Remi de Groot

1. What was the first fish you ever kept in some sort of an aquarium? Fancy goldfish in a small fishbowl as a kid. Didn't work out great... 2. What tank are you most proud of and why? I changed an old 2nd hand terrarium used for a bearded dragon into an paladarium. Was a big DIY project. - Resealing it all so the water would actually stay in the tank (took me a few try's). - Making a background with expandable foam and fern roots. - Making a watering system with a small water pump and hoses. - Adding floodlights inside the tank as lighting - Scaping the waterpart and background with plants. Has been running for nearly 1,5 years now and the first thing people go to when entering our house. Did some projects after that and i think i would do pretty much everything different if i had to do it again. But still very proud of the work i did. And some day.. I think i'll just start all over and try to do it even better. 3. How did you get here, specifically to these forums? Covid Lockdowns made me stay home for months in a row. Started the aquarium hobby first and watched some Dutch Youtube video's to learn some new things. In one of the video's they talked about the Co-op channel, so i had to check it out. Seen most of the video's so far and decided i could learn even more by going on the forum. No regrets so far. 4. What is something you think you do to make the hobby easier for yourself that others can use? Let nature do his thing. Don't try to be some god that can fix it all. I found out that how harder i try. The worse it get's. 5. What is something you specifically wish for guidance with in the hobby? Still strugling a lot when fish get sick. Especially because no strong meds are allowed in the Netherlands. I do use salt sometimes. But still feels like a lucky shot when a fish actually survives and still not sure if it's because of my doing or that the fish would have been fine without any help from me and the salt. 6. What fish do you miss most? Had a really nice fancy goldfish 10 years ago. Was living a great live untill i went on a holiday and my landlord was taking care of it. The guy was feeding the amount of food in a week i would have given in a year i guess. Didn't end well again (me and fancy goldfish, never a happy ending). 7. How often do you change water? Is this the same for all of your tanks? Paladarium weekly. It's a bit overstocked and has a lot of dead leaves from the land area. Regular tank when nitrates numbers start to rise a bit to much without using fertz. Shrimp tanks when the tds gets to high. 8. What is better, one big tank or a rack of 20Gs, why? I would go for a rack of 20G's. I like to try new things. So more tanks is more space to try different things i guess. 9. When was the last time you spent 30 minutes staring at a tank? Just did a rescape of my regular tank. Didn't like the tank at all before that. After it was finished i spend a long time just watching the fish explore the tank. Great to see that the fish did almost exactly what i was hoping for. Diamant Tetra's where more in the front of the tank because of the hardscape in the back. Cory's hiding underneath the leaves in the sandy part of the tanks and the endlers chasing each other trough the planted area. 10. What is your favorite food to feed your tanks? Frozen food. Love to see the fish nipping at the cube and trying to get the biggest peace. Only time i actually see them chase each other away and sort of defender their peace of the food. Feeding shrimps some round pallets are fun as well. They actually try to carry them away from the feeding area to be sure they got the whole pallet for themself. The bigger ones actually manage to swim away but are struggling not to sink to the bottom. XD

Never really cleaned a tank before setting it up to be fair. Always doing a water test before setting it up though. So it gets a single rinse before i use it. But thats it.

Considering a rescape is the reason to do a rescape for me. I actually think (re)scaping a tank is one of the best things about the hobby. As @Mynameisnobody is saying. If you don't enjoy the tank it will become a chore. I just did a rescape of one of my tanks. Went from just feeding it daily back to looking at it multiple times a day. Enjoying the tank way more, enjoying the fish way more and in general take way better care of it all as well.

General rule: if it fits in the mouth, it will get eaten. On purpose or by accident. But some fish are definitely more aggressive then others. But if the main goal is breeding I wouldn't add any fish. I've spoken a breeder on Vivarium this year that kept his caridina shrimp with longfin albino ancistrus.

Isn't the aquasoil the cause of all your questions? As far as I know most soils will leech little bit of nutrition when new in the tank. Most of them not that much though that it causes any issues. But the numbers you have are those kind if small, not peoblematic, numbers. Also the other way around it may take some of the kh/gh out of the water into the substrate itself. The ph is different during the day, with other readings in the morning then in the evening. That might explain the difference there.

