jwcarlson

Is he getting beat up by the others?

Apparently there's also another one: Spin Touch FF (waterlinkspintouch.com) Which looks a lot like the API one, honestly. Maybe it's a rebrand or something. Edit: I found some of their pool testing kits online and they're around $1,000 it looks like.

Yes, where can I buy one? 😄

I don't think shrimp are as fragile as people are led to believe (at least in my experience). I transferred a small sponge filter from my community tank into my 75 trying to get the cycled started. I wasn't in a hurry and I was just kind of putting ammonia in a little willy nilly. Tank temp was 85. I just dropped the filter in. A week later I tested the water ammonia through the roof, nitrites turned the Co-Op strip off-scale pink/purple within a couple seconds. I caught some motion and saw a shrimp tumbling through the tank as the 350 gph power head blasted it around the tank. I netted it out and plopped it back in the community tank and then found another and another and another (about 15 of them) in the 75. And that's how I learned that shrimplets LOVE the course sponge filters like the Co-Op sells. It's like a little shrimp apartment building. And I plopped them from a 78 degree tank into an 85 degree poisonous mess of a tank with ~4 ppm ammonia and who knows how high nitrites and they survived for a week.

Yeah, once we're house trained we're probably not too bad to have around. 😆

I don't have a dedicated shrimp tank, but there's a rather large cherry shrimp colony in my planted tank. I toss my plant trimmings into a 5-gallon bucket and they're in the basement with a grow light on them as "spares". There are absolutely shrimp in it that have hitch-hiked. When I do water changes in that tank I don't gravel vac, but if I decide to, I do that part of it into a bucket and let it settle and then net out shrimplets. They're not particularly easy to see. For the rest of the water I have a semi-permanent plumbed in Python that drains down into the basement sink (by gravity, not with faucet attachment). In that sink I have a square clear tub that I use as a "settling basin". I'm sure shrimp can get blown out of it, but I've caught a couple in it after water changes. I just drop them in the plant bucket. There's absolutely no way you're not going to eventually suck one up unless you're using something very finely meshed over the end of your siphon.

I lost a contact to the first chick we hatched. I was out of contacts and had an eye appointment later that week. I went and asked for a contact and told them how I lost it. I don't know if they believed me or not. *pfffft* what's with engineers anyway? (I'm an electrical engineer.)

@Sal I have been hunting (everything from squirrels to deer) for about 25 years. When I was younger I would say that I "enjoyed" the process of the actual kill or "harvest", to use a euphemism. I enjoy the rest of the process... sitting in the quiet of nature, waiting, etc. But the actual shooting of the arrow or bullet I, quite simply, dread. I have, though, made the decision to source meat as ethically as I can. I still buy 'factory farmed' meat, but it is always part of my decision making process. I think of it as an evolution we're going through. We've become so disconnected from our food that almost no one living in the US has actually killed any of the animals that they eat. And that's made for some really upside down thinking - to be perfectly honest if future me visited me tonight and said that 10 years from now I'm a vegetarian or vegan, it would not surprise me at all (though I think that unlikely). I would encourage everyone to get more involved in their food. It is an extremely emotional, rewarding journey and one that I think is well worth taking. An interesting read on the subject is Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. If you're a reader it's worth picking up. Or I'm sure there's an audio version as well. OR, you can find him speaking on the subject online, I am sure. Or to go further down the rabbit hole - Peter Singer's The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter is a more extreme view on the subject (Singer is an animal liberation activist). You might be able to tell that I like (but do not enjoy) to read views and ideas contrary to my own beliefs as I'm not sure there's another way to grow as a human. 🙂 But enough about that. This is a fun chicken thread and I do think you've done really well getting things setup and you'll greatly enjoy your hens! 🙂 (and eggs)

Sounds like it my be Cyanobacteria if it's mostly "in the water". Never experienced that myself, but I think Cory covers it in this video. Might be helpful to at least diagnosis what type it is. Is your granddaughter overfeeding them? Also, try getting a test kit yourself (strips are OK). I know a lot of people say to take your water to a store and have it tested. But these are (in a lot of cases) the same stores that we typically wouldn't necessarily trust advice from... so I would be skeptical. For example, you could take your car with a flat tire to a shop and they could air it back up and say "its good" when they haven't really fixed anything or diagnosed any problem. I struggled with hair and staghorn algae in my first (and only) planted tank. And I think I overreacted a few times. I've kind of let things ride with reduced lighting and it has mostly sorted itself out. Gut feeling is the kid might like to feed the fish too much and that can and will cause all sorts of issues.

