Biotope Biologist

Yes that’s a perfectly fine substitute although some fish can be fussy about the taste so make a small batch first before you commit!

When the water changes in the amazon it’s usually a sign of the rainy season approaching which means breeding time for your little tikes. I imagine thats what has them motivated haha

For a month I recommend having a family friend or hiring a service to do feedings and general maintenance thats a bit too long imo to leave an aquarium unwatched.

There is a guy on YouTube with an enclosed solarium where he has poison dart frogs free roaming. Anyway in the corner he put a 13’x20’ pond and did exactly as you described and built a mesh screen top over the pond that he can drop via pulleys to clean and do general maintenance! Arowana seem to be much happier being able to leap out of the water as most fish do. I think one day I may do a scaled down mesh canopy like this for my creek biotope because egg crate just really detracts from my slice of nature… Keep dreaming maybe someday it’ll become a reality.

Yes came to comment basically the same thing as @tolstoy21. Stable nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia are most important. I think there are a few people on this forum who keep discus (a notoriously fussy fish) in liquid rock water so don’t worry about any if that or go chasing parameters for your fish.

They are awful do not use. Idk why but their quality is so terrible they aren’t even useable around the house. The melamine foam they use now is so weak and brittle minimal pressure still leaves behind foam chunks on EVERYTHING. I buy Cory’s foam pads and soak them in chemicals for household stuff because the OG magic eraser was the best thing for cleaning scuffs off shoes and plastic trim around my home. It’s a shame truly but Cory’s foam pads actually last several cleanings….

I love dirt for heavy planted tanks! One thing I learned though is pumice floats! Haha so avoid pumice dirt I was scooping volcanic chunks off the surface for weeks! My current tank uses a mostly peat sand dirt which oddly had little effect on my ph but my emergent plants love it because it gets very muddy like you would see in a stream. I think depending on the composition of your dirt you may have a rough time with it. If you opt for a sandy loamy mixture it’s heavy enough on its own that you don’t need a sandcap and that when your fish friends inevitably stir it up while foraging or playing it won’t immediately cloud the tank. In my new tank im using a peat/sand/organics mixed with fluval stratum black. Haven’t filled the tank yet so we will see if I need to cap with black sand or not. Anyway not all dirt is created equal so make sure to check those compositions on the back!

Since you have a paludarium style tank you are going to want to get a glass drill and drill the bottom of the tank. Set up a pipe in the tank at the water level you want to be at. Then you will need a gate valve on the drain side to control how quickly water drains. I just bought a nyos viper for my sump and it is a night and day difference between it and other return pumps. You really don’t need an expensive return pump just one that consistently pumps at the rate you desire. the sump needs baffles too to control the flow of water. I bought a cheap 20g high during one of the many petco/petsmart aquarium sales for my sump and my baffle kit from ebay. The package got stolen and the seller was very nice and trusting to send me another before they got their ebay insurance kickback. Anyway I drew a rough sketch of what I would do in a paludarium style sump. Also if you can get your hands on a 50g lowboy I highly recommend for low slung tanks! I really enjoy mine for my gobes. I can attach pics too of my sump to give ideas. They are really nice to have and provide excellent water quality. Lastly just do some quick math to figure out how much overflow your sump can handle (I use the sump as the overflow) paludariums need not worry about flooding the display Sketch: My sump:

Yup! Fed them this morning they usually come out at night so here is a pair of adults snoozing on a log

Okay we are back and my isopods (powder orange) are getting fussy in their temporary turned permanent turned temporary again digs. Housed in a 5 gallon tote with airholes my throng of isopods wanted an upgrade. This one fits my standards after too many attempts at getting them a waterfall but also dumby proofing it to make sure they didn’t drown I scrapped that idea and went back to my roots with a no bells and whistles 12g terrarium. I want to wait a couple weeks to let these plants grow in and im also shipping some tropical mosses in to help hold humidity and finish the look. I am not sure the ID on this philodendron it is a rescue and just labeled ‘fancy philo’ at my LGS. Honestly looks good and the roots were in great shape albeit a little thirsty. I will be adding a canopy over the top of this aquarium to prevent escapes. The isopods can’t climb glass so I just gotta make sure no daredevils skydive from the top of the philo background: peacock plant foreground: white vein nerve plant ‘Blue peperomia’ is what this climber was labeled as. Scientists are still figuring this one out. It came from somewhere in Bolivia.

