Torrey

@Odd Duck & @eatyourpeas Thanks. Now I am craving chorizo, huevos & papas🙄

@Nourhan have you found the Aquarium Science blog yet? He answers most of these questions, and expends a lot of energy and time debunking aquarium myths that many aquarists have tried to make cannon. Once I found his blog, I was able to reinvigorate my love of fish keeping! I think someone in here may have shared it before... I might have shared it 🤔 Look up Aquarium Science . org Excellent answers regarding how to determine safe rocks for the aquarium, safe wood for the aquarium, and links to peer-reviewed research that debunks a lot of assumptions (hint: almost all rocks are neutral, so can't take pH above 7, and even "base / alkaline rocks" that bubble with vinegar or muriatic acid have a limit on how high they can boost the pH. I hope it helps as much as it helped me!

@Keeg I am out of daily reactuons... you are welcome!

@Keeg I believe that the videos have to stay members only, due to the information being shared. I'm on disability, and don't have the $$ to be able to join, however I can answer a few Google surveys each week to get my Friday $5, to support my fish hobby. Hope this helps.

I'm sure they will let you know, lol!

@s1_ storage unit(s) were in WA, paid for shipping down to NM, and discovered half the boxes had been emptied and the items replaced with newspapers. 🤬 Filed a claim, and discovered that the court system has not caught up with shipping households across state lines.🤷‍♂️

@CorydorasEthan make any changes gradually. Fish are a lot more adaptable than we give them credit for, and most of us don't go out and measure the pH and total hardness daily on a pond, creek, lake or river. If we did, we would rapidly learn how a lot of 'aquarium gospel' is merely myth. Watch your fish. Document the dates you add things, how much you added and of what, water parameters when you add, and 24 hours later, and fish behavior. Monitor for a week and add a little more. This allows you to find the perfect balance for your fish and your tank.

Amphopods, mating Carbon rili on hornwort (I should have put a wonder shell in this tank, even with my liquid rock. My colony would not have crashed when I got sick). This hitchhiker (and 3 siblings) came in on some azolla I bought. Luckily I carefully quarantine and sort my plants before putting them in tanks. I fed mosquito larvae to the fish, and any I didn't catch were easily picked off by these guys when they were in larval form. Now I have damsel flies in my rack system, eating bugs out of my terra plants😅 My favorite snail buddy!

What @Colu said: raise the pH slowly. Livebearers need calcium at rates similar to or *higher* than inverts and snails. Think about the calcium needs of a pregnant human, needing to support their own bone growth in addition to their growing young... but multiples. In my experience, males will die before females, maybe to ensure best genetics for breeding? The lack of wasting... wasting disease is generally pretty obvious (look up Dr Diana Walstad & wasting disease). If it is wasting, most breeders will euthanize the whole batch rather than fight a losing battle. I don't think it's wasting disease, though. I suspect the guppies were kept/ bred / raised with salt in their water. Now, in your tanks, not only no salt but also too soft, the guppies are succumbing to bacteria that is always present and they simply are not yet hardy enough to withstand the stress.

@s1_ those are the exact measurements (including thickness of glass) of my custom build that fit in the headboard of my kingsize waterbed. It disappeared from a storage unit in 2009, when I moved from PNW back down to the Southwest. I used it to showcase a pair of discus.

Back in the 90's I spent $150 each for 6 discus.... My (not yet ex) had told the buddy at the LFS there wasn't anything I couldn't breed🤦‍♂️. The fish were not as expensive as the water treatment system I made the lfs buy if they wanted me to successfully breed, so I felt like I had the better end of the bargain 😅

