HotTunaCartel

I use a Fluval 3.0 on my blackwater, set to about 25% max brightness. Have a few low light plants and a heap of floating water sprite that do fine in the low light

Yup, I got charged 12.99 for 10 harlequins and 6 otos; and all the way to PA from Washington state

I'm nervous but glad they came later in the day as the aquarium lights are starting to go off Thanks!

I was surprised it shipped and got here so soon. I was thinking Friday as it is supposed to be 4F Friday morning but I'm so glad it got here today. Slowly acclimatizing them

Just called to see if I can use the green rock wool to kind of pre seed my qt for the Otocinclus coming next week. Gotta love Gerry, talked with me a bit about using the rock wool to seed my qt tank. Absolutely great customer service, I've ordered from them 4-5 times now and really won't go anywhere else at the time being

Just realized I haven't update what I've been doing the last week. I was getting so frustrated at replanting cuttings over the last month that I started topping the fluval stratum. I had about an inch of stratum but nothing was really staying it without plant weights. I went through two packs for just the plants I have. After I started the Walstad tank I realized how much I enjoyed the Carib Sea SuperNaturals Peace River that I wanted to top the 44g with it considering how easy it was to plant stuff in it. Over the last week I have been gradually adding more and WOW! The ease now to replant cuttings are night and day. The only negative is that the bright reflection off of it has taken away some of the oranges from the harlequins.

@jwcarlson This is really going to be the best idea for a larger tank. I have a transfer pump that I used to empty a 50 gallon garbage can filled with liquid fertilizer for my gardens in the summer. I think it pumps 615gph and that goes from a 10 foot garden hose to a 100 ft garden house out to a sprinkler head. Obviously @2absolute2purity2 wouldn't need something as powerful but I think a bilge pump or transfer pump would be the way to go

Beautiful tank! Been using well water for the last 15 years. You will have some drastic changes depending on the weather etc. I wish I would have recorded the conversation with the NY water science center scientist that I spoke with about the ph drop that we had throughout the summer. It won't be sudden but it will change overtime. We went from 7.8 to 6.6 in the last year, but no issues as at all with the aquariums

This is a great answer. With our 44g we couldn't wait but I believe @Cory had a video saying to do this exact thing by leaving lights on 24 hours in a qt tank to get the algae going quickly before getting the fish.

Thanks! That is what I'm hoping for, I really like a full thick planted tank I think it's definitely going to be

So I had an old Fluval flex 6 gallon laying around, i've hardly used it due to having huge hands and that little hole in the top for access. I really wanted to try a Walstad tank but knew it wouldn't work with the little access hole, did some research and saw a few videos and posts about removing the top. To my surprise it was quite easy, and now I was left with a nice rimless 6 gallon little tank. I read and researched for a few days and found some videos on youtube to guide me through the process. I had some organic potting soil left over from up potting some indoor plants, got a bag of 2-3mm Carib Sea, ordered some plants from the coop and got to work. I started it on 1/12/2022, I wanted to do daily pictures but life happens. On first note I'm incredibly surprised at the growth in 5 days, I think the red flame sword is going to be way too big so I will probably remove that and put something else back there. The clarity has been good, I've had two bacterial blooms, one on the third day which cleared up yesterday and then another one this morning. I have to go out and snow blow but will add to this later today. EDIT: Driveway is snow blowed so I can update more but not sure how long my hands are going to last lol. I did an x patter when I planted, what I'm hoping to do is to be able to take cuttings and replant them inbetween but I'm not sure if in the long run that will deplete the nutrients in the soil faster. I put a very small 4 watt adjustable circulation pump down low as to not disturb the surface. I read over the weekend that some circulation is good and I think once the plants grow in it will be hidden from view.

Thats what I thought too, just weird but kinda cool though.

Was bored today, its ice everywhere still so I decided to make another video of the Tetra tank now fully stocked. Enjoy

Thanks! it took a bit of work to get the flow correct for them but they do enjoy swimming up the current on the back side of the tank Thanks so much, it was a challenge when I had the diatom outbreak and they took a big hit but they are finally starting to come back strong

Finally got around to cut a top for the 44g amazing at how much I can tell its already retaining heat and water as its already foggy on the top

@Guppysnail I've seen before that you use foam in all your filters, I too turn down my fluval about 50%. I have the green aquaneat as well but just haven't cut them up yet and put in the fluval. I like this idea, I might order some more aco course and mix it with the 30ppi

Definitely healthy, was the smallest of the bunch and was worried at first but completely fine since a few days after qt.

Its weird for sure but you can still see that slight red towards the tail but the top is clear, I think the darker part on the top is from the black background

Update: second batch of tetras went into the 20 long The clear one has grown well and is schooling with the others.

Thanks for the quick reply. i've read about matten filters and would certainly like to try that one day. I hear what you're saying about motor stress, currently I'm not running any floss in it and don't think I will it just clogs up way to fast in my blackwater even with an intake prefilter which I rinse out weekly. I thought I had a clogged hose at first but I think its the foam. I like being able to just clean the dirty one on the bottom rinse and bit and stick it on the top. In regards to motor stress, would I hear that or is that something that would just burn out overtime. I know in the fluval its completely fine to restrict flow as the manual states no damage to the motor. But I'm not sure about the eheim.

I just read https://aquariumscience.org/ as suggested by others on here and found it incredibly interesting and informative. I have sheets of 30ppi foam and was thinking about slowly adding it into my fluval 407. I had one question though, I do have three discs of it in my eheim classic 150 and I think it has slowed down the flow a bunch. My current setup is in the eheim is the lower is the eheim mech followed by a aco coarse sponge, then the eheim sponge and a 30ppi sponge on top. Has anyone else experienced this with other canisters?

The easiest thing would be to test your water then do a water change, say 25% and retest to see what your levels are. If still high do another water change and retest. When you get it to 0 then start trying to figure out what is the cause, overfeeding, tap water might have chlorine in it.

In general you're going to want a 1 point ph drop throughout the day. BPS is going to vary in every tank. the water box on youtube have really good in depth videos.

I have read that helps out some people. You could try but water changes didn't help me, it was more the manual cleaning that helped. On thing that might help, I see you have a prefilter sponge on your filter. Try wiping off the plants and let the prefilter sponge suck it up and rinse the sponge daily.

That looks like diatoms (brown algae). I had one of my tanks covered in it, my issue was not a new tank issue but I have read that most tanks will go through this process. If it gets out of hand its really hard to get rid of and you really have to work at it, and yes it will spread really fast. The co2 won't help out with this but your plants will explode after you get rid of the diatoms When I had the issue I checked everything, thought it was my water but ended up being thousands of dead mosquito larvae that were decomposing under the substrate. What I did was to hook up a hob filter with a sponge and lots of filter floss inside. I think took a big fish net, like the large one from ACO and put that in the tank and stirred up the substrate. The net would catch quite a bit and the hob would catch particles and clogged up fairly quick. You can usually get diatoms off plants without uprooting them, let it flow in the water column and use something to manually remove it. In my case, I split the tank up into six sections and gravel vacd one section every third day. Eventually I got all the dead larvae out got most of the diatoms out and haven't had a problem since. This is what mine looked like when I had the outbreak