jwcarlson

Does it kill bladder snails? If it doesn't at regular dose, does it kill them at a higher dose?

I listened to a cory expert give a talk to the Minnesota Aquarium Society a couple of months ago about cory toxin and the description of what it took for them to reliably get the toxin released, I feel, is unlikely to happen during most normal handling. Including at a store and the drive home. And maybe even relatively unlikely to happen during shipment. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I don't think I would necessarily hang my hat on that being the cause.

🥳 Can't wait!

The kasa ones are so much easier and you can schedule basically everything for it. On/off, you can set up basically feeding timer type function. For example, I have my tanks turn their filters and heaters on every night at 9:30 because *sometimes* I forget to turn them back on after the nightly water change on my discus tank. So it just automatically does it. It's surprising how many things you use them for once you have a few of them. Highly recommend.

I just trim the roots back and it's doesn't seem to be an issue. But I also don't have a huge plant, mine is in my discus tank and there's basically no nitrates in there for it, so it doesn't grow very fast.

EL, I think is "end of life" and I'm assuming 76 is the temp you have it set at?

No major die offs, one got sucked up my little tray siphon and there was a snail shell and it got pinched. Otherwise I think there's still 50-60 (hard to count). They're still in the fry tray, actually. I really need to get them into a bigger tank, but I've been moving fish all over the place and they're just taking a back seat for relocation. There's still a 37 gallon reservoir pumping water into their tray continuously, so I'm fairly confident it's just a space issue, not water quality. Doing at least three 90% water changes on the fry system every week. My first batch experienced die offs like you're experiencing and my take on it looking back on it is that I was WILDLY over feeding fry powder. Which I think is extremely easy to do. I need to spawn mine again and get another batch going, but a few weeks ago I had a massive die off of plants in the parent's tank, then a huge amount of hydra (never seen them in this tank before), and then about a week ago my biggest female was floating dead. No testable water quality issues in the tank and I have no idea what to make of it, unfortunately. I don't think it would be old age, but perhaps it's a set-up issue that's causing her stress overtime. She was the only mature female for about a year, so it could be related to that. If you go back through this thread there was some chat about nitrite poisoning and it's long term effects. Might be worth reviewing (posted by Lowell's Fish Lab). At least I think it was this thread.

Some of us don't even worry about the algae on the glass. 😎

I think it looks awesome the way it is!

I just got my first rams a few weeks ago. So no opinions yet. 😄

My discus are in my tap water. pH 8.3, GH and KH are each like 18+ degrees. Not breeding in this, just keeping. Edit to add my actual GH/KH, which I haven't checked for awhile. This is from a couple years ago... KH was 16 drops = 286 ppm, GH was 18 drops = 322 ppm

Everything I have ends up in my tap water unless I am trying to breed it. And the stuff that actually breeds just does it in my tap water and I've failed miserably at breeding anything in tailored water. 😄 And it's a pain in the butt to manage the different types of water.

Kasa WiFi timers. I use a few of the smart strips that have individually controlled outlets. And several of the cubes that are just one outlet. They're really easy to use and even switching phones and stuff is pretty seemless. It actually has a functional app for your phone and in my experience that hasn't been an issue at all. It just works. Which is refreshing considering apps these days.

You probably need to change another 150 gallons of water. If you don't have fish in it and the plants allow, you could drain it mostly empty and slowly fill it up with the water you want (assuming you are making batches of water) as it's available. You probably don't need to go full RODI, can probably get away with just RO. But I'm not a plant expert. I, too, have exceedingly hard water and I've just embraced whatever grows in the water I have and if it dies, it dies. Of course that all depends on your goals.

Being more colored up and less hiding would be the more dominant fish, typically. I don't think the other is defending the skull as a spawning location, but probably just using it to hide from the other.

Beautiful fish!

As a two year discus keeper, I would encourage you to not get discus. Doing them "right" is a lot of work in most cases and IMO they're best kept as a species only tank (or discus + cories or plecos kind of deal). Every time I've done new tankmates with my discus, I have to worm them as one of them drops off and stops eating and starts losing weight. Interested to see the 180 as you get going. I just set up a 125 (used, resealed, etc). I have a 30 gallon sump under it. I'm not sure that I love sumps, but I know I don't like canisters... so that's kind of out as an option.

Ebay is the cheapest place to buy them. Make sure you buy from the actual Inkbird store which is called Inkbird (wild, right?)

Hard to tell, but it also looks like the black spot has the blue spangling mixed in which indicates female, yes?

Book taste is wildly subjective. Just because "everyone else" loved it, doesn't mean you will. I will say that I think you're sleeping on Abercrombie and Lies of Locke Lamora, The First Law series and Gentlemen Bastards are among my favorites. I, too, read amongst plenty of distractions and I've done two things when I really want to focus. Ear buds and listening to classical music or movie soundtracks or just regular old ear plugs. You have to be a certain level of anti-social for this and I don't often use them. But I will break them out when I'm reading the heavier books like you're talking about.

I finished Of Blood and Fire by Ryan Cahill and am excited to read the second book. Finished The Surgeon by Leslie Wolfe last night. It was OK, but I'm not a great fan of twists simply for the sake of twists and then when you think that is the last twist here's two more. Meh. It wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't particularly great. Lots of belief suspended and I'm typically a fantasy reader.

AquaHuna has been pretty good for me for fairly run-of-the-mill fish like you're looking for.

Agree on the leak, but I will say that I think the collars take a little bit more air. It's not a problem for me on a central air pump with plenty of capacity (so far). But I think if someone was at the ragged edge of their pump capacity and then switched everything over to the new collar, it might be an issue.

He does talk a bit about that decision, doesn't he? My personal suggestion for anyone struggling/worrying about heaters is to invest in an Inkbird controller and then it really doesn't matter what heater you plug in. I run all of my tanks and aging barrels with Inkbirds and whatever the cheapest 100-500 watt heaters are made by the alphabet soup Amazon-only companies and it works swimmingly. I'm a bit of an off-standard case, maybe. Because we keep the house quite cool in the winter and I've got some very warm water fish so I'm asking them to raise the temperature 30 degrees above room temp in some cases. I understand the appeal of an all-in-one unit. But I really think the Inkbirds are under utilized and they work with any heater which makes keeping spare heaters cheaper AND you don't need a specific heater. For instance, I could drop a 200W heater in a 10 gallon with an Inkbird and not have to worry about it cooking the fish (though the temp swings will not be well regulated with a bigger heater).

I believe he said they can continue to sell the stock they have or that they (ACO) would refund them.