@Streetwise I would wrap a plastic mesh canvas around the sponge filter to prevent munching. Turtles are incredibly messy, *and* if you get their tanks / swimming areas set up properly to begin with, long term maintenance is much easier. And the dirted side Pictures are not ideal, because I don't have a huge amount of space around my rack system. The pond side is 14 gallons at high water mark, and drops as low as 9 gallons between maintenance. It has a UG filter with a customized uplift tube hidden in rocks (otherwise Karma destroys it). I have a Tetra reptile filter (top right corner of top right picture) that I retrofitted the insides with plastic canvas mesh where the Tetra carbon filters were supposed to go, and filled the empty/hollow areas with a mix of hygro balls and bio balls. I use the tetra provided pump, and elevated the repto filter on rocks so that the max and minimum water lines matched the exterior 'tank'. There's a piece of cork that wraps over the edge of the pond for the turtle to climb up and into the pond. Dirt houses worms, springtails, and other bugs to promote hunting instincts. Pieces of slate keep nails and beak trimmed. UVB & UVA lights are on the same timer as my fishtank lights. When Karma was smaller, she had a sponge filter wrapped inside the plastic canvas mesh, I will see if I have any pictures on social media that I can import here. She bit a chunk out, and thought it was delicious 🙄 This image is from before I figured out how to retrofit the reptofilter. You can see the provided tetra carbon filter (it comes with 2) and I literally had to replace 1 of the 2 every single week. Now, I do a major maintenance once each quarter, I top off every week, and I do a partial water change and add more plants every time nitrates top 60ppm. I never have ammonia or nitrites in this tank, now that I retrofit the insides of the filter... and turtles are notoriously messy eaters. There are also guppies in this tank. I take close to a hundred to my lfs every tank maintenance. The guppies learned to dive bomb the turtle to discourage hunting behavior, so I no longer have a natural control mechanism. Turtles lungs don't do well with dechlorinators, so I top off with distilled water, and water changes are very limited because aging water / using a water remediation pond with phytoremediation plants takes a lot of preplanning and extra work beyond turning on the tap and adding dechlorinator. Needless to say, these are exceptionally hardy guppies! (Water bottle in the back corner was used to protect the airline tubing for the sponge filter. It worked for about a year)

Cayuga duck eggs start out black and fade into a bluish grey as the season progresses. Feed chickens pomegranates to get some beautiful eggs, plus the healthiest egg yolks that are a golden red color. You can shift the coloration of most birds eggshells with diet: shepherd's purse will add/intensify a greenish tinge (Easter eggers & rumpless), pomegranate adds flecks of red, pink & orange, darker grapes (like purple and red scaupignon) intensify the color of the yolk and also add flecks of color to the shell. I can't wait to see pictures of your eggshell planters, and I think I need to ask for some egg shells from friends who run an organic farm now!

This is my 'mother plant'. In addition to all the varieties (thank you @Odd Duck for showing some of the variaties available) there is significant variation on the leaves of each plant according to growing conditions. Yes, the pothos grows great and puts up with a lot of abuse (the yellow and browned leaves happened when I had a stroke and was hospitalized, but the plant itself didn't die), and is excellent at removing nitrates from the water. Here's a cutting in another tank, that is just getting established. In areas where this plant gets less light, the leaves get darker green and lose the marbling. If I forget to add liquid fertilizer, the whole leaf goes yellow, and also loses the marbling. Lime green leaves, in my experience, have only happened when *all* the plant's needs were met, perfectly. Last year, a cutting from the same mother plant was in my Back2TheRoots system, and none of the leaves were bigger than 2", were lime green with white marbling, and had the smallest, healthiest root system I have ever seen on a pothos. So even on one plant, you can get a lot of variations depending on water chemistry, nutrient availability, and lighting.

@Guppysnail & @Odd Duck if they breed as prolifically as the pond snails, and breed true, I will let everyone know. I cleaned out my fry tank yesterday, and found 2 more live ones (moved them to the Walstad) and the shells of over a dozen. Apparently, the assassin snail also prefers these golden ramshorns🤦‍♂️

@Jennifer V thank you for letting me know, now I have to figure out where they came from 😅

@Ron Uni is the breeder local? If possible, find out what they do with their water, and if they breed for sturdiness or looks. I stress the heck out of my fish before selecting breeders. I want sturdy, hardy fish that are smart enough/ fast enough to outwit predators and have longevity, as well. After stressing the heck out of a few generations (12 to 18 months worth of breeding, longer for fish that take 6 months or longer to mature) I select based on aesthetics. This method identifies potential issues (like the fainting gene in my short tailed zebra danio female), and allows at least 4 generations of comparisons to identify poor genetics. If the genetics are good, find out if the breeder uses salt in their tanks. Prophylactic salt / prophylactic meds for extended periods of time, breed resistant strains of bacteria. I have noticed this more frequently, as local (US) breeders have been trying to duplicate the success of overseas breeders who don't have access to as much desalinated water. The fins look like early finrot is what makes me wonder if you have perfect water parameters why would there be finrot after quarantine meds....

