Rube_Goldfish

Need a recommendation for a realtor?

Not a lot more progress, unfortunately, since both my employer and my kids want my time. Don't they know I've got an empty aquarium to fill?! Anyway, my canister filter came in, a Sunsun HW-302, with fine and course filter pads and both bio rings and bio balls. I'll get some polyfil filter floss from a fabric store for polishing and a large pre-filter sponge from the Coop for the intake. My wife bought me a bucket with a cool bucket-toolbelt thing for storage of odds and ends for the filter to sit in. Now I just have to learn how to pack a canister filter, as I've never used one before. I'm also planning on putting a Coop sponge filter, even though it's undersized as a Small; it'll really be just to keep it cycled for quarantine/hospital tank usage. The FairmountSantrol AquaQuartz pool filter sand is here, too. I had to special order it; I guess it's not pool filter season at the moment? I've now spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to decide on lighting. I have a Finnex Planted+ 24/7 KLC on my low tech planted ten gallon, and it's been growing plants very nicely. I wish I could adjust and customize it with a little more granularity (instead of just the eight 3-hour blocks) but I don't wish it enough to spend twice as much on the Fluval 3.0. (Great though they may be, they're simply not in the budget at the moment. Maybe someday!) So mostly I've been trying to decide between a Hygger (either the HG-957* or HG-999) or another Finnex (probably the ALC this time). I have experience with the Finnex and I like it, I know it's got good build quality. It's also got a PAR rating at 14 inches water depth of 117, according to that Amazon page, but it's also almost twice as much at $130 instead of ~$70, and every dollar I spend on lighting is less money for everything else. I know the standard answers to "which light should I get?" is "well, what are you trying to grow?" and "are you running CO2?" I am not running CO2, and I'm mostly planning fairly easy low and mid-light plants: swords; stems; crypts; anubias; Java ferns; floaters, that sort of thing. But I also want a few easy red plants here and there. I'm thinking of scarlet temple, red ludwigia, red rotala, tiger lily. So my questions are: can red plants grow without infused CO2? If so, are the Hyggers bright enough to bring out the red? Is the Finnex? Even in a 21 inch deep tank? Also: any suggestions on low tech red plants? *Or maybe this is the HG-957? Amazon's listings are a little vague sometimes. Edited to add picture of the filter in its tool bucket:

Thanks! I've been closely following your "Southern-fried 75s" journal. I love the split stump idea and the execution looks great, too. I've drawn inspiration from it, too; I've already got boat cleats coming after seeing them in your build. (And my wife, who is building my new stand, looked closely at the stand that you and Patient Spouse{tm} (re-)built!) I already have the 55 and the stand is mostly done (framed out but still needs some finishing touches) and yeah, knowing what I know now I would have gone with a 75. Maybe for the next tank! (Don't tell my wife I used the phrase "next tank"!)

The way I think it works is that GH is a measurement of both calcium and magnesium collectively in the water, and that yes, you could get a high GH reading and not know what proportion of that hardness is Ca and what proportion Mg. You can also buy more specific test kits to find out,* if you wanted, but to the best of my knowledge (I'm still new to this, too!) it wouldn't really matter to fish anyway. It could matter to plants, which might show deficiencies of one or the other nutrient in that case, but you could just wait and see how they grow. (This part is speculation on my part: I think "all Mg and no Ca" might be harmful for young fish developing their skeletons. I know snails need Ca for their shells and shrimp need it for their exoskeletons, so I'm extrapolating.) *This one, for example: https://www.amazon.com/Nutrafin-Calcium-Test-Fresh-Saltwater/dp/B0002568F4

She just likes fish, but never kept any, even as a kid. I think it's got to do with The Little Mermaid, truth be told, but she's just always liked fish. She and her family never kept any fish. My parents had a pair of oscars who died to ich, then a fish-only saltwater tank (an artificial reef), but I have only vague memories of either tank. They got out of the hobby when I was still pretty young. I'm planning an upgrade from the ten-gallon to a 55 and would like to put some cories in there. I have a feeling she'll end up loving them, but at the moment her heart belongs to "sucker mouth" fish like plecos and otocinclus because she says they're ridiculous looking, basically. I can pitch the idea to her of a personal tank but I think she's happy to just enjoy mine and not have to do any of the work! That said, she's doing almost all the carpentry on my new DIY tank stand/bookcases (she's very handy!) and will spend a surprising amount of time going on algae hunts with the aquascaping tweezers, so she's more into it than she lets on!

