[Save my 29 gallon tank!]

On 2/6/2022 at 9:51 AM, HH Morant said:

You can either turn down the intensity or shorten the time period when the lights are on.

I like to have the light on so I can enjoy the aquarium, so I would turn down the intensity for a week or two and see how that works. If you still have too much algae (you will always have some), then turn down the intensity a little more.

You should also check to see if the tank is getting natural sunlight from a window at some point during the day. My experience is that even a little natural light can cause a lot of algae. You can draw curtains or pull the shades to limit natural light. You can also consider moving the aquarium if that is practical.

Good luck, @Oblivious_666!

I am a little afraid to ask how you chose that name.

Okay! I can definitely adjust the intensity of the light! It's covered by my snake enclosures from the window so I'm sure the algae is from the light only! Luckily I'm always so busy with work and other hobbies, so I don't mind turning down the hours much. I absolutely love the small coat of algae on the driftwood I have so I'm very happy with some!

Haha, it's not too bad of a story, no one usually uses the username Oblivious, and the 666 was just the first number that popped in my head being a young metalhead. 😜

On 2/6/2022 at 9:57 AM, lefty o said:

9 hours is wayyyy too long. try 6-7 depending on intensity. if it is really bright, 6.

Okay! I will adjust accordingly! 😊 Will definitely do the same with all of my tanks- as I do have a bit of a problem with that in my ten gallon actually

On 2/6/2022 at 9:49 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

Just to pipe in here, I have some pretty intense lights on a couple of my aquariums and despite dimmer switches and being on a timer if my plants get tall enough I tend to see plenty of hair algae, they like it. The lower down the plant the less light/less algae. 

Flow in this case doesn't really matter- though a wise man in an Aquarium Co-op video said "the more flow, the more algae" so he didn't do flow (also doesn't have to change water and has an amazing shop).

IMO it's your lighting that's doing it. 

 

On 2/6/2022 at 10:06 AM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

Same wise man in the co-op video said rhizone plants need 4 hours of light, stem plants 6. I run my lights for 8 but I dim them back a lot more than they are capable. So I have to deal with the algae consequences (which if you fiddle with your light you can get it to where there isn't much if any algae)

I believe the flow question was in response to the BBA outbreak I also have- I've always struggled with algae control (it's hit or miss with me), so I could be far off with that. 😛

[Save my 29 gallon tank!]

On 2/6/2022 at 9:19 AM, JoeQ said:

What kind of lights are you running? For how long? Are they on a timer? 

Also, how's your flow? Any dead spots? 

After extensive searching, I cannot seem to find the brand of lights, I want to say they're (what I think is) an obscure brand called AQQA. They're on for about nine hours it looks like.

Just checked and it looks like the other half of my aquarium isn't receiving much flow, actually! I should address that! 🙂

On 2/6/2022 at 9:32 AM, lefty o said:

you could probably use some more nutrients, but the hair algae im seeing points also to too many hours of light, or too high of intensity.

Okay, I can readjust my light intensity! should I dim it? As said in the post above, it's on for about nine hours (I think that may be too long).

[Aquarium Memes]

My contribution from the podcast a week or two ago:

[Save my 29 gallon tank!]

Well, I'm being dramatic here.

I set up my 29 about five months ago, and it had been thriving with boisterous growth until recently. I noticed the plants have been growing more slowly, and a lot of algae is taking over. I'm fine with some of the algae, because it looks exceptionally nice growing on the driftwood, but I have some hair(?) algae growing on my water wisteria and a BBA outbreak on my scarlet temple. I'll list as much details with photos below:

Stats:

- Nitrates: ~25ppm

- Dosing: 5mL of Fluval Gro+ every two weeks or so (inconsistent due to my forgetful nature 😅)

- Stocking: 3x Panda Garras, 11x Harlequin Rasboras, 1x Krib and Pearl Gourami, and 1x Nerite Snail

- Water Changes: About every other week

My own Diagnoses:

- Not enough nutrients, I could try getting root tabs or dosing more consistently, as it is a very heavily-planted aquarium

- Not cleaning my sponge filter often enough, could contribute to the mulm buildup? I clean it about every 1-2 months (again, I need to get into the habit of this)

Evidence, I mean photos:

[Snake Enclosure Rack Build Journal]

 I have not forgotten! Just a more "live the moment" type of guy nowadays and I recently started working again. 🙂 I managed to finish building, staining, and stacking everything extremely quickly after! The only things missing from the last picture were mid-bottom braces for the back, which were 1/2" x 2" x 63" pieces of wood I sawed to size.

