OnlyGenusCaps

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with these AI generated images to music lyrics. This one is less creepy though, I promise! Not only does this one have people facing the viewer, but it's clear that many images were generated for each line and the human editors put together the images they liked. That human editing piece also give these sorts of videos a completely different feel to me. See if you agree:

Interesting! Thanks for sharing! I could go on a far too long tangent about what, in my opinion, constitutes native, near-native, and not-yet-here native. But I'll spare everyone. 😝

Smaller turtles fit more easily in children's mouths? 🤷‍♂️ It is interesting that sliders have exhibited such an impressive ability to invade new habitats! I wonder why this species and not say, painted turtles to the same extent? I know painted have introduced populations around, but they seem much less extensive. I mean sliders can even move into where pained exist already. Sliders, for whatever else people may feel about their introductions, are absolutely successful!

The sale or turtles with shells less than 4" has been illegal across the entire United States since 1975 when the FDA banned the practice on the grounds that small turtles often have salmonella. Though it is only rarely enforced.

Your photo is of a root. That, of course, do not preclude there being worms, or some other parasite in your tanks which is causing illness in your fish. I am no expert at treating fish parasites and disease - as someone who is still dealing with a die-off from some unknown pathogen despite over a dozen treatments. But, perhaps @Colu has some useful input?

Interesting! I'm assuming this is a polyculture, correct? I wonder if I should test this out with my phyto monocultures once I've got them up and running... 🤔

I recently learned that AI can make art! Some of it is really pretty good, but much if it feel inhuman to me - which makes sense. I stumbled across this video created from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" by plugging every line into an AI to generate an image. I'm struck by how creepy most of the images are, and how the AI has such a strong preference for centering a human figure facing away from the viewer. It's a bit haunting! Also, none of the images seem to evoke the content of the lyrics within the context of the song for me. Still, a fascinating experiment! Enjoy!

I remember that. I was just glad you didn't electrocute yourself with that one! I remember waiting impatiently for a reply from you so I knew you survived. When you moved to playing with seltzer I breathed a sigh of relief!

I wish more folks would post about their failed experiments. There is a lot of value in that! I used to joke with my friends back in grad school that there needed to be a "Journal of Negative Results" because of the number of errors we made on our paths to understanding our systems that resulted in more experienced scientists telling us "of course that doesn't work, we tried that years ago". So thanks for bringing this to our collective attention today, so we don't have to try this tomorrow!

Wow, those seem like high prices! I mean I saw a 4 ft black-tipped reef shark for sale when I was in Chicago last time for like 2 grand. Can you imagine someone walking through the door and being like "I'll take it! Bag it up for me!". I wouldn't want to be the employee on shift that day! Not least because if someone is in the market for a black-tipped reef shark, they might be a Bond villain...

**** I am not a geologist! I have a rudimentary understanding of rocks. And I am just beginning to do marine tanks. This might be a combination where I know just enough to be dangerous! You, reader, have been warned... **** So, I find that reefers are super, super careful about anything they do. They do not like to use anything that has not been shown through thousands of successful folks to work already. I mean there are those who are still debating whether LED lighting grows corals! They are so conservative that their default answer to anything new is: "it won't work". Or that it won't work with corals at the very least. I'm never quite so sure. That said, there are possible reasons why this person may have said this. Corals are sensitive. I was just over at Bulk Reef Supply this week, and the 160 was looking rough with lots of coral die off. The culprit? High heavy metals. The only source they could find? A bread bag tie that dropped into the water. Yikes! Some lava rocks, like those from Hawai'i can have a lot of olivine in the rock. This mineral tends to break down easily, and could release a lot of iron into a tank if there was a bunch of it. Maybe. In general, igneous rocks may contain different compounds in them depending on their source, making them variable and thus introducing uncertainties in a sensitive aquarium (I mean there are "lava rock" - scoria - sources with zeolites in them!). Meaning some might work and other not. For why this is an issue, see my above comments about reefers conservative approach to their aquariums. In short, it could work with corals. I mean the reefs around all of the Pacific islands must have started on Lava bases, right?! If it was a small tank, I would try it in that case because if something went wrong, you could pull the rocks quickly. Still, I would proceed cautiously. I might try it, start with fish, test, if all is okay then add less sensitive corals, test, and go from there. If it's a big tank, enough to where removing the rockscape would be onerous, I would shy away from it. Out laziness. Good luck!

