jwcarlson

I've also thought about the aged water trash can in the utility/laundry room downstairs. I'm not going to save any trips up/down really, but having a setup where I can dechlorinate and heat up to temp and then pump it upstairs might make sense. That would probably be a bit down the road. Need to do some checking of tap vs aged tap first to see if that would make anything better. The one wrinkle is that I have a water softener, the hot water is always going to be soft. The cold in the laundry sink is currently soft as well, but could be plumbed (easily) to bypass for the cold so that I could mix it. Our tap water is very hard. But if I'm going to mix it for temp then I need to be relatively consistent in hardness (I'd guess). So many things I never really thought about when I was younger keeping oscars, guppies, and yellow labs.

I'm an engineer and run a part time honey bee business (selling honey, queens, and nucleus colonies). Honey bees requires me to be doing stuff during the day when everyone else is awake and makes me feel like I'm shirking family/other responsibilities. But I can screw around with fish basically anytime. I jokingly mentioned to my wife the other day that I could sell all my bees and just turn the basement into a fish room (~1200 sq feet that we basically do not use). She was all for it. That's not going to happen just yet. Been doing bees for eight years and kind of feel myself slipping towards being a little 'bored'. This spring I need to move my 40 colonies from their current location to one four or five miles away. That could push me over the top as moving bees is not fun.

I'd be doing it myself. The line would be drain and supply. I have thought about a temp mixer, but would just do that down on the sink (supply). Think of my idea as basically just a semi-permanently installed Python line that I take the end off of when I'm not using it and store it in the cabinet. *disclaimer is that I've been basically out of the hobby for 15 years and maybe there's a new wiz-bang Python type thing that everyone uses* I'm still thinking of the one I had back in late-90s/early-00s assuming it's basically the same now. Edit to add that we're talking about a couple aquariums, not a massive fish room or anything.

I might be moderately crazy for thinking this, but wondering if anyone else has tried. I am not planning on an automatic changing system, but I'm wanting to basically install a hose spigot out of the wall behind my aquarium. I would then plumb that back (flexible clear tubing) down to the basement laundry sink and attach it with a Python, basically. Total rise to the tank would be like 15 feet or less and horizontal run from sink to tank is maybe 20 feet. So not too much tubing. Basement is unfinished and would just be snaked through the rafters. This would allow me do changes and refill really easily and wouldn't need to do anything crazy for water changes other than walk up/down the stairs a couple of times and screw my vac with whatever extension I need into the spigot. Has anyone done this, if so any tips? To be clear my intent wouldn't be to have this pressurized always or anything like that (so not a live hose line in the middle of the house). Basically just a "permanently" installed Python that I can stash the last 15 feet of or so.

If I order discus from a reputable "dealer", in this case from Discus Hans who sells Stendker discus. Should I do your "quarantine trio" on them immediately? Is there some initial time after shipment that you typically wait before dosing the meds to allow for some decrease in stress level? Also curious if discus are more sensitive to meds in your experience? If the eventual goal is to have a community tank with said discus, would you recommend putting the whole community together and then doing your quarantine treatment or perhaps holding the discus separate from other community members and dosing them independently from each other?

I have by no means watched all of your videos, but having binged a lot of them last last few months... I haven't seen anything to know how to "test" for Easy Green dosage. If I do a test strip and then dose my aquarium and wait an hour or something for it to get dispersed, when I do a test strip, what kind of changes should I see. I've got a pretty heavily planted 10 gallon that I never seem to see nitrates increase in. Just a very very pale pinkish on the strips, I've been calling it "10" ppm, might be something like 15. I've scaled the lights back yesterday and started dosing Easy Green a couple of weeks ago. Lots of hair algae has popped up. It's not a big deal as I'm simply learning. Stock is 8 cardinal tetras, 1 honey gourami, 1 hillstream loach (tiny thing 1" maybe a bit bigger), and five or six cherry shrimp. They're young fish so not to full bio load yet. And most all of them won't be in there here in a few days when I get my 75 completely ready.