Here's the final result throughout the evening, starting with the 180 gallon on the bottom:

Next I got both of my roommates to help hoist the last two tanks:

Pushing it in place was easy enough, although I'd definitely have two people controlling the tanks, they're super heavy!:I'll do one last update in a couple months once I'm fully outfitting the snake enclosures! I definitely enjoyed this project, it came along very smoothly and I had a blast working with tools and watching it come to fruition! Definitely gonna be building some more things soon! 😊

[Snake Enclosure Rack Build Journal]

Happy belated birthday to me!

Managed to finish all the wood cutting for the basic frame! Enjoy some photos of yours truly:

Making sure everything is in line:

Cutting through the 2 x 4!

Planning on finishing the job today as well, seeing as I just have to put everything together!

 

Don't mind the mess! Putting the main supports on proved difficult!

Progress after my drill's battery ran out, I managed to finish pre-drilling the first half of the rack. Peep the Legos and the new snake enclosure! 😛

[Snake Enclosure Rack Build Journal]

This all leads up to today!

Just worked on the base, I'll get photos tomorrow of the end product, but it mainly consisted of sawing the wood for the casters to be installed on, installing the said casters, and finally 

I got to use a circular saw for the first time, and man those things are powerful! No casualties outside of my table that I don't mind using as a workbench! I want to find somewhere to saw and not potentially disturb the peace, but no one has said anything yet! For reference my roommates haven't heard anything right outside the backyard so I believe it's a green flag.

Also peep my new toolbox! It's part of a three tier rolling system so I'm gonna eventually upgrade my tool ensemble! This was also taken before everything got covered in sawdust.

Thank you all for getting this far, and hope you have a nice day! I'll keep updating as often I remember, but I'm bad at documenting this sort of stuff. 😅

[Snake Enclosure Rack Build Journal]

Material buying time! This happened the past 2-3 weeks!

Not pictured but I scored a 48 x 96- 3/4" thick piece of scrap wood for $5 that was cut to the specifications (24" x 52") I needed, so that was a major win on my end. I bought a few materials beforehand but returned them because they were not needed for the final model.

I made the HORRIBLE mistake of not looking up how to install casters, so I had to make a run for another round of stuff, and walked out with all the proper materials in another run. Luckily no wood was wasted in the process of this fiasco.

My (not actually final) run was for 2 x 4s! I got four 8' ones and a 4' one as scrap wood, only cost me $28 (I don't know how much lumber was but I feel like that is a reasonable price!). Also yes I have all this lumber in my room at the moment, I might be a bit crazy. 😛

[Snake Enclosure Rack Build Journal]

Next had to write up plans for building the rack, this was the most hair-pulling, annoying part. Good rule of woodworking: measure twice, cut once. Or in my case, measure 15-20 times, make two cuts. Enjoy all my chicken scratch as well. 😅

The first draft was a bunch of 2 x 4 s, sadly didn't fit my condo I'm renting out:

The second iteration was still too large, so I had to make even more tweaks, still not up to all the specifications I wanted but closer!

The final iteration was 3/4th inch melamine and 2 x 4s with eight 2.5" casters, and I could finally sleep well knowing I had a rock solid plan.

Basically I knew my 180 gallon tank had the structural integrity to hold my 120 gallon, so I build off that 5' mark to make a rack with as low clearance to the ceiling as possible and could support the weight of all the snake enclosures.

[Snake Enclosure Rack Build Journal]

Hi! Don't know where else to post this journal, seeing as it's a DIY build for animals, but for reptiles instead. I'm not gonna go into too much backstory, but I decided to document my progress on building a snake enclosure rack to store my two 120 (4 x 2 x 2) gallon and one 180 (4 x 3 x 2) gallon snake terrariums! These next posts are catch-up from about a month or two ago:

Late-November to Early December(?)

 First one is of my newest tank, my 180 gal, for my Japanese Rat Snake! Sadly one of the glass panels that was shipped was broken on arrival, but I got a new one from the company!

The fully assembled 180 gallon, it's huge! (peep the Legos, I'm a nerd)

Had to rig up my own light fixtures for it, but it's not my first rodeo. I made a TikTok on how to make a light fixture if anyone is curious as to how to make their own. Takes about 15 minutes to make! I bought a T5 fixture off of Amazon that's the exact same used for reptile enclosures for about $35 (for two!)