I saw that video of the plastic bottle hive thing, I would strongly caution against using something like that. Bees are adaptable and able to be abused in many ways. No different than a betta that somehow lives out some sort of life in a teacup sized container. If the sun ever fully hits one of those plastic see-through hives it's probably curtains for the colony and overheated bees isn't a pleasant death. They regurgitate their stomach contents in a last ditch effort to control the temperature (normal cooling is spreading water on the combs and fanning). Not to dive too much into that. I am familiar with Stamets and really like the guy. I do not know how much merit his bee "stuff" has, however. I know a number of years ago there was a bit of a rage about it and I never really heard anything come of it. Which is kind of normal for most "viral" bee stuff. Ends up being kind of bunk. Regarding "contactless" beekeeping... I find it irresponsible. You probably wouldn't put fish in a black tote with a black lid and then hope everything is OK months and months down the road without interacting with them. So bees should be managed similarly to fish, IMO. Regular observation, treatment for disease/parasites when indicated, fed as required, etc. Not to mention that's the fun of it all. Sure, I guess honey is good. But if you're buying bees to get honey then you are absolutely going to have the most expensive (and labor intensive) honey you've ever had. I think a lot of new beekeepers want to have bees so they can tell someone that they are a bee keeper. And I suppose that's how a lot of us start a lot of things. But there's a whole lot more to it and bee gurus should be taken with a mountain of salt. If you do ever cross the beekeeping bridge feel free to message me, more than willing to help as best I can. Regarding the wrist, I am a firm believer in modern medicine, but I think a lot of time people are surgery happy. But that might kind of be a case of "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail". I never went and saw anyone about my wrist. I went by what my dad said was his experience and then just experimented with what seemed to work best for me. I tweaked my left wrist a bit when I was in the bees. So I've been trying to be cautious with it since then. It feels a little better today, mainly I just notice it hurting less.

I noticed some of my rummynose looked a bit more... full... than the others the other day. Wonder if they're going to spawn. That would be pretty cool, but would guess in the community tank they're in there wouldn't be much success for fry. I didn't think they'd breed in a tank, but now I want to watch closer. I really like the rummynose. If I didn't already have the cardinal tetras in there, I would probably replace them with more rummies. Pretty cool you got some baby rainbows even if it wasn't your rummies 🙂

