Crow

I love my fluval 3.0s! I actually have them on 3 out of my 4 tanks since they're so easy to find and buy and work great. So far my only problem with them is that they don't make a 30 inch and the 24 inch doesn't seem to put out a whole lot of light to the sides.

Thank you. Looked it up and the freshwater ai blade seems to have great features. I really like that they have one that comes in the exact width I need. I'll have to keep that one in mind. And yeah, the lack of a proper ramp up/down is what's mostly making the co-op light a pass for me. Otherwise I don't really mind the yellow cast too much either. I have some spare nicrew controllers sitting around, but idk if they'll fit the co-op light.

It's a planted tank with cO2. I have a fluval on it now, but it's not wide enough so the plants at the edges are doing the lean. Thanks 🙂

I love my violet cories. Really active and out and about all the time after they get comfortable. Their blue tails and polka dot heads are super cute!

I took a short video as well. Might be a bit blurry if you’re viewing from a phone. Music is to cover up the baby hollering while banging some metal spoons 😉

Oh my gosh, I can’t believe the last time I posted anything was back in march! Long story short my family life got turned upside down due to my spouse getting into an accident at the end of March. He’s all healed up though and now everything’s pretty much back to normal, so I’ll have time for my tanks again! An exciting bit of news to reboot my journal with, I think anyway, is my two hillstream loaches spawned at some point recently. I never in a million years thought any babies would survive in my 75 and I never thought my loaches would spawn at all! My intake doesn’t have any foam on it and my EBA won’t even let me have any snails, so I was quite surprised this morning when I saw the first little baby swimming on the glass and then when I found more of them in my algae balls… I found at least 3 different individuals. Hard to tell how many exactly since there are tooooons of hiding places. One baby is starting to grow out the flat fins and is a little larger and the rest are still a bit tadpole shaped. Pictures were very hard to get because of how tiny they are… the camera wanted to focus on anything else haha.

Ty!

So every once in awhile when I order plants the sellers usually send me extra surprise plants or substitutions and I sometimes have no idea what they are even after I’ve had them awhile! The ones I need help with are the ones in the center of the photos. In this photo the green and purple plant with the spikey leaves and the plant behind it: And I just got this one in the mail today, so it hasn’t converted yet: Thanks in advance!

Hello all I discovered a few days ago that the c02 on my smallest tank wasn’t shutting off at night. I run airstones in my tanks with c02 and the good news is the fish seem ok. After ruling out my Wi-Fi switch as the problem I think my regulator has failed and is stuck open. However when I went to pull the regulator off I realized the c02 can’s shut-off valve isn’t stopping the flow of c02 even though I have it turned all the way to the “closed” position. I’m not sure if the shut-off valve on my c02 can (which is a 5 pound can) has also failed somehow or if the faulty regulator is keeping the shut-off valve from closing properly. I’m also unsure of how to proceed from here. I’m really new to c02 so any advice would be appreciated!

Pearlweed is fantastically easy to grow with a little bit of light and a general fert! You can use it as a foreground plant as long as you're willing to keep it trimmed as it can get very big and bushy when it's happy in your tank and left to its own devices. It also spreads, but is pretty easy to just pull a section up and snip it off. Trimming pearlweed is easy. You can do it during your water changes while you're siphoning out water. Hover the end of the hose over the part you're trimming and you don't have to worry about a bunch of little clippings floating around or having to try to chase them down. I actually have a field of pearlweed in the front right half of my 20 long and the betta fish in there loves to wedge herself in it and crawl around in it! It started out as a few short clippings from someone else's tank. No c02, I just use a cheap Nicrew light on that tank and a couple squirts of easy green once or twice a week.

Algae in the 75 is continuing to recede. Added some mermaid weed, ludwigia peruensis, and a small vallisneria triptera plant to see how they do. I think the first two will be fine, but I had the vallisneria shipped and it looked kind of rough from the process. I think I'm at the stage where I'm playing the waiting game for plants to fill out now so that I can start rearranging them into a more thought-out configuration and move some out to my 20 longs. They've made much progress in just two months, I'm excited to see what they will look like in another two months. Water change on both downstairs tanks today... everybody got excited thinking they were going to get fed, which meant I was able to take the time to get some blurry old cellphone pictures while I waited for the tank to fill back up! ----- Kitchen tank green water is also continuing to clear up... although now I can properly see the algae farm that's been hiding in the murk. But that's also looking considerably better since the beginning of February as well. While I was away last month staghorn algae took up residence in the monte carlo and I haven't decided what I want to do about that yet. I was considering letting the monte carlo grow out and seeing if trimming the infected bits would work. I'm still trying to learn how to juggle light/ferts/c02 and it's been a bit of a bumpy road in this tank haha. One of the stem plants floated up while I was changing out water. When I pulled it out to look at it I noticed that the stem had turned to mush. Tried to google it, but I wasn't really able to find a clear answer. Does this mean the plant isn't getting enough light? I also did a some tank shuffles so that I could put 10 red neon rainbowfish in this tank! They've only been in there a few hours, but the males are already starting to flare out their fins and show off to each other and the ladies. It's quite the show! They are a very pretty fish and I hope they do well for me.

