modified lung

Filtration Build (5) This filtration setup is working far better than I expected. The air-driven skimmer box (airlift skimmer? bubble skimmer?) is picking up quite a lot of particulates to small for the radial flow filter to remove. Here's what was removed after about 48 hours of running: You can see I reworked the head design a little. I just cut two notched in a piece of ¾" pipe, fed airline tubes through the back notch and kept the front notch open. I then inserted a cap to force the bubbles out the front notch more effectively. I also added a cup with a small tube feeding out the front bottom (hard to see in the photo). This way I can more easily see how fast water is being deposited into the box by the airlift. I can adjust the speed by adjusting the height of the ¾" pipe. A very slow drip is all that's necessary. Less than a half gallon of water is deposited in the box to be removed each day which is less than 0.1% of the total water in the system. You can see how clear the water has become below. If you look closely, you can still see all the solid matter from the heatwave plant die-off that is still caught on the stem of the water primrose. I'll have to take the primrose out and rinse it off at some point. The best part of this filter combo is there's no mechanical filtration at all. That means no filter cleaning and lazy days from here on out. I'll still have to remove solids from the settler occasionally but that's easy. I'll probably still mess with the airlift skimmer some more though. I want to remake the main body with smaller piper so it takes up less room in the sump. And I'd like to replace the head so it looks less like it was made out of junk ...which it was. I could also easily relocate the airlift skimmer outside the sump and it wouldn't take up much room. Then maybe I can move the sump to the back and out of the way because where it is now limits my reach to the back of the tanks and the radial filter.

To be fair, it sounds like a long time ago the blues and whites were called the same thing in Japan. There's a whole medaka naming association now but they don't translate anything into English. Most of them have very straight forward names according to their traits so you could call them blue or white platinum sparkle/galaxy/lame if they have both the reflective back and the glitter scales.

Blue sparkle should be white with a slightly blueish tint and have reflective scales that look like glitter (often called "lame") along their back and sides. Platinum should be pure white with a very bright reflective stripe across their back. I've noticed blue sparkles also usually have translucent scales while platinums have solid scales. But there doesn't seem to be clear rules for translating that Japanese names for different characteristic into English names. So a lot of US sellers don't seem to know the difference yet and pictures on their websites are very inconsistent at times. So really you could be getting any variation of white or blue. I once ordered pearl galaxy which is basically the white version of blue sparkle but they sent me platinums instead (which was actually what I wanted lucky for me).

It took mine over 10 days to hatch I think. Feed them right away. Just a little bit though.

That would be really interesting. Let us know.

@KittenFishMom I think the population would at the very least die off from old age since they need flies during the juvenile stage. Adults might eat scuds but I'm not sure.

@TOtrees they could definitely be ostracods. I have some big ones almost the size of Daphnia that are tan with big dark brown spots.

Yep. I used to put yellowing elodea/anacharis clippings in a 2.5 gallon of scuds and they'd eat it up fast. Frozen vegetable, watermelon rind, and land moss are other thing I've fed them regularly. I had a big population going in a 5 gallon with nothing but sand, snails, a couple small pieces of wood, and a sponge filter. I'm not even sure what they were eating in that one. Maybe biofilm off the wood?

Get some plants but be kinda bad at growing plants. They'll have a constant supply of dying plant matter to feast on. 👍

Yeah. I don't have any good windows that get enough direct sunlight though. Except for that weird closet with the big windows but it gets over 90°F in there.

Bred again today. No obvious trigger this time. Big RO water change two weeks ago. Added a little Wonder Shell for the electrolytes. I did notice the male was hanging out underneath a coconut shell every few days. Yesterday I lifted the shell to see if there were babies but there were none. Afterward the male moved back to the same flower pot they bred in last month which was possibly more preferable to the females. Feeding moina, simocephalus, and blackworms. Temp = 73-80°F pH = 5.8 Conductivity = 35 uS / TDS = 22 ppm GH, KH = 0 NH3, NO2, NO3 = 0

You can leave the lights on 24/7. There aren't any negative effects as far as I know but you don't get much more growth leaving them on for 24 hours compared to 12 hours. I still leave mine on 24/7 because I forget to turn them on some mornings otherwise.

