OnlyGenusCaps

That tank looks really nice, @madmark285!!! You are always the PVC king! If the screening becomes a problem, I wonder if Poret cut to fit in between the PVC might work better? Not for more biofiltration surface area, obviously. But, it would hold the gravel up, and if it got clogged, you could pull sections out to rinse them, in a pinch. Just a through. Like I said, it looks great!

Sumps are better than canisters. Full stop. If you are looking for a DIY vertical sump/can substitute @eatyourpeas built a nice one! Long live the V-sump!

'Tis the season:

You, sir, remind me of a friend of mine in our local club. He bred more ACA recognized cichlids than anyone outside of Chicago last year (what is it with Chicago and cichlids?!). He's always got his eyes on the next project, but loves each species along the way. It takes a special kind of dedication and passion to do what you do. And I wouldn't have fully recognized it if I hadn't seen someone similarly driven locally. Hats off to you, sir! To the folks reading here, it's even more impressive than you think. I assure you!

And now for something completely different! Edgard Varèse, Ionisation:

Well, slow but steady. I've got a few other irons in the fire, so I shoot to cycle between them all as time allows. I recently built, what I think anyhow, is a decent stand for over and under 75 gallons. Once I had the height figured out, it was pretty easy. I thought I would share the joints I used here, just in case someone else wants to build an easy but overbuilt stand. So this is the joint over all. I used 2x6 boards out of an abundance of caution. What I like about this system is that I have mostly separated holding the structure together from the weight bearing aspect of the stand. Not the cleanest holes, or saw lines. I'm no carpenter! The internal frame that will hold the tank is held together by 2 1/2" deck screws. Get the star drive. Makes a big difference! Once those were together, I attached the uprights with more deck screws, which you can see better below. On the left side of the upright. With just 2 deck screws per corner that would be bearing the full weight of the tank (these would be the only pieces between the tank frame and the supporting uprights at this stage), I wouldn't trust this stand to hold a 75 gallon tank. But you can see there is more. Those two bolts were then added. Well the one on the right is actually some sort of screw, but a big one! It is 4" long and passes through the first two boards into the long part of the frame. These two chunky pieces of metal are now there to hold the majority of the weight of the tank as they are now the largest pieces that will transfer the mass of the full aquarium to the uprights. They are each about 3/8" thick stainless. I'm thinking that will suffice. I inset them (poorly I know! again, not a carpenter) because I have very little wiggle room for extra width. But the nut on the inside is allowed to protrude as you can see here: I specifically chose to have the short side be the one that runs the full distance and long side to be affixed inside of that. This replicates the short side support that Cory has in his shop to hold up the tanks, but provides extra support along the long face of a 4' tank. At least that was my rational. Anyhow, I hope this perhaps overly detailed discussion about aquarium stand joints helps someone. Someday. Somewhere. Thanks for looking!

Thanks! I took that into account when building the rack. Mine will top out a little higher, but the bottom tank is still very low. Oh well. No way to get around it without making maintenance on the top one a real pain in the keester, I suppose.

I'm looking for opinions here. I am about to build a stand to stack two of my 75 gallon tanks. I hate that my current setup puts one of them like 2" off the ground. It's hard to clean under there, and they fish hide at the site of legs (I find some do this more than others, but in my experience fish seem to hate being too low - don't know why). So, let me know what the center point height of the two tanks would be, in an idea world, in your opinion! I realize that there are a number of factors that go into this decision, but I'm purposefully not going into the construction right now because I'd like to hear optimal heights in folks' opinions. I will say, the tanks are 21" tall and I am 6' if that helps. I'll talk about construction once I get some thoughts, and I'll let you know what I go with in the end. Thanks in advance for all the input!

Perhaps my favorite Scottish fiddle player, Jenna Reid. I had the good fortune to run into her on one lovely, blustery October day in Steòrnabhagh on the Outer Hebrides. In case you are wondering, she was lovely, wonderful woman.

In honor of yesterday's passing of Steve Harwell, here is a lesser known song from Smash Mouth "Waste":

Nice! Thanks for posting about this! I'll be trying this with my viv plants for dart frogs next time I set up a viv. Right now the standard protocol is to bleach all the plants for fear of transferring some terrible pathogens like chytrid. I've been taking some risks, because I'm not super on board with the whole bleaching of plants that frogs will then hangout on. So, I figure this might help. Will RR eliminate fungal spores? Don't know. But I'll still QT the plants post treatment. At least no slugs, snails, and plant insect pests are likely to be introduced with this method!

