Torrey

I have started having pH swings in my tanks w/o dirt. I did the 24 hour aeration and discovered my 8.0 pH out of the Pür filter (kitchen sink) drops to 6.4 pH after 24 hours. Why? Because while we have too much calcium in our source water (the reason for the Pür faucet filter), we have almost no magnesium in our water. So no buffer. Over 300 TDS comes out of the faucet.... and no usable magnesium for my plants😒 kH in my tanks from larger water changes (and I hadn't tested my tap water in a while because I ran out of strips), so didn't realize I was lowering kH... kH & pH had been dropping, and I couldn't figure out why. Only tanks not at 40 ppm kH or lower were my shrimp tank (remineralized RO) and the tank next door (I top off both with the same water, and if I have water left from shrimp tank water change, I use the leftover water for the neighbor tank). This past week, while I reorganized my bedroom to be in compliance with a new housing mandate, I discovered that the bag of crushed coral that normally lasts a good 6 months had almost completely dissolved in 6 of my 13 tanks. In February, my kH out of the Pür filter was 120 to 180 ppm, so I have no clue what my water treatment facility changed. I do know that a decade ago they started pumping water from the Rio Grande into our aquifer to offset the drop in water levels and try to prevent sink holes. They didn't treat the water before pumping it in, and that might be causing problems to water stability now.🤷‍♂️ At any rate, the crushed coral does a great job at improving pH stability, and you can "pretreat" your water (for both tanks) in a 30 or 50 gallon trash can, if you desire. Aeration will let you know accurate pH for water changes, aeration gets rid of simple chlorine in 24 hours of offgassing (need to use water treatment for chloramine), and you can sink a bag of crushed coral in the treatment reservoir (the trashcan of water) if you don't want to keep it in the tank.

Same goes for people 😁

Did it have only one tail, as it appears in the picture? Or 3 tails, as shown in the links? If you enlarge this image, you can see a damselfly nymph in the upper middle. It is lighter colored than the background. Unless you find a damselfly nymph in a newly started shrimp colony, or a very expensive breeding program, the small number of losses in livestock are far outweighed by the positive impact on the environment of keeping mosquitoes and other insects under control. I allow all the damselfly nymphs I find in my tanks to live, if they can escape predation by my fish. I am rewarded 3 months later with the best garden maintenance crew, that keep a wide variety of insect pests out of my orchids and food crops that I grow indoors. Damselfly larvae get a really bad rap in the aquarium industry, because people focus on one aspect of development (the nymph) and ignore the larvae stage (an important food source for fish getting ready to breed) And the adult stage that is greatly beneficial to humans and food crops. Just something to think about. If your little aquatic guest only had a single tail, it was a dragonfly nymph. Again, they can be a threat to a smaller shrimp colony and a really expensive breeding project that is small. Outdoor tubs host entire egg casings of nymphs (both damselfly and dragonfly) yet manage to outproduce indoor aquariums without us humans removing the nymphs.

We need rain so badly here... May you get all the rain you need, and not get too much rain.

That's a very important part for successful tubbing. So setting up the initial location is the most important thing. Allowing nature to take its course is really hard, especially when Nat Geo specials unintentionally generated emotional responses (musical scores) that encouraged rooting for the underdog, instead of the honest appraisal that *every single creature is an equally important part of the ecosystem* Sick & injured herbivores become food for omnivores and carnivores. Stress either builds better health and resistance to disease, or culls the animals with poor genetics that don't get the chance to reproduce (and therefore pass on the genetics for poor immune systems). Look forward to following this journal!

Is that Gammerus fasciatus?

Awesome! :goes to research binomial:

Yay! Glad things are back on track!

I am lucky enough to now have 3 LFS within an hour of our place. I went in for the Prime, came home with plants plus Prime (but can't find the picture of the plants, just the picture of the prices I used to help me budget) Their show tank.

All of the above. I've been the customer that shares knowledge, and for the past few years shares links to Cory's videos. I am satisfied simply because the people sharing (Cory, Dean & crew) are enjoying themselves. Compersion is a beautiful thing, and not enough people get the opportunity to grow their compersion muscles, you know?

I like the shorter videos to share with people newly getting into the hobby. It can take a while to develop the longer attention span unless one is autistic and the Co-op is a special interest. Longer video format I share with the autistic homeschooling community. Parents love it when the kids make the Co-op an SI (special interest) and adults can get 2 hours of quiet to soak in the tub, read a book, or quietly enjoy a cup of coffee knowing that their kid is happy and watching something safe (and educational to boot!) I have been sharing your videos with my LFS owner, and his managers. My kid started watching your videos after getting a job at the LFS, and now has real world experience that helped what you were offering (knowledge wise) take root. All of your videos have made me seem a lot more "cool" in the eyes of my kids, because growing up all they heard was "the real world doesn't work that way" from people who thought I was a dreamer and too idealistic. Now my kids are watching your success, and realizing their parent wasn't quite as crazy as people made me out to be. Good pay, good health care, and a healthy work environment that values mental health actually is profitable. Who knew?🤷‍♂️😏 I have not yet found any videos that were not helpful. Each of them are beneficial to different audiences, so my recommendation would be do the videos you have fun with, and allow other employees the opportunity to volunteer to do the videos that you have made simply because having your teeth pulled wasn't available. (A little humor. You look like you are enjoying your self more often than not. My mom said "you can please some people, some of the time, but you can't please anyone (other than yourself) all of the time and maintain your self-respect. So don't even try."