@Sal Your plan sounds good. I utilized the area under 10x12 honey bee equipment shed as part of their run. It still get some moisture in from the joints and if it blows a lot and can get a little muddy at times. Your chickens won't care, but you might get muddy eggs and you doing anything in there can get messy/slippery. If the run is sound, your dog won't be able to do much other than spook them. Eventually they won't even really spook. Occasionally one of the chickens will hop into the main yard and usually the dogs chase them, but they jump back over before it's an issue. One of our dogs could probably clear our 6' fence if he wanted, but the 3' fence keeping the chickens in their part of the yard he can just bound right over without even running to it. So I added some stuff to keep him out. But chickens still venture out sometimes. The dogs have caught them and most hens will just "submit" and squat like they do when they're being bred. So once they stop moving the dogs don't have as much attacking instinct after that. They've done some feather damage, but nothing too major. But without intervention I'm sure they'd kill one. Our aussies are 2 and 1.5. The older one I did a much better job socializing and training him. He wouldn't bother them. But the younger one is from a "working" line and boy does he want to herd stuff. Every sparrow or other bird in the yard cannot touch the ground when he is outside. He got about 3" from catching a red tailed hawk this winter. It was on some garden fence and I let him out and he ran around to it and jumped JUST missing its tail. I plan to work on the dogs this year. The older one I could have "round up" the chickens for me and they will just naturally run back home, but the younger one is more driven, faster, and tougher to call off. All things that are my fault. He's smart (or as smart as dogs can be which IMO isn't very smart), so I think I can teach him to coexist better. Our goal is to move to the country and right now we've got a lot of the workings of a farm, but we're packed onto a 0.18 acre lot, which seemed fine about 10 years ago when we bought it. I think the noise eventually kind of becomes part of the background noise. Our neighborhood is quiet... but once you start listening... it's not that quiet. We're not too far from a main road and there's loud cars. Everybody here in the area has at least one dog or two. Ours bark quite a bit, but they're not even in the top 10 of barking dogs around here. Chickens get up EARLY (I have one that is out in the run at 5 AM and in my experience they are more quiet when they can access their run as soon as they wake up. If I lock them in the coop (have done this when a stray cat was terrorizing them) they know they should be out pecking around and get cranky and complain loudly. In the better parts of the year when they have run of some of the yard, they will complain if I'm not up early enough to open their run. I'm up at 4:30 every morning except for some weekend mornings. So I am usually able to head most of that early morning stuff off. They're always making some noises though... even if just scratching or jumped up/off chicken swings in the run. There's some level of noise. Usually it's just soft clucking and movement sounds. If there's already chickens in the neighborhood they can (and will) get each other going, which might be an issue. You can train them a bit in warm weather by spraying them with a hose. I know it sounds cruel and you don't soak them or pin them down... just sweep some spray from a hose over them. But they'll learn if they get loud they get sprayed. They do not remember this forever it takes pretty constant reminding, though. Our chickens will just sometimes go absolutely bananas and be totally inconsolable. That is rare, but when it happens I think it's the right conditions (temp, wind, etc) that they can hear someone else's chickens some distance away and get into an alerting loop with them. In nature birds have different vocalizations that mean "look out" or "scatter" and that kind of stuff. Wild turkeys, for instance, have dozens of vocalizations. Chickens have less, but you'll start understanding their noises once you get them (or YouTube it). If they get in an alarm contest back/forth with neighboring chickens it might get difficult to deal with them. Hopefully that doesn't happen and maybe I am overblowing the likelihood. I've never had a neighbor complain about the chickens, but don't conflate that with them "not hearing" or "not noticing". If you've got hens laying eggs and screaming at each other at 5 AM on Saturday morning it's going to irk your neighbors (and probably you as well). Treats can be your friend here. I like dry meal worms (spring/summer) and whole corn (fall/winter). Meal worms are all protein basically, so can't really cause a dietary issue. Whole corn helps fatten them up for winter and basically requires them to "warm up" to process it. Or at least that's my understanding of it. Regardless, I don't feed them much/any of that in the warmer months. Chickens seem pretty quite during waking hours during winter. But spring/summer is different. If your chickens hop down into the run at 5AM and find that "mom" has scattered a couple of handfuls of meal worms all over the run... they're pretty likely to be more content than if they fly down and "mom" forgot to fill the feeder and the waterer. If they're going crazy and being loud mid-day, I'll go out there an try to settle them down. Usually me going nearby will get them all to run over and settle down. This may not be the case for non-hand raised ones. But mine have all learned that I mean food. So if they're going bonkers I settle them down THEN I'll give them some treats scattered around all over (don't want to reward them for screaming at you). Some in the coop, some in the run, some in the grass. I want them to be searching out that stuff and forgetting that the neighbor slammed a car door too loud or something. Additional methods here are things that take them a long time to peck at and will cause a frenzy. So tossing in an apple or a squash or a pumpkin or a pepper or tomato will distract them and they'll often forget why they were being loud. Giving them something to scratch in also keeps them happy. I keep some straw on hand and put a flake of it in the coop and/or run every once in awhile. I also rake all my leaves and/or collect leaves in the fall and put them in the run. I put them in very thick, like two feet deep. Give them a small area of bare ground and they will churn and shred and pick through all of the leaves. And other than leaf scratching sounds, they'll be quiet. Multiple levels of perches in the run is also a good thing, sometimes one might get on the others nerves and if she can escape them up on a perch, that can help settle them down. Additional note: they don't need a heater to get through the winter. Chickens are much hardier in the cold than they are in the heat. During summer I run a small square fan in the coop screwed to the ceiling and pointing out their door. This keeps some of the black flies and gnats out of the coop (they can kill chickens by clogging nose or biting face so much they get infections). Plus it helps cool down the coop a bit, which can get really hot. They seem to love a little breeze when it's hot. And shade. If you don't have a tree or shrubs or something that will give them decent shade in the summer, consider putting a few bushes or maybe a vine plant that will grow on part of the run's wall to provide them some shade. I'm in Iowa, so it doesn't get really hot. But we get 95-98 degrees and 90%+ humidity every summer and the chickens are miserable even with good air flow and shade. They spend a lot of time in the cool dirt under the shed when it's like that. Sorry these have been really long. Noise is a constant concern for me. We've had chickens in the yard for about six years, I think. Because of having added another kid (we have three total) and two dogs during that time, they might be on their way out this spring. There's just too much else going on and we'd really like to have a bigger yard for the kids to play in as the chickens currently take up about 1/3rd of it. If/when we move to a farm, I would absolutely have chickens again. My issue with getting rid of them at this point is just that I have an irrational attachment/unspoken agreement to any animal that I raise, regardless of how inconvenienced I might become after circumstances change. It might sound absolutely silly, but I can and do very much separate pet from meat. I can hand raise a bunch of day-old cornish cross chickens for meat. I give them the best life I can for their 7-8 weeks with me. And I can hatch eggs knowing that all of the cockerels that I can't give away will end up butchered when they're 14ish weeks when crowing gets out of hand (they'll start at about 4 weeks, but it's not loud or frequent until later). But the hens I hatch (or let my hens hatch), I go into it kind of agreeing "with them" that they're going to live out as close to a natural life as they can with me. I do not enjoy any of this killing... not by a long shot. But if you start thinking about how many cockerels are killed as day-old chicks when you buy eggs at a store for years and years, it helps put things in perspective. And it's probably rationalization, but I figure that chick if given the choice between never really living or getting to live in my backyard and eat and scratch and chase bugs, worms, and each other for a few months before having one really bad night... I think it would probably take that over getting tossed in a pile of other dying chicks at a hatchery. I digress... what it comes down to is me trying to, as much as possible, look the meat I eat in the eye and understand all that it takes to put a dozen eggs in the fridge or a pound of steak on the grill. (main meat source for us is whitetail deer that my family and I hunt and process) /end of my ranting

