proper lighting intensity will help control algae by giving you more control over the nutrient levels in your tank and keeping those nutrient levels stable. Nutrient levels not being stable can be just as bad for algae as them being to high because algae is able to adapt and use whatever nutrients is available much more easily than plants. Eventually as plants grow in fully I will reduce the size of my water changes because as there is more plant mass the chances of algae out competing the plants is less and less.
  23. ChefConfit
    I've been looking at getting either tuxedo koi, dumbo red tail or red ribbon koi. My patio pond will either be one of those three or yellow fin white clouds.
  24. ChefConfit
    Depends. Actual aquarium gravel you could get at a pet store made for use in fish tanks? Not gonna leech toxins. Colored decorative gravel meant for... I actually don't know what it's meant for but you can find it at craft stores or the dollar store in the isle with the fake plants. That kind could because it's not meant to be used in aquariums, but most is probably still safe. I think the colored gravel is toxic thing mostly comes from when we still used lead based paint in everything, but I could be wrong.
  25. ChefConfit
    I've reduced feeding to every other day, but even then it's so hard to not overfeed when there's only 16 shrimp. Even a small pinch is to much food. 2 females are berried though so my colony will hopefully be growing quite rapidly soon and overfeeding won't be as easy. Water parameters are good and pretty stable so I was really only concerned if they posed a threat to my shrimp. I think this is my 4th or 5th attempt at starting a colony and I promised my wife it it didn't work out this time I'd give up.
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