jwcarlson

The fish store here tosses in a piece of yarn knotted into an X, basically. A stick or any plant trimming will do just fine.

Don't fill the 5-gallon the whole way to prevent sloshing. Wouldn't worry about an air stone, shrimp are tough.

My shrimp are in pH 8.2-8.3, GH and KH are both in the 18-20 degree range. I've got absolute gobs of shrimp and can send you some if you'd like. Not sure how they'd ship this time of year, but can probably figure something out.

It wasn't "today", but shortly before Christmas I took possession of new to me tanks of 125, 55, 40, and 29 gallons. And a 90 to-be-collected still. Not sure what I will be doing with them yet and considering resealing the 125, but also wondering if that's the right thing to do.

Yeah, my oldest bottle is definitely not squirting well. The newer one is OK still. I think there's a big enough sweet spot (I hope), that it doesn't need to be perfect.

Truthfully, the strips report exactly what I would expect based on tank and plant conditions. And it does respond as expected based on Easy Green input. I can do an API liquid test to compare to the AC Strips, but every time I've done that in the past it's been spot on. I suppose it doesn't hurt.

If there were appreciable nitrates at water change, I think I would agree. But it's kind of eating it all up. I don't mind doing the water changes, I change about 65 gallons in my 75 gallon discus tank every night. I've been testing pretty frequently since posting, dosing easy green a bit, and maintaining what looks like about 25 ppm of nitrates. Also cleaning out water lettuce as it escapes the hoop that somewhat contains it. Unfortunately I absolutely destroyed my best anubias trying to kill the black beard algae. Apparently I left the peroxide on too long or dosed it too much or something. All the big leaves are dead. I guess we'll see how it bounces back. If I can keep this somewhat stable, I will probably skip next week's "scheduled" water change and see what happens. I have extremely hard water, so I don't think there's necessarily an issue with running out of minerals or anything, generally.

Geeeeze, basically totally gone as of today. No survivorship at all. I don't think I'll RR this plant again. Everything else in the same batch was fine.

That seems a reasonable assumption, but unsure how any appreciable pressure could build. Now to hope some grows so I can try it again. 🤣 Or the nice guy in NY doesn't tire of sending me his cuttings!

@GuppysnailI use a gallon ice cream container with lid set over it, not snapped. Then towel over it for darkness. I have only done it a handful of times, but same way hasn't been an issue before. Wondering if maybe this does just happen to be less tough. It is certainly a thinner leaf. But hornwort doesn't seem to skip a beat. Lesson learned, I guess. If I do any more hygro it will be with no lid at all,see if that helps.

Has anyone done RR on Hygro? I have done it on anubias, vesuvius, subwassertang, hornwort, wisteria... Probably others I am forgetting. No issues. Here's my hygro that I got a few days ago. I don't think any of this will live and I am pretty bummed. A couple of them had decent roots, so maybe they'll make it. Just curious if anyone else has had issues. I thought maybe they got too cold in shipment, but they looked OK before RR. And I included a sprig of my own cuttings and it looks the same amount of wrecked to me. I did miss the 12 hours by two (so more like 14). Everything else in the batch was fine. Maybe this plant is just sensitive?

In my opinion duckweed is not acceptable in any aquarium.

99% chance fish will be fine, but because it's a new setup, it doesn't hurt to wait until you are back.

Giving the potted plants another go. Hopefully these discholes don't destroy them again. 😂