Thank you!

So it's been some time since I've posted! On Jan 11. I received a plant order in of various clippings and tissue cultures and threw those into the "cube". I also bought a 5LB can of c02 and a FZone regulator. I ended up having to leave home for a little bit. While I had someone feeding my fish and kind of dosing fertilizers, they didn't know how to do much else. I don't know how, but both of the Fluval lights ended up getting stuck "on" for almost the entire time I was away. I received a text about it, but there was nothing I could do about it. The 3.0 has gone from 4/5 rating to 3/5 rating for me. The filter in the cube also clogged up and it was barely pumping. This is pretty much what I came home to. My tanks on Feb. 8 ----- For the cube, a good vacuuming the next night. The white powder is GH booster. I also managed to finally find another pink flamingo tissue culture at Petco! I think I got four of them for 10$ and so far none of them have melted! I also found another multi-pack of plants I didn't have yet that I wanted to try. I mostly bought it because it had a crypt undulata "red" in it and I may or may not have a thing for crypts... By February 24 the Cube had become a Mountain Dew themed tank. Since my UV sterilizer is way too big to use in this tank I've decided to try my hand at manually fixing the issue. I kicked things off with a larger than usual (50%) water change. I also swapped from easy green to the dry ferts I use in my 75 (since my mix doesn't add nitrates at this time) and bumped up the c02 just a smidge. February 28 - Four days later March 1 In the next couple weeks my plan for this tank is to swap the NICREW internal filter to a small Oase canister filter. Then I'm going to drill holes in the bottom of the cabinet above the tank so that I can house the c02 can and filter up there in order to reduce visual clutter and to reclaim counter space. ----- In other news, I dug my UV sterilizer out of the closet, tossed into the 75, and the green water fully cleared up within a week. (COOSPIDER on Amazon, in case anyone is wondering). I also bought another c02 can and FZone regulator for this tank a couple weeks ago. The last batch of ferts I mixed up I also omitted the 'N' and doubled up on everything else. This tank continues to be my "throw 'n grow". I put what was labeled a Hygrophila Siamensis 53B in there on Jan 11. I don't know if it just hasn't converted or what, but it doesn't look like any of the photos I've seen online of it. It just looks like grass on a stick with its many super long, thin leaves and I actually hate it. I'm really not sure what I want to do about it. I also notice the plants in the back leaning forward toward the light, especially once they get taller. Many of my other plants are also struggling to grow leaves lower down. I'm wondering if I might need a second light. February 28 - so much growth since my last photo... on January 8!

Nabokov is right, mine is a reticulated siamese algae eater! I specifically sought this guy out and was surprised to find him at my lfs. I was able to double and triple check that I wasn't bringing home the dreaded cae!

It requires trimming to keep it low and get it to spread, but pearlweed is an option that can be stupid easy to carpet. Not quite grassy, but can take a beating and survive a vacation.

I put some zucchini in for mr. pleco, turns out the sae and at least one cory really liked it too! Vacuumed out the algae and rearranged some plants in the cube yesterday. Also set up one of those fluval c02 kits that I found new on ebay for $25-ish in preparation for some plants I have arriving probably on Thursday. c02 isn't as scary as I thought it would be and the set-up was super easy. Depending on how long the original cartridge lasts I might buy one refill and if I like it I'll start looking into proper set-ups. I also saved up enough points in my browser app that I was able to get another 20 gallon long tank for $3 while they were on sale! I've got enough going on in the three tanks I'm working on now though, so I'm going to save setting it up a couple months until after I get those all sorted out and decide if I'm going to get another Fluval or Nicrew light for it.

I usually put root tabs in sideways using the tip of my tweezers and make sure my tweezers are fully open, or close to, before gently pulling them out of the sand. The sand fills in the spot over the tab and between the tweezer prongs and weighs the tab down, and I don't accidentally pull the tab back up removing the tweezers anymore . I rarely have one float up unless I get in a hurry.

