OnlyGenusCaps

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!

Oh, wonderful! I'm so glad that you enjoyed the meeting, and felt enough of a connection to join the club. It's really a bunch of very good folks. And now one more! 😃 Welcome!

Thanks! You know how long I've wanted them, too. Smaller scale than the original plan, but I think that's going to work out fine. Today's update is that I finally, and at long last, have an automatic water changer (AWC) that I am happy with! It took 4 iterations but I'm finally happy. I've done PVC, drip irrigation line, PEX tubing, and none of those worked well for me. Their either leaked, or were hard to regulate, and I ended up tearing all of them out eventually - at loads of wasted expense. The ironic thing is my final setup is inexpensive. So here it is: 1) I had to get some work done on my plumbing system (I have a well and so I have various filtration I manage). This was probably the most expensive bit, but I got a harden hose valve installed in the spot that had the water at the stage of filtration I wanted to use. To that, I attached a battery operated sprinkler timer from Amazon with two zones, which is all I needed. Then I attached a fitting that got me to 3/8" RO line tubing. 2) The 3/8" line then runs to a group of tanks. When I need to branch to a single tank, I use either a T fitting with a reduction to 1/4" RO line. 3) The final tank on a line gets a reduction fitting down to 1/4" as well. 4) The water is delivered through my homemade tops via a 1/4" hole I drilled to create a tight fit for the incoming RO tubing. And that's it! It is the simplest system I've built, and probably not coincidentally, the one that has given me the fewest problems. Really anyone who can hook up a garden hose, or use push connect fitting for a home RO filter, can build this. Plus, it is quite inexpensive. Finally, I have my forever AWC. 🥰

And I for one am so glad you did!

Can you explain? That checks out!

Nerites: 5 will keep your biofilm down and the glass pretty clean (except for the eggs, which you'll have to scrape off), they won't eat leftover food that cichlids leave behind though MTS: start with any number, you'll have plenty soon enough

Glad I'm not the only one! It's a big reason I don't have tanks smaller than 20gal. I can see I am in good company.

Welcome! I'm down in the Cities, but the local club (Minnesota Aquarium Society) has nearly 400 members from all over the state (and across the country as well as beyond). If you are looking to connect with local, or local-ish folks in your case, feel free to join our meetings. You don't need to be a member to attend the online meetings, and we have one on guppies tomorrow at 7pm. Good to see you here!

Are those macros growing on the powerhead too?! A tank full of life!

As someone who drills all their tanks, but still struggles with small tanks, may I ask what specifically you changed to achieve your success?

In my 75gal mbuna tank I have Colombian ramshorn snails who help clean up the uneaten food (leftover Repashy Super Green gel food with veg'n stuff thrown in the mix) and do a little on the glass. I'd also add limpet nerites, or any "horn" nerites with spikes for better glass clean up.

Oh good! That means I didn't get too lost. 🤪

Wow! Just, wow! That's an simple and elegant solution to home blackworm cultivation! I might try to keep some blackworms again. You have aeration, but do you use biofiltration? Do you think it would be beneficial for the setup if the aeration came from a sponge type filter? How much and how often do you do water changes? Would you be willing to give step-by-step for your final tower design, and you feeding procedure? This is really cool!

It's a miracle! Well, science. Which is a miracle!!!! So, I was adding the phyto to my tank to help get the pods established. Some of the algae took hold on the rocks, as you can see in the last update. Well... I stopped dosing the phyto figuring the pods now had enough algae to eat. Check out the rocks now! I don't know how well it comes through in the image but - Gone! It's all gone like a week later. None of the visible algae remains. Not on the rocks. Not on the substrate. Nothing. The copepods ate it all! I've started dosing phyto again. In related news, I now have plans with a live-foods expert in the state to go collecting copepods in FW around here. We are going to collect, isolate, and try to culture pure strains of benthic copepods with the intent of making this sort of sorcery happen in FW tanks. Can you imagine starting a tank and dosing FW pods knowing you could skip the diatom stage?! Or knowing if you got hair algae, or green-spot algae, that you could introduce some pods and not have to think about it again. That's the dream! And our goal.

Agreed! Well done on the revision @dasaltemelosguy! There is likely to be some Al (though I am not aware of any Al accumulators in algae - there are a range of metal accumulators in vascular plants however, but topic for another day). I suspect, if I am following your train of thought here, perhaps the more salient issue is that the Mg plays a critical role in the metabolic processes in the algae.

Now that's a dog who is begging for some skijoring!

Ah the freedom that obsolescence brings! No longer pressed by the requirements set upon me. No, no. I'll be with my tanks, thank you. 😎

I grew up alpine skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains. But now I live where it is flaaaaaaat! Some people still try to alpine on little bumps, but I've decided it's important to adapt to my current conditions, so I took up nordic skiing when I moved here. Plus, I trashed my knees doing moguls when I was younger avoiding knuckle daggers (i.e. snowboarders 😜) who at least at the time would plunk down in the middle of runs and just become speed bumps. Moguls guaranteed no boards! 🤣 Now the battle is with train trashing snowshoers. There's always something I suppose.

I've not. I have one. But in the 10+ years I've been growing it, I've just kept it with my other Sarrs. I have used the pitchers in cross section as displays at the State Fair before though. I probably should have put it in with some guppies at some point and found out if the traps work to catch fish as they are purported to. Still time, I suppose.

Wow! I've been out of the hobby for like 2 years, and I've never heard of that vendor! Their prices are all over the map, as is their selection. I can't even process it right now. So weird! Got it! That makes sense. I am always curious when folks outside of the CP hobby have success with the plants. The hobby (or as I just learned, as I knew it back in the stone ages of 2 years ago!) is pretty canalized into a single way of cultivation. So, when folks who aren't steeped in that mindset succeed, there can be a lot to learn! I'm always excited if I find out I have been doing something wrong for years because I just wasn't adventurous enough. Sorry, I didn't mean to take us down the garden path. It's a great plant, and I am glad you shared it with everyone here!