anewbie
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Posts posted by anewbie
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I'm not familiar with Erythruras but cockatoo - esp domestic cockatoo are not peaceful and your tank has too much visibility - having said that you could add them and it might work but if i were betting i think in 30 to 60 days you would wake up one morning and find things didn't work out so well.
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That is a 65 breeder i think - if you are going to put another cichild in there i'd go with something that prefers the middle/upper region - for dithers you could have a lot of kubotai rasbora and pencil fishes of a species you find appealing. kubotai rasbora are very very active but stay near the upper area of the aquarium (one of my favorite rasbora - sort of like rummynose in behavior but much smaller and not very likely to go after frys - rummies on the other hand would find the frys yummy. I like Nannostomus mortenthaleri but 10-15 of them would set you back a pretty penny. If you have a very tight top you could go with hatchet fishes - have a tiny gap and they will all jump out.
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You can use a water filter - i used one that is 2 feet tall with a pump - it was aruond $80 to put together with all the pieces. You can also use a horizontal pvc tube as @Mmiller2001did - either way make sure to leak test it.
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Don't over plant - leave room for the plants to expand - esp the vals which will soon become a weed going everywhere - if they take to your conditions.
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Complex yes - lineage is less likely - I can't remember if group is possible - i.e, it goes lineage -> group -> complex and complex is an almost definite yes. However unless you have a huge aquarium cockatoos can be quite vicious - i'd say you need a min. 4ft x 4ft and probably larger to be safe. Not sure how things would work in a 6ftx18 inch aquarium but in a 29 or 40b forget it - you are likely to end up with dead apisto. To give an example My d50 (pair) faught with my female nijjensi (solo) like cat and dogs until i removed her in a 40B and the 40B was very well scape with many hiding places. She just didn't want them around and he was bigger than her so eventually she had to back off.
They are in different groups so they are probably ok together (no promises as i forget the exact rules); other than the issue that they will likely kill each other if not in a very large aquarium that is well scaped.
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Did a water change; so now the aquarium looks like this:
This is a slightly older picture from the top:
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This is one of my new tanks (550 - as mentioned above 4 feet front to back and 10 feet long;
(the angel you see is from the 120 pictured in my earlier post this thread). And these are two pictures from the 4 feet wide 4 feet long aquarium:
Taking decent pictures of larger aquarium is definitely more challenging. I think there are a few major factors to consider - glass or not (i'm a glass person) but there are disadvantages esp if the aquarium is much longer than 10 feet; sump or not (I'm mixing on custom aquarium sump solution and would probably re-think things if i were to do it over); height of the stand (esp if you have a sump); do you want to climb a ladder to feed your fishes; height of tank; if planted do you want to go scuba diving to plant the plants; ...
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On 10/3/2023 at 5:23 PM, Biotope Biologist said:
Go to a car store. Ask for vacuum hose clamps.
Unfortunately they are the annoying ones that need pliers or really strong fingers, but they are rated for high pressure oil hosing for car, bit overkill for aquarium use, but they’ll do
My concern with those is they won't fit - most reviews on amazon note they don't quite fit the really small tubes. I need something around 3/16 to 1/4 (OD); and these seem slightly larger.
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I can't seem to find a good clamp for a 3/16 inch water hose. Basically i have tubing connected to a 3/16 barb which goes to a dripper and i'd like to put a clamp on it to ensure it doesn't slip off - the sort of nasty hoops that can make a giant mess. Just can't find anything that small... any suggestion (I suppose I could use a twistie and cross my fingers).
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ok folks - i'll look around for some coral to crush.
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my gh is 6 and kh 3 - unless my memory is all misty from today misty exercise in which case my tap is gh 3 and kh 6 but i'm pretty sure it is gh 6 kh 3.
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Now that i have put most of my guppies in their own aquarium (40B); i'd like to make the water a little harder (tap is 120 tds); question is what is a cheap easy way to do this. Rather not use table salt as that will kill the plants. Someone a long time ago recommended wonder shells but those seem like a vendor product of some sort and it is not clear what they do since they talk about removing chlorine and other stuff. Is there a cheap easy way to make the water a bit harder - would tooth paste with lots of calcium work ?
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I've been working on two things - first getting the mist system setup:
This is above the blackwater aquarium - sadly one of my brand new marble hatchet fishes jumped out onto the back land mass and died 😞
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And getting my drip system working on the 550:
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What this is - i have ro and filter water - each run through a dripper that sets the flow rate - around 2 to 2 1/2 gallons an hour - they go to a T then go through a flow meter to measure the flow rate and total gallons used and then up into the aquarium. The aquarium will eventually overflow and go down a tube into the drain.
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Not sure - the stable ph seems around 7.1 (there is a rock in there leaching calcium i think); and the low reading is around 6.3
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On 9/25/2023 at 9:41 AM, Mmiller2001 said:
Remember, CO2 and O2 are independent of each other. CO2 does not displace O2. O2 does not decrease in response to CO2 addition. This is the desired condition while injecting CO2. Maximum O2 and around 30 ppm CO2. Have you ever checked a degassed sample of your tank water? Take a sample, enough to pH, let it sit open for 24 hours and then pH it. This pH value is the baseline pH to measure pH drop from.
I have a monitor that measure the ph and the co2 goes off for approx 16 hours (4pm to 7am); so i measure it before the co2 goes on - also i measured it before starting co2. However - i have noticed ill-behavior from fishes if co2 gets above 1ph drop (gasping at surface) so i try to be conservative. Also i'm not trying to 'max' plant growth but just beef it up a bit.
