NetBelleAnie

So, after letting it sit in the tank for 2 months, my spiderwood is finally nice and waterlogged enough to stay sunk. However, I want to attatch some anubias nana petite to it. Can I superglue it while it's still underwater, or should I just pull it out of the tank entirely, dry the section to be glued and then try?

@Odd Duck you can stay on your soapbox, I understand all of this. Considering that prepared pet food has only been in existence for maybe the last hundred years (canned horse meat from leftover warhorses from WW1) while dogs have been surviving off of human scraps since they separated from wolves, while cats have always been used as pest control, it seems almost silly how people will preach that their pets need the finest cuts of human-grade meat to live. I just wonder about how different sources of nutrient types affect the average healthy fish. Is the protein from salmon or krill better than the protein from fish meal? Is the protein from fish meal better than the protein from soy wheat or pea? I'm not sure how advanced the taste bugs are on the average freshwater species of fish, but I know both movement and smell can stimulate feeding (at least it works for trout/bass fishing). It just always gives me pause when I see items like "dried bakery product" as a listed ingredient (Looking at you algae wafers) or "hydrolyzed vegetable sucrose polyesters" which is Olestra. (The things you learn from reading things like science studies on the internet.)

So, lemme preface this by saying I'm basing my thoughts on what I know from keeping cats and dogs and may have no bearing on anything aquatic. In dog and cat food, some ingredients are considered the best, and some the worst. Pure meat meals (beef, chicken, lamb, etc) are considered the best things universally to have, while many cheaper starches (corn gluten, wheat gluten, soy, etc) are considered filler or even bad to have. Other things (rice meal, pea meal) are in the middle ground. As someone who has had animals that are allergic to corn, to chicken, or to some unknown (that made my cat vomit blood, yuck), I spend a lot of time staring at ingredient lists deciding what is good for my animals. Now, there's the grain-free fad, which can make it harder to find a food with the ingredients you want (wanting something with rice or grains but no chicken products was very hard). There are literally thousands of foods devoted to just 2 different species (cats and dogs), but when it comes to fish foods, there's maybe a few hundred commercially prepped food for hundreds, if not thousands of species in the aquarium. My question is, how do you decide which ingredients are right for the fish you are keeping? Do we look at the ingredients themselves, and decide if it's a good choice, even though there's no way x species would eat x ingredient in the wild? Krill, prawns and brine shrimp are very popular in tropical foods, but those are all oceanic species, not something you'd find in freshwater. Every dry food requires binders like wheat, soy, etc just so the product remains in a form that doesn't rot immediately upon opening the container, but I doubt the average betta or tetra would naturally eat a piece of those starches if you stuck it in front of them. Letting the pet choose isn't always viable, since I know that no matter what the species, if a food seems more appealing (by sight,, smell or taste) doesn't mean it's actually healthier for them. (I will pick a cheeseburger over a salad every time, and my Labradors have eaten anything from frozen steaks, squirrels, parakeets to ceramic briquettes, bars of soap and more.) Even if we go into basics like carnivore and herbivore diets, every veggie diet has a bunch of fish or crustacean based foods added usually as one of the top 5 ingredients based on weight. So, how do we pick? I'm curious to know everyone's thoughts, since it seems every manufacturer thinks their food is the best, and it gets tiring going through individual product reviews on any website when people don't give proper reviews.

I was wondering if anyone has tried using Fritz Maracyn Oxy in their tanks. The SDS says it's a proprietary chemical, but I'm assuming it's some peroxide type chemical. I'm curious how it would work with shrimp and snails, since the packaging says "Not suitable for use with starfish or related species; safe for use with other types of invertebrates" Thoughts?

Just wanted to say thanks everyone. I managed to clean everything up, and my baby cories and guppies are getting some decapsulated brine shrimp untill I get hatching again. Washing the towels a second time hopefully will remove the smell, if not it'll be an emergency fish and boating towel. The microworms are doing just fine, but I've yet to see any grindalworms, hopefully they're not dead.

