KittenFishMom

@Zenzo My hero! I was hoping it was 48 inch of light with the brackets slide in! I wish the ranges for each size light was on the stores page for the lights. @Tazalanche I think this was what you were asking.

@Zenzo With the brackets slide in, is the 48 still 48 long?

@Anjum Oh that is so sweet! I have the same corys. The ones I want to breed are long and high finned. I put mine on black sand for substrate. They have turned very dark. It is very hard to see them if they don't move. I didn't know they would change color to match. I picked the black so their silver areas would contrast.

@Anjum Wow, that is encouraging !

@Cinnebuns I put the ramshorns in when I was cycling the tank because I was ghost feeding the tank and the food wasn't breaking down. I can move the ramshorns snails to a different tank. The tank is a 10 gallon half cylinder so it is tall and narrow, compared to a regular 10 gallon tank. I might just start up a 10 or 15 gallon tank from scratch and leave the snails out. After the hundreds up guppies this summer, I would be very happy with less than 10 cory fry, probably less than 5 cory fry would even be better. I am not interested in selling them privately or driving an hour to give them to a fish store. The nearest LFS is now over an hour away. I would do the trade/swap through the forum for local pickup, but I don't think there are any forum members near me. I have decided to rehome my flagfish, but I haven't figure out how.

We have the 50 gallon totes and 250 gallon tanks at home. We built a ram pump in the gorge at our house and used water power to pump water up over 100 feet. It was a fun project. We bought ours off craigslist. I think they had held honey or maple sap. They are food grade and no where near $400. We had a few 50 gallon ones here at the cottage here one dry summer and used a big sump pump to fill them from the lake. Siphoning out of them made watering the rose and the garden much easier than hauling water up from the lake.

We have set up a temporary 12 gallon covered holding tank where we condition the RO water with Equilibrium, using a heater and an air stone for 24 hours. Ee are still deciding where a bigger long term tank will go. What would the carbon block do? We have a 7 cylinder RO/DI system. It has a booster pump to provide the high pressure needed. I don't think I am chasing numbers. We have to treat the RO water. It is just like distilled water. It has no minerals at all. The RO system takes out the good with the bad. We need to put the good stuff back in for the plants to grow and the animals to have calcium for their bones or shells. We tried to make the well water work in the tanks, and it was not possible with no calcium and high ammonia.

@Remi de Groot I believe "Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement." My fish would rather I learned from other's bad judgement instead of making all the mistakes myself. 8-)

Our well has a lot of problems. No calcium, off the charts magnesium, ammonia and bacteria. We can't drink it unless it is through the RO. We recently put in the RO system, I am just figuring out how to do the tanks correctly. I start a year and a half ago with my first tank being a 120 gallons of lake water to hold the fish I was catching from the lake. I have only had non-native fish for about a year. I have only had shrimp for 6 days. I am pretty new at this stuff.

@Remi de Groot I just posted a new thread with more questions.

How do you manage your Tiger Lotus? My Tiger Lotus is so happy in my semi walstad 55 tank that it is covering the surface with beautiful floating leaves, blocking the light to the plants below. A piece of driftwood is corralling the leaves, but I think there are 5 or 6 floating, and more rising. I have added a floor lamp with 2 plant bulbs to shine through the side of the tank. The lower plants are doing OK with the light from the floor lamp, but I bump into it a lot. I think I would like to remove most of the floating leaves, but am not sure how this will effect the Tiger Lotus. What is the best way to keep all the plants happy and make sure they are all getting enough light? I could move the plants under the floating leaves and replace them with hard scape, but I like plants more than hard scape. (I would like to replace my cobbled together collections of lights on that tank with the soon to be available new ACO light)

Background: About 4 weeks ago, I set up my 10 gallon half cylinder tank to start it cycling. I put organic potting soil in with a black sand cap and a few plants a sponge filter and and air filter. I sprinkled in sinking pellets and some other fish food and added some turbo start 700 several times on different days. I was going to run it as a heated tank for fish. The water is RO water with carefully measured and mixed Seachem Equilibrium. Last week, I saw shrimp in craigslists and thought it might be fun to use it as a shrimp tank. I took out the heater and added 30 Blue Dream Neocaridina shrimp and ordered shrimp supplies. I ordered Salty Shrimp Mineral GH/KH+, cholla wood, shrimp food and continued to research shrimp. Then I read that corys made good tank mates for shrimp, so I put a female and 2 male hifin, long fin peppered corys in the tank. Today I fed the tank bbs and many bbs are still swimming around. I also fed sinking pellets and some fry food(for the shrimp) The corys and shrimp seem to be happily cruising around the tank. No adults seem to be hiding and no one seems to be fleeing. ....................................................................... First Problem: The pH is dropping, I think due to the potting soil and IALs and cholla wood. I added some crushed coral and 2 wondershells 3 days ago, so the pH would change slowly and not shock the shrimp. The pH is still around 6.6. I was going to wait until the Salty Shrimp arrived, but am planning to do a water change tonight because of the pH. Second Problem: This is a tall tank, and I think cory fry need a shallow tank to be able to fill their air bladder easily. ...................................................................... First Question: Would it be best to start a tank without potting soil to move the shrimp and corys to so the pH stays higher? Second Question: What is a good water depth for cory fry that will also work for adult corys and shrimp? Third Question: Should I use the Salty Shrimp minerals 100% and not use Equilibrium or dose a percentage of each to equal 100%( ie 50% Salty Shrimp dose, 50% Equilibrium dose) ? Fourth Question: Food placement, Should I feed the shrimp in a shrimp feeder on the tank wall and the corys on the bottom of the tank? Also there are 8 or so big pink Ramshorn snails and a bunch random snails. I think they may complicate feeding. Maybe I should feed the snails first and after they get to their feeding spot, then feed the shrimp and corys in their feeding spots on the other side of the tank? I look forward to your replies!