[Mystery Fry]

Another low-quality photo update! They've grown so much in the past two weeks already:I'm thinking that these could be Harlequin Rasboras, but I think it'd be cool if they were a different fish species! They're still feasting on the infusoria, sadly got exposed to covid so I'm stuck at home for the next few days, probably gonna try my hand at baby brine shrimp once I have free time, not taking F/T tubifex worms or flake food unfortunately.

Will continue to post updates! 😊

[Stocking Ideas for Single Species 75G]

I enjoyed my all skirt tetra glofish tank when I had it. Call me tacky, but I had plastic coral for the hardscape to give it a "pseudo saltwater" feel. was planning on switching it to finer white gravel and adding vallesnaria to the tank to send the look full circle.

[Curious of how you all came up with your usernames!]

I chose Oblivious because it's a word very little people use. The triple six was because I was most likely unironically edgy.

[Mystery Fry]

On 12/10/2021 at 4:02 PM, Odd Duck said:

Sometimes a video could help identify fry by the way they move.  At least as far as putting them into a group/type even if not down to species yet.

Is there any way to embed a video? I have one, I just can't get Imgur to work on my computer unfortunately

[Best Water Puppy?]

My blood parrot and electric blue acaras always swim up to me when I come up to their tank.

[Mystery Fry]

On 12/9/2021 at 2:17 PM, PedroPete said:

Did you add live plants from another tank? For example, ricefish could attach their eggs to moss in another tank, and then you move the moss to your tank, and - voila - mystery fry 🙂 Very cool! Keep us updated.

I have! The only fish that I suspect could produce the fry in my tanks would be harlequin rasboras, panda garras, or guppies/platies. This doesn't look like guppy fry to me and I believe the Rasboras are egg scatterers and the panda garras are extremely hard to breed in captivity.

On 12/9/2021 at 3:21 PM, Colu said:

Rice fish and zebra danio are egg are commonly bought in on plants I would say it looks like a rice fish fry 

I would love to grow out some rice fish! There is an extremely, extremely minute chance it could be giant danio fry but I have them in with four predatory fish and it was a small clipping of Anubias nana petite. 😛 

[Mystery Fry]

Hello all! I have been cycling my fishless 10 gallon for about a month now, and it's been teeming with microfauna! I recently saw some movement in the water column and realized I had a couple fish fry! I haven't had any fish outside of a few nerite snails, and suddenly these fish appear! I'll be growing these out no matter what out of my sheer curiosity, because this has never happened in my time fishkeeping. Here's a photo of it if anyone can give me an idea as to what it might be:

Really looking forward to seeing these babies grow up!

[Introducing My Fish and I!]

Thank you all so much!

On 11/20/2021 at 4:37 AM, Atitagain said:

Welcome to the forum, quite an assortment of fish! These two tanks look great. Wanna see the EBA!

Here are two of my EBAs, photos don't do them justice:

[Introducing My Fish and I!]

Hello! I am Oblivious_666, or you can call me Traian (either works for me)! I live in Seattle, Washington and go up to Aquarium Co-Op whenever I need something, whether it be plants, tech, or fish! I have been fishkeeping on/off for about 1-1/2 years and have kept a wide range of freshwater fish, from tetras to cichlids.

Currently I have four tanks! I have:

My 75-gallon semi-aggressive community tank, with a trio of Electric Blue Acaras (Ed, Edd, and Eddy), a Blood Parrot (Porky), a Rainbow Shark (Sven), and a school of eight Giant Danios.

My heavily planted 29-gallon planted tank, with a Kribensis Cichlid (Toto), Pearl Gourami (Dorothy), a school of Panda Garras (most unnamed except the largest, Goliath), and a school of Harlequin Rasboras.

My 20-gallon livebearer tank containing assorted guppies and platies with a copious amount of snails.

Last but not least, I have my 10-gallon nano tank, which I am currently setting up! I am planning on adding a school of Chili Rasboras and a shrimp colony once I have all the plants and hardscape I want for it!

I'm still new to the hobby and a hungry learner, I really enjoy keeping unique and interesting fish- no two tanks of mine is the same! Sadly don't have any good recent photos of the other two tanks, but I'm sure you'll see them eventually! Hope to be semi-active in this community, so I'll see you all around! :)