Same here. I bought six adults right before Christmas. It would not surprise me at all to learn that I have 100 or even 200 in the 37 gallon community tank they're in now. They're freaking everywhere. It would be kind of rare to see more than three when I had the six of them in the 10 gallon. Now there's regularly 30+ visible all over the tank doing what they do. Super hard water here, so maybe that's the key? As far as my main frustration, I think it would be the lack of technology entering the market with any reliable options. And what is there is expensive. I was in the hobby as a teen and into my early 20s. And took about 15 years off having a ten gallon every now and again over those years. I guess I expected it to be more different. The fact that there's not some widget that you can dump an ounce of water in and have it spit out your parameters is kind of wild to me. How is there not a reliable pH probe that doesn't cost $300 and take a day to calibrate? But I suppose there's not necessarily a lot of money in that. edit to add: don't get me wrong, there is some better tech now. Lights are SO much better and some of those have lots of fancy features like my Fluval 2.0. But most tech seems to be driven simply to cost more not necessarily make the hobby better or do the job they do better. Filters are a good example of that. Heater tech is also head scratchingly pretty much the same as it was. But I suppose there are some good heat control options now that do a decent job. So maybe the main complaint is the testing/water chemistry front. I envision a system that constantly monitors my water and sends me a text message when my temp drops below some level or when my flow on a filter drops to zero.