I'll second the Finnex, @Brandon p. I've had some very nice results with a low tech ten gallon on plain gravel with a Finnex Planted+ 24/7 (the KLC series). I have easy plants (Bacopa caroliniana, Java fern, anubias, rotala) and floating plants, but they're all growing great with just root tabs and some Easy Green.

I was initially bummed out that every hardware store and pool supply store in my area seemed sold out of PFS except for this one, so I did a little research (well, a search here on the forum) and saw how much you like it, so I felt a lot better about using it.

Some photos: Planning: Out with the old: Beginning of framing: Have to make sure it's level: Framed out: With a shelf: Coming soon: cabinet doors, trim, and book shelves on either side.

In early September 2021, I set up my first ever tank, a ten-gallon big box store kit tank (see my Introductions post here). The only thing I knew was that I knew nothing, so I started researching. That tank started off with artificially colored gravel and plastic plants, and is now a (slightly overgrown) community and ecosystem. Along the way, I've learned a lot and been really bitten by the bug, and now I'm ready to upgrade to a new 55 gallon tank. Additionally, we're taking this opportunity to completely revamp the home office where the 10 gallon currently is and where both tanks will eventually be. Out go the old hand-me-down particle board bookshelves, to be replaced by the built-in bookcases my wife has always wanted, with the new tank the focal point in the center. Our inspiration was this build we saw on Reddit: (To be clear: this is not my tank or office; I have just been using it as inspiration!) I bought a new Top Fin 55 gallon tank all-in-one kit, we moved all the books off of the old shelves, and started buying wood and other assorted hardware. (I'll respond to this post with pictures.) My current (and only) tank has four cardinal tetras (down from an initial six) and two honey gouramis (two males after some inaccurate sexing as juveniles at the LFS), along with three Amano shrimp, and a ton of mini ramshorn and bladder snails. The fish will all be moving on up to the 55, and once it has had a chance to season a bit, the Amanos will join them. The ten gallon will eventually be re-purposed as a Neocaridina tank. So now I'm in the planning stages. In no particular order: After my current community moves over, my stocking plan is, in order: about 14-16 more cardinal tetras (for 18-20 total); 6-8 Sterbai cories; 2 Apistogramma cacatoides; and either 1 bristlenose pleco or 5-6 otocinclus. I had originally thought to get some female honey gouramis to go with the boys, but I am worried that I'd have to add at least four females in order to spread the male attention around, but that seems like more gouramis than I wanted and though I think I'm better at sexing them than I once was, I'm worried that I'll accidentally end up with even more males. The must-haves here are more cardinal tetras to increase the size of their school and either the pleco or the otos. My wife has a real soft spot for "sucker fish" and since she's largely building out the tank stand and the bookcases, and she's got the patience of Job with me prattling on about fish, I owe her. She like the idea of many small otos over a single bristlenose but is open to either. With all that said, will that community work? Any incompatibilities there, or things I'm over looking? Am I overstocking? In addition to the DIY stand, I bought a Sunsun HW-302 canister filter. I have some FairmountSantrol AquaQuartz pool filter sand on order at a local pool supply store (@Mmiller2001, that's your brand of PFS, right?) and plan on doing a beachfront/sand path divided substrate, with the other portion being a blend of small gravel and Eco-Complete. I've got a couple Coop heaters still in my cart. I'm still doing my research on lighting but I've been happy with the Finnex 24/7 Planted Plus I have on the 10 gallon, so I might go that route. That said, I'm not planning on running CO2, so I might look into something like a Hygger instead. Hardscape is to be determined, based on what I find at my awesome LFS.