So, I've been having a bad day. It was snowing today after 2 weeks of it being 65 degrees out, and it's been downright chilly inside. Been hatching brine shrimp at 65 degrees (I don't have a dedicated heating for my fish hallway), so I harvested some of them at the 2 day mark today, and was going to harvest more tomorrow hopefully. My hatchery was currently standing on the floor, in front of the counter where I store excess hardware tools I ordered a new grindal worm/ microworm culture a week ago and they arrived early, to my mailbox down the hill a quarter mile from the house, where it is still 40 degrees outside. So I frantically brought them in, and went to look for a tool to make hole punches for the lid of the tupperware since my dremel is not cooperating with me. I was going through the drawer when I heard a knock, felt a wet splash and realized that I have now spilled about 1.5 liters of salt water and brine shrimp eggs onto the floor, over my socks and everywhere else.. I'm attempting cleanup, but I expect eggs will be everywhere since the floor is tilted slightly and there's a pile of stuff I have to remove to clean up everything. To add insult to injury, I'm not sure how my worm cultures will fair. When I opened the box, it was upside down, the microworm lid was coming off at the corner, and I haven't seen a single worm in the grindal worm culture yet. I'm hoping getting everything to room temp will improve things, but at the moment, I'm just feeling kinda miserable. What we do to keep our pets happy.

I'd like to point out that delivery time is affected by location, and not in the usual way one would think. I live in an area where 50% of the time, the local USPS is delivering not only postal, but for Amazon, UPS and FedEx as well, while the other 50% the usual services do their own delivery. I'm not sure how often this happens elsewhere (I live in the sticks in horse and camping country), but I wonder how often things get lost because of issues like that. It seems to come down to who is working at the time your package is going through and whether they are a good worker or a bad worker. In my 20 years of buying stuff on the internet, I've only ever remembered never recieving 1 package ordered via USPS. Only other times I've had slow shipping speeds is when I've ordered from Russia and far east Asia with no tracking (Alibaba and BJD supplies) so I am not sure if I am lucky or not. I have been frustrated many times when I've had packages delivered only to find out that they're stuck in the mailbox half a mile from our house because it was faster than coming up the driveway.

This is basically what I did. I used glasshead straightpins to hold mine shut, since I originally intended to use some silicone to glue them together, but I've been a bit lazy about it and haven't gotten around to it.

I did a rough count of 50, I'll be happy if 20 survive.

Introduced 3 new adult cories to my group of 8+ (I haven't counted how many I have and I have a lot of plants and hungry fish) on Feb 5. Fish came from a Sacramento Aquarium Society club meet, and due to limited space went straight in the 55 gallon community after a 2 hour drip acclimation. On Feb 7, about 1/10th of the total surface area of my tank was covered in cory eggs. In an attempt to safe some from being eaten, I used an old gift card to scrape some into a cup. I used a 16 oz deli container, glued an airline in through the bottom and floated it inside the tank, running an airstone to keep the water flowing, but seperate from the main tank. Added a drop of methyl blue, added the eggs, and waited. Feb 10th I went to check the floating bubble cup and found some wigglers. I used a giant pipette to carefully siphon out the hatchlings into a seperate cup, while the unhatched and bad eggs were removed, given clean water, and replaced in the floating bubble cup. Fry were added to my floating coffee filter (reusable basket I had previously used to seperate guppy fry from main tank, due to me not being able to locate my breeder nets) along with java moss and fogbit for cover. Fry are feeding off of yolks and highly active. Added one small ramshorn to coffee filter for clean up crew, and is floating underneath an aquaclear 30 filter (hanging on main tank to cycle it for another tank) water trickle.

Gotta love it when you do nothing and babies just show up in the tank. Must mean something is going right.

No objections here, Pygmy cories are adorable. Now if someone could come up with a healthy albino strain, so I could see them easily in back of the tank behind the rocks, wood, sand and plants. Because I don't want to tear down my tank to get a head count.

Awhile back I bought 3 trios of Albino Blue guppies, and even though I was feeding heavily at the time, they never seemed to eat and they all ended up dying. (every other fish in the tank was healthy except for those guppies in particular) I'm thinking of trying again, but I'm worried that the same thing will happen. Are albino guppies blind/have poor eyesight, or could it have been from the strain not being as hardy as other guppies?