You're getting a good setup there for sure. I've got *too many* (11) in our small backyard started with 7 we hatched some number of years ago and have let them hatch fertile eggs a couple times. And a few have been lost. Coup is 6x4. They have an attached 16x8 run and then outside of that in the spring/summer they have about half the yard with 6' privacy fence. A few things I underestimated or didn't fully understand: * They're freaking loud, even quiet ones like Orpingtons (that's what we started with, they're absolute sweethearts) will sing egg songs and occasionally the whole flock will also congratulate each other on their eggs. * They will eat everything down to bare dirt on any location they are confined to. Before losing my place to raise meat birds, I was raising 35 cornish crosses in a tractor that I moved daily and even those lazy birds eat a lot of grass if they're confined on it. The run will be dirt if it's covered, mud if it isn't. I'd suggest a roof of some sort over the run (sorry if you've covered this). * Mine do astronomically better when I wrap the run in plastic for winter. Before I did that they would barely or never leave the coup in the winter. Wrapped in plastic they use the run as they normally would (coup extension). * They poop a lot... more than most "backyard" types might like to admit. * We shared the yard with them for quite awhile, but our old beagle finally died about two years ago and we now have two Austrailian Shepherds and they are not as chicken friendly as the beagle was (who would never bother them at all). Between the new dogs and the poop all over the patio we went to a two layer "run" so they still get plenty of space and grass (seasonally). * They are much more intelligent than people give them credit for. Mine learned to "knock" on the garage's man door when they heard me in there... hoping for treats (they can be trained to come for treats - meal worms, whole corn, etc). Mine will follow me around and I use a handful of stuff to throw into whatever I might need them to move into (into the run from the yard, for instance). * If you have the time and you raise them "by hand", you'll have a very interactive and curious pet. When we had more time with them, the originals would sit on our laps, shoulders, sometimes our heads... the ones raised by a momma hen in the coup/run are much, much, MUCH more wild and cagey. I can still get most of them to eat out of my hand and let me pick them up if I need to. But one (and easter egger) is crazy. It finally started laying (which calms them down A LOT). Last summer I almost took her out with my pellet gun because she decided to start flying over the privacy fence and one evening was about 20' up in a neighbors tree and would not come down. I finally got her back in the coup and clipped one of her wings that night. * Water in winter is a constant struggle, you're going to want electrical in your coup/run. I use a simple 'open' heated dog dish in winter. During warmer months a larger waterer so I don't have to fill it up every day. * Even with 6 hens you're probably going to have more eggs than you know what to do with. Eggs sneak up on you. I've got probably 150+ eggs right now. I am horrible at getting rid of them. Used to have some reliable egg takers, but took a new job about a year ago and without that "egg sink"... I have them piling up. * Chickens can be very violent. With orpingtons, you'll probably be OK. My brother has some different types and they have killed all but maybe one of the hens I've given to him over the years (extras from hatching). I think he got rid of them this last fall and is starting over. The only one that's still alive has a big part of her head missing. They can be NASTY. (they're dinosaurs) * We've had Orpingtons (buff and lavender), easter eggers, olive eggers, Americaunas, Marans, cream legbar, silkies, cochins, brahmas, silkie crosses (frizzle/sizzle), and others I cannot remember. They are absolutely different in a lot of ways. Some quiet, some "fliers", etc. Our favorites have been buff Orpingtons and lavender Americaunas. They are the most quiet and friendly. Silkies seem to be the dumbest of them all by far. You'll have fun with them. If you don't have a fence around your property, they will absolutely end up in the neighbors. But even if you don't, I wouldn't hesitate to let them out of the run and into the grass to peck around, eat bugs, etc. They LOVE leaves and mulch and will dig through any of that you have around. So landscape will be destroyed if they're left at it for any amount of time. They will find patches of bugs/grubs and they will dig them out, killing/ruining grass. They will also target any area that's up against a wall/fence. For example, when they ran the whole yard, I didn't have to weed eat around the fence because they would scratch it and keep it down there. Chickens seem to multiply even if you don't have roosters! 🙂 We even have a "rescue" hen that someone found wandering around. She turned out to be a sweetie, but was very stressed when we got her. You might have a hen (or several) that want to get broody on you. I have found that letting them hatch eggs (if you can get some fertile ones from someone local) is the absolute funnest chicken thing that we've done. Especially if you have a really good momma like we had. Unfortunately, I think we lost her last year as none of our buffs wanted to hatch eggs last year and she ALWAYS did. She was a significantly better mother than the frizzle and silkie/cochin cross were that I last let hatch eggs. Buff momma "Blue" would sit her babies for WEEKS, always very attentive. The frizzle and the cross tandem sat eggs, which was cool. And shared mothering duties. But once the babies started wandering around a bit they were not good mothers at all. I had to help them out. Some pics attached. Including one of Blue sitting six of her seven week old chicks still. Five of those six ended up being cockerels and so I processed them. But the one hen is still a part of our flock now, she would still snuggle up to mom for about a year. Blue was such a sweet momma type she would also let the silkies run up under her even as adults if I spooked them (pulling eggs in the dark of night like I do, or just general activities that caused them to panic a little like mowing. Note: not all of this was in my backyard. I had awesome access to a place where I could have some layers and my meat chickens in tractors. I was at this location daily anyway, so taking care of them wasn't a problem. Lost that access and condensed down to just the backyard. Which is part of why we ended up with so many at the house. I was incubating eggs each spring for a bit because I had the outlet and would let a mom brood some too. Between the layers and the meat chickens I was dealing with about 70 of them at different points. If you hatch or let eggs hatch you will have lots of cockerels (roosters) to deal with. So consider that. I would process them when I did my meat chickens, but the laying breeds are almost not worth it for meat. But I am not just going to kill something and toss it.