37 gallon tank Stocking: boat load of cherry shrimp, 8 kerri tetras, 3 cardinals, 1 betta, 5 sterbai, 1 bristlenose (and 2 tiny baby ones), 3 borneo suckers... I think that's it. I don't know if that's a lot of fish, but with the footprint it seems busy enough. So far the betta w/ tetras has been OK, though I think taking all of the water lettuce away stressed him a bit, so I got him a log which he does seem to like. Also lots of bladder, trumpet, and some rabbit snails. You can kind of see what's to offer from a plant standpoint. Many of them are about a year old and unfortunately were planted in substrate at one point or another, before I pulled them to the wood. So the java ferns were in really rough shape and actually seem to be doing better. They were stressed and made dozens of baby ferns on their leaves. About the only thing that's thriving for the most part in my opinion is the anubias. Everything else is just kind of bumping along. Have had some stem plants in here as well and they seem to do really well for a few weeks and then disappear *seemingly* overnight. Now recently, I pulled just about all the dwarf water lettuce out because the whole tank was covered and it was clearly causing an issue. Since then, the anubias have sent new leaves, including the bottom ones which haven't done much for some time. I do water changes every other weekend, about 50-60%. I forgot to do a test before, but after the nitrates tested somewhere around 10 ppm using A-C test strips. So I pumped in eight squirts of Easy Green. 24 hours later (tonight) I do another test and it MIGHT have been 15 ppm, it was slightly darker pink than last night, but it sure didn't look like much of anything. So tonight I did another 8 pumps. About a year ago I had someone tell me Easy Green was about 3 ppm per pump per 10 gallons. So for about 40 gallons my 8 pumps should have added about 6 ppm and another 6 tonight. Obviously minus whatever the plants are absorbing in the 24 hours between. No real algae issues, the highest anubias have some BB and green spot, I hydrogen peroxided them and the shrimp seem to be cleaning it up now. I don't want to do anything crazy. I'm considering that the pothos is the culprit and that it will just be impossible to reasonably get ahead of the curve with it in there maybe? I have a much larger one in my discus tank and the nitrates in there are basically zero (but doing 90% nightly water changes). I haven't been consistent overtime with root tabs, but I have been giving the sad sword in the back corner, the val (tiny sad thing under the heater, I used to have runners, but they apparently all died), and the crypts tabs every water change for the last three changes. Trying to not get too out of whack and cause some big issue, but would almost welcome something drastic changing, honestly. What would be some suggestions? Stay the course? Quit changing water until nitrates build? Keep daily easy green until I see some "therapeutic" level accumulate? Today 12/19: Right after water change 12/3: Before water lettuce removal 12/2:

I don't feel experienced enough with cherry shrimp (only one year) to know. But I bought six red ones and I couldn't begin to guess how many there are now in their 37. Hundreds of them, been limiting feeding so the bigger tetras and betta eat some of the shrimplets. I have seen them doing just that. So, I would wait for someone else who knows more, but mine certainly don't have an issue. I got some yellows and blues from JettsPapa awhile back and his are thriving just as well and making babies like crazy.

My water's pH is 8.4 and I have more shrimp than I know what to do with. But the water is also very hard. I personally do not battle pH or mess around with RO or anything like that. If I ever breed discus, maybe. But just for community tanks or shrimp... Nah. My discus are in straight, aged tap water.

Good thing you have a long TBR, @Katherine My theory is that when you run out of books to read, you die. So make sure you at least keep some on there!

Finished Vinland Saga 5, I'm really enjoying the series. Then read Red Rising by Pierce Brown, which was quite enjoyable. Starting Gleanings: Stories from the Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman. It's a "spin-off" from his Arc of the Scythe series, which was pretty good.

"Oh, I see you've seen our continuous water change system."

Congratulations to the both of you! Glad it was a happy ending (actually, a beginning 🙂)! Looks like a cool location!

I assumed that was water returning that had splashed up onto the second floor. 😉

I just put an order in for a 100,000 gallon Shop Vac just in case my wife finally lets me get the 265,000 gallon aquarium I've always wanted. Gotta be prepared.

Tell me about it! haha Friend from high school messaged me about them last week. Wife said she didn't care, which is wild. She must want something. 😄 They all have stands and (mostly new within the last year) filters. $350 for the whole ball of wax.

10 gallon CPD/shrimp 37 gallon community tetras w/ betta, corys, shrimp 75 gallon discus with some tetras Empty 10 gallon for emergency/QT purposes This weekend I am picking up a 125, 90, 55, and 40 bow front.