Torrey

Due to 2 divorces and a house fire, no chance of an oldest photo from before 2017. "Turtle Pond" right after the house fire, using a nebulizer to aerate the water, lol. Took a while to recover from having lost everything. First day after an actual filter and the airpump were replaced. Karma was happy. First attempt at a scaped tank after we accepted we were staying in the apartment: First time we set up the big tank after the fire, and discovered it had gotten chipped in the upper right corner: Above is a May 2021, below is now Scape from Scraps tank started in February, I think hthis picture was in April My advice to a new fish keeper just getting started is think long and hard about goals. Evaluate how much time and energy we are willing to dedicate to the hobby, and what will we do if supply chain interruptions prevent us from getting a key item, or we have an unexpected emergency? What's the back up plan? Then, bravely fill up that tank, and embrace every supposed "failure" as an exciting learning opportunity. Before adding any living creatures, play with exploring what impacts different foods have on the nitrogen cycle (by testing water chemistry). Add plants, and learn their language. Play with what plants like to be at the top third of the tank, and which grow well at the bottom of the tank. Play with perspective. What do things look like all on one level? What happens if you "break the rules" and put the biggest plants up front and finer leaved plants in the back? What is the easiest way for you to add "slope" in your tank? In other words, learn about how to keep healthy water in a container by playing with it, and apply what is learned to daily life (and vice versa). Channel the inner child before we were trained to make judgements about failure versus success, and learned by making spectacular messes that brought us joy. Have *fun*

Nice!!!

Unless your fish have a tendency to eat your substrate (I can't remember what all you have posted you have and their behaviors) there's nothing to worry about with sufficient O2 in the tank. If they like to eat substrate, observe for blockages (which I assume you already do if they have a tendnecy to eat your substrate). Feeding live or frozen daphnia should help move things through, and the fish would enjoy the treat if you want to feed preemptively/proactively.

Maybe you will have success breeding, and your culling practices will improve the gene pool. If they can handle harder water, I have achieved 7.2 pH in a couple of my tanks now. I'd definitely be interested if you have breeding success. Looking good, and nothing to apologize for on taking time between updates. I just realized I have over a hundred pictures I've taken for updates I never made, because I logged in and my stroke brain got distracted with everyone else's pictures and stories. Trust the synchronicity, and glad to see that your tanks and their inhabitants are healthy and happy! Keep up what you are doing, recovery is a never ending process I am learning.

WonderShell is helpful, especially if you have snails or shrimp. I am really enjoying adding crsuhed coral, and in one tank I am testing crushed oyster shells (left over from when we had poultry). Glad you decided to relax and have fun (another reason I prefer crushed coral to wonder shell: the crushed coral lasts longer, seems to dissolve more slowly, and once the tank minerals get more stable it's simply a matter of watching plants, noticing the correlation between crushed coral time in tank and time before plants show magnesium or calcium deficiencies, and then you can start adding before there's a problem.

Well then, Welcome Tazalanche, lol!!!

ORD😍

"Evaluated my life choices" is a daily mantra around here. ORD😍

Everything Odd Duck said. Wait, I already do that, regularly, even with new tanks, lol I am really enjoying the flexibility with fully submersible LED lights. Easy to add more to improve growth, and zero worries about water damage.