@Joey_Jojo I look at the sword plant and if 1/2 to 2/3 of the leaf is in good shape, I trim the leaf to maintain the shape... otherwise, I snip from the base. If the new growth doesn't have any more pinholes, then the root tabs have done their job. Swords are notoriously hungry plants, so plan on adding root tabs around your sword every 2 - 3 weeks to prevent this happening again. You said you have a dirted tank. How long has it been set up? What is the fish load? And most importantly, what animals do you have helping to work the mulm into your soil? If mulm isn't getting worked back in by MTS, blackworms, and copepods, the soil gets depleted more quickly. On the other hand, even with a great "grounds crew" Amazons are little piggies, and will still need supplementation to maintain beautiful foliage.

@Guppysnail I just realized mine are a different shape 😳 I have no idea what kind of snail I have! I have small, dark bladder snails. And a few bladder snails are golden. But until I compared pictures, I didn't realize what a unique shape these reddish gold ones are. I wonder what I have🤔

@RyanU see @GameCzar for feeding recommendations. I try to have my fry tank growing daphnia and other infusoria while I float the "eyelash fry" in a Dean inspired set up. Once fry are free swimming, I start feeding the tiniest powdered, high protein food I have. First week I feed every 2 hours, and WC 3x a day. Week 2 - 3, depending on how they are growing, I start to spread out feeding to every 3 hours, and 3 WC a day. By week 4 I am feeding every 4 hours, and a WC 2x a day. I feed tiny amounts at a time until I see there little bellies begin to round out. I remove any left over food before each feeding with an infant nasal syringe. Empty the syringe into a clear or white cup, to check for fry before tossing the water. Same thing for the water changes: I put a coffee filter in a strainer, drain the water into the coffee filter, and rest the strainer on my 5 gallon bucket to collect the water. I use an air line tube attached to an infant medicine syringe as my "water vacuum" to drain the tank. Don't let the coffee filter overflow, and any fry that gets sucked up will be saved by the filter.

Snail closeups this week 💜

I believe that it was either @Odd Duck or @Guppysnail who had yellow snails? I have discovered some reddish gold snails, and they are all going in the Walstad tank. I'm hoping they will eventually breed true, because they are gorgeous. Pictures don't do them justice. A reddish gold up top, and gold below. A gorgeous red one😳 I remove any dark snails I find in the Walstad tank, and every tank maintenance day I look for pretty snails in the other tanks to switch to the Walstad. Once I have gotten rid of the darker snails, I will probably move the guppies out, and find a less addicted to caviar fish to put in there.😅

Time for updates! [Edit: Guppies are not guppies, they are all] Endlers are eating the snail eggs and the small amount of BBA that started growing. This is 5 plant trims in, and tank is keeping me pretty happy. MTS have pretty much mixed the sand cap into the dirt, so my sand cap wasn't thick enough. As you can see, dirt has overtaken the white path that meandered to the back of the tank. Still plenty of tannins in the water, and I added a bit of saran wrap across the middle of the tank to protect the light from air bubbles... which promoted faster growth of my floating plants. Floaters are corralled in a circle of airline tubing, and when they overflow their corral they get moved to the turtle. I have trimmed back 3x as many plants as are still in the tank, and started planting the rest of my tanks. Remember the slowest growth was on the left side? Yeah, these have been trimmed back twice now! The most impressive part? Despite the tannins, despite my having to settle for the 15" light instead of the 20" AquaSky I wanted, I have RED LEAVES on my plants! Fresh, new red leaves, and they aren't even directly under the lights, and are only about 4" high there, so 8" from the light. I am overjoyed.

I'm your downstairs neighbor 🤣

Nope. We live in the desert, so I don't need a dehumidifier. I just need to slow down the dispersal of humidity 😅 My fish rack is also my grow room. Plants and fish do better in the 60% humidity that the curtains maintain, and open tops allow heat to move up from the turtle to the rest of the tanks and the plants.