Aquarium Co-Op Test Strips (and Ammonia strips) for day-to-day check-up type stuff. I only use them for the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate pads (I find the rest of pads useless for my water). They're good to detect the presence of whatever you're testing. And if you're good at extrapolating and getting a "feel" for them, the numbers are accurate compared to API liquid tests. If I want to know the pH, I do the API liquid. Or if I think the strips aren't telling me the whole story (or if I'm having an issue and want to report water parameters), I do the liquid. I test my discus tank water at least once a day with the strips. My other tank every couple of weeks. Sometimes I cut the strips in half (sorry, Cory). Doesn't hurt to have both, but if I could only have one I would go with the liquid kit personally. I would just test my water SIGNIFICANTLY less often because the liquid kit is a pain in the rump to use and takes forever as mentioned above.

That is awesome!

Couple of things, you can probably find a utility sink pretty cheap. I have a plastic tub one that all of my "stuff" drains into (laundry, water softener, and aquarium water for changes. Have a Python hook up with a short garden hose so I can refill aging/preheating barrels. Now that spring is showing up, I'll probably start running a short line right out the front door as I'm sending 55 gallons of water with fish waste in it down the drain every night from my discus tank. Might as well water the apple trees and/or landscape with it when weather allows. Obviously, make water changing as trouble free as you can. An additional note - I had pretty darn bad tendonitis in both elbows/wrists about two years. I wasn't sure it was going to get better without doing something drastic. But I kept on the bracing straps and I'm OK now. But I do pay attention to anything that's using my forearms a lot and I try to be careful. It's a lousy ailment. I found that there's a balance between restricting movement of the joint and use of it to build strength/stretch. At one point the brace became a barrier to recovery. But to get me to that point the braces were very important. My favorite was the single 3" neoprene strap style. But also used a bigger one that covered the whole elbow joint on both sides for awhile. That was good at keeping me honest in how much I was using it because you can't move your arms too much with it on. Final thing to add is that I'm a beekeeper (which really made this problematic dealing with 30-40 colonies of heavy boxes). I stung myself in the elbows and wrists every time I worked the bees. And it absolutely helped. Relief would last 3-4 days it seemed and gradually got better. In short - lots of blood flow to areas of concern (might) be what helps. My great grandma had arthritis and swore by the bees my grandpa and dad would bring to sting her. And I've done it for my dad who's had chronic tendonitis. I don't know if it's placebo or not, but my dad took several stings for a couple of years and hasn't had an issue for probably 3-4 now. Finding bees might be tough and finding someone who would be willing to let you sting yourself is probably tougher. I think there's a company called Bee Weaver that might ship small bee toxin kits with live bees. I have had a number of people over the years want to get bees from me to sting themselves and there's absolutely no way I will do that. But personally have found it extremely beneficial when coupled with other traditional means of relief.

Yep, turq. He's grown a bit finally. He is basically the size that the other ones came in at, for reference for how much they've grown.

