jwcarlson

Nerites are great for eating algae. But my vote for best clean-up crew is responsible feeding and/or your siphon. 🙂 What else is in the tank already? Or if it's not already setup, what's the theoretical future stocking?

If you want something to eat algae, I think you'll be disappointed with hillstreams for this purpose. Both can be a bit of a spectacle to watch, though. A mature male bristlenose is quite wild looking.

My sterbai have been saving up for me.

The fish looks fine now and it's been maybe 3-4 weeks since I took them out. I'm not sure how long you need to have salt in for ich, but if you're trying to keep a certain level of salt make sure that you add back what you take out with water changes.

I did 1 tbs/gallon on my discus tank which had two bristlenose plecos in it. The super red was fine, but the regular female started getting what looked like fin damage on the ends of her fins after about a week, so I pulled them. I did the discus for about 12 days. I've always heard that corys are very salt sensitive as in "any salt might kill them". But maybe that's not true? I've always been too scared to try.

Best of luck in your battle against duckweed, @GoofyGarra.

You've got some strange discoloration on your pads. How are you letting the strip sit for the minute you wait before reading the chart? I wouldn't worry about TDS at this point. When you have the two strips next to each other. To be clear, that's two tests from the same water at the same time? I love the ACO test strips, but I do not find the pads below nitrite to be of any value for me with my water (which is very hard and high pH). I still think they're valuable though. I did an expected water change just last night by dipping a strip into a newly setup tank because of the strips. But the hardness and pH pads just don't work for my water. They do seem fairly accurate in the tanks that I cut with RO water for breeding.

Interesting, I have none of the push notification info on computer or phone.

You can push notifications to your email, but I'm not sure there's a way to do it through your browser unless there's an add-on, maybe?

Found that two of my pitch black ram pairs had spawned.

Interesting. I have had some of these installed since release and haven't noticed any plugging off and I have rock hard water.

It's all about your goals. If you have mature fish in a community tank that you're simply enjoying. I don't think there's anything wrong with every other day. In general, I think there's more stuff that fish graze on in a tank than we might realize. I feed almost everything twice a day. But that's because almost everything is growing out or attempting to breed. So that aligns with my goals. I also thrive on a routine. So that is a factor for me too.

The issue is it just moves the thing you've got to lift up. I'd argue and a bunch of single scoops of sand is lighter than a shop vac with all the sand in it. However, if that's not a concern. I have used a shop vac whenever I'm emptying a tank. I find scooping more efficient, but once it gets to a certain level, the shop vac is the way to go. The only thing is that you want to make sure you don't just bury it as the more narrow hosed ones can plug off. Mine is a 3" hose, I think. Maybe 2.5". Either way, if you are careful not to suck up too much, it should work fine.

^this. If you're happy reading it, who cares if anyone else enjoys it! I've recently read One Piece volumes 4, 5, and 6. And last night finished Blake Crouch's The Last Town - the third book in the Wayward Pines Trilogy. I loved the series. Blake Crouch is an absolute must read, in my opinion.

Staghorn Algae I think it's my favorite algae. 😄

Looking good! It's wild how slow they grow! 😄

I agree, that doesn't seem like that pH shift would cause an issue.

I'm not saying this could be causing it (especially at only 20% water changes), but it might be a factor... if the water comes out of the tap at 8.2 pH, what does it "age" to? You can do this by putting some tap water in a jar with an airstone and then measuring the pH after you let it bubble away overnight or eight hours or so. If there's a significant shift, it could be causing some water change relate stress. How often are you doing water changes?

Any sort of spots, fuzz, discoloration... lack of appetite or always spitting out food. Flashing (where a fish swims up to something like a rock or wood and dashes off of it quickly). White, stringy looking poop. Any general lethargy. Any gasping at the surface. Constant rapid breathing. Some of these things can just be stress related, so it takes some figuring out. My personal opinion is that I always worm my fish (with levamisole). I don't use any of the antibiotics or IchX unless there's something noticed.

I just did this with almost 30 cories. Going from 76 to 82. Netted them all out into a half gallon container with a couple inches of water in it. Moved them over to the new tank and set them on top. Took a cup and dumped another inch of water into it from the new tank. Let them set for 5 minutes or so and then released them. They were eating 30 seconds after release and none appeared even remotely stressed.

Yeah, gotta use it on municipal water, for sure. I even age all my water 24 hours and still can't get away without using it.

I still dip a test strip every once in awhile. It's like Groundhog Day... if I see any of the "bad stuff", I just keep doing daily changes. If it's looking good, I wait a couple days and test again. If still good... probably cycled, but check again in a few days. If not good... change water again. In general the world seems more and more water-change averse and I don't quite understand it. Especially as the hobby seems to be moving at least a bit towards the more nano sized tank. Anyway, I'm not trying to argue. I just think it's astronomically easier to cycle a tank with fish in and doing daily water changes in most cases. Outside of some outliers (like a huge tank or something). It takes all of the understanding of toxicity and all that noise away. It also helps lean away from the idea that you can just dump something in your water and solve all the maintenance you should be doing. And to be clear, I'm not saying anyone in this thread is saying to do this, but as you can see... it's a VERY common thought process out in the real world. Plus, you get really efficient at changing water. 🙂

It certainly won't be ideal long-term. So, if that's not what you want to do, then perhaps it would be best to rehome them. I don't know if you're going to find a LFS that's going to take surrenders for credit, but maybe you know of a place. In the meantime, fish-in cycling is easy as pie in a small tank. Change 50% of the water every day, it takes a matter of minutes in a small aquarium like that. I do them in some of my 10 gallon grow outs every morning. It takes a few minutes and the most intensive part is vacuuming the bottom. The rest is hands off. While I'm refilling the bucket from my aging barrel I can do get the baby brine ready to feed and/or do a load of laundry. It's close enough in time to doing a water test to see if anything is building up, it's just more efficient to do the water change.

That's the way I run all my regular heaters, too. But occasionally, I do run them dry because I do a lot of 90-100% changes. Whoops.

What's the draw of using a heater like that when you already have an InkBird? The appearance or footprint? Something else? Just curious.