jwcarlson

Just plop them in a bucket or tote and set up the new one. If you don't think you can get it done in a reasonable amount of time you could refill the 20 even just "on the floor" if you think you need a day or two. But if you move the filters over and dechlorinate the water you don't really have much to worry about.

What do the instructions that came with the strip say? I don't really look at anything except nitrites and nitrates on the Co-Op test strips. And I don't care about what the chart says for PPM. If I dip it in for the three seconds and five seconds after I pull it out, the nitrate square is getting pretty pink, I know there's a lot of them. On my discus tank there's barely any color on it after a minute, but if I don't pitch it right away the nitrite and nitrate squares show a tiny bit of color after it dries over 10-30 minutes (or a day). Whatever process that's designed around that reaction, there's a reason they give you a time after which to look at it. Go by the instructions on the container and (in my opinion) don't use it to try to quantify how much nitrate or nitrite you have, but simply use it was a rough estimate. If I dip in my planted tank and there's a very light pink after one minute, I'm going to give them some Easy Green. If I dip and it's a deeper pink, but not boldly pink. I wait on the Easy Green. If it's dark pink I need to do a water change. If for some reason I need to know "exactly" how many PPM of something I have... that's what the master test kit is for.

I have an auxiliary digital hanging on the front, a heat controller in the cabinet with digital readout (but have to open the door). The stinking aux one went loopy a few days ago and just kept reading a degree higher every day and went it got to 97 I finally turned it off. So now I have to remember to open the door and look. But currently with the daily WCs I'm doing for the discus I'm well aware of the bath water they're in. Pretty cool they seemed to take the 65 degrees just fine. Kids are so "fun" to have around aren't they? 😄 A handful of years ago one of ours filled the little 10 gallon in their room with paper and socks. 🙃

I think Cory had a video of some he was growing floating. I've definitely had some loose trimmings or breakoffs floating around quite a long time, they start growing roots. They might not grow as fast as rooted in substrate, but that might not be a bad thing. I just trimmed my big plant again and put all the trimmings in a catch-all 5-gallon bucket that I have sitting around with extra trimmings and floaters in. They were still green this morning when I added some water and it's been a couple weeks. Not sure if any of that helps.

I'd personally move them back to the ten gallon as the "problem" seems to follow the apistos. I've never had apistos so can't comment on if they can be murderers or not.

How does this stuff compare to a $4, 50-pound bag of Quikrete all purpose gravel from Home Depot? It really looks very similar to me. Attached is some Home Depot gravel in one of my tanks. Small rock pile front left made of some river stones that I got in a big bag. Something similar is probably also available at HD, but I bought these elsewhere.

I just listened to his Inferno yesterday. I was writing something at work though and I think I only caught like a quarter of it. 🙃 And then started listening to Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby today. Again, difficult to pay attention at work. While I was changing discus water tonight I resumed Lullaby and I was like "what in the world is this even about" over halfway through it. I do get the overall jist of the story, but I would not pass a pop quiz about it. TDR is pretty good. But I think The Great Hunt is better. This will be spoiler free, but my complaint/worry about WoT just being rug-pull after rug-pull for the next 12 books. Overall I've found the conclusions of each book pretty anti-climatic/immemorable. I'm still plenty early in the series, though. If I powered through seven Witcher novels waiting for it to "get good", then I can probably push through 15 WoT books. 😄

I bought a Kindle paper white awhile back. It's not horrible, but I just cannot read long things on a screen. I struggle with it at work too and often end up printing out anything that I need to read "cover-to-cover" because of it. I don't know if it's discipline or some sort of sensory thing or what. I just know it's a struggle. The Kindle was no different, but I gave it a shot thinking that it would save a lot of money (maybe?) and space. All I know is if we end up in sort of post-apocalyptic world, I don't want to be stuck trying to charge my Kindle so I can read. 🤣

I've got to be careful, I have not often met a suggested book that I didn't want to buy. 😄 I have an extensive "to be read" collection.

My dad fairly recently finished The Farseer Trilogy (borrowed it from me, but I haven't ready any Hobb, yet). I will eventually get to it. In fact, once I finished burrowing my way through this 4th Wheel of Time book, I'm going to take a bit of a break from WoT. At least one good sized book and maybe two before I jump into #5. I have been slipping short little books between (like Sanderson's The Rithmatist), but I don't think it's enough of a "break".

