Torrey

Are you on a phone or a computer? Because it's a little different with each....

Our battery backup for power outages (to run DME) has the USB ports which ran pumps for our tanks for a week. I need to get into the closet, because I can't remember what kind it is, we bought it at Cabella's in their camping section. It also has an air hose for filling an air mattress or tires (but sucks the battery fast). Takes 24 hours of being plugged in to fully recharge. Might be worth the investment based on the combination of construction and floor warpage? Two would allow you to swap out.

Good to here!

Conditioned normal tap water, and your fish should be thrilled. Plus, less stress for you! (I know you know about conditioning, since you have the autowater changer set up. For any newbies reading along, it's always good to clarify)

There needs to be a hug emoji, I hope your mom recovers quickly!

I would venture it's a combination. I typically don't add ferts on the days I clean the tank. May be an old wive's tale, but when I started keeping fish and plants together, I was told to skip ferts if I cleaned the filter or gravel vacced. This has consistently been my experience, the denitrifying bacteria seem to replicate at about half the speed.... Do you double dose on the Prime to accommodate the higher chloramine in your water? When my chloramine is low (barely detectable) I only use 2 drops/gallon. When my chloramine levels leave 0.25 ppm ammonium in the water, I double dose. At 0.5 ppm, I triple dose. Above that, I don't use the tap for the water change. If I double or triple dose, I also increase aeration. You already got a lot of great advice. Keep an eye on your shrimp, they are more sensitive. On the plus side, the geek in me has joined the geek in others, and Prime appears (in my water, as well as the water of a bunch of people in Australia) to bind up nitrites and ammonia to the point it stops fish flashing from irritated gills, for 48 hours. In softer, acidic water, they were able to get 72 hours of relief. In my hard water, I noticed fish flashing again after 48ish hours. As long as my nitrites didn't above the 0.5 ppm, I just dosed with Prime and kept monitoring. My experience has been it takes the nitrospira colony a good week longer to get the nitrites down to zero when cycling than it takes the bacteria colony to break ammonia/ammonium down to nitrites. So if it took 2 weeks to get nitrites out of my ammonia, it has typically taken another 3 weeks to get nitrites down to undetectable unless I am heavily planted. It sounds like the tabs were a little overkill. Do you have a picture of your tank? Do you have floating plants in another tank? Some floating plants will help you get/ keep ammonia and nitrites down better than water changes if you can get enough roots in the water column. Depending on your plant load in your tank, and the species, it may be less stressful next time to limit root feeding (tabs) to the heaviest feeders (like val) and use liquid ferts in the water column? I have noticed with my shrimp and snails that they are much happier when I divide the weekly dose of ferts into 7, and just microdose each day (yes, I occasionally forget a day) and surprisingly my plants are also growing better on the smaller, but more frequent doses of ferts. Just something to think about.

My nibling took an internship where she spent the summer in Malaysia doing field research. The house they rented had been empty for a while, and had a neglected, British inspired pond. As she cleaned out debris, she was shocked to discover how many fish were living in the above ground pond, as the house had been empty for at least 2 years and nobody had been feeding the fish, much less taking care of the water. There was a male betta about every 18" with it's own little bubble nest to defend, and so many females! The bettas ate the guppy fry and insect larvae, and the guppies ate mosquito larvae and algae....

Wordle guessed in 4/6! Can you do better? Try this wordle: https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=ycilpw 🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟩🟨🟨 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 #mywordle Here you go! https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=giyot

Yes, the added difficulty of chasing water parameters made the discus breeding a Holy Grail project. This was before I had kids (when I got started). Once I got the hang of it, I never had fewer than 3 pairs breeding, much to the delight of my LFS. Eggs would not hatch in our hard water, but by the third gen I could raise the fry to be acclimated to our water. By the time my daughter was born (1995) I was able to keep it going *only* because I had already learned to leave the parents alone to learn how to raise the fry. They typically eat the first 2 - 3 batches, which is a great conditioner for the next clutch when feeding BBS every day, in addition to worms and mosquito larvae on top of quality flake food and scrambled egg. Each clutch of eggs would cover double the space of the clutch before, and the discus raised by the parents would get the hang of taking care of the eggs *and* the fry by batch number 3. The ones I naively tried raising without the parents? The fry that survived made great pets... horrible, horrible parents. Quickest way to trigger spawning behavior is an increase of live foods, followed by a series of water changes to get the water softer (mimic the monsoon season). Rain water was ideal for breeding. Horrible for overall stability, but fantastic for breeding. Of course, in home RO wasn't really an option for me in the 90's, lol

