Apulo

I have two cats, brother and sister, a little over two years old. They're named Fry and Leela and have the personality of their namesakes. Fry is a lovable doofus, and Leela is a prima donna.

Oh sure, just when I convinced myself I don't need any more aquarium stuff, this happens.

It's algae on the glass yeah. This was before I changed my lighting a bit

Yep! You can barely see the lilly pipe in the second pic.

Hey @Cory I seem to be spending $100+ per paycheck at ACO. Where can I just start direct depositing a percentage of my paychecks to make this easier? 🤪🤣

My Fluval 107 only outputs 360L/h and I'm using the 16/22 lilly pipe and getting plenty of flow.

This is really showing me I can clean the side glass without starving my Otos lol! I typically leave the algae on there for them and the snails. It seems there's plenty on the back for them.

Last night I set up a webcam on my aquarium so I can enjoy it at work during the day. If you want to take a peek, it's at https://twitch.tv/apuloiii

That's what I'm doing now, testing foods, most of which I get from you 🙂 The XTreme betta pellets are doing great for my betta but my other tank has a mix of cories, amano shrimp, and tetras. I'm trying to find something that will make them all happy. The XTreme nano pellets seem to be doing an okay job so far. I dump some in and everyone comes out for the feeding frenzy.

Aw crap! Time to put together another ACO order

I solved my fear of exploding heaters by getting titanium heaters and connecting them to a heater controller lol

Just a quick photo of my 14 gallon progress. I still have a small diatom issue but the shrimp and snails are merrily cleaning it up. The substrate looks tons better already. I still have a gazillion Java fern spouts, when payday rolls around I'll grab a light and a tub to grow them out. That water sprite is growing like two inches (maybe more) a day. Once I get the growout tub, I'll put the trimmings in there too. The fish all seem happy. They mostly hide all day but when it's feeding time, it's a frenzy.

It's very regional and they advertise it as a 50% off sale now. For tanks under 29 gallons, that usually ends up being $1.00 per gallon though. The sale at my local Petco just ended.

I have heard that black neons also school. I might get another tank to move the neons in to and replace them with black neons in the future.

I finally got the last of my livestock for my 14 gallon cube. A group of 7 Neon Tetras. Imagine my surprise after getting them acclimated and watching them for a couple of days. I always thought Neons were a schooling fish, but apparently they're not lol. They hang out in groups of two or three but mostly swim around alone. When it's feeding time they'll all dash out from wherever they are for a feeding frenzy. I guess they only really school when they feel they're in danger, if they're comfortable they swim around alone or in small groups. Live and learn I guess. At least this makes me feel that they're happy little fish.

Personally I have found the WiFi smart plugs to be a lifesaver. I have my CO2 solenoid on a smart plug with a timer set up in the associated app to turn it on two hours before the Fluval 3.0 starts it's program and turn it off an hour before the program ends. I also have another smart plug to turn on an airstone an hour after the CO2 goes off and shut it off an hour before the CO2 goes on. It's been working great for me. I'm actually going to swap out the WiFi plugs for Zigbee based plugs soon so I can add them to my Homeassistant install.

Yeah, I'm overcoming a diatom problem. It's a lot less severe than it was but it's still there. I'm going to get a light to put above a tub and move the plantlets in there. I'll let them float around in some fertilized water.

I thought that might be the case because I have about ten thousand other baby Java ferns growing. These were just exceptionally long hence my concern. I do dose easy green regularly and plant easy root tabs once every week or two.

Good morning folks. What might this be? Is it an algae or just more new Java fern doing it's thing? Whatever it is it's pearling by mid afternoon lol. TIA

@CoryNew product? 🤣 This reminds me I need to set my Cricut up again. This was the last thing I cut.

I am testing every other day currently just to make sure nothing is going wrong and so far, things have been doing great. I'll probably reduce my testing to once or twice a week once I have confidence things are going to stay great lol.

My goal since setting up my two tanks is to do virtually zero water changes. I have live plants in both and dose liquid ferts three times a week and root tabs once a week. If Ii show an acceptable (20-40ppm) nitrate and everything else is good, do I need to do water changes?

I have actually adjusted both lights to Bentley Pascoe's settings just recently and in the bigger tank I adjusted the co2, it wasn't quite enough.

Many many years ago I had a beautiful 125 gallon community tank. It was nicely scaped with natural rock and artificial plants. I loved it, caring for the tank and feeding the fish were highlights of my day. One divorce and about 21 years later I decided to jump back into the hobby and try my hand at live plants. I consumed every second of YouTube videos I could and discovered ACO. It's been about two months since I set these up and I'm extremely happy with the progress.

Home Depot or Lowe's buckets do you own? My two tanks total 20 gallons and I have four. I might have a problem.