This the oldest photo I could find, from late February. The tank was about five months old by then, and it's a mix of live and plastic plants at that point. This one is from late July. Please pardon the algae! There's construction going on in the room, so I've been a little less thorough on my maintenance.

Hello! When my wife and I were first married, she mentioned how nice it would be to have a fish tank. I agreed; when I was a kid, my parents had had a tank with, first a pair of oscars and then a full reef set up. Her dad came through with a ten-gallon kit from one of the big box pet stores. Unfortunately, a series of moves led to us putting the kit in a series of closets for years, in part because of a belief that "fish can't survive moving." Well, last summer we finally had the space and opportunity to set the tank up, so knowing that I knew nothing about fish or fishkeeping, I started researching. After a quick seal test, and an interminably long cycling process, we finally got a small community tank of cardinal tetras and honey gouramis. While my wife did and still does really, truly like fish, I ended up being the one really bitten by the bug, the one who really became a true nerm. The owner and staff of my LFS recognizes me when I walk in, my kids tease me about always talking about fish, YouTube thinks I'm not interested in anything else... I'm sure you all can relate. That little ten gallon is still happily running, though it's gone from plastic plants and bubbly volcanoes to a densely planted jungle with driftwood and stone (there's still a lot of unnaturally blue gravel, though), and I'm in the process of getting a 55 gallon upgrade ready so my little community can become a bigger one. That initial research led me to the Coop and this great community, and now I want to document my new tank in a tank journal, keep learning, and hopefully be able to pass on what I've learned like so many of you have helped me!

Are canister filter hoses standardized? Where can you buy better hoses, and how would you know which hoses are better? So if canister filters need to be manually primed, if the power goes out and then comes back on, will their impeller motors just burn themselves out? (Sorry, I messed up the formatting and put the quite below.)

Thanks. It's a bummer, but I guess I'll just keep an close eye on the remaining fish (let's be honest, I was going to do that anyway!) and unless something else pops up, chalk it up to Just One of Those Things. And redouble my campaign to clean up the hair algae. Amano shrimp eat hair algae, right?

I just found one of my cardinal tetras dead, upside down. I netted him out immediately, checked the other fish in the tank (four more cardinals and two honey gouramis), who all seem fine and are acting normally, then checked my parameters with a Sera test strip, which doesn't test for ammonia, but which found the following: nitrite 0 ppm, nitrate about 25 ppm, pH about 7.6, dGH about 6, dKH between 10-15, chlorine 0. Those parameters are pretty stable, comparing them to my notes.* Plus, like I said, everyone else seems fine. I then thought about how the dead tetra was upside down, stuck in a sort of net of hair algae, between my HOB prefilter sponge and a "broken vases" decoration I have in there. There is about a 1/2 inch gap between the sponge and the vases. So my question is: could the tetra have gotten caught in the 'net' of algae, unable to escape? Could that have been the cause of death? All five tetras seemed fine yesterday, and the body didn't have any visible problems; even the colors hadn't really faded much. My other question: I netted the tetra out and put him in a plastic cup that I use for all kinds of things. Other than thoroughly rinse and thoroughly dry both net and cup, are there any special cleaning precautions I should take, in case there was some sort of pathogen or something on the net or cup? I'll need to use both again at some point. Thank you in advance. *My water out of the tap is about 8.2 pH (after 24 hours off-gassing), 1-3 dGH (water softener installed), 8-10 dKH. At the suggestion of my LFS, which supplies free RO water, I have begun doing water changes using a 1:1 blend of RO and tap, with Seachem Equilibrium mixed in to bring it up to about 6 dGH. That was on Saturday (19 March); it was about a 15-20% water change. I had expected/hoped that the eventual change in parameters would be slow and beneficial.

