Torrey

I know Cory was taling about some issues with customs in one of the livestreams. Plus, Amazon requires a minimum amount of stock to be in the Amazon warehouse before they will list the merchandise. I can't remember everything he covered, though.... I do know he said don't wait for things to be in stock, if you need something get it from a local supplier. Also, he posted a story? a comment? on YouTube that they are accepting applications for affiliate stores. If you have a local store, you might want to let them know about the affiliate opportunity, and then your local store could carry the ACO merchandise.

I have not had the same results from both. If you are not remineralizing, then the plants, bacteria and fish are missing necessary minerals to keep growth and stay healthy. Plus, RO eliminates kH. I mix my Pur water (typically 245 TDS, with ~120 ppm kH and 150 GH) with my ZeroWater to get down to 180 - 200 TDS and decent kH... but sometime between January and now, my water treatment facility has almost eliminated kH and my plants are showing magnesium deficiency, so I am having to do a lot more water testing and tryin to bring my kH back up....🤦🏼‍♂️

Maybe water celery??

This should help with ID, I don't recognize it. https://www.iowadnr.gov/Portals/idnr/uploads/fish/research/AquaticPlantID2.pdf

Thank you for the deep dive into the explanation!

After tonights livestream, a new video showed up by a band I started following during the pandemic. They remind me of Cory, and they put their money where there mouth is. When they discovered the uptick in suicides during the pandemic due to social isolation, they contacted a global network of mental health workers and PAID for a huge number of hours (some of us volunteered our hours) to be used by anyone who said they needed it. It was a beautiful thing. 😍 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChDkP71cJOHop-iRgl_8pVg

Okay, I finally have a favorite content! @Cory tonight's stream was fun, informative, and embraced the spirit of sharing that I think separates the Co-op from almost everyone else!

You already changed a lot, so I recommend testing parameters and documenting any changes in a journal or spreadsheet for the next 3 to 6 weeks. If you see nitrites or ammonia, do a water change to bring them down, to protect your fish. Prime binds up ammonia while breaking the chloramine bond for 24 to 48 hours (I think amount of ammonia determines how long the covalent bond binds the ammonia). You can use Prime to give the fish a buffer, just know that ammonia tests aren't always completely accurate for about 24 hours after Prime has been added to a tank (sensitive tests will detect the bound ammonia, and other tests sometimes won't pick up on ammonia at all for 24 hours). Good fishkeeping is 90% about observation, and 10% patience... except when something goes wrong and then it's 90% patience while waiting for the tank to respond to whatever change we made, and 10% observation, lol

You can throw a bag of it in the tank near a sponge filter, you can throw a bag of it in HOB and canister filters, and you can throw a bag in a water reservoir you keep on hand to speed up water changes. Neos really like having access to crushed coral

It was great to read you in the Livestream tonight!

Did not even flinch!!!

Thank you so much @FrozenFins!!! I got in the chat in the first 20 minutes, and texted my kids who are both out on their own in the world, lol. Our Nerm family *ROCKS*

awwww!!!! So cute!!!! I like keeping them around and looking for random color morphs that show up. If you really can't stand them, dip your plants in an alum bath (see Irene's GirlTalksFish channel for the ratio of alum to time in dip). Then rinse the plants so the alum doesn't make it to your tank.

One of my greatest delights was finding out I could use the "contact" option in most peer-reviewed journals to ask questions about specific parameters in hopes of replicating experiments which then increases validity of the original experiment (for anyone still reading along). Email geeking ensued, and even though I never got permission from the university to actually duplicate an already peer-reviewed experiment, I did learn from the original research teams how to ask for more data, how they arrived at the data, and that they actually get pretty excited when somebody fans their work and asks for details not covered/explained well in the paper.

I had just seen it referenced in a video, or I would have been clueless @Baphijmm!

Have you ever noticed hormones from one spawn seem to trigger more spawns?

Wordle guessed in 3/6! Can you do better? Try this wordle: https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=kvbr ⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩 #mywordle A few more letters, should also be a challenge! https://mywordle.strivemath.com/?word=kpclbyervqd Hint: Binomial does double duty

We name ours, lol! The one in the picture was named Sidhe

I participated in the secret Livestream today! <shhh!>

Thank you FrozenFins! @Guppysnail, @Fish Folk, @Streetwise did y'all see this?

@Sweet T here's 2 articles on planaria. The first covers feeding/hunting & reproduction for researchers to keep planaria. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6701699/ This second article shows how different light frequencies can inhibit growth. Since anything that kills planaria will damage your snails and shrimp, knowing how to use light to reduce reproduction and limit growth gives you a cushion while manually removing with traps. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31830733/

Those look like planaria... Let me find the article. I purposely breed planaria for homeschooling families to use for biology class. I keep them with snails and amphopods, and plants. It's a fairly stable ecosystem. However, if I underfeed, the planaria will go after whatever they can eat. They hunt snails by following the 'snail trail' and immobilize with a toxin the planaria secrete. Typically, if there's enough food, they won't go after snails... but they will multiply like crazy. According to a local biologist, the reasons I maintain a balance: 1. I don't siphon or gravel vac. So nothing to break the planaria into pieces to speed up reproduction (cut a planaria in half, and you have 2 ants). 2. I don't have any impellers (see above) 3. Amphopods are protein eaters, and will attack and eat planaria if they can do so without the planaria slime immobilizing them.

Remove them if you see them, and try putting them in an outside water container to complete their life cycle.

Bettimus with my youngest in 2019 She's a mastador, so not a small dog. They used to cuddle all the time.... Munchie talking the baby into going on the potty instead of in the diaper. Munchies typical attitude toward all other living creatures: "Unless you are here to serve me, I have no use for you" She trills like a hummingbird, weaves around our feet like a cat, and has a serious Napoleon complex and believes it is her sole responsibility to boss the big dogs... as long as she knows that they can't get her back. This past year, Bettimus finally decided that Munchie (at age 7) has lost puppyhood status, and doesn't take her being a bully anymore. It's been an interesting change in dynamics. Munchie will do the play bow, Bettimus says "sure", and then Munchie tries to tattle on Bettimus (as if we didn't just watch the entire interaction). So Munchie gets treated like a big dog bully🤣 However, she is incredibly patient with the grandboos and pandemic babies! (As long as they are confined to sitting on the baby potty, lol)

Aren't they great for photography!!! I need like... 6 more😁 One for every tank, plus 3 dedicated to photography (so I can set up trios and not have to put up the equipment to catch fish between shots. Just catch all 3, put each in a container, get the photos, and be done!)