Irene
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Posts posted by Irene
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Looking good! Yes to what everyone said previously about tying down or gluing the java fern to a piece of rock or other decoration. If you're going to bury the java fern in the substrate, just make sure not to cover up the rhizome. The air stone isn't necessary in a sponge filter - it just makes the sponge filter a little more efficient and it lessens the bubbling noise a lot if the sound bothers you.
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Here are the 58 juvenile dwarf red coral platies I had in a grow-out tank, all trying to reach that last piece of Repashy gel food. Ended up selling 50 of them to my LFS and keeping 8. Such a stunning red-orange color, especially in a planted tank.
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I just finished listening the podcast that @Preston John did with Randy. Very interesting, especially the description of how hard it is to keep the spotted congo puffer babies well-fed and how he made tons of infusoria for them. I wonder if Preston would be willing to share his secret recipe for odorless paramecium. Pretty pleeease? 🙂
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Ah you're right, she may have parasites. I usually use Fritz ParaCleanse to treat for tapeworms, and if it doesn't solve it, then I try levamisole from selectaquatics.com to treat for roundworms. (Both dewormers usually require 2 treatments with a 2-week waiting period in between.) Given that she may have had worms for several months, not sure if it's too late for her but it's always worth a shot.
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29 minutes ago, Jay said:
When you ship, do you use usps or ups or FedEx or what
We use USPS Priority shipping (takes 1-3 days if there aren't any delays). Here are a couple of pages that talk about the shipping process:
Shipping Policy for Aquarium Co-Op | Freshwater Aquarium Supplies
WWW.AQUARIUMCOOP.COMUse our interactive map to find out how long your shipping takes for your order. Watch our packing process and learn about our live arrival guarantee. Fast Shipping Policy
WWW.AQUARIUMCOOP.COMHands down, we have the fastest handling time and ship quick. We over-staff so that your orders go out as fast as possible, if you order during business hours, we often ship it the same day. We ship everything(yes, even the big...-
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Nice haul! The little fuzzy plant kinda looks like Mayaca fluviatilis.
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Lol, that video of you pushing the discus away! I love how inquisitive they seem. The picture labeling all your plants is very helpful too. I may just have to push discus to the top of my "large aquarium" bucket list now.
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How beautiful! The little bubbler on the left is really cute too. I've really enjoyed my dwarf aquarium lily with its huge leaves and reddish-brown color. Congrats on getting your first lily pad!
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3 hours ago, clovenpine said:
Do you track by tank or by task? I'm going to build a workbook today and I'm thinking about how best to organize it.
I track by tank. I don't have many tanks so they're currently all in one spreadsheet, but I could easily divide them into different tabs.
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Yes, my mollies and platies both pick off algae from any surface they can. Love these little guys.
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I agree - increasing potassium will probably do a world of good for your java fern. Here's another similar forum post that has some more ideas for potassium supplements:
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Awww, thank you! I'm especially proud of my profile pic, since I just took that as a cell phone selfie next to my kitchen window. I need to update my aquarium picture too. The tank is finally balanced and no longer looks like algae heaven.
Before:
4 months later:
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That's awesome! What's your secret to flowering?
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Wow, I can't wait to see how this tank (and the betta fish) turns out! Interested to see what others have to say about the heater guard.
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On 10/16/2020 at 9:11 PM, Jessica. said:
Perhaps @Irene can also chime in, as it sounds like she's using easy green and equilibrium. I think I read in another thread that Irene was actually dosing extra potassium in with flourish advance for java ferns – is my memory correct on that?
Yup! I dose Easy Green for my base line, add Equilibrium because I have low GH, and then I had to add Flourish Advance to increase the potassium level because my plants were getting pin holes and my java fern was so potassium hungry. Here is the full explanation, as well as the link to the potassium kit I used:
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1 hour ago, Jessica. said:
Seachem equilibrium, or add crushed coral to your filter or substrate. Equilibrium is the easiest for me to figure out the dosing on.
Fully agree with Jessica. Crushed coral is better at raising KH, whereas Seachem Equilibrium is easier to measure out and accurately dose for adding primarily calcium and raising GH. I used Wonder Shells but didn't have a great idea of how it increased GH since it dissolves slowly over time. My tap water comes with 3 dGH, and 1/2 tsp of Equilibrium per 10 gallons raises my water by approximately 1-2 dGH.