I love this!!!! I'm also ORD 😍😍🤣😍😍

You can use wood, or canvas mesh, to elevate plants closer to the light to get more colors. Here's a tank (that I wish I had a picture from a different perspective from the early days), but the large rocks are closest to the bed. The perspective of anyone in the bed is looking across a long creek, or viewing a section of a river. The far left has the outlet for the pond pump, so the illusion is the flow is coming towards the bed. This is what the tank looked like May 2021. You can see how the canvas mesh is in the back corner, and water flow is directed down the cholla as well as the mesh. Fry will escape adult predation in the mesh, I scoop out the teens every couple of months and evaluate for culls. Below is what the tank looks like after a year of growing out: Honestly, the look changes every time I trim and do tank maintenance according to what makes my Patient Spouse™ happy, as this tank is in their room. Here's a close-up of a tank so you can see how perspective can be manipulated by placing largest items toward the front, and smaller items toward the back. This means finer leafed foliage is grown in the back, larger leafed plants up front. It's a similar concept that 2D artists (paint, drawings, pen & ink, anything on flat media) use to give the illusion of a 3D image: Select a horizon line, create a vanishing point, and place the largest and most detailed items "closest" to the viewer. Same tank, a little further away. The depth is a massive illusion, this tank is almost twice as high as it is deep (front to back). Same for the one to it's right... but it's easier to tell the one on the right is taller than it is deep because of the current perspective. Here's a 10 gallon Initial set up last year above, and a few months growth in the image below Notice how tannins pool at the bottom with zero circulation. Tannins better dispersed after I added airstones, and Malaysian trumpet snails are relandscaping the two mounds that were supposed to help add depth to the tank. I took out the plants and fish, and used canvas mesh to give me my two mounds like I had used the canvas mesh in spouse's tank to support plant growth (and offer a refuge to fry). I added lava rock to the two mounds of soil/blasting sand to prevent sulfuric pockets of anaerobic activity. Tank right this moment. Wood supports some plant growth to keep it closer to the light. Plant growth in the breeder box houses microfauna for fry. Once I remove the Co-op sponge filter (I need more plant growth, first) there will be the illusion of depth, with a path of every shrinking rocks in the middle, larger rocks up front. Larger leafed plants will be added up front with the thicker stick supporting the milfoil. Smaller, thinner twigs are in the back with moss (hopefully) growing on them to provide the illusion of the same "trees" growing further back with finer, thinner, foliage. Does this help illustrate how perspective can be manipulated by changing placement of items? I wish I had a better illustration of how to utilize the plastic craft canvas underwater, and hide it with plants, but it takes a while to et the plants growing and it's a concept I only started applying to fully submersed scapes over the past few months. There's a foam, Waterfall foam sealant, or pond foam sealant, made by smartpond, that is fish/aquarium safe once it is completely cured. Dried, it can easily be carved to give the illusion of rocks inside the aquarium, and can have planter areas and caves carved out for fish to use for spawning. I have worked with it in the past, and that was a *very* easy way to cover the plastic canvas mesh, secure some actual rocks, sculpt to give the illusion of more rocks, and not put too much weight on the floor of the aquarium. It easily accommodates "terraces" so you can get plants that need strong lights up near the top, and in a long, tall aquarium you can employ a "double vanishing point" to keep the scape more visually engaging while preserving more swim area for the fish.

Your fish are gorgeous! Agree, the difference between outside and inside fish keeping is quality versus quantity. It's why when people ask questions, I generally respond with: What are your goals?

Niiice!

I'm ORD😍 That nerite has gorgeous coloration and patterning.

ORD😍

I'm ORD again, lol. I didn't mean to trigger an unpleasant memory, Waverly had a reputation in the industry during the 80's and 90's for their period fabrics. Growing up in NC, the majority of the people who could afford my uncle's expertise lived in period houses (lot's of colonials, too many antebellums) so Waverly was the main upholstery fabric I worked with... since upholstery was their bread and butter back then, I was surprised to discover they no longer have a line😲 Honestly? Their reps were way too pretentious, lol... We ran into enough... "issues" since I was attending NCSA (now UNC-SA) I could "fit in" well enough... but I was also taking academics at WSSU and had not yet learned how to frame my sociological critiques in a manner actually conducive to changing people's perceptions. I believe I have mentioned before there's a reason I no longer live in the South, even though I can still "Bless their heart" with the best of them, lol Prior to the earthquake, there was an amazing upholstery fabric factory in Haiti, I used their fabrics for reupholstering a VW bug in the late 90's. If you do some research, you should be able to find a good upholstery company that reflects and supports your values, without triggering teen/young adult angst

Yeah, I might be a Nerm.... I may be the Nerm version of that....🧐😅🤣

It will die if you glue it😅 However, if you take the time to carefully wrap it around small branches, doing minimal damage while wrapping, and keep it out of strong flow, afetr a couple of months Guppy grass, pearl weed, and dwarf AR species will start to "grow" on the twigs. My pogostemon "octopus" is proving to do the job a little faster.