@KittenFishMom Definitely water mites. They won't hurt anything in your aquarium. I had some come in with blackworms once. In their juvenile stage they only parasitize on flies. They supposedly taste bad to fish but I don't think they're harmful at all if eaten. @TOtrees the death stars don't look like Daphnia either. But they're probably closely related. I'd be interested in what they are if you can get a really close photo.

Lol same here. I always say most of my discoveries come through procrastination and incompetence. I think Chydorus could possibly be used as a first food. I'll have to get some fry going again and find out.

***Chydorus (2)*** At a crazy 70% protein and an adult size smaller than newly hatched brine shrimp, chydorus has been one of the main new live feeds I've been trying to develop a low maintenance, high density culture method for. I made some progress feeding microalgae that had settled on the bottom of culture jars so the chydorus could graze on it rather than filter. After finding some literature that suggested feces was important to chydorus reproduction, I tried using cow manure. But results from both of these were inconsistent. More progress came after noticing the population grew faster when the jar was kept away from light. However this only seemed to be true in the jars fed microalgae. Regardless, the population never grew large enough to support regular harvesting. At this point it's been about 8 months of trial and not quite good enough results ...then I discovered I already had a super high density chydorus culture. They were in my 55 gallon scud barrel probably this whole time. I usually skim duckweed off the surface with a net that can let the smallest scuds through. Last week a different kind of duckweed took over. It's much smaller and almost spherical so I used a much finer net. Wondering what kind of duckweed this could be, I put the net in a bucket of water. The next day, I found thousands of chydorus in the bucket. ALL THE WASTED TIME AND EFFORT!! But still I want to figure out how to grow them in jar indoors. So what could they be eating in the barrel that allowed their population to grow to large? The barrel has hundreds, maybe thousands, of scuds whose only food source is dead plant matter mostly from hornwort and elodea. Maybe the chydorus are eating the same thing. This would make sense of the low light jars with microalgae. Perhaps it was the low light causing the microalgae to die off which made for a better food source than living microalgae. I decided to throw in a few different types of leaves from a spring mix salad and compare that to jars fed spirulina powder, golden pearls fry food, and live greenwater. Of the three feeds I just mentioned, there was no noticeable difference in population size, although they all did sustain the population. Thicker leaves from the salad mix, like spinach and swiss char, turned the water cloudy very quickly, killed off the chydorus, and filled with infusaria over the next two days. But jars fed thinner, more fragile types of lettuce had a big population boom. Other thin leaves, like celery leaves, also worked well. Yellowing leaves were consumed almost completely over night. Thin, dying plant matter seems to be the secret.

Yeah! That's exactly what to call it! I didn't think you were. Maybe at in some point I'll try to to attach a real protein skimmer.

"woot" ...as the kids say.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone wanted to argue this isn't really a protein skimmer which would be fair enough. I'm not sure what else to call it though. It definitely isn't going to foam much and I'm only using an air pump about the size of ACO's. But the water was noticable more transparent the next day despite taking out the filter sock. The cup is definitely collecting particulates too small for the radial settler to filter which is the goal. Yesterday afternoon I cleaned the cup out and this is what collected since:

Do you know when more info and sales might be available? My employer is also looking for some continuous monitors with logging capabilities. A multiple tank logger would be perfect and save a ton of money in the long term. I was going to build and program them myself through Arduino but it would be a huge learning curve and idk if I have the time.

Filtration Build (4) Basic DIY p̶r̶o̶t̶e̶i̶n̶ airlift skimmer: I made the collection cup on the cap extra tall so it's less likely to overflow and wash back into the system during the rainy season. Here it is with the cap off: The inside is just a 90° elbow pointing upward to avoid air traveling up the discharge pipe. The design doesn't have to be that complicated. ...in the sump, cap off: ...in the sump, cap and collection cup on, over flow attached: Unfortunately I dropped my air pump in the water and it stopped working so I couldn't get a picture of it bubbling out the top. Maybe I should get a bigger one anyway. The design is the same as a very basic protein skimmer. But there won't be much foam like you'll see in a saltwater or pond protein skimmer. Instead the airlift should bring particles too small for the radial flow filter to settle (and possibly unwanted bacteria cells), trickle them over the ½" adapter hole and into the collection cup. This can work with only a small air pump because the water level set by the discharge pipe is just a tiny bit lower than the ½" adapter which basically acts as a weak airlift. Since the radial flow filter was installed a couple weeks ago water clarity is continuing to recover from the heatwave plant die off and the Yokihis are getting even redder:

