Torrey

This is a similar DIY, I recycled Gatorade bottles instead of using PVC pipes. I have made the same design and used lava rock in the UGF to increase available surface area for beneficial bacteria. I don't gravel vac much, the malaysian trumpet snails turn the gravel, and the plants consume the mulm. I have used a similar set up (only one layer thick instead of two layers thick) for breeding egg scatterers like danios in a drink dispenser, and open the drink dispenser to "pour" the water laden with eggs into a gallon jug for hatching (way easier breeding process, tbh). Benefit of DIY is any shaped tank can have a UGF. I used hydroballs in the gatorade bottles, so the UGF increased the surface area for beneficial bacteria. Due to the larger space, really doesn't ever clog. Important part was to keep gravel above the spigot level, and maintain a good flow of water. This achieved both. I do 2 stories of UGF when creating a breeding system for amphipods, as they enjoy hanging out in the UGF. New scuds (amphipods) primarily eat biofilm. This 5 gallon system has been going for over 2 years now, and produces way more scuds than my fish can eat. I also keep plants and snails with them to semi-maintain a homeostasis. Water change day. I hooked up a piece of refrigerator water tubing (1/2" ID) to the spigot, and poured off 1/2 the water through a paint strainer to catch any scuds. Scuds get removed from the paint strainer and returned to the system, or fed to takns. You can see hornwort between canvas mesh and the side. Pothos and philodendron are growing on the other side. I have used pond pumps and air driven UGF, depending on the needs of the fish for flow. I successfully bred zebra danios for several years, because the pond pump generated enough flow the zebras would swim as a school and never actually get anywhere in the 5 gallon drink dispenser, but because they had the physical space top to bottom, the flow, and plenty of plants (plus live food to hunt) they bred beautifully. I just collected eggs each day via the spigot. Dedicated glass drink dispenser breeding big eared radix and scuds, and propagating plants. Front view in 2020. Testing out different substrates for flow, summer 2020. Fastest cycling that led to a seasoned tank is hydroballs or lava rock from another tank. Smallest gravel, 1.5" to 2" depth is most stable water parameters. I want to try this idea from gardenman on my next UGF😁

Currently reading "The Color of Law" to understand why laws don't always get applied the same. Just finished a month researching the origins of fairytales, and am reading peer-reviewed research on hominids and on Doggerland. Waiting for the library to get a book in on aquatic plant respiration and photosynthesis (don't remember the name of the book😅) Fiction I'm rereading The Simarillion (Tolkien) and Serpentine (Hamilton). Serpentine has me rolling with laughter.

My spouse does the majority of the cooking. I am a very lucky person, because I'm the absent minded professor who forgets to eat.🧐 However, I do a mean Chicago rare! And decent sushi.... I am incapable of getting the noodles correct for my spouse's family recipe for Samoan chop suey.🤷🏼‍♂️

I have guppies and Endlers at 64 F to 74F over the course of the year. No heaters (I got tired of what you are going through). Our apartment stays ~68 F, but tanks temp goes up when lights come on, and at night the energy saving on the HVAC allows the temp to drop to 64 F during the winter at night. So, a temperature range. Most cories seem to have fewer disease outbreaks, and maintain wieght a little better at the cooler temps, ime. Especially panda cories. Your mileage/experience may vary. The important thing is no drastic, sudden swings.

Yes please, because inquiring minds do want to know!

I double checked against the restricted and prohibited list on the .gov site for you, and Stenomelania torulosa are legal for you! Similar to MTS, but require cleaner water and reproduce slower.

That is such an important tip, and so ingrained I forget to mention it, lol. Worst return from a vacation ever!!!!!!!!!!!!

Purigen for nitrates, if you are going with resins. I prefer plants for long term sustainability. Even my turtle tank is now staying under 40 ppm nitrates with plants.

I just give mine leftovers from other tanks, or if I miraculously don't finish a container of fish food in under a month, it gets labeled "scud food". I throw in veggies, dropped leaves, a baby carrot or two, and on Sundays and Wednesdays they get pellets, flakes, brine shrimp, or whatever else I feed the rest of the tanks (or their own leftovers, if they have a dedicated container). Monitor water quality, ammonia and nitrites, or dropping pH due to decomposition in the tank will kill them. Snails and scuds, in a 2 gallon jar. UGF, and lots of plants.

I put together the T4' tank for my spouse May of last year. Wood had been soaking since January. One piece still hasn't sunk all the way (most of the way, one end hangs out just below the water line). Josh Sims has done similar vertical wood forest tanks for ADA competitions (fun nerm fact: he was the first aquascaper to use vertical wood in his scapes), He zipties to rocks, you can watch one of his videos on the Green Aqua if you need functional, proven to work, different solutions and want to watch them done. He's got a great sense of humor, and reminds folx to play and have fun. I took the "I'm going to work with what I have" approach, and let the fish push the wood around for the past year. In the end, they are the ones who have to live in the tank, so I figured I should let them have some creative license. I hope the coasters work for you! And yes, this hobby provides plenty of opportunities to learn patience. And then some more... and then a few hundred more for good measure.🤣

Floating plants also helps. I have 2.5 gallon tanks and the plants have kept the splash from the super fine bubbles exiting the tank. Also, I lowered the water level.