My LFS has started selling blackworms in small cups, supplied by a local hobbyist. I'm not sure how many there are in terms of mass, but just eyeballing it, I estimate that there are between two and three dozen worms in there, so it's not a big quantity (the cup itself is maybe a four or so ounces capacity). Anyway, I have a 10 gallon with two honey gouramis and five cardinals tetras with a gravel substrate. I didn't buy the cup of worms when I was last there, because I figured it was too many for my little community, and I assumed the uneaten worms would be a problem in the tank (and I knew there was no way my wife would be okay with live worms in our refrigerator!). But from what I read above, it seems like any 'leftover' blackworms might just escape into the substrate and maybe get picked off over time by the fish? I has no expectation of the worms reproducing or anything; I just don't want to have any problems with ammonia spikes or anything else from uneaten blackworms. Could I get away with buying the cup?

I know you can seed a new filter in an established tank, but do you have to actually run the filter in order to seed it? Or can I just put the media in the tank and the beneficial bacteria will colonize it anyway? In this case, it's a Co-op sponge filter, and while I'd normally just put it in an run it (can't over filter, right?) but I'm worried the bubbles will disrupt my floating plants, which didn't like the turbulence of the air stone I used to have in there.

So you're scooping out 75% of your surface area, leaving 25% remaining?

I know this is an older thread, but I'm at the point of having to thin out floating plants (Salvinia minimia mostly) for the first time* and now I have a rookie question. When people "thin out" floating plants, are they literally just scooping out some percentage of them? And then doing what with them? I've heard that some folks compost them or feed them to herbivorous animals, but I don't have any kind of compost set-up** and keep no herbivores. I also know, or think I know, that S. minima can be invasive. Would I be safe to just throw it away in a regular garbage can? Please allow a second rookie question: do you sell or give the floaters to you LFS? If I were to bring mine there, I guess I'd have to call and ask if they'd even want it first, right? And how do you transport it? In a bucket, maybe? * There's also some duckweed in there (Lemna minor, I think), but I've been far less precious with it, just target plucking it out and throwing it away. I've heard the jokes and am trying to prevent a duckweed takeover before it starts. ** I should probably look into starting some kind of compost set-up...

Okay, I did that, more or less (I can't remember if I used Prime or not). Anyway, I put about 2.5 gallons in a bucket, stuck a heater in there, turned the heater on (77F) the next morning, took three 5 mL samples about eight hours later, and dropped an extra small Wonder Shell in the bucket. The bucket had a lid sort of loosely resting on top (to allow space for the heater's wire). I took three more 5 mL samples every day after that for three more days. I wanted to know a) would the KH and/or pH go up? And b) how fast would the GH go up? Day 0 (before the addition of the Wonder Shell): pH 8.0, GH 1-2, KH 14 Day 1: pH 8.2, GH 5-6, KH 15 Day 2: pH 8.0, GH 8, KH 15-16 Day 3: pH 8.2, GH 10, KH 17 A few thoughts: I'm not sure why the pH seemed to go up and down, but I'm attributing it to human error. My pH out of the tap (after 24 hour CO2 off-gassing) is 8.2, and the tank has consistently read 8.2 for months. Similarly, where I put a range, I was trying to capture where I screwed up and accidentally dripped some extra drops into the tester vial. Amateur chromatography is not my forte! I attribute the rising KH mostly to evaporation. That's a confounding variable I hadn't considered, so I didn't think to record that. But while the bucket has a lid, it's only loosely on, and the air in the room is kind of dry and about seven degrees cooler. Most importantly, I'm satisfied that the GH rose slowly enough that the cardinal tetras, honey gouramis, and plants could deal with the change. Especially since it's a ten gallon tank, not a half-filled five gallon bucket, so the rate of change of GH ought to be even slower. I'll drop a Wonder Shell into the tank, then keep an eye on all these parameters over the next few days and weeks, doing water changes as necessary. Once the tanks has reached 6 or 8 dGH, I'll try snails and Amano shrimp again. Anyone see any problems with that plan? On a semi-related note: I expect to have a lot more questions. What's the etiquette here? Make a new thread every time a new question occurs to me? Thanks so much for all your help so far!