On the contrary, downloadable logging gives the ability to identify long term trends and correlations which is extremely useful. Logs also let you spot drift and often failing equipment failure before it becomes an emergency. I'm also looking to buy a continuous monitor but would consider owning a monitor to be almost pointless without logging. The hourly average is usually fine. Could an old cell phone continuously run the app and let you see auto updated measurements every so often? That would be even better. I don't like having to whip out my cell phone to get a glimpse of what's going on. I just want to try hooking it up to my solar controller. That would probably be a terrible idea anyways 🤣 YEEES! This drives me crazy. Agreed. Most lights have a built in or cheap attachable timer. And it's better to heat the room than the aquarium. I personally don't really need controllers but it's hard to find decent loggers that aren't priced for scientific use.

I tend to operate in a bare bones fashion so I personally wouldn't use most of the features listed (although they all look very useful). • Downloadable data logging that can be easily imported into Excel or G Sheets would be a must for me. • Basic digital display either directly on or attachable to the unit. • Resettable min/max display. I've never seen a continuous rolling min/max display anywhere, i.e. displays 24 hour min/max temp; every hour the min/max record updates and boots the earliest hour from the display. • You only mentioned temp and pH. I'd also want conductivity (could have a customizable TDS factor) and possibly ORP. Those might not be a common thing most other would use though. • Is a USB-C power supply possible with this kind of unit?

That's awesome! Do the females still have any red or did it disappear? I've heard any red at all makes them male. But I've also heard badis/darios swap sexes really easily. I wonder if that's true or maybe females can have red after all? There are times I swear some of my black tiger darios swapped sexes but there's always the very good chance I just misidentified them.

I wouldn't worry too much about keeping a certain pH level as long as it's not extremely high or low. The problem here is your alkalinity. The bacteria eat bicarbonates to reproduce. At zero KH, the population won't grow much and the cycle won't establish. 1 tsp of baking soda per 10 gallons will bring KH up 4 degrees which is a good level. Seachem Alkaline Buffer is mostly baking soda so 1 tsp of that will probably bring it up about the same. Then whatever that brings your pH to is fine. You don't need the Equilibrium. It will only add to your GH. I don't think you need Acid Buffer either. It just overcomplicates things. If you want to use both the Alkaline and Acid Buffer, then like others said, you'll need to do some experimenting. You can start with the recommended amounts or half of them if you want to be extra safe. See what happens and go from there. How much your pH will change depends on what all else is in your water. Usually I try not to swing the pH more than 0.5 a day with additives. I add ¼ to ½ of how much you need and see what happens. If it doesn't swing the pH to much I add more. If it does, then I wait until tomorrow to add more. Take as many days as you feel comfortable. This probably mostly why your water is getting so hard.

Filtration Build (3) I setup the radial flow filter last weekend and it's been working far better than I expected. It's made from the bottom cut from a trash bin, a 2" and 4" uniseal bulkheads and some pipe. The uniseals were used to allow for the height of each pipe to be adjusted up or down as needed because I was to lazy to take measurements ahead of time. The idea of this type of filter is to force water from the main tanks down the 4" center pipe. Any solids will settle out on the way down while the bin skims clean water from the surface and sends it to the sump. The reason for the large bin instead of just a 90° pipe turned upward (like seen in most DIY radial flow filters) is to increase the overflow-able area as much as possible. The more area available to collect overflow water, the thinner the layer of surface water will be collected, and the less likely suspended particles will make it to the sump. During the heatwave a lot of plant matter died off and filled the water with suspended particles. The radial flow filter is working so well, not only has the water clarity improved dramatically, but the filter sock I added hasn't clogged for the 7 days it's been running. I really didn't expect this thing to be so effective. It's working so well I don't think I need the bead filter. So I think I'll take out the bead filter and replace it with a ...DIY p̶r̶o̶t̶e̶i̶n̶ airlift skimmer!!!