Sarina

It actually comes with a second lens, too, if you want to change the light cone. It's like $45 on amazon, so def worth a shot for how well designed it seems to be. I was mostly salty at Fluval for not making a 12" version like everyone else 😂 [Fluval if you're listening, make the aquasky in a nano.] A girl can dream, right?

So far I'm really impressed with this little light. It's nothing fancy, but it looks great and feels really well built. At full power it does get pretty hot, but not enough to burn you. The LED diode is honestly huge, I'm surprised it doesn't get hotter. I will definitely keep people posted on how my plants do and how much algae I end up with 😅 I really wanted a Fluval aquasky 2.0, but the shortest one is 15" and I was kinda bummed about it until I turned on the Lominie and saw how good it looked. We shall see what the plants say in due time!

The easiest plant you're going to find for an axie tank is java moss. It will tolerate temps down to 59°f, though it will grow more slowly at lower temperatures. It's easy to find, easy to care for, and is very attractive. Java ferns and anubias also may work, but they may not. Java ferns can be finicky, I've always had trouble with them, at least. It might look pretty cool if you can get an entire carpet of Java Moss going. It'll help suck up nitrates, too. To propagate more moss to make an entire tanks worth, try cutting up pieces of the moss and sticking the pieces in some jars in a window with a bit of air and a few drops of easy green. I also cultured some daphnia by accident that way, my fish loved it!

I hope it works out for you! I totally forgot about heater controllers, which is silly since I have lots of them 🤦🏻‍♀️

Fluvals are good, I think that's what Cory recommends if I remember correctly? Don't quote me on that. I have a mix of different brands and my favorite is the cobalt neotherm, but they're super expensive now, unfortunately. I've had my 200w for 3 years and it's still accurate and functioning.

Yeah I'd definitely swap the heater out. Eheims are usually pretty reliable, but there's a chance yours is stuck.

Definitely not a weird question, do you have a heater in the tank? Sometimes dropping the temp can discourage breeding.

I have 3 Florida Flagfish as a clean up crew for hair algae and they have completely eradicated it from my pond. They can be slightly territorial, but they wouldn’t dare go after an angel. They’re hardy little buggers and the males are very pretty when full grown, and they’re usually okay being by themselves. I would imagine that they might eat the hydra, as well, since they really aren’t picky eaters.

This is crazy cool, what do you plan to do with a setup like this? Looks like saltwater setups, will you use them for saltwater as well, or just freshwater?

Planted Nano Pea Puffer Cube For the first time ever, I have a beautiful rimless all-in-one aquarium. Over the weekend, my partner and I picked up a Tideline AIO 11.3G, which is just under 14” cubed. Our eventual goal is to house a single pea puffer (and possibly some amano shrimp as cleanup crew). As a seasoned aquarist, I know this aquarium will take a while to establish before I can add our new tiny friend. In the mean time, I will be keeping a journal about its progress. Full disclosure, I did pretty much pull this entire post directly from my blog. I use the blog to share information with friends and family and document my journey, but it makes it rather easy when I can format it there and just paste everything over here to spark conversation. Hope you enjoy! 💚ALL PLANTS ARE FROM AQUARIUM CO-OP💚 The Process Substrate Egg crate structure with *Magic Mud™️ There are two additional layers of egg crate stacked in the back to create depth without using excess substrate. It also brings the nutrient layer up a bit so it’s easier for the plants in the back to reach. As you can see, there’s about 1/2” of space from the edge of the egg crate to the glass, allowing me to keep a clean edged look on this rimless tank. In the back, I have a total of 1.5” of nutrient-rich layer. This will help feed the Sagittaria subulata (dwarf sag), Ludwigia repens, and Helanthium tenellum (dwarf chain sword) without having to reach their roots through 4” of sand. Hardscape Initial substrate pour. Sand is Caribsea Super Naturals Torpedo Beach and accent gravel is Spectrastone shallow creek regular. Addition of hardscape. I am unsure what kind of wood this is, but it’s very splintery and the glue wasn’t holding very well. Instead, I chose to zip tie it temporarily to ensure it doesn’t disturb anything or shift when I filled the tank. The rocks are a grayish toned dragon stone. All hardscape and sand was acquired from Dallas North Aquarium, which is an excellent store and I do highly recommend them. Top-down view. As you can see, I chose a budget light, the Lominie Asta 20. I will write a full review once I have tested the light for a decent period of time, but so far I really like it. Planting Addition of Sagittaria subulata – contained in the back corner behind the hard scape. My hope is that the hardscape will keep it from taking over the tank. This stuff grows fast and I really don’t want to be yanking up runners every week. Cryptocoryne wendtii sp. pink flamingo in the front (I am so ridiculously excited about this plant, it’s so pretty!) and Ludwigia repens just behind. Althernanthera reineckii and Helanthium tenellum added, and some baby java ferns tucked into the holes in the rocks. We added some Anubias nana petite, some Bucephalandra sp. Green wavy, and shoved some moss (Christmas moss? Unknown sp) into the splintery bits of the driftwood. The zip tie is a bit unsightly, but I would much rather have an unsightly zip tie for a month than have my hard work ruined by a stubborn piece of wood. I squeezed an established sponge filter over the tank, filled it, and started up the filter! After about 10 hours, the water is tannic, but no longer super hazy. The filter pump is a little too aggressive for my liking, so I have one on order that’s a much slower 80gph instead of 150gph. A single pea puffer isn’t going to need that much crazy filtration, and quite honestly the poor thing would probably get blown around by the flow. I’ll reserve the pump that came with the tank for another project. Final thoughts This scape turned out pretty great, and I’m really enjoying staring at it, even without livestock. I uploaded a YouTube short of the “sparkle” that happens in this aquarium that photos just can’t accurately capture. You can find that video here if you’re curious. *Magic Mud™️ is a product of my own design that I am still working on perfecting. Its main components are organic worm castings and natural red clay. The egg crate is simply there to keep everything in place and to avoid having the soil slide down to the edges of the aquarium, giving it a nice clean look all the way around without sacrificing a nutrient-dense base layer. Want to see more? Follow me @Nirvanaquatics on Instagram and Facebook!