I poked through my water softener manual, but I'm not sure I'll be able to bypass it. I haven't ruled it out, yet, but they didn't make it easy. Unfortunately real life got in the way and I wasn't able to do GH/KH testing on my tap water yesterday, either. In the meantime, since I know Wonder Shell will raise my GH, but my concerns are a) will it affect my KH and/or pH; and b) will it raise it too much or too fast for the tetras and gouramis, I think I'll draw some tap water into a bucket, condition it with Prime, then drop the Wonder Shell in there and test it after 24 hours or so. Depending on those results, I could "dose" my tank with the Wonder Shell'd water in as big or small an increment as makes sense. Does that sound reasonable? Long term, I may just suck it up and use LFS/grocery store RO or distilled water, re-mineralized. That shouldn't be too expensive with only a 10 and 29 gallon tank, and even bi-weekly 25% water changes would only be about 10 gallons, which would be a couple bucks. My LFS uses an RO system, so maybe that's just what the water around here is like.

In the beginning, I was thinking I'd use driftwood and maybe peat to bring the pH down, but my KH is high enough that I've long-since abandoned that plan and decided to console myself with a relentlessly stable, if high, pH, along with the "don't go chasing parameters" mantra. That said, GH seemed a more reasonable parameter to chase, at least if it just meant dropping in a Wonder Shelll every so often. I also meant to add: I know an RO unit with remineralization would be the way to go for surefire parameters, but I don't think I can convince my better half that the cost and hassle is worth it, which is why I'm trying other means first. Once I upgrade this 10 gallon to a 29, I plan on turning the 10 into a neocaridina tank, so I figured I'd sort out all my pH/GH/KH problems now before even getting to that point. Plus, like I said, being able to have inverts in my little community tank without it being some sort of instant death.

About two months ago I did a pH test of straight-from-the-tap water, then set about a cup or half cup aside in a drinking glass to age overnight, and did another pH test (and then about 24 more hours later), though I didn't think to use an air stone or anything else. I think the straight-from-the-tap pH was about 7.4, but I seem to have forgotten to write it down! (duh!) The 24 and 48 hour numbers match my tank water, though, at 8.2. I'll try again with the air stone, though, and write it all down this time! Thanks!

Ah, I didn't think of trying to get pre softener water! Now I'll have to to pull out the manual and see how to do that... Thanks!

I'm still pretty new to the hobby; I have a ten gallon tank that's been running since the beginning of September 2021 and has had fish in it since early October 2021: two honey gouramis and five cardinal tetras (down from an original school of six). My nitrogen cycle numbers are fine (consistently 0/0/10-20 ppm), and while I know my pH (8.2) is high for cardinals, it's very stable, and they haven't seemed to mind it too much. In mid-November 2021 I put a nerite snail in the tank. It just sat there that first day; I saw it on the glass the next morning, but by the end of the second day it was down on the gravel and never moved again. In mid- and late-December I tried again, adding three Amano shrimp and one nerite snail, respectively. I found one of the Amanos on the floor the morning of the second day (no lid; I've since added a pretty snug lid). The other two Amanos seemed fine for about two weeks or so but have since disappeared. I haven't seen them in about two months. I know they're very good hiders, but I'm not optimistic that they're still alive. The second nerite followed the pattern of the first one and also died within about 24-36 hours. With all that long preamble, I bought an API GH/KH test kit and followed @Irene's advice on her YouTube video on pH/GH/KH, having theorized that that was the problem. I ended up with a GH of 3 degrees and a KH of 14 degrees, and the pH is still that constant 8.2. I have a water softener in my house, so I guess that's why the GH and KH don't "match". I bought some Wonder Shell from the Co-Op to increase the GH, because I'd like to have snails and a couple Amanos in this tank (which I will shortly be upgrading to a 29 gallon). So here are my questions: 1) Is the low GH the source of the problem I'm having with inverts? 2) If so, will Wonder Shell help? 3) Does Wonder Shell affect pH or KH at all? 4) Would raising the GH with Wonder Shell hurt the cardinal tetras and/or the honey gouramis?