Chris
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Chris's Achievements
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Doing this sparingly is fine in my experience. I've got a flower horn that allows me to pet him. I only do it every now and then, and always gently. Never noticed an issue.
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Simple sump in mudskipper aquarium/paludarium
Chris replied to ecarter's topic in General Discussion
I'm not seeing anything glaringly wrong, but I'm no master tank designer either. I know @Zenzo has a tank with Indians, so he may be able to chime in on whether the extra water volume would be worth it or not. -
Finally getting a little color on a few of these rainbow shiners. We're about 3 months in and they've doubled in size. The hints of blue on these guys has just developed recently.
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I spent the morning putting together some worm cultures. I've got vinegar Eels, banana worms, microworms, and grindal worms.
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Rainbow Shiners and blue shrimp didn't show today. Hoping they're doing okay in the mail. Here's a quick video tour of the tank as they sit tonight. Nothing special, just things settling in.
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Thanks! I found a seller on Aquabid, who's sending me Microworms, Vinegar Eels, Banana Worms, and Grindal Worms. Should be here before the second round of eggs hatch. I agree. I love macro tanks, but they can be even harder to keep in good shape than reefs. I'd love to try some actual seagrasses, which is an actual saltwater plant (where macros are algae). http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2691511
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Yeah, Macro tanks are amazing, and can be more beautiful than even a good reef. My favorites are usually Tigahboy's - he's a well-known Macro buff. Here's just a couple of his well-known tanks: https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/reef-of-the-month-may-2021-tigahboys-macroalgae-paradise.804/ To be clear, I'm not really trying to do a macro tank... More trying to include a couple varieties of non-calcified Caulerpa for nitrate reduction, kinda like how you might add a fast-growing stem plant in a fresh water tank. I got the ricefish back into their tank tonight. I thinned out their scape a bit, mainly to encourage them to lay their eggs on the spawning mops. I've got medaka fry! Just two, and I seriously doubt they'll make it. Microworm culture isn't here yet 😞 too small for BBS and my fry food, too. Everybody is doing well tonight.
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I've done saltwater for about 6-7 years now. I think Cory put it best in a recent live stream - "I could keep like, two reefs, or my entire fishroom." I love saltwater fish and all the variety you can have, but I've found most of my reef tanks to be too needy. I get a bit burnt out, spending so much time on one tank. So, for me, I decided to tackle it a bit more like my freshwater tanks. Add water, fish, plants (Macroalgae coming soon) and skip the coral and advanced filtration. I think it'll work well, but we'll see. The plan is to keep a breeding pair of Banggais and a breeding pair of clowns in simple Fowlr setups. I'll add sand and a bit of live rock after QT, and the angel will move to a display tank in the living room. I'll probably keep a powerhead in each tank and remove the sponge filters once they're properly cycled with rock, and add in some green macros to help with nutrient export. I'm going to get a brute trash can for water storage, and just pump the water from the can to the tanks (already heated and at the correct salinity) so that, operationally, they'll be the same as the freshwater tanks. That's the plan, anyway. Not sure if it'll work out or not!
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Also, fed the new fish some BBS this morning. Doing well so far!
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Man, that's rough. Sorry to hear. Sometimes it seems like there's simply nothing that can be done, at least with our current set of knowledge. Thanks! Believe it or not, drilling the tanks hasn't been so bad. I ruined one while drilling (just had too much breakout around the hole), but the other's I've drilled have been fine, at least until I cracked that 10 gallon this weekend lol. I was nervous, too, but so far so good! It helps that these tanks were all bought on the 50% off sale, so relatively cheap if you make a mistake. I'd be much more upset if I had cracked an expensive tank. Yikes! It's a really awful sound, isn't it? You just know the rest of your day got worse. Luckily this was more of a hairline crack, so just dripping. I've come home to a shattered bottom, though - last time I use a pressed board stand!
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Alright, got quite a bit done today. Here's the tank with the new drain system. The PVC coming out of the elbow sets the water height. On the outside of the bulkhead, I've got a 1" slip to 1/2" MPT elbow that goes to an MPT to barb connector, which runs into a vinyl tube into a 1" tee into the drain line. Much simpler than version 1. I have all 4 10 gallons set up, and plan to work on the 20s through the week. I picked up my pair of clown fish and a pygmy angel I ordered through the LFS this morning, too.
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I really need to buy like a 1000 ct bag of plant weights... I always find uses for them, even if it's just weighing down food that wants to float or something. Definitely a tool that I'm constantly finding myself needing! Like pipettes, lol.
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- panda garra
- albino corydora
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Alright... So, guess who managed to crack a tank today? This guy! Yeah, I'm an idjit. I was trying to add some tubing to the valve for draining the tank, and the small amount of pressure I was putting on the plumbing cracked the tank. It's a 10 gallon, so thin glass, but still... It was so little pressure that had I not heard the crack, I never would have thought to check for it. So, I drained that tank (it was the 10 gallon the ricefish were in) and moved them into a bucket with their sponge filter for the night. Lowe's opens at 9 in the morning, so I'm going to have to wait till then to get a replacement tank set up. I'm going to go ahead and remove all of the valves from the tanks and start from scratch - no more valves. I'm going to go for a much simpler, but less efficient system instead. An elbow inside the tank to set the water height, and soft tubing to a PVC tee in the drain line. I'll just fill the tank using a python and let it overflow into the elbow and drain. Originally I was concerned that an overflow-based system would be too expensive for my saltwater tanks, but I'm finding that the actual calculations wouldn't be much over what I'm already paying in monthly salt costs since I wouldn't be doing frequent large water changes - plus, these are fish-only tanks, so no sensitive coral or inverts to worry about. So... yeah, that's gonna be a pain in the rear tomorrow. But, very happy to have learned this now before I have the last 3 tanks set up. Now, in fish news... I lost the other Banggai Cardinal. So I'm down to just the large male. However, now that he's alone in the tank, he's eating like a pig. Maybe the stress of having another male in the tank was causing him not to eat? Not so sure.
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Woke up to a dead Banggai Cardinal, with another one on its way out. They're simply starving - I can't get them to eat even live foods. Depressing way to start the weekend.
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Aquabid stuff incoming! Nothing too crazy. I ordered 20 blue neos to add into my ricefish tank (hoping to breed a trifecta - mystery snails, shrimp, and ricefish all in one aquarium), and they should be here late next week. I also won an auction by accident, lol. I came across a brand new auction for 10 rainbow shiners about a week ago, and put down the minimum bid of $40. Seemed like a really good price, considering what the other listings were asking. Never thought another thing about it until I got an email yesterday saying I won. Whoops! They'll be going into one of the 20's up top. Also coming late next week. All I need to finish up my rack of tanks is some more soft tubing and barb X NPT fittings. I bought out the store this week, so waiting on some to come in. At that point, all 7 tanks will be ready to be set up and good to go!