My partner wanted to start their own tank and naturally gravitated towards pea puffs. So here is the tank getting ready to be setup I still need to paint the stand white to go with the rest of the furniture so the tank looks dirty from the dirt/fluval stratum mix that was put in. The cherub is a resin bust planter. When my partner gets back from their travels we will be picking out plants and what else to put in here to provide activity for the pea puffs. tank is a aquatop 12g high that was going to house isopods but after several failed attempts I gave up and moved that project to the 12g bookcase tank that used to house gobes. Filter is a shiruba canister and the light is I believe a hygger plant light w/moon setting. More to come! And also if the diction in this journal changes it is because my partner may commandeer it. ☺️

I have found adapters at Ace hardware. Although my new place the sink has a built in aerator so I just use my garden hose lol

That is a ramshorn they come in all sorts of colors

Last I saw them was at aquarium zen. Cory gets them from time to time too I believe. Also if none of them have stock check pond stores like bridges they often carry bulk dojos for stocking ponds (which should be illegal but 🤷)

A pair of aquascape scissors will set you back about $20 I like having them for trimming all my plants around the house. It stimulates growth by cutting leaves and limbs that aren’t pulling their weight, but I would say I like the jungle look!

Interesting golden dojo and wild types are sold pretty commonly here in Seattle area. I do not know where you are located For awhile when I worked at chain petstore in college we got them stocked pretty regularly marketed as ‘cold water cleanup crew’

Could be a number of things but most likely all the answers are harmless detritivores. If you want a more precise answer I will need a photo

That is either a boesemani rainbow or herbertaxelrodi males get the blue orange contrast breeding but otherwise both male and female can look a little drab in non breeding colors See here: photo credit- Jean-Cristoff Avare

Seiryu stone don’t alter kh at all. AFAIK its igneous rock with quartz veins. But im not a geologist. Kh is a buffer to ph. It will absorb swings in ph. Gh is general hardness and is magnesium and calcium. Luckily you can disregard this measure as amazonian fish are well adapted to low-no gh. If you plan on having plants you will have co2 which will lower your ph. But co2 is a weak acid so it doesn’t affect it much. As plants both respire and photosynthesize. Also if you have decaying matter such as wood or leaves your pH will also lower quite a bit.

As a kid I kept batches of tadpoles in large tubs full of water. I would just pop a couple sponge filters in and bring them fresh spring water for water changes. You can find pretty much any of these larvae in vernal pools as well so they aren’t super fussy about water quality. But for whatever reason the tadpoles did not like tap water. Anyway it takes dragonfly nymphs, caddisfly larvae, and even megaloptera nymphs several hours on a rock or grass to pupate and have wings to fly on, so it’s pretty easy to catch them and throw them outside before they fly off!

Well genetics have got quite interesting and fish have quite a few pigments. I am sure somewhere down the line someone figured out that you can keep the albinism gene and artificially select for all pigments to be missing except melanin As is the case for these chocolate albinos. Something interesting of note I have seen in native rockfishes that could perhaps pertain to this yellow albino molly is that I have noticed very rarely rockfish will have random streaks of yellow even in rockfish species that do not appear to have any yellow. It appears to be some sort of gene defect in the red pigmentation that makes it highlighter yellow. I wish I could share pics of some specimens ive seen it is truly wild. It looks as if someone has been grabbing random rockfish out of the wild and splattering them with yellow fluorescent paint. I just want to make a note: I don’t know very much about genes and gene manipulation. I just see things in the wild and say “oh that’s pretty neat! The fish lab guys aren’t gonna believe this” and thats about the extent of it

Algae is kinda like a plant that you don’t plant. I have a stream style tank so my main ‘plant’ is algae. It took a while for mature mats to grow like 3-6 months. I didn’t touch the medium that was growing. I watched it go from green spots to brown to hair like to structured like it is now. My fish strike it and eat it which is a cool behavior I’ve never seen before. I couldn’t tell you what different algaes I have. One downside though is if you have some sunlight come in from a window the algae will have periods of high photo intensity where it’s green and beautiful and lush, and low phot intensity where it’s brown. Some people may not like that, but I suppose if your light is strong enough it may never do that Here are different photo intensities: low: Medium: high:

I’ve seen algae do this from time to time or as said before could be pollen, but it looks like the tank is normally sealed off with a lid so id say a type of brown algae most likely

Yup thats a caddisfly larvae. They are ubiquitous in NA and construct their cocoons out of different available materials using saliva and maybe even a spinerette style thing (think spiders)? They are harmless detritivores that start emerging this time of year as a larvae. Takes anywhere from a few months to a year to pupate and turn into a caddisfly.

It’s a nerite snail. There are quite a few variants available for sale now. This one is called a helmet nerite