jwcarlson

I kind of get a chuckle out of the novelty of bald eagles to other parts of the country. Here in Iowa along the Mississippi River we see so many of them that they're just another bird, really. It's not uncommon to see a hundred of them. Sometimes 20+ in a single tree. I know this was not always the case and I do appreciate that they've recovered so well. It's also not uncommon to see this majestic bird eating a dead hog or cow that a farmer threw out in one of his fields over the winter. 😄 Or eating road kill.

I've never noticed GH going up, but I honestly do not check. Yes, you'll get calcium deposits, but this is not some sort of insurmountable challenge. I've had tanks set up for years that have some moderate amount of calcium built up, but it's not the end of the world. I'd say that the biggest drawback is that with hard water and high pH you have a couple of things to consider. First, your water (like mine) will be a bacterial soup. Bacteria likes higher pHs. That's good for cycling and maybe not so good generally. I know that I cannot get away with some of the things that some discus keepers get away with for instance. It's just something to be aware of. I believe that plants can also struggle in hard water, though I do not understand why. I have a certain selection of plants that does well in my water as long as I keep nitrogen available for them. This is somewhat difficult because of my maintenance routines, but if you find what works you can still grow jungles.

Yes. I think people get a bit too hung up on tap water if all they're doing is keeping fish alive to observe. Breeding is a different animal, but even with hard water I'm finding a ton of egg laying fish that seem to breed just fine in it with the proper care.

I have kept and am currently keeping discus, apistogramma, and rams in my straight tap water. 8.2 pH, gH and kH both 16-20 degrees. They won't successfully breed in this water, but they seem to survive just fine. That TDS reading seems through the roof. You'll note that is says "calc", so perhaps that number is completely made up. TDS is a bit of an odd duck... I don't understand why it isn't cumulative with all the other solids. But it doesn't seem like that's the case for reasons above my head. In general, though, TDS isn't a particularly important number. I would guess that you could keep a very wide variety of fish in your tap water. Instead of tetras, I'd suggest seeing if you can find some celestial pearl danios. They stay a bit smaller and seem to thrive in hard water, I believe that's close to their natural water. They breed readily in my tap water. AquaHuna is a good choice if you can't find fish locally. I've had pretty good luck with several orders from them.

Do you have an ion exchange system (aka water softener)?

Thank you! I've always wondered what these things are. Seems like I don't see them much in tanks that have glass cleaners. But they seem to pop up in anything that doesn't have them.

Two eggs is higher than average, I believe. I used to work at a place that had a bald eagle nest on-site and they'd put up an eagle cam to observe them. Pretty neat to watch. The size of their nests is impressive.

A power head like the ACO power head works well, a vinyl tube can slip over the end and you can use that to pump water out or a bigger pump (this is what I use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000X05G1A/). Power head works well for smaller tanks, you wouldn't want to drop this big pump in anything smaller than a 55 probably.

I have a 75 on the main level of our house and I ran a hose up through the wall and down to the basement utility sink. I mounted a splitter (similar to the one you linked, but with 6" long hoses coming off of it) up on the wall behind the sink. Then ran a short length of hose down from one side into the sink. The other side of the split has a 10' length of hose that connects to a submersible pump. At the end of each water change, my splitter valve is in the "drain" position. So, when I start a water change I just need to get the siphon going. It's my discus tank so I can just let it go after I clean the bare bottom quick. When the water is done draining, I flip the valves and drop the submersible pump into the aging barrel and start the pump. It takes a bit more than 15 minutes to pump up the aged water. So I set a timer. When that's done I go back downstairs, flip the valves to drain (for tomorrow) and then refill my barrel from a python attachment with a length of hose that hangs up off the wall when I'm done. It's pretty efficient and fairly limited "hand time". It's not far from automatic. The vast majority of my tanks are in the basement, so I normally run the water to the floor drain with a long python tube (through a course sponge pad to keep any algae and what-not out of the drain. My 125 down there would take forever to drain by normal siphon, so I have "backup" submersible pump that I drop into the 125 and pump that back into the sink. Then reverse it to refill from the barrels. On the smaller tanks I still do a bucket drain/refill, but only because that's the quickest way to do it. It's helpful to use little pieces of tape to mark water levels. To get a rough idea I measure the height divide the capacity by height to get gallons per inch and then measure down to how many gallons I want to change. It's pretty accurate and if you need to make a little adjustment you just move the tape up/down a bit for next time. Also start timing how long some of the tasks take so you can walk away from the tank during some activities and then set up easy-to-use timers on your phone.