Driftwood is part of a healthy, stable tank... eventually. Consider your 10 gallon like a bachelor's degree. You did the work, and C's get degrees. (The ich outbreak). The 29 gallon, plus the driftwood, let you know that the water out of your tap needs a little chemistry to be healthy long term for your fauna (fish, shrimp, snails, etc). So you are moving into grad school territory. While the frustration right now feels pretty big, your 29 gallon with the driftwood just taught a necessary lesson that might have taken years to learn in the 10 gallon, and would have been more catastrophic when it finally crashed. I think you will be pleased once you have a bag of crushed coral in your tank. Your livebearers, and any shrimp or snails you decide to get in the future will benefit greatly from your having this opportunity to learn about kH now. A mild perspective shift helps keep the hobby fun.

Cory, you just saved me a small fortune. Thank you! I have been struggling with good power strips, because the cord is always too short to safely mount the strip above the water line... leaving my bedroom looking like the electrical cords are the result of Black Widow and Black Lightning having a clandestine affair but not being concerned with the after effects. 😅 The most outlets any of my strips have, is 10 +4 USB, and that's on a large (as in bulky) strip I bought specifically to handle the lights and heaters for the turtle.

I rearranged my bedroom, so tanks got redone😁 Actually started yesterday, this is the current status of the only tank I have finished. To be continued....

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Welcome to Nermlandia! My cousin lives/d on Whidbey, I am not sure if he's still there🤔 I'm off FB, and that's how my family keeps everyone updated😆 I haven't been on Whidbey since I left WA in 2009. Your tanks are gorgeous!!!! I agree, they need more plants, lol. Check out @eatyourpeas journal for a really cool idea that I will be replicating if I ever escape the Land of Enchantment. I miss my Salish peeps. Again, welcome to the forum!

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10% water change, and handfed the shrimp for the first time. Was my reward for surviving my day and being a safe place for a lot of vulnerable people....

My o-chem teacher's instructions were "shake the reagent bottle until your arm wants to fall off, and then shake some more"🤣

Tonight, I decided to offer a flake of Xtreme Krill, to see what happened. A few minutes later, I had 2 shrimp plus the Radix auricularia sharing a flake. Struggled to get a good closeup, but here's Princeling Flappy with the blue dreams! You can see the very red flake between them, which was devoured in just under 4 minutes. I tried to get video, but the focus wasn't co-operating. I don't have enough shrimp yet, for them to do serious damage to the green beans, carrots or baby squash strips I put in. However..... The shrimp in the middle (and mostly covered with the red flake of food) appears to be getting rather thick under the tail.... you can actually see the flake of food is not as wide as the shrimp tail.... So maybe shrimplettes are in my future?

Rocks and minerals can't raise pH any higher than their own pH. Combine that knowledge with the volume of water, and at 8.2 pH you aren't even going to see an increase in TDS from the seiryu stone, because the water isn't acidic enough to begin deteriorating the rock.

Welcome to the Nerms!!! All of us, if we are 100% honest, have been there at least once. It happens, whether it was an impulse buy, an emergency save, or not enough information when we set up our very first tank. Luckily, the nerms in here are incredibly gracious with sharing knowledge. Here's a link on various options for keeping nitrates down (once you have them) and interesting thing: Plants absorb ammonia and use it as food, even easier than nitrates! So feel free to get lots of a plants growing, and watch your tank go through the half dozen algae evolutions that represent the various "awkward teen" stages of a tank getting seasoned... all while knowing the plants are acting as a protective barrier for your fish' gills. As far as testing with the API liquid, it is the most accurate test as long as all of the directions are followed, including shaking first the #2 reagent bottle, and then the test tube, until you are pretty sure your arm should fall off. The reagents for nitrate don't like to stay suspended in liquid and require *MASSIVE* agitation to get accurate results😅

What Greg said. Also, otos need **really** well established tanks, because they rely on biofilm, as well. An overly clean tank is a death trap to otos....

Halfbeaks are an under appreciated livebearer that I do well with at the LFS. Angelfish are always in demand, but I don't compete with friends in the Aquarium Club, so they breed angels and I breed endlers and halfbeaks.