Note: Equilibrium doesn't dissolve very well if you add a ton of it all at once, so I only tend to add 1/2 tsp per 10 gallons at a time and gradually build up as needed.
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12 hours ago, TheDukeAnumber1 said:
Just three foods here, and I do it Irene style, small portions are bottled off and the rest stays in the original container sealed in a bag in the fridge. I feed live baby brine, Xtreme Nano, and Northfin Fry Krill Food.
Ah, I really like the glass spice jars you use to contain them! They're dishwasher safe and a lot easier to clean than my plastic fish jars. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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39 minutes ago, Dandy Pearl said:
Is there an option to 'bookmark' posts? or to have some form of 'collective knowledge'?
Might be a good suggestion for @Cory. I believe he's slowly releasing new forum features so that we have time to adapt to them and not get overwhelmed by all the changes. 🙂
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Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that! I've kept honey gouramis before, but I've never seen symptoms like that before. I downloaded the video and I'm not sure if her roundness is from eggs or worms, so I think you're right about trying to observe her poop to see if it's abnormal or not. Maybe someone else in the forum has some suggestions?
If the fish never went through the quarantine med trio, it might be worth putting them through it just to try to give the remaining fish a clean bill of health. Here is an article from Aquarium Co-Op about how to treat with those medications. Let us know what happens!
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1 minute ago, Phill D said:
For that, i rotate the food at each meal just a simple 1-2-3 pattern.
That's a good idea. I also use a rotation pattern with my frozen foods. I feed from the frozen food packet at the front of my freezer shelf and then move it to the back after it gets used.
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So glad to hear it! We've worked hard on our shipping process to hopefully minimize any customer issues on your part. 🙂 What did you end up getting and where do you plan on using them?
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Sorry to hear about your snail problems! I've played with alum a bunch, but always in a quarantine tub with no substrate, no fertilizers, and no dechlorinator. Unfortunately I don't have any experience nuking an entire tank and can't recommend it without more experimentation. 😅 Also, I've had two plants (guppy grass and pearl weed) that reacted badly to it, so be aware that some plants are too delicate even for alum.
If you have a stem plant that needs pruning, you could throw the clippings into a small plastic container and conduct an experiment to see what happens to the trimmings if you add alum, fertilizers, and water conditioner together. In my brief Google search, I didn't see anything about adverse chemical reactions, so do some more thorough research to be sure. Let me know what happens!
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5 minutes ago, RyanR said:
@Irene you were the one who made me realize I wasn't too crazy...lol and to not be afraid to expand my fish food pantry. I haven't added them to the freezer yet, but that is my next project as I get new food.
What is your biggest disappointment? Something that you hoped\thought the fish would love, but you were let down by the results. My biggest disappointment was the Xtreme Sinking Wafers. I had such high hopes for that food, but I love their Krill Flakes and I'm going to keep trying some of their different foods.
Awww, I'm so glad my food collection inspired you! My community fish didn't take to the sinking wafers either, but maybe it's because I only own nano fish and it takes a while for the wafer to get soft enough to take bites out of. I probably should've tried it out longer. It took my otocinclus almost a week to get used to Repashy Soilent Green, and now they will hardly touch the green beans and zucchini I give them because they prefer Repashy so much.
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Just now, Andrew Puhr said:
@Irene do you label all of your dry foods with your purchase date?
They're actually labeled with the "open" date. When I get a new fish food, I promptly divide it up into lots of snack-sized ziploc baggies and store them in a larger gallon-sized ziploc bag in my garage freezer (labeled with the date I packaged the food and the manufacturer's expiration date on the jar). When I open a little ziploc bag of food, I label the container with the month that I opened the little bag. I don't have a hard and fast rule for how long I keep the food before dumping it, but since I store them in the refrigerator, I usually keep them around for 3-4 months. You can see my freezer/ziploc system starting at the 8:14 mark in this video:
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Show me your livebearers
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted · Edited by Irene
At 2-3 months old, they were about about 1" long. The adults don't get much bigger, maybe 1.25-1.5" at most. Awesome community fish, easy to breed, and great at eating hair algae. The main trouble I had was in the beginning when I got the adults. I'm like 99% sure they came from a fish farm that used brackish water because they started dropping like flies when I got them. I ended up dumping in a bunch of salt & minerals to raise the water hardness to 20-30 dGH, waited for the adults to breed, and then caught all the fry and raised them up in normal freshwater conditions. Totally worth it. 😍