@Bev C and @Jawjagrrl the second night Houdini was with us, I couldn't find Houdini in the tank. I looked *everywhere* and finally took everything off the table, and then cleaned out under the table looking for my inherited Zebra nerite (hence the name, Houdini) and we couldn't find the snail anywhere. Knowing the Papillion x chihuahua x pom we inherited from my MIL eats everything, I resolved myself to having to explain that the zebra nerite had escaped under my care.... Fast forward... Munchie (above mentioned canine) starts a weird tribble sound and I come to check it out. I have zero clue where the snail had hidden, but the zebra nerite had magically appeared under the buffet and Munchie was alerting that an unfamiliar something was moving down there. As I rescued the Zebra Nerite from the puffball of tribble sounds, Patient Spouse™ dubbed him Houdini, and the other nerite snail was named Watson. They are (well, Houdini is) capable of lifting the Aqueon lids, so they now live in the T4' in my spouse's bedroom, because it has a locking reptile lid that is Houdini escape proof. My aunt and uncle had a Doxie named Tootsie Roll, and my old next door neighbor had one for 23 years named Jack. They are excellent hunting dogs, and can be trained to have a mouth as gentle as a lab, with a little work. My service dog is a big mastador, who thought it was her job to bring me the chickens everyday so I wouldn't have to go collect the eggs. She would bring them into the living room through the dog door, and they would lay the egg right there.🙄 She never did believe us that the chickens didn't want to get slobbery and were much happier in the chicken run. @Jawjagrrl scuds are super easy to breed up to astronomical levels. I have the 5 gallon with the snails and planaria. It's got a UGF, some floating plants (if they start eating the healthy plants you are underfeeding them) and hornwort (lets me know when I need to add more calcium). I like having the spigot to turn, to just collect scuds in a cup. I used recycled items from around the house (so technically this was my first Scapes from Scraps, TOUS) to build the UGF. Filled the cut bottles with a mixture of hydroballs and plastic bioballs to host the beneficial bacteria colony. The scuds really like to hang out in the hornwort. I added a piece of canvas for the scuds to climb on and eat biofilm off of.... When I drop in some baby brine shrimp it looks like the canvas is moving! I suspect they also filter feed, as the water from the pump comes down the canvas like a guided water fall, and they just hang out grabbing microfauna straight out of the water column. Biggest cause of colony crashes is underfeeding. You won't notice how much the colony has grown because they are tiny, and without the canvas mesh to hang out on they generally stayed hidden. I accidentally underfed my initial colony, and they went cannibalistic. They eat a surprising amount of protein, blackworms don't stand a chance if you add them to the substrate *after* you add scuds. You can see the UGF a little in the 5 gallon. This has been running since 2019. Meanwhile, my little 2 gallon has been thriving! I don't know if you can blow the picture up enough to see all the scuds, but they are covering the bioballs in the UGF (they much prefer the open weave design of the black plastic bioballs to the compressed clay hydroballs). There's no planaria in this one, just snails and scuds, hornwort, duckweed and Bacopa carolinia. They eat a baby carrot every other day, BBS at least once a week, and they polish off any fish food that manages to not get eaten by the fish in under 3 weeks... otherwise they get a pinch or 6 of the same food I am feeding the fish. If you notice your plants are getting eaten, either harvest some scuds or start feeding more. But having the spigot at the bottom definitely makes harvesting infinitely easier!

Oh wow!!! My Patient Spouse™ could drop me off there, and I'd never get bored! That's awesome. @Flumpweasel, congrats on mixing fish with family!

@gjcarew what is the secret to keeping trimmed *and* not killing with the trimming? Because I haven't found that sweet spot, yet😅 Will be trying again when my Co-op order arrives, lol

Thank you (I'm ORD)

It should definitely help your CO2 last longer! Take photographs, and document your water testing regularly (I add my photos to a spreadsheet, to make it easy to keep up with). Remember to only change one parameter a month so you know exactly what led to a change. After a month, you can compare pictures and even come in to the forum and share how it wnet and help identify any nutritional deficiencies that may show up. It's amazing, how as we make life easier for the plants to grow, they start telling us exctly what is missing (or is in too high amounts) in our water, almost more reliably than the expensive tests for minerals and TDS composition.