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I usually wait 24 to 48 hours after they start swimming; the thing is they still have yolk sacks they are eating and so don't require immediate feeding.
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Not all of this done today but the last couple of days:
setup ghl meter to monitor temp and ph
setup co2 injection into 550 gallon aquarium; discover my 2 foot water jar thingy actually works - might not be as efficient as @Mmiller2001 horizontal unit but works a whole lot better than the diffuser i used on a 120; can easily drop ph to 0.8 without much effort (0.8 is the most i'm willing to go with fishes used to lots of oxygen).
work on my dripper system - discover drippers have a front and back - discover 1/8 is not 3/8 - order more parts - today when parts arrive retest dripping system.
measure chlorine of my system - discover it is measuring 0ppb (which is good ithink); cross check with tap which measure 389ppb (which seems low but maybe not - no real clue; need tap expert.
notice my festum have settled down the past week and stop trying to jump out when the lights go off and stop running away from me - they seem to really be getting use to their 10x4 home and now come up to be fed (the large males used to run away from me when i fed them in the 120); really lovely fishes.
discover my blacknight is still alive after not seeing him for 6 weeks; all i really saw was the white tip of his tail but that is more than nothing.
need to spend more time working on the mist system for my blackwater setup - will take pictures when complete.
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specific numbers would be helpful; different species have different requirements; D50 like around 80-140 (tds) (too soft and they cna't breed too hard and they can't); domestic cockatoo as noted above can breed in harder water (don't try this with wc fishes); ph generally doesn't matter but you want gh/kh/tds of course this can get super confusing because some use degrees and other ppm and some use german scale, or uk scale, or us scale and it all gets confusing.
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fishmates; fishy; smelly, liquid pets, all washed up, .... a name is whatever string of letters you pick ....
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If the aquarium has decent flow it shouldn't matter; my personal style is to use two filters one on each back corner - but my aquariums end up with decent flow for various reasons. If the aquarium has very little flow then maybe closer to the middle.
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setup a ghl mini-wfi to monitor the ph on my blackwater tank. Still can't see a thing in there but the hatchet fishes i put in a week ago are still alive and come to the surface when i drop in food which they chomp down.
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Marginal update picture of the 10x4; really should get a fish eye lens but then i'd have to upgrade my 10 year old digital camera; hum.... not ready to get back into photography:
Also did some work on the 4ftx4ft (for my a. pucallpaensis); three pictures of the same aquarium:
First one is front; 2nd one is from left sides and third one is from left side different part - again it is much easier to take a picture of a 29 or 10 than these larger aquariums 😞
The tank you see from the side shot are the 8x4 which is next to it.
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Move yesterday so doesn't count; then today i moved the 10 which took a while but i think i got everyone. Tomorrow after the dust settle i'll fix the plants in the tank (i planted them today but need to adjust) and then go back to the condo to start with the 40B (giving me two days on that). Right now i'm just watching my army of loaches in the 550:
They are so much happier in a 550 than the 120; seen by the fact that they swim up to me constantly to say hi. In that mix 9 clowns; 4 yoyo; - thank also has 6 zebra but the zebra aren't swimming with the clowns right now - i think they got tired out - they were with them in the morning. People who say an 80 or even a 200 is large enough for clowns are kidding themselves; they never tried a 550 - wish i had room for a larger aquarium for them.
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On 9/13/2023 at 7:55 PM, FLFishChik said:
Well, the 29g is just off the left side of the screen. so to make it truly balanced, I should probably get another one of those too!
I'd be careful there as i've had more than one aqueon 29 spring a leak over time. Sure the warranty cover the $40 cost of the aquarium but not the $$$$$$$ cost of water damage.
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This is one of my new tanks (550 - as mentioned above 4 feet front to back and 10 feet long;
What did you get done today?
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
Not doing much today - these 4 pictures are from the same aquarium; they really don't do it justice and i have to work on better technique for taking pictures of larger aquariums. This one is a 4ftx4ft box but it is doing quite well.
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From the front:
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Hopefully eventually the plants will fill in to cover up the overflow box in the back but it has only been setup 45 days or so.
This is a closer up of the red flame near the front. The place where i purchased plants actually sent some rather high quality plants with regards to root stock and this one is taking off - it is too early to say how it will play out over time - if it can keep up the growth or if it will die back a little.
This stringy Echinodorus I think came from one of my old aquariums; the name will come to me eventually - one of the many melon like echinodorus or maybe it is a melon doesn't really look like a melon and it certainly doesn't have any obvious seeds but whatever:
The reason for the picture of it - being next to the red flame is usually a red flame will stay fairly small and is fine near the front - the melon sword can at time get quite large and if this realizes full potential i'll have to move it to the back - perhaps in front of the overflow box but only time will tell if it takes off.
This is a picture from the back and you can see how clear the water is because you can see the 29 on the right and the 10x4 on the left - oddly the distortion makes the 29 look almost as large as the 10x4 where in reality i could put almost 16 29 in the 10x4. Anyway the picture was a poor attempt to show off of my favorite plants - Aponogeton Boivinianus - which has done quite well - not sure if this is the one i ordered or one i transplanted from my 29 - didn't really keep notes - this one is already quite large but you can't tell because of the size of the aquarium - you would not want this in a 10 for sure:
I just love the rich colour and texture of this plant but you might not. Definitely provides good contrast to lighter green plants or more olive like wenditti.