I'm currently dreaming of (some might say obsessed with), putting together my marine species breeding setup. First getting my phyto cultures going, then the copepods and mysis colonies. Once I have the live foods, I'll be ready to assemble something to rear the larva most marine species hatch out as. For that, I'm going to go with a modified modular larval rearing system (MoLaRS) à la Dr. Andy Rhyne that he developed at his lab at Roger Williams University. Because the ones he created are thousands of dollars, mine will be the Fleet Farm (think if Walmart served farms) version of one; so I'll be using a stock tank and muck buckets in mine. I think I can put on together for less than $120, which is also part of the fun and challenge. 😁

I don't think so. But I don't actually know.

While I strongly disagree with their recipe, the song is good! 😏

That is interesting. I had assumed they would ll be very similar. Perhaps the Chicago one is not their best? Glad you had so much fun at the Dallas one!

Can I admit something? I went to Aquashella in Chicago last year, and I found it to be a total disappointment. It was my first fish show/expo, but I have been to reptile ones in the past. At reptile expos there are reptiles for sale. There are products for sale. Companies show off their new stuff and you can usually get these new products at a "show discount", sometimes even after the show has ended for a time. At Aquashella there was none of that. Well, you could get coral frags. But not fish, or shrimp, or... Well, there was one guy selling plants too. But, there were no product sales I could tell. I was speaking with a well known company that had a new product they were displaying and I was excited about it, so I asked if I could buy it. Nope. So..? The response was I should go on their website and find out if there were vendors in my area and then call them to see if they had any in stock. Seriously?! Why did I pay to get in?! No big product discounts. No critters. Lawrence Pet World had awesome wood and stone which though not being sold at a discount, didn't come with the associated shipping, so that made it more worth it, plus getting to pick out your own pieces. And Dan's Fish was there doing what looked to be a brisk business of selling plants. But overall Aquashella left me feeling cold. For me, it didn't seem worth the price of entry. I'll stick to the reptile shows where I can recoup my entry price on the discounts on stuff I need.

Thanks @Guppysnail ! Always testing and advancing our understanding! And thank too to @JoeQ for discovering this wonder food!

I'm near those as well. Welcome to the forum fellow Twin Cities aquarist! You know you you get a discount at both those places if you are a Minnesota Aquarium Society (MAS) member. Just saying. But even non-members can attend our online monthly meetings. 😁 Too hard of a sell?

ok

Off topic - But I like the your new avatar. Nice Dal!

Sumps. Flexible platform. Customizable. Highly effective. Hides all of your equipment.

Well, that was short lived excitement. For reasons I can't fully understand, the female murdered the egg-holding male while I was at work today. She has paired off with a new partner now. Miss a little, miss a lot! All the literature said I should be careful as she pairs off that she might kill other subordinated in the tank. Having African cichlids, I thought I had that managed. But, nothing told me she might try to kill the male holding her eggs! Well, not until she was ready to breed again in 2 weeks (it takes 3 weeks of holding for the fry to be released fully developed). I was ready to deal with that in the future, but not yet. Clearly! BTW, don't let me sit your fish. Clearly, I should not be trusted!

I am fishsitting some benggai cardinal fish for someone in the club. He is part of our BAP program with me, and I told him I was going to try to breed his fish before he could while I'm watching them. And... Well, I might just. One of the males was holding a couple weeks ago, but they only lasted 3 days before he ate them. But this time around he looks way more serious about it based on his behavior. He is hiding under an overhang, and trying to keep everyone away. Plus, he is doing a better job of pushing water of them in his mouth. This time I also got a photo! It's not great, in part because of my poor photography skills, but also because the clutch is small enough he can mostly close his mouth. Still, it's exciting! Here it is (the girl who knocked him up is behind him): Now I need to go make a fake urchin for him to deposit the fry into if he makes it to term. Wish me/him luck!

That sucks, dude! I am so sorry to hear it. I've been battling a restriction in part of the soil pipe, and getting my kids' bathwater coming up the floor drain (nothing into the tanks, as I have an air break for their drain), but that is nothing like you are dealing with. Good luck! I can't even imagine. Well, I can, but I don't want to.

A microscope photo would go a long way to a closer identification, but if I had to guess, I would guess something in the Chaetophoraceae like a Stigeoclonium species. The branching pattern could suggest something in the Cladophoraceae like a Cladophora species, but those tend to be finer and wispier in FW species, in my experience. Yours looks a bit coarser which is why I'm leaning toward the former guess. But this is just a guess. Whatever it is, I agree it is a very cool looking algae! What a nice discovery upon feeling better! I came across what I would call "Green Beard Algae" once at a LFS. It was beautiful! It had a dark aspect to it like the regular Audouinella BBA, but with the ends being almost metallic green like the band in the right light on a neon green tetra. The owner game me some for free, but it never made it in the tank I introduced it to. I would have taken an entire tank covered in that stuff!