This is why Patient Spouse™ has been trademarked in the forum, right @Jawjagrrl😉 I have 13 tanks, a porch pond, and a 4' that is waiting to be finished in the dining room. Why waiting? Because I did a test build which has become my Patient Spouse's™ tank in their private room. It's definitely helpful to do a slow build that eventually gets buy in from the [not yet a Nerm] spouse. Then everyone is happy, and as the Patient Spouse™ picks out fish and plants, the hobby is completely reinvigorated!!!

All my java and epiphytes take about 3 to 6 months to fully adjust to my water. I have discovered my snails do better if I break the weekly dose down into daily amounts. Surprise benefit was my plants started acclimating faster. I keep a lot of snails in my tanks. They eat anything that starts melting, before the melt can spread to other leaves, much less plants. I have also gotten in the habit of floating my plants/ zip tyeing to a suction cup until they have decent roots. Once they have roots, I wrap the roots around whatever I am sticking them to, and if glue is still needed I use the cut end of a q-tip to apply a *dot* of superglue between the plant and the surface, and then hold in place for a full 5 minutes in a bowl of water. Then I move it to the aquarium. I learned the new gluing technique this year, so far it has been effective. I learned about suspending the plants last year with the ziptie and suction cup from Guppysnail, I can say that's been a huge success and I am losing less than 10% of my plants now.

Save your medium filter, it will come in handy. I have a medium in a 10 gallon, because that's what I was seeding as a filter for my 4' (originally it was a traditional Walstad, but endlers are livebearers...) and now it's staying in my 10 gallon since I rescaped. I never have detectable ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates (last is thanks to all the plants). As for taking up real estate... I plant around my sponge filters. The plants catch the majority of debris and use it as food. Fry use the larger surface area on the sponge filter as a 24/7 buffet. In the vent of a power failure, the sponge filters only need the USB nano pump, and will run for ~3 days between charges on my external battery. And the base is apparently better than a resort getaway for encouraging shrimp and livebearers to engage in courtship.

I saw that too!!! Wish I saw those deals down here, lol @Fish Folk you know I miss breeding my discus..... So the selfish part of me that lives vicariously through other people's pictures of their discus is screaming that you should breed discus for a year or two. The realistic me, who bred fish while managing a farm and being a single parent to 3? The parent says your kids are only this age once, and discus will be around later. Go with the saffrons.

ORD 🤣 I love Nerm humor!!!!

Ditto modified lung's experience

@Atitagain I am ORD, I am loving the look!!!

I'm ORD😆🤣😆 My eyes can't tell either, lol!

Hmmmm..... I'm with anewbie on this one. I suspect the lotus isn't going to stay that low to the ground..... I still think you have a gorgeous tank.

ORD 🥰😍😍 My assassin snail played "Follow the Leader" and a snail version of Chutes and Ladders with the ramshorns. They'll eat them when they get hungry, and will do a decent job of making sure the eggs laid now don't reach adulthood, but you may need to ask your LFS if you can rent some assassin snails... I discovered a single snail eats ~30 small to smallish/middish sized snail a month.... the bigger ones need at least 4 assassins hunting together. I currently have 3 assassins, and they will share a mid-sized ramshorn and MTS that are <3/4" long. Anything bigger apparently needs more assassins to take down. I collect the shells every 2 weeks when I clean the tank, and soak them in H2O2 for 48 hours, then rinse well, and add to tanks for aesthetics and to provide my fancy snails and shrimp with a fully balanced source of MgCa, and other minerals they need. This is a betta cup (for size perspective), and it took all 3 assassins to take down that largest ramshorn... which is half the size of my adult rams. It's actually kind of cool watching them hunt together. Was a bit disconcerting to watch the youngest assassin "playing with it's dinner"😲 On the positive side, no protein skim on the surface from the assassins killing more than they can eat at once.🤷🏼‍♂️ (video is the youngest assassin playing.... Apparently I originally bought a pregnant female assassin, and didn't keep enough snails going into the tank to keep everyone happy....😢. Problem now solved)

I'm ORD 🥰🥰🥰 Ghost is gorgeous! Are you going to have the kids watch the Patrick Swayze/ Whoopi Goldberg movie since they vetoed your name, Spectre? PS: Patient Spouse™ walked by and asked if that was Ghost, without reading the screen, lol. They are now pondering the likelihood of Ghost channeling a loving ghost, lol