Phew, the holidays are finally over! About a week ago I got hold of a few reinforcements for the 20 gallon. They're currently marinating and growing roots before I plant them. The 75 gallon is still ugly, but it's doing great. Almost all of the algae has receded with the exception of some hair algae on the root wood, which I actually like. So no biggie if that's where it stays haha. Almost all of the plants are showing new growth, even the ones that were just bare, leafless stems. The pogostemon stellatus octopus is going nuts and has actually engulfed a young sword and another little plant, so I'll have to get in there and move those next water change. The ludwigia is growing some new, gorgeous giant leaves. Not sure if it's the light or the ferts. These were clippings from my 20g and those plants still do not look like these despite being more established. The camboba that's always just been a small nub for the better part of a year is finally getting tall, but it's all leg. I'll give it another few weeks and see what it does before I either move or remove it entirely. Can't see it because it's behind the camboba, but the blue hygro is finally starting to make a comeback now that the angels are leaving it alone. So far the parrot feather is not showing much improvement. I might have to bring more clippings over from the 20 later on. I also have a melon sword in here that I had to severely chop back a couple months ago that's not putting out any new leaves despite getting its own root tabs when everyone else got them. It still has one leaf that's still alive, so maybe it just needs some more time. It was a pretty intense pruning. Progress photo 1/5/23: I also finally cracked and put a HOB on the 75 a couple days ago. I'm not showing any ammonia or nitrite despite only having a sponge, but the floaties were getting to me. Stuffed this thing full of polyfill, which it has acres of room for. Water is looking much better already. The downsides are I had to take my glass panels off and the evap is insane. Also, the flow nuked the floating plants, so I'll have to rig up some tubing if I want to keep them. And I finally put water and plants in my new algae farm after two months of it sitting on my counter! It's got the new tank uglies! Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates are high. I ordered more plants to fill this one up as well as fill in the gaps left in the 20. In the meantime I've tossed a bunch of floating plants in there to hopefully help with the excess nutrients. Might just go ahead and change out the water next water change day when I do the 75, which is Sunday. I'm also happy to see tons of baby red ramshorn snails in here! The eba obliterated the snail population in the 75 and not enough food makes it to the bottom in the 20g and when it does it doesn't stay there for long. I threw in a stick of snowflake shrimp food I had left over and the babies were all over it! I'm gonna keep feeding them and hope the population continues to boom.

I'm finally gonna do it, I'm making a journal so that I have somewhere to keep track of my misadventures! I've only been back into keeping aquariums for a bit less than a year now. Eventually I want to have nice 'scapes, but for now I'm just gathering knowledge, experimenting and trying out different stuff, and TRYING ALL THE PLANTS! to see what I can grow and what I can't and then I'll go from there. I have three aquariums: A 15-ish gallon cube that I built at the end of October from the SerpaDesign tutorial on youtube. Nothing really went on in here for awhile due to problems with both the heater and filter I bought for this tank. A 20 gallon long tank that currently houses some angelfish babies I bought a couple months back. They are waiting to move into my 75 gallon. They're supposed to be 2 blue pinoy paraiba and electric blue marble pearlscale widefin, and 3 brazillian wild blue glitter angelfish. They were very small when I got them, a few of them were still kinda football shaped. And a 75 gallon tank that is going through some ~things~ right now. About a month and a half ago on this particular tank I changed fertilizers from Easy Green to GLA's dry mix because this tank and my 20 together absolutely slammed through a bottle of easy green in a month. I started with the recommended dose and many of my plants just stopped growing and melted and/or dropped most of their leaves which led to an outbreak of algae. I slowly increased the amount of fertilizer I was dosing until the plants finally started to show new growth again. Turns out I need 4x the recommended dose. My pleco also decided that sword leaves are tasty and ate the surfaces of almost every leaf, so I had to trim them all off. The blue hygro is also trying to grow again, but the angelfishes keep going at it like pitbulls with a squeaky toy. I dunno what it is, this is THE ONLY plant in the tank they do this to! Hopefully in another month to two months the stem plants will be looking good as new. The plan with this tank is to rehome the 5 largest angelfish and move the babies in now that they're a decent size. The adults were supposed to be rehomed at the beginning of the month, but we all got covid and it's taking awhile to recover. Once the babies are more grown later in 2023 I'll choose who I'm gonna keep and rehome a few again. I would also like to increase the numbers of my small violet cory gang at some point, but I am reluctant to mail order them because they're the only fish I've bought online that don't seem to ship well. Nov 7. Dec 26. I mean, I guess the one positive that came out of what happened to this tank is that the pogostemon stellatus octopus that I've had in there FINALLY grew. It didn't do anything for several months and then about three weeks ago it finally became the weed I was told it would be hahaha. I almost pulled it up at the beginning of November, but decided to let it be and it's paid off!

I don't know about any premixed fertilizers, but you could go the dry fertilizer route which would allow you to make your own fertilizer mix and omit the iron. I use GLA. NilocG also has a line of dry ferts, but I haven't tried that one.

I second the suggestion for the Wet Spot. I order almost all of my fish because I live in rural Washington state. Used them multiple times and haven't had a DOA with them yet. Aquatic Arts is pretty good too. Only reason I don't use them as much as the first is that shipping is cheaper for me from the first because of location.

Beautiful tank! How are you liking the fluval c02 kit now that you've had it going for a bit? I've been hemming and hawing over getting one of these for awhile.

I’ve got some parrot feather that I’ve had for a couple months! Despite what the guy at the lfs told me it’s probably the one of the easiest plants I have. I don’t really do anything with it except whack it in half or lower when it reaches the top of the water and replant the stems. I started with three stems and now I have bunches of it in two tanks! It gets light and easy green like everyone else, I don’t give it anything else.

Beautiful tanks! I really love the first one. You have some nice wood pieces! I've been looking for months and have yet to find the perfect piece to make an arch with.

Ty! I wanted to get an easy carpet going because I want to have shrimpies and nano fish in there after everyone is evicted to their permanent tanks 😃