HenryC

I got a 75g tank with a grown oscar, a midas cichlid, 3 blood parrots, a jack dempsey, a featherfin catfish,a female vieja zonatus and a T-bar cichlid... granted, most of these are medium-sized juveniles, but still it's a crowded tank (in the process of getting a 350g for all of these fellas). I use only 2 20 gal sponge filters powered by a tetra whisper 100g pump, and been doing so for months. 0 problems, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, clear water. So if your bioload (and this is a HUGE bioload for the tank, I feed heavily) is gonna be lower than this, I'm sure you'll fine with sponge filters. The only bad thing I would say about sponge filters is that they're tricky to get out of the tank to clean without releasing a cloud of mulm. But it's not that bad once you know how to do it.

Been thinking about that a bit lately. Sometimes I see a goldfish so chunky, with a wen so big it blocks vision and a double tail so large (or small!) that it seems they're struggling to even stay afloat and swim around. Seems even feeding these guys is a big strain to them, as they swim so clumsily that sometimes they miss the pellets. Their spines are so bent on the tail area and their bellies seems they're about to burst. Is it safe to say that some of these are like, the fish equivalent of pugs? So selectively bred that they struggle to do even the most easiest of tasks. Thoughts? Am I exaggerating?

My 350 gallon tank is almost ready. I still havent decided what fish will go in, but most likely a giant school of a cheap tetra like monks, along with a few bigger dudes like acaras. I want to heavily plant it first though, because I dont want to put too much filtration or a sump. Ideally I just want a line of 4-6 sponge filters all along the back and let the plants take care of water auality. What would be a cheap, low maintenance plant that i could use to quickly propagate a nice back wall of greenery? I'm thinking stem plants would be the best. Perhaps elodea? Some kind of hygrophila? Pogo octopus? Something that has explosive growth so it can suck up nitrates and minimize water changes/filtration required.

Thanks! I already have black and sky blue aquariums, so I wanted to try something different. The color is Krylon Peacock Blue if anyone's interested.

I Use krylon fusion all in on Paint in quick, light sweeps, don't oversaturate it, do 3-4 layers, waiting for it to dry after each layer. Doesn't matter if you are left with blotchy spaces, you keep covering em with subsequent layers. SUPER IMPORTANT to clean the glass VERY WELL, dust specks and/or oil from your fingerprints will ruin the paint around them. I used windex and a new microfiber cloth end result!

Hi! Has anyone used this one for a while now? What's the difference between the old 1.5 Pee Wee vs this one? I'm guessing it has more stuff like asathaxin and the like? Also, why not just put that formula on all foods? One thing I like about Xtreme is that they don't have a bazillion "formulas" like other brands, which at the end, when you read the ingredients, they aren't that different from each other. But now they got NICE, hmmm... will we be looking at NICE becoming the norm later down the road? Talking about NICE krill flakes, NICE big fella... etc.

I was genuinely curious about this, not trying to start an argument but hearing the "other side's" version of the story made me think... So everybody knows why Cory quit selling NLS, in a stream he said they were very rude to him, they screamed and yelled to him in a convention, and told him feeding anything else other than NLS was fish abuse. Cory said it was someone, most likely in charge of social media, that was rude. She appears to have apporached Cory to ask some pointers for her youtube channel, and everything happened from there. I'm assuming this individual was a girl named Hillary? (You can check her out in NLS youtube channel). She appeared to be freshly hired back then? So then, the other part of the story: I've been told in another forum that the person that was rude to Cory was indeed this newly recruited social media spokesperson for NLS. I don't know what the hell she was thinking by saying such things but for the looks of it, the actual owner of NLS would not say such things (at least I was told that by a person who claims to know the owner of NLS (Pablo tepoot). He said he called him on the spot about the incident and pablo confirmed it wasn't him that was rude to Cory, but that newly hired girl.He also said Cory was selling their foods for very very low, to the point of going below the MAP price (Minimum advertised price) that they specified. MAP prices are supossed to protect a product's reputation by setting a minimum price someone can sell your product, in order to protect your product's "reputation" and value. Well at least this is what he said, that NLS wasn't happy with Cory selling their stuff for super cheap (below MAP), sent a letter about it, and everything fell appart. Does selling something below MAP price is illegal? If this indeed happened, was Cory in his right to sell NLS for the price he wants?@Cory I can send you the forum thread if you want, but really it sounded like the whole of NLS was very bad when it appears it was just one inexperienced person? Did the owner actually scream at you back then? 😮 I'm aware that all of this might be irrelevant since it has been years, and a decision has been made, but I was wondering if the guy at MFK.com is saying the truth or just making things up.

