Speakeasy

Hey all, as most mornings, I spent this one cleaning filters and feeding turtles and fish. This morning I thought I might show off a filter I've been using for years. Mostly cause I think its cool...."nerd"....but also cause someone might could find it useful. Materials: Lee's mini critter keeper Top fin small under gravel filter Plastic canvas Tools: Scissors Super glue (gel type) First I start off by trimming slats out of one of the under gravel tiles so I can latch the bell end of the tube to the center of it. Next I remove the clear plastic door off of the lid of the critter keeper. Then trim a piece of plastic canvas to fit it and super glue it in place. Making sure to cut out a center hole for the upright tube. (You can see on this one I kinda messed up centering the hole) Now assemble, fill with media (i like lava rock and poly fill), attach and air pump and thats it you're done. The under gravel filter kit comes with a standard air stone which clogs super quick, so i recommend replacing it with a no clog air stone from Aqurium Co-Op when you get a chance. These filters have about the same capacity as an aqua clear 70 and considering you can build 2 of them for under $40 including the air pump and media they're awesome. I've been using them for years with turtles (a lot of turtles) and fish alike.

Thank you all....gave me some ideas to try.

Hey all, I run a little bit of a turtle rescue and as such I have a plethora of outdoor tubs to house the turtles in. This year I had a open tub so I stocked it with water hyacinth and leopard daniosand and tried my hand at breeding them. So as goes the danios are breeding and the hyacinth is growing, and as the hyacinth grows i have been pulling plants from the danio tub and put them in the various turtle tubs. Lately I've noticed that every turtle tub has a small swarm of danio fry in them (guessing either eggs or small fry hitched a ride in the roots of the hyacinth). Which is awesome but now the hyacinth has over taken the all over the tubs. Normally I would start pulling plants from the tubs and add them to my compost pile but this year I don't want to loose the fry that maybe hiding in the roots. Guess what I'm asking is....Does anyone have any good i deals as to how I can make sure the hyacinth i pull from the tubs are fry free before I add them to the compost heap?

Is this why I haven't been able to find these things for a year now...these things make for great hang on tank planter boxes

Yeah I have some water Sprite planted in a small pot on the bottom. Do to the water hyacinth and the duck weed that came with it I'm having a tough time keeping sun light on it. All things given, not exactly a bad problem to have. I wanted white clouds, but they just not available locally to me...I hope you breed a swarm of them, maybe I can buy some off you

I laid a layer of pea gravel (from home depot) as a substrate...I was told that the lager than standard stone size allows the eggs to gather between them, protecting them from the adults eating them. I also have water hyacinth floating on the surface, of which the root structure allows the the fry to hide in.

Fabric pot and a milk crate. The fabric pot can be folded down the what ever depth of substrate you want to plant in and the milk crate can be trimmed with a hack saw blade (every easy, soft plastic) to accommodate the water depth, that how I'm doing it, just not with pothos. If you look at my earlier post the lager plants are in fabric pot sitting on trimmed milk crates that being said pothos grows underwater. The pic with the neon has a vine of pothos along the back. I just jammed a piece of vine into the gravel about two years ago and it rooted and grew around the tank rooting in different places and is now coming up and out of the tank over the side and hanging down to the floor. In the beginning it did need a bit of time to convert to the aquatic life.

110 gallon tough stuff stock tank...breeding long fin leopard danios in it. They're tough to see but if you expand the pics there is a ton of fry in there. I leaned a 12x12 tile against the wall of the tub, gives them a bit of a cave to hide in. It has an unattended benefit of becoming a fish and snail buffet as it catches food before it hits the bottom. Aq.Coop med sponge filter and air line, ziss no clog stone and nano air pump combo works great. I tuck the air pump under the ledge of the tub (nice snug fit) and clipped it to to a hole I drilled in the lip. This helps protect it from the weather and should it ever come loose it wont fall into the dirt. Feeding Extreme krill flake food and nano pellets, Aq.Coop fry food and hikari first bites as well as some hikari frozen foods. My first attempt at breeding fish, and its awesome.