How wonderful to hear. I fully support your decision. *Even if you have now reconsidered and edited this part of your comment out.* @Galabar, so it seems a generally respectful discussion can be had about filtration, but perhaps not on the "hot button issue" of Prime. 🤣 In all seriousness, this was a wonderful social experiment in addition to being a good discussion topic! Plus, as someone who enjoys thinking about and discussing filtration, it's nice to know that filtration generally seems to get people less red faced these days. Thanks for starting this topic!

The thread was shut down because people got max aggro about it, but there are chemical means that suggest Prime could work pretty well as the label says. Up front I'll say, I am not here to argue about this with anyone. I just thought you might be interested in some of the chemistry and patents related to that and similar products. If not, feel free to ignore it and move on. No hurt feeling from me if that's what you decide. (I know it's a lot of hedging language, but this topic seems to bring out something in a few folks like they have a dog in that fight or something. I don't know why. But now I do a bit of this first. Sorry.) It's a long read, but I really like the post:

Wait a minute. I'm no economist, but doesn't higher demand typically result in higher prices? If that's not the standard view, I think I might be onto something here! 🤪

I've got a nice M. veitchiana. It's a bit of a sentimental plant for me. When I was in high school, my mother met an older woman in line at the grocery store who was having trouble maintaining her orchid collection. My mother selflessly volunteered me to help her because I liked "stuff that's alive". Well, it turns out this woman and her husband were in their 90's at the time and had traveled throughout Latin America in the 1930's collecting orchids (they had the absolute best and craziest stories!!!). They had one of the largest private collections of orchids on the West Coast; it covered 4 large greenhouses on their property. Anyhow, I've never been super big into orchids, though I've had to care for hundreds of species in my career. But they have never been my thing, if that makes sense. Well, after 3 years of helping her out for at least a few hours each weekend, I was headed off to college. She asked me which orchid I wanted when I got back as a gift. I told her I liked the M. veitchiana most; when in truth it was about the only one I cared about at all. She promised me she'd divide her only plant for me. Unfortunately, she and her husband died before I could get this kind gift. Her family, not caring for her collection, sold it off piecemeal to the highest bidders. I never got to say goodbye, and never got the plant as a memory of this kind and adventurous woman. So, I decided I wanted to one day grow this plant again. I have essentially built a whole room to optimally house it. I think she'd be proud. 🙂

So, I ran Biohome for awhile in my sumps. The pores are larger than those on ceramic rings, but they seem just large enough to capture lots of uneaten food. I found I had trouble keeping my nitrates under control, even with quite large water changes after a fair bit of time. I ended up replacing them with the old, plastic, pond "bio-balls", and I never encountered the issue again. Mulm built up around the balls as well, so I'm not sure why the difference, but I won't use ceramic type medias again. This is likely the moral of the story. Reefers, who need to keep insanely low N and P values, don't use any biomedia typically. The rocks they use are sufficient to house the bacteria that convert the most toxic forms of N to less toxic species. Most FW hobbyists probably have more media devoted to bio-conversion of N than necessary. Now there might be something to be said about heterotrophic bacteria and whether you might want more area to support this function, but I digress. Anyhow, nothing wrong with having more, or seeing the most efficient means, but loads of methods likely work just fine. That said, I still like knowing, and I get a little filtration obsessed. 🤭

I've been absent on the forum with only intermittent involvement of late. There are a number of reasons for why Ive had less time to be on here, but really only one relevant to the topic of this forum. I have been turning a bit of bad luck into an opportunity. When I set up my aquariums under my basement stairs, I did so because I have had to move my tanks around my house repeatedly because of necessary maintenance or repairs to my "fixer-upper" house. So, I specifically picked a spot where there was only one utility anywhere near the tanks. A plan for a permanent home if you will. The only thing in the area was the main soil pipe under the foundation headed out to the road. Safe. Or so I thought... Turns out, this spring I learned, much to my horror, that the soil pipe had corroded and would need to be replaced. This would mean using a jackhammer to excise the section of the foundation directly under where my aquarium are. Figures. I was lamenting this one evening to my wife in our basement, where we spend most of our evenings, when she suggested that the display tanks (aquariums and vivariums) would be welcome to move into the finished part of the basement. I was elated, but realized too, that we were wasting this space essentially. It's 1/3 of our house's footprint, and is just one big room. It acts to hold exercise equipment, the rack for coats/mudroom from the tuck-under garage, and the only TV in the house. It has always felt like a jumbled purpose room. So, in a bold stroke we decided to put in a wall to divide the room, making the back half a den. I would get a spot to put my display worthy tanks (breeding setups will need to remains back under the stairs later), and she'll get a newer TV out of the deal (ours is the one we bought when my TV/VCR combo from under grad broke and her desktop monitor at work is larger), and a big comfy corner couch. As a bonus, this will mean we will get to spend our evenings together; her watching whatever terrible drama she wants, and me cleaning algae. Wedded bliss! But we've had to build it. Just to give you a perspective, here is the before photo looking from the back of the room to the front: Full disclosure, we hired someone to build the wall. But here it is in process: But we are painting this ourselves. The idea is that for both a gallery-like display of tanks, and for a room to watch movies in, dark wall are best. But they started out very, very light as we primed them. Yikes! I now remember why I have a disdain for white walls. A very dark, windowless room, though, can be quite uninviting to enter when you first open the door. So we have plans (even if the dog is not sure about them!): A slash of color to help make the room seem more welcoming: We finally got to the darker paint stage last night. I wanted a dark gun metal grey, and piked out on from the line up at "big box store". Unfortunately, it looks more brown on the wall to me. What do you think? After the paint is done, I am going to have to build stands for the tanks. So, let me get some input from you all. If you had to stack 2 75 gallon aquariums as a double rack, what would be the shelf height you would pick for each, and why? I'll be curious to hear what folks think. In the meantime, thanks for looking! And hopefully I'll be able to be back on here more often once this nears completion. The whole process had made me wonder what has become of @Brandy's basement build.