Couple of maybe better pics. Pardon the poop 😂

No real big developments here, all of the remaining nine fish are eating (the little guy is finally developing an appetite). I have had the tank elevated to 90*F for a couple of weeks, but will probably start shifting that down a degree every few days starting like Monday to settle in around 86. We're leaving the house for the weekend on Friday evening. So I'm hoping to do a water change Friday and then they'll be without food for a couple days (which isn't a big deal at all). I'll be able to do a change Sunday evening when we get home, but they're going to miss their first water change in the almost six weeks that I've had them on Saturday! 😱 On the tank cycling front, ammonia is processing swiftly (measuring zero the last few days) and nitrites seem to be kind of past the peak now. Last night the nitrates appeared to eclipse the pinkness of the nitrite indicator. I know it's not scientific, but nitrites went down compared to previous 24 hrs and nitrates went up. So the right direction hopefully. Last night I added a Poth-O-Carry and put a couple of rooted pothos cuttings in and took two trimmings from a philodendron and put them in as well. So excited to see those take off in the coming months. And you can kind of half see the new background and bottom paint. This weekend was supposed to be when I got my water change system a little more "automated", but this trip kind of became unavoidable, so it will have to wait. Right now I rely on a timer to remind me to go down and shut off the water that refills the 55 gallon aging drum, but I'd like to get that on a float. Mainly in case I forget to turn it off some night which is absolutely inevitable. Thinking about getting a second 55 gallon barrel and plumbing them together somehow to give me more capacity, but that's pretty unimportant at the moment. I currently have a 55 gallon barrel and a 32 gallon trash can, so if I needed to, I could do an emergency 100%+ water change. But it would just be kind of a pain to do. I also have temp controllers I want to set up and have kind of a control center that I can kill power to from my phone as needed (heaters when pumping out of the aging barrels). Also want to plumb separate drain and return lines so I can leave the pump connected and just valve between pumping and draining. Son trying to get them to eat out of his fingers, which they do readily... but he wouldn't quit bouncing so some kept backing off.

70% nightly. Water aged and pre-heated 24 hours. @JuanchoI've not fed mine blood worms. I know there are supposed to be issues with them, but I think most everyone says Hikari are OK. I feed the beef heart frozen pre-cut into cubes and they sit in the freezer in a plastic container. I just grab a cube and toss it in. It sinks relatively quickly. Sometimes I stick it to the glass, but it usually pops off pretty quick. Freeze dried black worms stick to the glass well.

That would seem to indicate you've got something in the tank that's bumping the PH. But like @Jawjagrrl said, that looks low range to me in first pic and high range on this pic above. So maybe you are right in between. I can't comment how much of a swing is bad for fish. I know discus people say less than 0.4 swing. I noticed that my fish seemed significantly better when I did water changes with aged water in my community tank. But... mine is swinging a lot.

I'm not sure that TDS is going to tell you anything in this situation. I'll pull the rock and put some vinegar on it. Does it fizz? Otherwise, what's your water pH out of the tap vs overnight with an air stone running in it? Mine comes out @ pH of 7 and ages over 24 hours in my barrels with aeration to pH of 8.2 because it apparently has a lot of carbon dioxide in it.

I don't think you can go wrong with a HOB and a sponge filter or two for what you're describing. The HOB will help keep the water more clear (in my experience) by giving you some decent mechanical filtration and if you ever have an extended power outage or something like that, you'll still have sponges that you can power with a battery air pump. Plus why not have some sort of air stone... and if you're going to have an air stone, why not put a sponge filter on the end of it? You don't necessarily have to have a massive HOB aiming for multiple hourly turnovers for that part of it either. On my old oscar tanks I tried to aim for something close to 10x hourly turnover (two Penguin 350s on a 75, for instance). That was a long time ago and I don't think that kind of flow is necessary in most cases.

What are you planning on keeping in the tank? I think that makes a huge difference. Air driven sponge filters (in my opinion) are more or less useless for mechanical filtration. The caveat is that I am relatively new to sponges. Perhaps a power head driven one would create enough "suction" to slurp up material. This is actually good for some applications, but not necessarily great for others. Otherwise, I've always enjoyed HOBs and I think they're a good option. But I don't think I've ever had a tank without at least two filters. Like a HOB and a sponge filter working together. In my 37 gallon community I have a couple of HOBs and a smaller Co-Op sponge filter. On my 75 discus tank I've got (as of the shipment arriving last night) three double stacked large Co-Op sponges. Hospital tank has a smaller finer sponge that I had laying around. In the discus tank, I am the mechanical filtration with water changes every night. If you're going to put 40 male African cichlids in your 75, you should probably do something different than what I'm doing. 🙂