jwcarlson

I put everyone in quarantine Sunday and dosed with all three of the "med trio". Didn't notice ich until this AM. Have plenty of meds to redose. No activated carbon in the tank. Should I redose Ich-X? Change water and redose everything? No other fish have it so far except the rummy nose. And it looks like all of them have it. Thanks for looking!

I am so terrible at reading these things. Also have master test kit I will do and see if that's enlightening. We have fantastically hard water here if that helps frame the question at all.

I'd still trim them back and drop them in, as long as the roots/rhizome are salvageable it should be OK. It will be a long road to recovery for it either way, though. (not saying they shouldn't be replaced)

I think that fish (and animals in general) are exceedingly more observant and interactive than we give them credit for. I had a couple of oscars many years ago and they were awesome as far as interaction. And they recognized me compared to other members of the family.

Spoke too soon, when I went to bed last night there was no leakage and it had been 5-6 hours. But this morning it's leaked out into the tub again. Strange. Guess I'll wait and see if the seal fixes it when it arrives (or maybe vasoline it up and see if that helps). Making me miss my "Penguin" filters on my old 75 circa 15 years ago. 😄

Have a lead on an aquarium friendly apartment? Might be looking for one if anything else shows up in the mail. 😄 😄

Minor update: There is a shut off. I was playing with it without it being on and thought it was a clamp keeping the hose barb assembly in. So that helped a lot. But there was still a slow drip leak from the seal area. I bought a replacement seal even though the seal seems absolutely fine and flexible. I removed/rearranged a bit of the bio rings. I think the top wasn't seating fully because it was hitting on some of the rings. No more dripping at this point. Now if I can sort out how to get the intake and outlet held down to the tank I'd be good to go. Didn't come with that part of it.

Breaking the siphon is really a royal pain unless there's a trick I don't know. I might have to do some thinking about how to sort that out easier. I checked out what I could before filling it up, everything is in pretty good shape, honestly. I don't think he used it very much (maybe because it was a pain?). It's nothing I can't deal with, in any event.

I bought an unused (but pre-owned) 75 gallon tank and the guy threw in a used SunSun HW-304B. I fired it up a few days ago after testing tank for leaks. Ran two+ days without issue. Bought some new filter pads for it and wanted to rearrange some media. So I shut it off and popped the top. In a total brain-dead moment I did not consider that it has an active siphon in both tubes and when I popped the top it, um... Siphoned a good amount of water all over until I could get it sorted out. Totally my fault. Cleaned up, rearranged media, closed it up, and good to go. A few hours later my wife wakes me up (we have a sick kid and she fell asleep on me and I dosed off watching an old Cory live stream)..."There's water all over again!" So another big cleanup. Took it all back apart again. Something must have been holding one side of the top up a little bit. So now it is in a plastic tub in "time out". Everything is cleaned up, no leaks out of it yet. Are these things always this big of a pain in the rear or will I get used to it doing enough maintenance on it? I've always had HOBs on everything when I was younger. The amount of biological filtration you can fit in this thing is something to behold, honestly. Just wondering if I should drain it all and move everything from the living room to the unfinished basement. 🤣

Yep, that's one of the sites I keep checking out lol... 🙂 There's about five types that I think I really absolutely want. And it's about another $100 to pick out ten for myself. In the grand scheme of things what's another $10/fish? 😄

I'm at least a month out from ordering discus, but I am haunting websites looking at them. I cannot pick out ten to grow out. I just want them all. I think I decide and then I pick out ten more and it's a different mix. They're just all so stinking cool.

You'll know when you get them, I'd imagine. They'll either have been frozen and then thawed (most plants get stringy and soupy leaves when that happens) or they'll have avoided major damage. If the heat pack is "done" and they're still bouncing around in largely non-climate controlled trucks/warehouses they're probably toast. I got a shipment of plants from Aquarium Co-Op kind of in the middle of whatever bug wasn't telling them to do the insulated pouches. Actually two shipments without pouches. First one it was colder out, a couple of plants had some minor damage, dwarf baby tears was pretty rough, but had some salvageable parts in it still. They're hanging on. Second shipment was fine, but it was a little warmer. Not bitterly cold for either of them, but certainly nights well below freezing in the area. I live in Iowa. I would bring the box in as soon as it's delivered and then let it sit (without opening it) for a few hours to let things get back up to temp and then take a look. Plants are a bit more resilient than we give them credit for sometimes, but cold is one thing that can really wipe them out in a hurry. It's possible the roots might fare better if they're packed in rock wool, but even then it is going to be a long road to recovery for them.

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.