@Rube_Goldfish My guess was "crushed coral" because the calcium would have time to leach out into the water.

I added 3 peppered corys to the shrimp tank. All hifin long-fin. I'm hoping to get a few fry at some point, with the shrimp tending any eggs.

@Remi de Groot I have had the shrimp 6 days. Note I am a Native English speaker and make spelling mistakes and typing mistakes everywhere 8-)

@Streetwise I like tannins. I think it is to get rid of pesticides? I'm not sure, that is why I am asking. I don't like the look of fish "swimming in air". It doesn't look natural to me. I like the water to look like lake water, with some color to give depth. I always have IALs in my tank. I just bought some alder cones. I don't want really dark water, but I don't think it should look like drinking water either. I know I will be soaking my boxwood roots in the lake most of the summer to remove toxins. I don't know which woods have to be soaked or boiled due to toxins or pesticides or pollution.

@nabokovfan87 and everyone, My tank is getting clearer. I think it was the driftwood that was causing problems. When I try to take photos, they tend to be covered with reflection. Where can I find info so the photos don't look so bad. I took about 20 this evening, and this is the only one that is close to looking ok. In most you either see the hand holding the phone, or other reflections wash out the image to the point you can't see the fish. I can avoid the reflection if I hold the phone against the glass. but that scares the fish away. If I want to photo the tank, I can't be against the glass. I like the way this shows more of the curves of the driftwood. That is my betta, front and center. I wish it was more in focus and had less reflection. It looks so much better in person. .

@nabokovfan87 So some wood you both boil and soak? How long do you boil it? I need to hit the thrift stores and get a BIG pot. Most of my driftwood would have a hard time fitting in a metal trash can. How would you bring that much water to a boil?

@Flumpweesel This is a great idea. Unfortunately, I put organic potting soil under the black sand in my tank. Vacuuming the sand and potting soil would be a bigger problem than I am prepared to handle. One of these days, something will distract me, and I am sure I will do it by accident. I am more than willing to wait for that to happen.

I started my shrimp tank as a fish tank with organic potting soil under a black sand cap. I then found Ultra Blue Dream shrimp on a local craigslist and decided shrimp would be fun to try. The water is RO water with SeaChem Equilibrium in it to remineralize the water. I have done some research on shrimp and ordered Salty Shrimp Mineral GH/KH+ What do you think is the best way to transition the tank from Equilibrium to GH/KH+ ? I don't want to shock the shrimp by switching too fast, but I don't want the shrimp to suffer by switching to slowly either.

I bought a box of random chunks of cholla wood thru Amazon from BioActiveFX. Do I need to boil this before I put it in the 10 gallon shrimp tank? Can I put in a bunch at once, or should I only add a little at a time. I have IALs in the tank already.

@Aiden Carter I was trying to figure out if the shrimp were getting nutrition directly from the green beans, or mainly for the bacteria that was feeding on the green beans. Green beans are harvested while the bean is still immature. I think of green beans as a good food, but not as nutritious as a mature bean. I would think finely ground dried beans would be a better food than canned green beans, but I never studied the digestion of shrimp, so I don't know how it works. As long as the shrimp have it figured out, I'll be happy. In dairy cattle, in the USA, the AI bulls get their nutrition from the bacteria, who get their nutrition from the sawdust, urea, and supplements. While the cows get their nutrition from the bacteria feeding on the cellulose, as well as getting nutrition directly from they rations. It was probably not the best comparison to use on a fish forum., it was just the first one that popped into my head.

@Patrick_G Canned green beans sound so salty and look like all the nutrition has been cooked out of them. Would steaming some frozen green beans be OK, or must they be cooked until mushy? Are the shrimp getting the nutrition from the green beans, or the decomposers that are living on the green beans? (When I took An Sci, I learned that the valuable AI bulls were feed sawdust with minerals added because they really lived of the bacteria that broke down the sawdust. The dairy cow diet was very bad for their health)

@Aiden Carter There are several way to approach this topic. Here are a few examples: To a parent: I need something for my fish tank siphon that if finely woven and stretchy like nylon stocking. It also has to be cheap and in a color that contrast with my shrimp. I don't want to be seen buying white knee high stockings. What do you think would work instead? To a parent: I want to rob a bank in the style of a 1950's movie. I don't want the police to be able to trace the stocking purchased for the face mask back to me. Could you buy some for me so you won't have a convicted felon in the family? If I chicken out on robbing the bank, I could really use them for my fish tank siphon. To a Parent: I need something I feel uncomfortable buying... (take a deep breath) knee high stockings for my fish tank. (They should be so happily relieved that you didn't say birth control, that they should gladly buy them) Anyway, if you think about it, I'm sure you can come up with a way of presenting the topic that is fun, or funny. Humor often makes things easier.

@Fish Folk I have a box of knee high stocking to hold my bait in my minnow traps. They keep the bait in the middle of the trap and the fish and crayfish have to get inside to the trap, rather than eating through the wall of the trap, or eating what washes out. The bait lasts so much longer too. I can put the over my siphon tube easily.