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Minanora

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Minanora last won the day on April 14 2022

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  1. Oh yeah, and my hardness is THROUGH THE ROOF. Holy moly. Even with adding only soft water/ RO water (depending on the tank) I don't add any minerals aside from KH.
  2. I'm sorry for my lack of participation. My life as a mom has taken the drivers seat, plus some, and work.... Honestly, my life has been chaos. All of my tanks are happy and healthy though. My marriage is catching up, and that's what's most important right now. We're building on our foundation that we both neglected for too long. Sigh. I'm really tired these days. Honestly. My fish keep me going, my husband loves them as well, so really it's keeping us whole. I'm just exhausted doing all of the other things. Especially since we're trying to remove plastic in our food stuff as much as possible, plus my husbands grandpa (91) is struggling, so we've been very busy making time for him. Then we had to sell our favorite car and damn me to driving a 9mpg truck... while my husband drives our 255k mile 2003 4 runner every day. We're car shopping.... but it's hard. I got some more 3 stripe cories for the 75 on Friday. I got 6 more and they are very happy... I started feeding guppies to my chickens... along side the duckweed... don't judge me, I have soooo many fish and I can't justify going down to the fishstore to sell them right now. I just can't make the time. My time is so valuable as a mom/wife/ceo. Lucky, my workload is about to shrink... I can hardly wait. But sheesh, I'm so dang busy with everything, I can't keep up with it all, I have to pick and choose. However my fruit trees are all pruned, garage isn't leaking, kitchen is clean, and we're eating dinner as a family at the table every night.
  3. I'm sorry for being absent for so long. Our lives have been full of things that have kept me so busy that I don't even read on Kindle. I spend.... 42 minutes a week on average on my phone/computer. Keeping shrimp.... you really just need a few to survive from your original shipment. I always order 20+ shrimp when I am starting a new color of neos. That way, more live, and I can adjust their babies to the water of the tanks I keep them in. It's all about the goal. Alll about the goal. What water parameters do you keep full time. Do you want your shrimp to live in that, or something else. Shrimp are a pretty expensive investment outright, but the more you can afford in the first batch, the better off you'll be getting the colony to establish in your setup. Don't make more work for yourself if you don't have to. That's my thought. I I have Orange neos, and Yellow neos. They are in entirely different water parameters. My orange are at 7.8PH in both of their tanks, plus an odd tank I keep at 7.2~. My yellows are at 6.4. I will move some into higher pH eventually, when I want to sell them to the local store, but for now, my plants are in charge. Plus all of the Panda Cory babies. <3. I keep amano in a tank that is 7.8 pH without the CO2 running. (yes, running CO2 changes your pH so keep that in mind if you are going to go higher tech. My yellow shirmp btw, I got 80 to start. just to make sure I had a robust colony in the beginning. I have well over 300 atm. 9+ months later. You got this. Shrimp are very hard to find in a seasoned/ planted tank.
  4. It happened! My son spotted a baby three stripe Cory in the 75. I had given up on the idea that any of them would ever hatch.
  5. @JoeQ thank you for your thoughtful input. I hadn't even considered the different phosphates. My pH is very high, hardness is a major issue for me when choosing plants I want to kill. Some live days, some live years and appear to thrive even. All joking aside. I'd love some of your recipes to reference. I'm actually thinking I'm willing to get back into weekly 60% water changes on my 75 gallon now that summer is winding down. My 75 has about 120 fish in it. So without water changes the nitrate stays at around 10ppm with the current plant load. I don't feed the plants any N. At least I didn't when I was actively fertilizing. Only K, iron and micros. Plus some root tabs. The tank was looking fantastic. Still looks good now but I've lost some stems (all of them), and I have some hair algae that's in retreat now that I am running co2 again. Moss is taking off, crypts look amazing, swords and Java ferns look ok, anubius is alright, buce is hiding in the moss.
  6. I'm about to venture into my gla dry fertilizer adventure. I'm using the rotala butterfly calculator. I feel like mixing the fertilizer in distilled water is the way to go.... I'll be using my RO, what fertilizers can I absolutely not mix together in the dosing solution? I'm thinking about the fertilizer that's crystalized on my easy green, so I'm less nervous now, but I also want to make sure I'm not mixing things that'll not work as well if they're in a 6.2pH solution. Is it better to dry dose? I have a gram scale, we use it for adding salts/minerals to our water when we brew beer. I'm using the pmdd method as it is similar to my previous fertilizing routine using seachem flourish products. I may adjust it along the way as I do not routinely water change, and I plan to dose at a half rate to start. I have one tank that will not be getting this fertilizer method,. I have one tank that gets easy green once a week, and no water changes. Which is kind of my goal with this pmdd dosing trial. My other tanks need more potassium and iron then easy green provides without adding excessive nitrogen. Easy iron doesn't work well with my other tanks high pH.