Everytime I look it seems like they've doubled in number...

I know it's 'funny' to talk about just doing something and asking for forgiveness, but just in case someone takes that advice seriously... please don't do that. A roommate doesn't really have a say in what you do... a spouse does (or at least should). You can get to the point where the agreement is such that you can basically do whatever you want with your hobbies. But just taking that into your own hands without being upfront and honest is not right.

I have a Tidal and I'm not a fan. The Aquaclears that I have, I do like them better. But everything has its drawbacks. I thought I'd like having the pump in the tank on the Tidal and it might be one of the dumbest things I've ever dealt with. It's impossible to get it apart and back together. The cord never stays where it is supposed to. And it draws like 95% of the water it pumps comes through the skimmer, not the lower intake tube. In fact, I'm not sure it would really be appreciably different if it didn't have the tube at all. My biggest complaint is that any tiny amount of debris jams up the Tidal and tearing it apart to get to the impeller is a task that really upsets me. The Aquaclears will also have this issue, but it seems less often (and with less maintenance). And the Aquaclear you can pop the pump off without being up to your armpit in water. Also the Tidal's twist out leveling thing behind the tank will fall out everytime you bump it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

It's not uncommon at all to see a 10 gallon with sponge bob decor and they want $100 for it. Also, frequently, tanks that clearly need resealed asking new/retail pricing for it. It's not really worth paying attention to it, honestly. I don't know if it's a regional thing or not, but I can't even get people to pick up free stuff when I'm giving it away. I added two bedrooms to our basement and as a result kind of lost the place for our 100# heavybag that has basically never been used. So, I put it up on Facebook for free. 4 or 5 people and pickup instructions for some of them 2-3 times and FINALLY someone actually showed up and grabbed it. There's people that spent more time going back/forth about the freaking thing than just driving over here and letting me throw it in the back of their car. I even put it out in the driveway so they could just grab it anytime without me being involved at all. *shrug* It's such a pain and I don't even sell anything on there, I just give away usable stuff when I'm cleaning up things.

Shrimp are pretty good clean ups. If you're worried about snail over population, a nerite or two would work well.

I've got 12 of these and they're pretty interesting to watch. The sparring gets pretty aggressive for something with such small of a mouth and being not very big. The males is almost jet black too, it's hard to see them against a black background. Good luck with them!

I remember hearing someone talk about pectoral fin and barbel erosion on corydora fry on bare bottoms. But I haven't experienced anything like that. Not sure about your fish, but I agree that it is probably something related to decor or being spooked. That rock interface looks perfect for a wisker to get snipped off in.

My wife broke my glass lid today. I was siphoning glass out and picked up the pleco cave to get under it. Apparently this guys date with the female in the tank a couple of days ago went well. Just laid them on the bottom instead of the top. 😄 Or at least I thought they're supposed to lay them on the top. Maybe I'm the wrong one.

What's on the bottom of the tank?

Have you kept any cherry shrimp yet? Otherwise, if it's got to be a fish... celestial pearl danios are pretty neat if there's enough plants to make them feel secure. And I breed them in far harder/higher pH water than you have. You might even get some passive breeding with them.

That's wild to me, I have rock hard water and I have never cleaned an air stone. Ziss or otherwise. Occasionally the actual "stone" type ones get crumbly. But I've never had to mess with one otherwise. Now, I've only been using Ziss stones for a little over two years. So take that for what it's worth. My biggest complaint with air stones is they constantly fall off when I'm cleaning filters.

It's really difficult to say what might have caused the problem. Do you have any pictures? Sometimes that might help. I'm only bringing this up because no one else has yet, but this is a great example of why quarantine is very important. If you'd have QT'd the new fish and they died in QT... no big deal as that's what QT is for. If you QT'd and you still lost fish in the existing tank then at least you'd know that it was just a timing thing. But having it happen in your main tank right after adding new fish and seemingly spread an issue to other fish makes it really hard to pinpoint on account of all of the variables here. I'm not trying to pile on or anything, this is just a good example of how it complicates troubleshooting issues when you don't QT. Small fish can have very small problems that are exceedingly difficult to see, so I'd suggest taking a good long look at everyone left in the tank.

I would think it's difficult to clean them, but maybe a vinegar soak would help dissolve any minerals. But if it's little micro-pieces of mulm it seems like that might be really hard to remove.

You could probably cut some of your own if you're patient enough. Otherwise might be more time/cost effective to buy new air stones?

I'd argue that you already did intentionally breed them.

Mine seem to like to lay eggs on each other. And on the assassin snails. And any other slow moving surfaces. 😄