So I entered the contest and last week they told me my green terror was a finalist! Thanks for posting the contest! So excited.

Mega necro thread hehe I've been told in another forum that the person that was rude to Cory was the newly recruited social media spokesperson for NLS, a young woman. I don't know what the hell she was thinking by saying such things but for the looks of it, the actual owner of NLS would not say such things (at least I was told that by a person who claims to know the owner of NLS (Pablo tepoot). He said he called him on the spot about the incident and pablo confirmed it wasn't him that was rude to Cory, but that newly hired girl. He also said Cory was selling their foods for very very low, to the point of going below the MAP price (Minimum advertised price) that they specified. MAP prices are supossed to protect a product's reputation by setting a minimum price someone can sell your product. Well at least this is what he said, taht NLS wasn't happy with Cory selling their stuff for super cheap (below MAP). @Cory I can send you the forum thread if you want, but really it sounded like the whole of NLS was very bad when it appears it was just one inexperienced person? Did the ownder actually scream at you back then? 😮

Waiting for the popular ones to resume like Attack on Titan and Re:Zero. But most of all, Demon Slayer, it's gonna be incredible!

Albino oscar and a juvenile T-bar cichlid. Eh I got lazy this time and left all the specks lol, they were kicking up a storm thinking I was going to feed them lol.

Absolute fave is potatoes with franks, onions and jalapenos. 2 over easy's on top of it and I'm good! Super filling and delicious. Gotta have that runny yolk so it pours over the potatoes on the bottom. YUM.

Electric blue acara and blood parrot!

If you need to dechlorinate your water, use Continuum Aquatics Fraction D powdered dechlorinator. It is incredibly concentrated, only 1 gram is needed per 240 gallons... So make the math, for a 40 gallon breeder for example, you will only need 166 milligrams, That's literally a lentil-sized amount of powder to dechlorinate the whole tank. a bottle will last you AGES! Their biggest size is a 4 kiloggram bucket, for just $100. That bucket will probably dechlorinate a lifetime of the hobby. Hope I don't get banned for suggesting another product, but here's their page: https://www.continuumaquatics.com/marine_wc/fraction-d.php

Oh wow do you think my fish are in danger? The smallest I have are harlequin rasboras, everything else is fairly chunky (red eye tetras, angelfish, electric blue acaras, etc.)

Local fish shop told me it was a ghost shrimp... but he's massive. Close to 4 inches. Do ghost shrimp really get that big? It was sold cheap, for just $2 so I'm guessing it's nothing special, but still, I had never seen such massive shrimps in the hobby, outside of saltwater!

I was wondering if it would be possible to filter a 10 foot long, 350g tank with just sponge filters. I don't think I've seen a tank above 100g filtered with just sponges, so I was wondering if it was doable. Thee tank will have about 4 oscars and 4 viejas. Sponges seem to be the best bio filtration there is, according to an experiment I read somewhere in the past (will try to find it again to post it here). The person managed to remove a gigantic amount of ppm of ammonia in a day, with just a sponge filter. Much more than canister, I think it was a crazy number like 70ppm. The internet dictates that for such a big tank, I need a big sump to filter it. But I wonder, if I put, perhaps, 4-6 big sponges all supplied by a big air pump, and a couple powerheads to circulate the water, would that be enough to process the ammonia? The idea of a sponge only monster tank seems really cool to me. Thoughts?

Been listening to electronic/nu-disco/house recently, particularly Satin Jackets, his style is so refreshing, groovy and feel good-y music, all good vibes.