He's in a community tank. With tetras and corydoras. And cherry shrimp. They all seem to get along pretty well. He seems to sleep lodged into the middle of the big floating pile of water sprite. He'll eat flakes out of my daughter's fingers and sometimes tolerate being "pet" (poked at) when he's cruising around.

Yep, was in 10 gallon quarantine and then everyone popped over into the 37 gallon and sprouted.

Fins lengthing a lot here the last month.

I bought some snails on EBay from a highly rated seller that sold a lot of them. Figuring that they'd have good packaging/heating included since it was mid-winter. They shipped it snail mail (pun intended). Took like 10 days to get here. I could smell it in the mail box from about eight feet. And even knowing they were all going to be dead, I still opened them up because that seemed like the right thing to do. Toothpaste is a decent way of dealing with it, though I am not convinced that it actually cleans anything off better than anything else. I think it just also masks the smell a little. Bee-Go for pushing bees out of honey supers? Smells like bottled vomit? They also have those stainless "bars of soap". I can't say that I've ever used one.

Appearance. I don't really like how the bare bottom looks because it's kind of reflect-y and I can see the stand through it a bit. And it's dark. So I want to brighten it up a bit. I did have sand in the tank, but that was a bit of a pain, so I sucked it all out.

What's your water's pH straight out of the tap vs in a cup (or some other container) left to age for a day? With an air stone if you can.

I think this is an important point. 0/0/0 readings 🤔

Sunfish are under rated. In college I kept a green sunfish. Converted him over to pellets and he was about as interactive as most cichlids and in general a fun fish to watch. I had him in a 29, which looking with the prism of being 15 years older seems far too small. Will be interesting to see if they'll spawn for you, that would be very cool. And to see the male's breeding colors, of course! 🙂

What water parameters did you check and what were the values? What have you been dosing every day?

I'd hang the filter right on the back. Assuming your 10 gallon had a HOB. I did this when moving from 10 gallon to 37 gallon. Now it's got two HOBs on it. Also moved sponge filter over.

Add the filters from the 10 gallon to the 20. The bacteria is already ready for the bioload. Once you have the new tank set up, just move the filter and fish back over and you'll be set. Instant cycle. The only fish that I'd be worried about losing would be Red Shirt, honestly.

Well, that would make for a very interesting used market for aquariums. Imagine how many impulse buys there would be if you could get a three pack of decent sized tanks for $12! 🙂 Make 10x 5000 packs of guppies by next month.

I dosed Kanaplex in food heavily about 5-6 weeks ago. Rabbit snails and cherry shrimp didn't seem to skip a beat. Shrimp were hatching during that time as well. Six adults survived and probably had 30+ babies in there as well when treatment was over.

I second the hack saw, utility knife might also work. If you go the utility knife route it might help to run it under hot water for a bit to soften it up. A steak knife would probably do it as well, honestly. Anything serrated should be able to handle it. If you feel like spending a while you could probably sand it down. Otherwise just leave it off 🙂

It's a meat grinder. I used to grind our dogs' raw diet, but ending up being money and time ahead buying pre-made. Discus beefheart is like $15-20/lb (maybe more with shipping?) and I'm into this for less than $4/lb. And the kids had a blast helping me clean the hearts. I'm a total discus newbie, but my suggestions would be (if growing out young ones)... paint or otherwise lightly color the bottom, keep the bottom bare, and make it so your water changes are pretty well effortless. I've got a semi-permanent python hookup right next to the tank so I just grab it, start a siphon, and go. Then pump the aged/preheated water back up into the tank. Takes about 30 minutes if just doing a vac/fill. If I'm scrubbing sides and interior surfaces it takes a bit longer. I tend to find some crusty older person and latch onto what they say. It's worked well for me with honey bees, so I figure it'll work out this way as well. I started with sand and after about three water changes I'd completely pulled the plug on that. Way too big of a pain. It's a lot easier to add some of this stuff than it is to take it away after the fact! Good luck when you get them, it took ~2 weeks, but they've started to win me over. 😄 Make a thread!