  7. Ah, Saturday. I have spent lots more time watching my Aquariums this week. It's been really nice to make time to enjoy them. I really want to build out several more tanks............. ........ Every room should have a box of water in it, right? Anyway, I'm about to mix up my first bottle of dry fertilizers. Hopefully I get it right. I've been starving my Java ferns of potassium for far too long. I need to just commit! Everyone is happy and healthy. I plan to sell off a bunch of guppies soon. Here's the plaza, my crypts are starting to recover, I've been fertilizing with the easy green in the plaza again. 😊 I'm going to clean up plants today. It's long overdue.
  8. No fish-she-shed yet. We have a bunch of projects that are at like 90% done that we need to finish. It may just become a rack in the office closet. 🤷‍♀️ we'll see!
  9. Thank you. I caught up with most of your main journal today! You have been very busy! I love your Zen garden so much!!! I'm watching my three stripe cories lay eggs right now. It rained randomly last night. 🤷‍♀️ Being busy is exhausting. This year we had a bumper crop of peaches and nectarines so I had to deal with that, plus two new garden beds that aren't on the irrigation system yet, plus the hot, hot, hot, HOT weather we've had this summer. We're fighting to get Chevrolet to refund us for our car that they've never been able to fix and they've had for over three months... My chickens love all the duckweed! 🤣 I still have no snails in the plaza, but plenty in the 75, and 20g...
  10. Sigh, I'm so behind with all of the updates and adventures! I need to get to work updating my own stuff. Not much is new, my son is in kindergarten and I recently helped his teacher start a successful classroom tank. He's got 4 of my lovely black saddle cross guppies for now. Once the tank is really seasoned I'll be giving him some shrimp and maybe some panda cories to round out the group. It's hard to not get way too involved.... I keep telling myself "it's not your project... leave him alone..." 🤣 I finally changed water in the plaza, just because there was a lot of mulm in the bottom and so much plant growth I couldn't see in there.... I had turned off the canister filter back in April so a single sponge was all that was running in there. Tested the water, less than 5ppm nitrates, kinda soft, perfect pH, good kh. I was shocked honestly, there's like 80 guppies in there, plus 20 cories, 8 otos, plus over 100 yellow shrimp (you see, everything made babies). I had to completely clean out the canister, it was foul. I had turned off the co2 in that tank and stopped fertilizing when I turned off the canister. So I did lose a decent number of plants but others are still hanging in there, things are coming back now that I'm using co2 and fertilizing again. That tank went 6 months with no water changes. The 75 is still going without a water change! I ran out of co2 and didn't notice until the hair algae attacked.... so it's looking a little wild in there. There's like .... .. 5 million guppies in there. 😅 Mr swimmy leaves them alone, the harlequins leave them alone ... so, lots of babies. The shrimp sanctuary is dirty, but the shrimp are happy! No water changes there either. the chili ruins looks good. I need to top it off, no water changes there either. I miss being active on the from and reading about everyone's adventures! I need to make more time now that things are settling down. I have made some lifestyle changes so I will not have time daily, but I will make time on the weekends!
  11. All of my girls are supposedly sapphire olive eggers.... Mine are squatting and singing the song of their people like they laid an egg, but no eggs yet, 14 weeks old and the first squat, from Susu, was at 12 weeks. She's also laying in the nesting box, moving bedding and such. Anyway, my point is that they may lay eggs in shades of green. But there's a chance that they may lay blue, pink, or brown eggs as well. 🤷‍♀️
  12. I have two doxies and six chickens. Doxies: Reno (under the blanket) and Rainy. Chooks: Light colored is Princess Peach "peaches" Darkest neck, Susu. One with a bit of gold on the neck and face, Hiker One that looks almost like Susu, Merlin One that's lighter than both Susu and Merlin, Fidget Smallest one that has the most consistent barring, Tinkerbell "Tinki" Left to right: Susu, Peaches, Hiker, Fidget, Merlin, Tinki.
  13. Yeah I have still not changed any water in my tanks since March. My ACO test strips sensitivity to GH isn't enough to read 3 of the 4 tanks. That includes my primary shrimp only, Shrimp Sanctuary. That's the home of my main orange colony. I haven't seen any dead shrimp in at least two weeks. The water is so hard that I lost all of my Hydracotil Tripartita. And my red plants fizzled out. I haven't been feeding mineral junkie due to it bringing up the harness. Only really been feeding shrimp dinner and shrimp baby. My chickens devoured my kale so I haven't been giving them kale either. I don't even have kale to feed the humans in the house. 😂 The yellow shrimp colony is doing great. I haven't tested that tank in a few weeks.... I should. I want to do water changes this weekend. Though nitrates are always below 10 in all of the tanks. Even with the billion guppies and panda cories. I've just been insanely busy this year. I'm over it. But it's not letting up.
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