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castiel

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Everything posted by castiel

  1. castiel
    That can happen with a lack of flow it's just a build up of bacteria, you can soak it up with a paper towel or stir it with your finger or something to break it up. You should be fine leaving a lid off to allow for gas exchange but you can always drill some holes in a lid if you'd rather have it covered. You can also throw some floaters in there but it's mostly lack of water movement. In my Walstad jar I run an airstone overnight to help keep it from building up without gassing off co2 during the day. (I know the co2 loss is minimal that's just how I'm preferring to do it currently).
  2. castiel
    if you put it over an airstone it should help promote it to grow new water roots, a lot of houseplant people who keep plants in water have found using an air stone improves root growth expressly when transitioning plants over.
  3. castiel
    I've done some work on the pickle jar since posting but yes! 1 gallon pickle jar - added an amazon sword (already regret it due to the size but I'm just gonna see what happens) added more gravel and a fert tab, reworked the airline so there's less flow, and replanted the piece of pearlweed that isn't visible at this angle. Ignore the clump of hair algae up top I need to put it through reverse resperation to try and salvage some of the plant matter but there's so many baby snails in it I haven't had the heart yet. Home to a random number of MTS, Ramshorn, and bladder snails. 1 gallon Walstad cookie jar - The pearlweed has been taking off and I've had to thin out the duckweed several times. Home to a pair of MTS and at least a pair of bladder snails.
  4. castiel
    I'm playing with growing some plants emergent! Nothing too exciting so far but it's been fun to watch it root and start to grow.
  5. castiel
    Yes! I usually try and use pebbles but I'm out of ones I know are tank safe so I improvised lol. Besides almost glueing one of the plants to my hand it worked great!
  6. castiel
    I moved some Java Fern plantlets over from my tank to my Walstad jar, if anyone was wondering quartz aquarium media is heavy enough to weigh down small plantlets lol.
  7. castiel
    Not just today but over the last few days I purchased from TC plants from a local big box store to use up a gift card I got for the holidays, moved some snails over to the Walstad jar, and did some algae removal from 'Endor'. The pickle jar now has an amazon sword (it looked smaller in the TC package so I don't think it's staying in there long term), there's an Anubias Nana in Endor, and I split up the Lobelia Cardinalis is split between a clump in the Walstad and the rest set up to grow emergent in a little bowl.
  8. castiel
    No update on what's been causing the light to turn itself on (yet) but the light riser I got for the tank arrived! It raises the light up about 2 inches, I'm hoping this will help a bit with algae and also help me keep enough light on the houseplants I have in the back of the tank. (Picture once I'm feeling better and have my desk clean)
  9. castiel
    I can get a picture later, I'm home sick today so can't really move my desk out by myself. The light is plugged directly into the surge protector, the filter is the one on a WiFi plug so I can turn it off for cleaning and mucking around in the tank. They're both plugged into the same surge protector. I don't see anything loose or out of place on the light end of the wire so if it is something wire related it's on the other end.
  10. castiel
    Has anyone else with a Spec V / any Spec had their light start turning on by itself? I've woken up several times now to the light turning itself on in the middle of the night. It has been since I plugged the filter into a WiFi plug but they're only on the same surge protector so I'm not sure if that's the case or what.
  11. castiel
    I only have a 5 gallon tank but I've used a (designated) turkey baster for water changes.
  12. castiel
    The last Betta that I had Tilly (aka Tillikum, I name all my fish after whales).
  13. castiel
    Added an airline splitter to the pump running the airstone in the pickle jar and threw an airstone in the back of my Spec where I've noticed a dead zone flow wise. Already noticed a difference in water circulation! Next step is to streamline all the tubing so it's not all over my desk but I'm out of airline tubing holders.
  14. castiel
    Running - one 5 gallon, a one gallon pickle jar with an airstone and a bunch of moss In storage - a 5 gallon hex, a 5 gallon bow front
  15. castiel
    If it's been in water for a year that's probably not what caused the cloudiness. You could try putting it in a garbage can? I've only run nano tanks so I don't have any experience with larger decorations like that, hopefully someone else will chime in.
  16. castiel
    Glad to see they arrived safely!
  17. castiel
    Welcome! I'm also very hesitant usually about posting and interacting on social media but this forum has been one of the kindest places I've ever interacted with! I don't think I've ever really seen much negative on here.
  18. castiel
    Did you soak or boil the driftwood beforehand? It could just be a biofilm from the wood. Also, what parameters were you able to test and what were the numbers?
  19. castiel
    Not a lot hobby wise today besides taking a small cutting from my Fittonia plant and putting it in my tank filter to see if it will root, but I did manage to write a 3 and a half page paper for one of my finals so still an overall productive day. I also found some pearlweed still growing in my Walstad setup that I thought had all died off which was a nice surprise.
  20. castiel
    Airstones! I'm clumsy and unorganized so those little suckers get dropped or misplaced a lot 😅
  21. castiel
    Took a break from working on one of my final papers to do some work on my pickle jar moss storage. It's a layer of gravel with a bunch of mini Christmas moss and some floating pearl-weed and Bacopa (all covered in hair algae). It also has a bunch of Ramshorn, MTS, and bladder snail babies. Added an airstone that is circulating the water to help start to break up the algae, also replanted some of the pearl-weed.
  22. castiel
    I just moved some duckweed and red root floaters over from my backup jar, I had both in there before but once I stopped dosing it slowly died off. I was considering a nerite snail but my LFS was out so that might be a future addition, shrimp will have to wait until I can find a way to keep them out of the filter without hampering the flow as much as it was. The water has been fairly consistent with 0ppm nitrates since I stopped dosing so I think it's more of a substrate issue then a water column issue, it's hard given that the Spec V doesn't really have a lot of "floor space" so it would be very easy to over plant. The two pothos plants I have in it are fairly heavy feeders as well, and the lucky bamboo isn't as much but it's still a consistent feeder.
  23. castiel
    I never even thought about that!! And no fish (yet), just a bunch of snails.
  24. castiel
    After a month long black out a lot of the algae had died off and I've been slowly picking it off as well, today I stopped by my LFS and picked up some Java Fern and a small pot of Hygrophila Kompakt (that's how it was spelled on the little tag) and did a 50% WC on the tank, squeezed out the filter sponge, and took out a bunch of the algae. I got a lot of it out and the tank looks a lot better! Over the next week I'll keep picking out algae (as well as some of the snail shells) but I'm so much happier with the tank now! I wish I had the energy to keep going at it today but given that I have finals next week I decided to err on the side of caution. Edit: I forgot! I also used the time to switch the filter plug into a wifi plug so now I can turn it off to do maintenance without pulling my whole desk out which will make upkeep a lot easier.
  25. castiel
    I just wanted to update on how this was doing! I've had it blacked out for a little over a month (only turning light on for WC and topping off) and while it was starting to do better it was moving along slowly. I just went to top it off because the pump ran dry which is odd when I noticed the main tank itself was extremely full. I had bought a filter intake cover on Etsy to keep snails from getting into the filter, it turns out it was restricting the flow so much there was next to no water movement in the tank (I couldn't tell because even cleaning out the holes was restricted flow). I took it off and the increased flow stirred up quite a bit of the algae into the filter. I'm going to keep the blackout going and do a water change and filter service this weekend and see if that doesn't clear the rest of this out.
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