If there are no fish in the tank, and no animals you are interested in keeping, I think this would be an ideal opportunity to test whether the Reverse Respiration research Guppysnail and dasaltemelosguy have been working on could be utilized on an entire tank (it will kill all pests, snails, eggs, algae, fish, shrimp, etc)

I was thrilled to tune in just in time to see Cory say that, as well. Debt is a vicious cycle, and it's designed that way on purpose. Criticizing it is easy, refusing to support it/be a part of the cycle is a risk, and I am thrilled to see a business that lives its principles. Oh wait, that's how Cory got me interested in the Co-op to begin with.🧐

@FlyingFishKeeper gotta love it when the kiddos are finally old enough to appreciate the fun! Glad to hear they were able to have a dance this year, that's awesome! Excellent @nabokovfan87! Wordle guessed in 2/6! Can you do better? Try this wordle: https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=wsidemkb 🟩⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 #mywordle Wordle guessed in 3/6! Can you do better? Try this wordle: https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=icjvpw 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 #mywordle Inspired by Oliver's Member's Talk this morning: https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=wdzvescfrpl and https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=warczr

@Zen Ginger here's the Wordle posts! Some are more scientific than others, lol!

I feel your pain in this, and it sounds like both of you were willing to make a lot of compromises to try and please your families. This tells me (based on reactions from your fiance's family) that there are certain expectations that have been cultivated over a lifetime (or more likely generations) that the two of you may not be aware of... and are going to act like landmines no matter what kind of wedding you attempt to have. As a person who has had to learn how to wear many different hats, here are my questions, based on my observations: 1. Have the two of you done any pre-marital counseling with a counselor or clergy? 2. Have you discussed how to navigate holidays after the wedding? 3. Have you negotiated the steps to take to resolve differences in the future? I know those feel irrelevant to the questions you are asking, but my experience (primarily helping couples who are pregnant or already have kids, so slightly different) has been it is infinitely much easier to plan a wedding *after* those 3 items are addressed. In my TH&P work, I facilitate a lot of discussions around how to balance personal needs against community needs, and I don't think anything is a better demonstration for how that works (or doesn't) than planning a wedding. I've probably helped with somewhere between 20 to 30 at this point, so I'm no wedding planner. I am a problem solver, and a relationship healer though. I would say Mother Nature and Yellowstone have offered you the option of putting your wedding off for a year, and that way you and your fiance can discuss what the two of you need for *you* to start the next chapter of your life (as a married couple) in a way that meets *your* needs as a married couple. Then, take the time to identify what is needed for the family (your larger community). Plenty of people choose to do a smaller, intimate ceremony for themselves, that meets their needs, and then a larger celebration that is staged for their communities. My spouse and I got legally married with just us and our kids, we did one celebration with our faith community (and our kids), and a big party at a park for family and larger community. All 3 together didn't cost us $500. My first marriage I kept it under $1000. Weddings (and any celebration involving a larger community) are about compromises and how to demonstrate the values you want to live by and be known by. On the surface, they look simple. The reality is the planning and execution will uncover every skeleton in the closet that needs sunlight. Some people choose to avoid all the skeletons, and other people choose to embrace the opportunity for healing. The majority of couples find themselves on a path closer to the middle: ignoring as many skeletons as possible, lol. It sounds like your husband to be's family is used to him accommodating their wants at his own expense. That dynamic will eventually affect the relationship of all people involved, including you (sorry). The great news is, it sounds like the two of you have already established a really healthy relationship with each other! So if it were me, I'd probably ask if there was no family or friends involved, what would just the two of you want? Plan that first. Then, maybe work with a facilitator, mediator, counselor or clergy member about how to navigate the larger, public ceremony. It sounds like in this particular set of family dynamics, if there's enough time you might be able to merge the two celebrations into one, if that is important to both of you. It doesn't sound like everyone in the family is ready for that level of responsibility for pulling that off, this year. I'm sorry about the entitlement.... I've experienced that, too. In fact, it looked incredibly similar and they ultimately chose not to show up even after accommodations had been made. Hence my personal recommendation to start with identifying what the two of you need. Feel free to inbox me if you have more questions, or tag me here (if I don't respond quickly, I'm probably at a birth).

I'd go with black, unless you are going to allow the sides to overgrow with algae instead of the back of the tank. Most "black" bettas have some blue in them, and a black background will set it off nicely. Especially if you heavily plant the tank.

Are you going to enter your design in the Nerm Week festivities? There's a design competition, for either a room or a whole house.