dmurray407

OK, my Minnesota fishy friends. I got my GH/KH test kit yesterday and checked my water today during my regular water test. My GH is 20 and my KH is 16. I'm pretty sure this is normal for this area (I'm just a little NW of Minneapolis). What kind of numbers do you all get? I'm choosing to "embrace" the hardness and make it work. What do you all do?

Maybe I could be that lucky...... It's too bad they don't clean up after themselves 🙂 I'm lucky-I have a granddaughter who will take just about anything I offer her....

I got that covered! My pH is around 8 and my gH is crazy high. I think I would find the Nerite eggs to be a little annoying-does anything eat them?

I didn't know they had snails-looks like a good selection. Do snails need to be quarantined like fish?

I've been looking at photos of Nerite and Mystery snails and they are beautiful. I want some. I know nothing about keeping snails happy so give me your best advice for these critters. I have a 60 gallon freshwater community tank, I'm slowly adding some plants and driftwood. If I can't find them locally, is it OK to buy them online? Any suggestions for reputable snail "dealers"?

I've just started experimenting with live plants-I have some Anubis and some Java Ferns. they've been in my fishless tank for about 3 weeks now. They are starting to get some new green leaves but I have a few brownish spots as well similar to the ones in Leoaqua's photos. They kind of look like they could use some fertilizer to me but my nitrates have been 10-20's so I haven't added any liquid fertilizer (I do have some root tabs in the substrate). When should I start adding a little Easy Green? I was kind of waiting for the nitrates to go down a bit more because for whatever reason, they seem to randomly go up even though there are no fish in the tank (it's a 10 gal tank that will eventually be my quarantine tank). Maybe they are lacking in some other nutrients? (If the nitrates go above 20-30 I change out a couple gallons of water)

I used to work at Methodist Hospital-about a mile or two away from Sea Level and I used to enjoy browsing through there on my "on call" weekends when I had to stay close to work. I was surprised to see that they were moving-I hope they found somewhere to go and don't just close up. The Twin Cities is running out of "fish stores".

Thanks! My reading assignment for tonight 🙂

Got it-thank you! So much to learn 🙂

I live in Buffalo (Minnesota) and am looking for a nice piece of driftwood to put in my 60 gal tank. Any suggestions for the best LFS (or online) to look? We have nothing out here except Petsmart. They actually have a few nice pieces, but nothing that will work for me. I have kind of an odd shaped tank-front to back 12"x 48" wide and 24" tall. I'm looking for something about 8" front to back and at least 12" high, width is negotiable since I could get two pieces. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

The siesta method? Please tell me more 🙂

I just found how hard my water actually is. My pH is around 8-8.2 and the city website says my gH is around 340 ppm (I hope I'm saying that right). I ordered a test kit for gH so I can check it myself. I don't really want to fool with trying to "fix" it, and have been doing lots of research on what will tolerate water that hard. I know stem plants don't usually like it, but I love the look of the Brazilian Pennywort in the store here-has anyone had any luck with that? https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/pennywort-1

Good to know-I've been seeing a lot of online folks say that they love it and was thinking about getting some. I have solid black gravel-maybe I'll just mix in a little brownish gravel and see how that looks.

Guppysnail-I love the gravel you have on the bottom, what is it?

Yes, I think that it was mopani-it was a pretty big chunk.

I have wood questions. Do you boil the wood to remove potential contaminants or to get some of the tannin out? Last summer I bought a piece of "aquarium wood" (I don't remember what kind) but it came from a pet store and the label said to soak it for a few days-nothing about boiling. I soaked that thing for about 2 months and the water was still murky brown. I was going to just put it out in my garden but my granddaughter took it for her aquarium. I told her to keep soaking it-I think it probably ended up as an expensive piece of bonfire wood. Does all driftwood continue to seep tannin into the water and is it harmful to the fish? Is one type of wood better than the others when it comes to aquarium use?

I was just watching a Youtube video and a guy was explaining that water hardness has a lot to do with how things affect pH. I think my water is fairly hard-I guess I should test its.....

My city water usually runs around 8.0 and I stopped trying to fix it a long time ago. Years ago I had a 20 gallon set up and would bring in bottled water to do changes, but that got old really fast. I was reading that some types of driftwood can lower the pH-have any of you noticed that?

OK, you guys are scaring me 🙂. I've just started adding plants to my 10 and 60 gal tanks. I want to get a better light to support them and love Fluval products so I was planning to get a 3.0 light for my big tank. Does it have to be this complicated? Can I just start with one of the preprogrammed settings and adjust from there as I figure things out? I don't want to waste a bunch of money on something that's just going to frustrate me.

I have a 10 gallon freshwater tank that I've been cycling (no fish are in the tank). The water has been perfect (0 ammonia, 0 nitrite but 40 nitrate) for the past week. Yesterday, I did a 50% water change out just to see if I could get the nitrate down I added some new plants and put them down into the gravel along with some plant tabs. I also changed to a new light-a Finnex LED for the plants. Today, my nitrate is up (.25), ammonia is still ) and my nitrate is 20 (which makes me happy). It the nitrite increase due to stirring up the gravel yesterday (adding the plant tabs and planting 8 plants)? Do I need to do anything or just retest tomorrow? Thanks!!

I have a very understocked 60 gal tank (less than 10 fish) and want to start adding some new ones as soon as I'm sure my quarantine tank (10 gal)is cycled. I'm thinking of adding some Pygmy Corydoras (replacing some clown loaches that my grand daughter can take). My water is fairly hard 8-8.4 so will that be a problem? If I decide to do this, how many can I add at one time-I would like to eventually have a small school of 6+. Thanks for any suggestions!

I just rec'd the new plants I ordered so I can start replacing my fake ones-some amazon swords and Anubis nana (and some dwf baby tears that I didn't realize needed more light, but I can fix that 🙂 ) I'm pretty excited! But-my mom is having some health issues (she's 86, and she'll be fine) so I've been kind of tied up with that. Can I just plunk those plants down in the quarantine tank I've been cycling-it's almost done "cooking". I'm just letting it do it's thing for a couple more weeks just to make sure. I just need to hold them for a few days so I can get my mom fixed up then they can go into their new home. Thanks!

Thanks! I knew they were Rainbow Fish, but didn't know what kind. I've had them for a few years-got them originally from Foster and Smith when they did live fish. It was kind of "you get what you get". I will look around for some females-any good suggestions besides my local fish store?

I've had aquariums for years and have never really paid much attention to my water parameters (and my fish really have done OK most of the time). I retired last year so now have lots of time to keep my aquarium the way it should be. I have a 60 gallon aquarium with some Rainbow fish, a few tetras and some clown loaches. I'm thinking of rehoming my clown loaches so I can get some cory's instead. (My granddaughter is a huge aquarium fan and will gladly take my clowns if I decide to do that.) I'm also setting up a little 10 gal quarantine tank for when I get new fish-we had kind of a disaster a few years ago and killed off most of our fish by not quarantining. I'm having a heck of a time getting my water cycled in the new tank, but it's slowly getting there. I tried some Fritz-zyme 7 (beneficial bacteria) to speed up my cycle, but it didn't really do much-I got it from Amazon and I think it probably wasn't stored correctly in a warehouse 🙂 I love my aquarium and am looking forward to fixing it up and keeping some happy, healthy fish!