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I think Christmas is more likely, the bits aren't particularly feathery.

Seized basically nailed it. Mature tanks will always have well-established beneficial bacteria and are less vulnerable to swings in parameters. It will also have a lot of biofilm, which is important for development when breeding certain organisms (most often shrimp). Most of the beneficial bacteria grow on surfaces in the aquarium rather than the water, so if you want to kick-start the process in new tanks it's recommended that you seed the new setup with some filter media or substrate from an established one.

This isn't the same model that I have but it has very similar design. Personally I'm able to store mine under the sink.

There are some products that will treat algae. Fritz has a treatment for string algae and it may work for hair algae, but isn't invert safe. I know some people will treat their plants with cupramine to prevent pests from entering their display tank, possibly you could use an algae treatment on your purchased plants? If you want to go a more natural route I'd suggest having organisms known for eating hair algae in your setups. Amano shrimp are great for this purpose and are large enough that most fish won't bother them.

These were included in the water with a recent shipment of Amazon frogbit that I bought on eBay. The only moss I've intentionally kept is willow moss so I'm not familiar with what the strands look like of other species.

I think that Java moss or subwassertang are great low-tech plants that shrimp would love having around!

Another method similar to plastic canvas is using plastic gutter guard, as it's usually cheaper than plastic canvas depending on where you live or for larger scale projects. I've also had good results by processing equal amounts of moss and water roughly in a blender and then painting it onto surfaces and doing a dry start. This works best on broader surfaces (I've personally done it on Mopani wood), I had to use cotton thread for my bonsai in my 5.5g.

Usually the rim is bonded to the glass with silicone, you can use a razor blade to separate it from the glass and remove the rim without pulling too hard. Personally I only remove rims if they cause the aquarium to sit unevenly and need me to relevel it. In the photo below, 2 of the corners were off the ground due to how uneven the rim was so I had to loosen the silicone outside of the aquarium using a razor and then the rest of the rim came away easily. After removing the rim, I used a level to determine if the unevenness was due to the rim or the glass. If all of the corners of your tank are in contact with the ground and there's no wobbling when you apply pressure on each corner it's likely you can skip that step when resealing their tank. Hope this helps.

On AquaClears the only modification I've ever made was adding a prefilter sponge + removing the carbon and replacing it with biological media. For me carbon is only really necessary if there are meds in the water that I want to filter out, and that usually won't happen in my main tank. Some people use carbon for improving water clarity or reducing odor. If you want to you can add a floss/polishing pad on top of the first sponge in your media basket but it's may going to make a significant difference.

There's a shop in the area that I've used for cutting projects so I may have to pay them a visit if the acrylic hinges don't work out for me.

I love the idea of using an acrylic hinge instead of the adhesive strips, thank you so much for the suggestion! I'll definitely be trying them out.

Hi, my water is very hard out of the tap and personally I use RO. The only tank that requires it is small (5.5g/21L) so I purchased a very inexpensive (~60USD) unit. Personally I only went this route because I wanted to keep crystal shrimp and felt I'd have better results using remineralized RO vs trying to change my tap water in a different way. In the past I've attempted driftwood but it tended to only have much impact on water that had lower KH.

I'm refurbishing an old aquarium and need to repair the hinge on the lid. It was previously held together with silicone that was dried out when I purchased it. I don't believe it ever had a handle however my idea was to create a hinge+handle that is a very similar style to one of the Aqueon versa tops. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to accomplish this? I know that some stores sell replacement pieces for versa tops and planned to purchase one of the handles, but I'm hoping for an alternative that will allow me to use a clear adhesive instead of their black strip. Thank you in advance for all suggestions!

I'm Ange and am just returning to the hobby. My first experience with fishkeeping was with my grandmother's pond where she kept common goldfish, but I didn't start keeping tanks on my own until I had to raise some tadpoles for a science class 😂 After that I fell in love. I haven't been able to keep fish for many years because I was constantly moving cities, but now that I'm settled down I have a 5.5G shrimp tank and I'm refurbishing a 50G hex that I hope to eventually keep angelfish and/or Bolivian rams in. My favorite fish are usually from South America and I get the most enjoyment from keeping angelfish, cory cats, oto cats, and rams.