So I'm about to acquire a 10ft long, 350g tank that I plan to stock with viejas, mainly melanura, zonatus and bifasciatas. My water is rock hard and I've been told they will thirve in it. I just wanted to ask for any suggestions/advice any experienced vieja keepers have, like what have you discovered with keeping vieja, perhaps breeding ease, feeding the right food, substrate/decor/plant prefferences, etc. Thanks!

I've read that the rule is to make the stand be able to take 4 times the weight of your tank filled with water... Just to be sure in case a eartquake or a kid bumping on it. I always construct my stands with 4x2s. I do not trust at all the compressed wood material commercials stands are made of. They might hold the tank withotu a problem but they don't give me peace of mind. a 4x2 apparently can hold 1000 pounds vertically, when 8 feet long. Obviously I'm not making an 8' tall stand, so I'm not sure how the capacity if affected when you cut it. But I haven't had any problems, my stands are rock solid, with triple 4x2s at the 4 corners, and doubles on the center of the stand. Pretty sure they can hold several times the weight of the aquarium.

The Imperial Valley is my neighbor! I live in Mexicali, just crossing the border. Yes, Salton Sea deteriorates with each passing year, hopefully the plans for rehabilitating it are successful, there are so many animals that depend of that body of water now, as filthy as it might be hehe.

I never thought I'd see Caitlin Doughty talking about pupfish XD

Glad to see these gyus mentioned! They got a pond of these little guys in Arizona, I've seen them, cool little dudes. I wish I could keep a few... They would be the perfect pond fish in my city, as they're ridicolously hardy according to science, since they live in the desert. My temperature is regularly at 110F-130F in the summer! Even more on the peak of summer. The desert pupfish has evolved to live in such high temperature, oxygen deprived water. It is even the image of our ultra local, very small fish club! The fish can also be found in Mexico, it was the perfect candidate to our club that contains people from both USA's California and Mexico's California, hence the name of the club! (Literally fishkeeping of the californias)

I'm guessing there's a fair amount of people outside the USA in the forum, seeing that the co-op had fans all over the world. I really like looking at money bills from different places, for me they're borderline art. Got any beautiful, colorful, unusual bills that you'd like to show off? Here's my favorite, it's from Mexico. It depicts Sor Juana, a nun that was a big part of Mexico's literature and poetry. In the back it depicts the monarch butterfly sanctuary in Mexico, where tons of butterflies migrate each year. What about you?

Lol I think the hobby is taking a toll on me! Today I dreamed that I was at Wal-Mart, they suddendly had brought back the fish section, but this time it was incredibly huge, like an entire wall of the building dedicated to fish. They had a massive section of tanks with tons of fish to choose from, it was what it looked to be 20 gal long tanks, stacked up to 5 time. Also had tons of supplies like aquariums, pumps, food, etc. Even Xtreme was there haha, I remember walking around and finding it and I was like SWEET I won't need to wait for it to arrive in the mail haha. Anyways I went to get some fish for as soon as I started looking at them the lights on the aquariums turned off. The clerk, which was an elderly lady told me she was going to clean, feed the fish and siphon the substrate (Thinking about it, I have no idea how a single, old lady in her 70's would clean like probably 200+ 20 gal tanks on her own haha, but that's dreaming for you). I was like ahhh damn ok, I traveled all the way from Mexico to see the fish, bummer. The lady figured I was from Mexico and let me pick some fish before she started cleaning, so I wouldn't waste gas and time haha. I was happy. Picked up what appeared to be very tiny, dwarf-like, white blood parrots, kinda like the size of white skirt tetras, also a single fish of what appeared to be a weird strain of harlequin rasbora, it had green and yellow, and it glowed, but just bought one because they were extremely pricey, seemed like it was the new fish everybody was talking about. Also a new kind of rainbowfish that was the shape of a crescent moon, and was blue all around like the blue you see on a neon tetra. The fish were spectacular lol. I picked up my fish and then went to the toy section to get something for my little niece, and I noticed they had placed the betta cups in the kid's toy section! Talk about outrageous lol, strategically placed them there so kids would see them and want one. I think I was so angry it woke me up lol. So that's my weird fish dream.