With the normal energy prices I would agree it's just part of the hobby. But with the current prices of gas and electricity in Europe since the war in Ukrain things have changed. Energy bills have increased up to 300/400%. Even people that never had a struggle with paying the bills are looking into ways to save some energy to be able to pay it all. At the moment I'm paying $0,55 per Kwh. So a 400 watt pump is 3500 KwH a year. Makes it a $1925 bill. If I could split that in half and save $900 that's sounds like a good saving to me. I have to work a couple of weeks for that kind of money. Even people with a Ferrari that can't afford the high fuell prices will look for a cheaper gas station before selling the Ferrari.

I agree with @Pepere. And if you don't trust it. Just reseal the tank. It's actually not that hard of a task and actually fun to do. King of DIY has some great older videos how to do it (before his ADHD kicked into his videos).

Sorry to hear and totally feel you on the stress of the numbers of fish getting out of control. I experienced a similar feeling a few months ago when i started with Endler guppies. I knew they go fast. But didn't expect the numbers to grow that fast. Only luck i had was that i found out that my Diamond Tetra's in another tank don't mind some 'live food'. When seperating males and females as an sollution for the overpopulation and putting the females in that tank problems ended. When i was sure the Diamond Tetra's ate most of the baby's i've added the males to that tank a few weeks later as well. Now i do it the other way around. I place some pregnant females in a seperate tank if i need more Endlers (i do sell some online). Grow out the baby's in that tank and when they are big enough so they won't be eaten i place them back in the community tank.

With the high energy prices in Europe at the moment we are looking more and more into places where we can save some energy. One of the biggest 'users' at the moment is our outdoor pond, with the filter running 24/7 and a UV light in summer. For that reason i'm currently looking into cheaper options for the filterpump. The most common way of filtration here in The Netherlands in aquariums seems to be a cannister filter. Last few years i've been following co-op and learned about the benefits and way of working of other filtration systems. This makes me believe that most of the tanks in this country have way more filtration then actually needed. I guess Eheim did a good job advertising strong filters here ;). Same thing seems to be for outdoor ponds. Most of the information i can find online in Dutch are about Koi ponds with filtration that seems to be even more powerfull then the system filtering our drinking water (ok, not that strong. But you get the point 😉). This makes it hard for me to decide how much filtration i actually need. So i was wondering about your opinions. Our pond is 12.000 liter (3.170 gallon) and has 15 adult Golden Orfe (Leuciscus idus) and about the same amount of baby's from last spring. Besides that we also have 4 Comet Goldfish in the pond. The pond is a bit planted. But because the way they the previous owners build the pond it's not as much as i've wanted. The pond has a pressure filter with sponge as filtermedia. How much liter/gallon an hour would you guys use for a pond like this? I've seen numbers online going from 50% of the total water in the pond up to 2 or 3 times the watercapicity. Picture of the pond. But because of the winter hard to see. Only planted area is a small strip on the left side of the pond. Mostly planted with yellow iris.

My phone won't let me finish my last post. So I make it a double post. Sorry for that. What I wanted to say is that your water should be a source of Calcium as well for the shrimp. I've never had any Calcium related problems in one of my tanks tbh.The fact that Nanotankbank wants to add 2 of the pallets is exactly why I would suggest someone with just a few shrimps not to feed. The change of overfeeding is just so big. If you start feeding: look for a complete food balanced for shrimp. And feed as little as possible with that food. (So the smallest size you can brake the wafer/stick into) and remover the left overs after an hour. Do the feeding only once a week and only start to add an second day in the week if the shrimp actually finished the food provided within the hour.

I've seen way more shrimp die because of overfeeding then because of a lack of Calcium.

With only 5 shrimps I don't think there is any reason to feed. An algae wafer is already way to much. Just start feeding if they start to get more.

Tip for water change can be to put an panty around the hose or use an airtube to do the waterchange.

I think water testing is the key here and not some internet wisedom. Just keep adding some fish in over time and see how the tank is handeling the new bioload. Test every couple of days to see the changes in your parameters. When the parameters go up just estimate how much water you have to change and if you are able to handle the amount of changes. This will be probably different for everyone. So the amount of fish/filtration in a tank will be different for everyone as well. Personally i know i'll be skipping water changes once in a while in a busy period. So i try to keep my tanks a bit lower in stock and heavier planted so there won't be any harm in skipping the water change. I know other people are just fine with big water changes daily.

Do you have regular gravel/sand in your tank or some 'special' substrate that are good for plants. My experience with the last one is that they may release nutritions in the water when being disturbed to much.