Think of the added biodiversity you've added. 🤣

I wouldn't worry about pollution. Isolating the benthic critters you want is the first challenge, then culturing them is likely to be a significant hurdle too. By the time you are done getting that to work, the pollution will be negligible. Besides, copepods are often considered biological indicators, so you'll find fewer in really polluted areas anyhow. If you go for it, start a thread here so we can build knowledge on how to go about this process. When I can collect, I'll join in! Do it! I've seen a video with you in it. You'll be fine. And just start by not reading below the line. 😉

They are a respected company in the reef world. You might have even gotten what you paid for! 😁

One thing that helped me consider more complex concepts in aquaria was to start to check out the marine channels (well before I put together my first marine tank). There is a large vendor based in Minnesota that has a bunch of content that is quite advanced. Some of it is not applicable to freshwater, of course. But other stuff is. The microfauna stuff has really been taking off on the salty side of the hobby, and I think much of it would benefit FW keepers too. Check out the stuff on "Biome Cycling" your tank. It was almost inspiring enough for me to try to get together with a buddy and try to isolate some benthic FW copepods (likely Canthocamptidae) for use in FW aquariums. Sadly, it doesn't look like this summer will be the one. But, I do believe that many of the benefits of marine pods can be observed in FW tanks too.

That tank is looking good, sir! I love the biofilm that has grown over the rocks and such. It looks more like a natural stream than any tank I have ever seen. Well done!

First off, @dasaltemelosguy, the tanks look awesome! I still love the temple like quality the PVC lends to the aquarium as well. I think you could have dedicated this offering to Poseidon himself! I was shocked that all this mention of PVC didn't somehow conjure @madmark285 from elsewhere on the forum as PVC is a loved material of his. 😁 It's a really cool build!

I have species of both of those still growing, and though they tolerate very, very wet roots in my case. They also tend to like the evenings to cool, and don't tolerate low humidity well. I'd be concerned that even over an aquarium they would pout at best, and at worst, well the worst. I suspect this is why, despite most people's tendency to over water any plant in their house, you don't see these two more commonly in homes. I've often wondered why, given the extensive range of the species in the States, and it's cohabitation with many plants used in aquaria, we don't see this one in the trade. I think it would make a really interesting species for a planted tank, and wonder what the high-tech tank folks could do with it as a submerged specimen?! Rather than trying to adapt an epiphyte to a semi-aquatic condition, I might try orchids that are terrestrial and naturally marginals, like some of the Calopogon species or Pogonia ophioglossoides, which are both occasionally commercially available. Plus they look like "orchids" when they bloom. I'm not sure how hard set their dormancy is though. Just a thought.

That's awesome, @BlueLineAquaticsSC! As @Chris mentioned above, knowing your target SG is going to be really helpful in determining a full list of things that might be on the cusp that you could grow. There are brackish water specialists like Ruppia maritima (think guppy grass for low salt environments) which would do well across much of "brackish". In terms of pods... I'm a believer in the utility of microfauna in a tank! But, I'm at a bit of a loss when it comes to where to obtain them commercially. I do know of an eBay vendor who cultures microfauna for FW aquariums and lives in a coastal area (do they have brackish access? don't know). Plus, that would require convincing them to sell you something they collected. Always possible, but you never know. DM me if you want to know who that is to make the ask. Of course your target SG will likely be set by the needs of your intended livestock. But regardless where you go with it, I'm stoked to see it come together! I'm also happy to help in any way I can; just let me know.