I need a new heater for my 20 gallon aquarium before things start getting much colder. (Fishtanks are at the end of a hallway with no door, so can't heat the room area). Our indoor temperature is currently getting down to 64F and the tank seems to be staying around 68-70 on a good day, but I'd rather it be at least 76. Tank is for growing out guppies, and housing my snails and shrimp, with a medium Coop sponge filter. Any recommendations for what heaters are currently available? Brands and types?

I would like to have room to set up some 10 gallon tanks in my fish area. The area I'm planning on using is 44" wide and 63" high, and I can do up to 18 inches deep. The biggest commercial built wire rack I could buy would be 42" x 18" wide. As I've never undergone this sort of thing before, any suggestions with what I could do besides that? What designs for a self-built rack would I go with (if using standard 2x4s or the like)? Any links to articles on building would be great.

Out of curiosity, what 3d printer do you use to print your fish stuff? (there's so many types and such I'm just interested in one I could print small items such as what you have designed)

Help! I thought I was removing a clump of bubbles in some hair algae and I found eggs! I dont know who left them. Of the fish I have in multiples and seem likely are pygmy corys, neon tetras or sparkling gourami? (Not including my albino cories because they have bigger eggs as they keep laying them on the glass, and ony have 1 bristlenose pleco and 1 siamese algae eater, and the guppy already had fry) I know gourami make bubble nests, but it was on top of hair algae, so the bubbles are now gone. Any suggestions as to who left them and what to do now?

So, I have a bunch of hair algae in my tank, most of it is intertwined with my guppy grass, java moss, and even the water lettuce roots. I've tried hand removal, and the combined might of my bristlenose pleco, 4 amano shrimp and an army of ramshorn snails have barely put a dent in it. Should I try using something like Tetra Algae Control (after moving the shrimp and snails to another tank) or is there something that actually eats it?

I got some albino guppies in the mail on Thursday and one of them died a few hours ago. Another one is showing similar symptoms with the split fin and some blood on the edges of the fins. I'm pretty sure its fin rot, but as I was unable to set up a quarantine tank before hand (no room due to construction), so since none of my other tank mates (12 pygmy cories, 8 albino cories, 2 pygmy gourami, 1 bristlenose pleco, 6 amano shrimp and a bunch of ramshorn snails) have been medicated, I'm dosing the entire 55 gal. The only thing I'm wondering if my ramshorn snails and amano shrimp will be able to survive the quarantine trio meds? PH: 7.0 Nitrates: 10 ppm Nitrite: 0 Ammonia: 0 GH: 300 ppm KH: 60 ppm Temperature: 75.5*F

Looks like bladder snails, they could have come on the plants. I have some in my tank I am trying to remove (so I can have my prefered, more colorful ramshorn snails) that probably came in on plants.

Didn't realize the PH changes with temperature, I keep the tank at 75 but room is usually around 69-71 where I test. I'll look into a digital one, it's hunting that's the hard part. I used both the tests, and after repeatedly finding the regular one having the hightest reading possible while the high range before would be at the absolute lowest, I started testing only the high-range as the tests started leaning more alkaline. I'm pretty sure the mixture of Onyx-sand and Eco-complete and my 7.4 tapwater are combining, but I would assume that the 3 little pieces of malasian driftwood's tannins would start counteracting that.

So I set up my 55g, it's doing pretty good at the moment, but I keep having issues when testing my water. When I use either the Aquarium Co-op or API test strips, my PH reads around 6.8 - 7, but when I use the API liquid test (high range) it says it's about an 8. My KH is 4 and GH is 6. Any idea what is happening? All the tests are fresh, but I can't figure out why the PH reading is so different between them.

Try using aquarium silicone to glue the wood down to the tile/slate?

Like I said, I did get it to work again, but during the time it "died", I tried it on several other usb chargers and none of them worked. Just something to be mindful about.

Nope, that's exactly what I ment, Right now everything is planted temporarily since I'm still debating what goes where, and ignoring the fact my fluval 406 and spraybar arn't connected yet, replacing the hosing still.