Oh man I totally was not expecting this many responses and I kinda dropped off for a bit there 😅 I am so excited to share my knowledge with everyone and I hope I can help some people out. I’m no expert, by any means, but this is by far my favorite hobby and I’m very much looking forward to sharing everything I learn along the way. If anyone wants to see more photos or follow me on other social media you can find me on pretty much every platform @nirvanaquatics Things I’ve learned in the past few days: heavy rain in North Texas means high chlorine and chloramine levels in tap water, so definitely don’t do water changes after it rains. Learned that the hard way, but figured out the issue because of aquarium co-op test strips. I kind of scoffed at the chlorine test on the strips until I needed it, so a special thanks to Cory for the inclusion of that particular pad! I’m currently experimenting with the PPS Pro estimated index fertilization method for my outdoor pond, since I have so many different varieties of plants in there and very light stocking. So far, I have only been doing it for a week and I’ve already seen a marked improvement in stem plant condition and growth. Whatever deficiencies I had before seem to be a nonissue now, but I will continue to report on my findings. I am dosing for medium light, so the dry salts break down to the following daily dose for 50 gallons: K2SO4: 0.293g KNO3: 0.326g KH2PO4: 0.029g MgSO4: 0.202g Micromix: 0.143g I may or may not have done a lot of math to just do dry dosing since I can’t stand the bottles that GLA sends with their fertilizers. I tried them, and I do not recommend them. If I could do it over again, I’d just do weekly measurements of the dry dosage and avoid mixing the full bottles entirely because I have really only been using the pre-mixed stuff for soaking new safe-t-sorb. If nothing else, I would definitely prefer at least an amber or cobalt bottle so that UV degradation wasn’t a risk. I think these ferts are fairly stable due to the EDTA+DTPA formulation, however an opaque or UV filtering container is always recommended for mixtures that have the potential to degrade with exposure to UV. I will note that measuring out dry ferts is a bit time consuming and you do have to have an incredibly accurate scale, but since I’m only dosing one tank at the moment it has simply become part of my daily routine. I may go back to doing a pre-mix once I have more tanks that I’m dosing, however at the moment I’m pretty happy with the results just doing the dry salts. Well, at least until I can get my hands on some UV resistant glass bottles. I will wait until I’ve been dosing for a few more weeks to do an independent post about my findings on the GLA PPS Pro system on my ultra low-tech pond, but those are my thoughts so far 😊

Hello from Texas! I have been reading the co-op’s blog and the C.A.R.E forum for quite a while now, but never felt knowledgeable enough to really participate until now. My name is Sarina and I’m originally from Washington state, but now reside in North Texas. I actually used to live a few miles from the co-op store and wandering into that place one day was how I got into fish keeping and plant cultivation. I’ve been in the hobby for around four years, however I did have to give up everything and completely restart due to the move. Currently I only have two operational “tanks” if you could call them that... I have a “porch pond” which is actually a 55 gallon clear tub, and a 2.3g cylinder that was given to me for free. The porch pond featuring the view from my apartment: The porch pond shortly after setup, I keep meaning to take better photos of what it looks like now, but it’s low on my priority list: The “jar” aquarium, currently a rehab tank for the sad epiphyte plants I got on major discount: The tub is actually doing surprisingly well, considering it was an outdoor experiment. It’s been running for nearly 2 months and I now have a school of longfin zebra danios and some Flagfish for algae cleanup. Oh, and like... hundreds of ramshorn snails. No livestock in the jar aquarium other than some snails, I actually just put all those epiphyte plants in last night, plus some pennywort to hopefully decrease nitrates enough to avoid an algae bloom. There isn’t any artificial light on it, so I’m crossing my fingers that algae will stay away. My future projects include: A foggy bog style plant propagation tank to grow emersed aquatic plants Making my own root tabs and testing them against a few major brands DIY tissue cultures - “kitchen cultures” Plus many more, I’m sure. I will be writing about these experiments on my blog (nirvanaquatics.water.blog) but I’ll also be journaling about things here, as well. I hope everyone is safe and well, and I look forward to sharing my experiences with all of you. Stay lovely 🍀