::sighs::

What type of fish do you have, how heavily planted, how heavily stocked? Because like everything in aquarium keeping, it depends. Will someone be checking on theings while you are gone? I do not recommend the dissolving blocks, the rate of dissolve is not consistent. If your fish are really healthy, in heavily planted tanks, and not likely to prey on each other, it may be easier to get some live food in there that hides and they could hunt while you are gone. If they are messy fish (discus, goldfish, plecos, etc) it's worth asking an employee at the LFS how much they cahrge to tank sit. If they are livebearers in an overplanted tank with scuds to hunt, you'll come back to not many fry, but the adults will be fine, even if nobody feeds them while you're gone. Our big tank went 2.5 weeks with no servicing, and aside from the plant overgrowth and lack of baby snails or many fry, the endlers were fine. Water parameters were fine. Scuds have not recuperated yet. Shrimp on the other hand? They need someone to come check on them while you are gone.

@Odd Duck that's what I thought. From the 2 very different performing snail varieties i have in my tanks, and both were sold as MTS... the earliest difference I see is girth.... and even that doesn't seem to be 100% accurate. The final determination is adult length, with the Hercules hitting 2.5" to 3" easy. If only they wouldn't breed until they were adults, so I could separate the adult breeders *before* they leave their babies all over the tanks.... Might take me a few years, eventually I will have the species separated. According to the peer-reviewed research, they shouldn't be interbreeding..... of course, we never expected pizzlies or growlers, so🤷🏼‍♂️

Sweet!!! Congratulations!

Yeah, that width to length ratio really makes me think Hercules. You'll know in 6 months. Malaysian snails are smaller and quit growing at 6 months... Hercules won't. Hercules versus MTS

Kanaplax in the food, salt and catappa are all good together. I would need to re-read, but I want to say the Jungle Fungus won't work as well with botanicals in the tank (see if there's a warning on the bottle maybe?) @Odd Duck might know. After a while, I quit using anything other than indian almond leaves (catappa) and salt. The rest of the treatments seemed to cause more stress and the cost benefit ratio wasn't sufficient. That being said, body rot can quickly lead to septicemia (blood infection). If at all possible, get slides (I don't remember what you need to stain the slides) and get Odd Duck the pictures of the slides to identify if the body rot is a gram positive or gram negative bacterial infection. Each require specific antibiotics if you actually want to help the fish. Antibiotics are gram specific (what works on one, won't work on the other). Occasionally you can see more than one bacterial infection, and the fish will need two different types of antibiotics.

The caradina will like your water with minimal adjusting. I just picked up my Salty Shrimp from The Fish Room yesterday during the podcast for my 2.5 gallon tank. It's my only tank I seriously play with numbers, everything else get's a water strip test before the water change, and the degree of variation between the tap/gallon jugs and the tank determines the max amount of water I'll take out. Keep It Simple Sweetie is a fabulous motto to live by! (I don't keep any softwater fish, like discus, because I now live in the desert, and that's not the water I have). Mmiller is a godsend (or would it be a tanksend🧐) for learning how to frontload. I took his information, looked at my lived reality, and adjusted formy living experience.

My recommendation as well, I had gone to grab the thread link before I saw Odd Duck had posted it, @TomO

I second this! @ArmandoNvs your snails will eat damaged plants. It'sliterally their job. As the plants' nutritional deficiency gets worse, the snails will eat more, and if they detect the roots are unhealthy they will dig up the plants to eat the damaged roots. To get my snails (and shrimp) to stop digging up my plants in my Scapes from Scraps tank, I had to feed the shrimp & snails, and the plants better. Mmiller & Seattle_Aquarist helped me learn how.

Ya know.... I have an entire grow out for planaria. I wonder how much better of a microscope I need to get to show/record the Reverse Osmosis?🧐

You and I are in similar situation, except in addition to being outside disabled person budget, I think they are irresponsible in a drought... especially in the desert. I have been happy with my ZeroWater, especially since the TDS water meter is high quality and worth almost as much as what I paid for the ZeroWater filter. I signed up online, and essentially get a free filter for every 4 filters I return right now (once cost of shipping and everything is covered) I follow the directions! Completely empty the reservoir, so you know the TDS of the newly filtered water (don't want to mix 6 TDS filtered water with 400 TDS filtered water, and it will make that "membrane is ionized" to 😲 really fast!) I test the TDS every fill. It works for when I just need to top off (don't have the spoons for a water change), or like since March, when water aurhority has done something funky to the water supply.🧐 It even removes the residue from the jet fuel spill that contaminated our water supply.

I would test the tank one more time with the strips. The strips are showing variation between different water sources, and as long as they are kept dry, and stored in a cool dry place I have not had problems with the strips. When the reagents in the liquid test go bad, I have gotten reverse reactions, especially if I accidentally contaminated the bottle, or accidentally swithced bottle placement and used one other than the one I thought I grabbed.

Mine hide in the black rocks, the darker the substrate the more of their darker coloring shows up. Lighter substrate and they fade a little bit. The day they came home, doing drip acclimation If you study the gravel and rocks long enough, you can find blue shrimp and shrimplettes. Some are almost black, with a blue sheen, unless I put a light behind them.

Blue Dreams/Blue Velvet/Blue Dream Velvets are graded on the richness of the blue and the quality (no blemishes) of the shell. The way color genetics and lighting work, you will see some black shrimp in there. You can separate out and start another tank of carbons (black shrimp with that metallic blue gene that will pop up due the genetics of the blue dreams) or leave in there and keep an eye out to make sure you don't get any browns (it will ruin your blues). Congratualtions, having the black shrimp in thee should give you a wider genetic base, and reduce the number of defects that show up, as long as you don't see any browns or "muddy blues" If you have no interest in selling/specific aesthetics, then ignore everything I said and just enjoy your shrimp.