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nabokovfan87

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Everything posted by nabokovfan87

  1. nabokovfan87
    I know it seems to be absolutely fine. Aqueon and marineland actually sell containers of the black silicone you can use to reseal the aquarium. It may require it, the damage you're seeing is from an algae scraper and that's what is waterproofing the tank. There are some tips and tricks to make it easier to accomplish without too much work, but I do understand that task isn't for everyone. The silicone itself has two seams. The first is used to get the glass itself to bond with the other piece of glass. The other seam is internal (this is the one you're likely having an issue with) where that is used to waterproof the tank itself. There is going to be someone who built tanks themselves or has some firsthand knowledge on here to help us get you on the right foot. I just wanted to mention and that you may need to actually do a bit more work here to get that tank safe for long term use!
  2. nabokovfan87
    Well now they have to be fresh, only the best for him!!!
  3. nabokovfan87
    May or may not be able to order from Amazon UK with free shipping. Here's another, similar concept and a nice test to show how the traps all generally perform. It's one of those things where the timing when you pull it might just be the key.
  4. nabokovfan87
    I understand that. You're doing the right stuff. I'll mail you some worms to look at. 😂
  5. nabokovfan87
    I need to put one of my biggest in my neo tank and see behavior. It shall need a name if that happens. 😂 Gojira?
  6. nabokovfan87
    It's really cool that microscopes are so easily for people to get their hands on now.
  7. nabokovfan87
    I need a scared emoji.
  8. nabokovfan87
    I LOVE the way the tidal has this adjustment with the plastic screw. Works so well and secure.
  9. nabokovfan87
    That'll be awesome to see. I saw a clip / snippet of a plant that you might like. It's similar to PSO in terms of the look, but I think it's a bit more restrained and looks really good. He mentions the name, but I can't for the life of me spell it and I don't see it listed. Video should start when he shows it. (Edit: Looks like a type of / or to be Eichhornia diversifolia)
  10. nabokovfan87
    Congratulations! Here is a happy shark to celebrate. 😂
  11. nabokovfan87
    The amano vs. Neo is hillarious. @Chick-In-Of-TheSea
  12. nabokovfan87
    What about..... There is another version. That might be a method to keep the fish out and bait them?
  13. nabokovfan87
    Exciting! That's so awesome. 🙂 *insert something here about never stepping into the same river twice and then demanding a bloodworm* That guy is too fun. Love Rams!
  14. nabokovfan87
    yes absolutely. Especially over time as it hardens and cracks. Not having the bend radius, cuts off flow, forces air in holes that otherwise it wouldn't because the pump is trying to pull in water (and air) from other places it normally wouldn't.
  15. nabokovfan87
    I am definitely intrigued and interested. 🙂 I have a tank with pretty much all black on black fish and it's quite delightful. Temp is the only real concern for me. I saw one in Alyssa Bentley's tour from @Bentley Pascoe and that thing is GORGEOUS. I could only enjoy them more if the blue had some green in it! I was doing research, something like 8-9 species now? This is just a Blue odessa barb with big dough eyes. 😂 Such an unspoken gem of the NANF.
  16. nabokovfan87
    Snoopy has not had coffee yet. I see no blue. This is me in about 15 minutes....!
  17. nabokovfan87
    Agreed! I could literally "FIX" the marineland just by changing what comes in the box and modifying one thing. 😂 it's amazing how little engineering effort would solve so many problems! (for the penguin pro, it's all down to modifying the pump attachment method / intake tube. I am very happy, relieved, and content with the statement above about how you said it's working well for you, even with shrimp! What a massive accomplishment to get that Tidal to actually be viable for such a thing.
  18. nabokovfan87
    Crystal river and Torpedo beach are both lighter. They are white / beige color. They do have one other..... https://caribsea.com/freshwater-substrates/ Carolina Creek that might be perfect for what you're looking for 🙂 This is Torpedo Beach: This is Crystal River: Eco Complete is essentially lava rock with some stuff added to start the tank off with nutrients. It's not a traditional aquasoil type of media. It will hold gunk over time, but equate that to gravel. Many people will use Eco complete or Seachem Flourite and mix that with something like ADA amazonia, Landen's Aquasoil, Fluval Stratum, UNS contrasoil, etc. I don't think a lid is required for corydoras. For corydoras only tanks, you can just keep the waterline lower (below the rim) and they should be ok. Some HOB require the lid to be right up towards the top, so that is where you can have a corydoras jump on you. I have only seen a fish jump when water is bad or when they are chased and trying to escape. I always run a lid on all of my tanks due to evaporation and all that. If you cannot get a lid, plastic wrap is highly used in the hobby and works perfectly. 🙂
  19. nabokovfan87
    This is for the NEW Marineland series of filters. Tag @TeeJay because I do believe he has one setup as well. This is how I would set mine up! Step 1: I would have TWO of these prefilters designed for the system. Mechanical filtration DONE Step 2: Remove the Cartridges that come preinstalled, you can use them as a spacer Step 3: Add in a bag of ceramic media where the cartridges were installed previously.
  20. nabokovfan87
    @MrWestCoast given the age, there has to be a pinhole somewhere on the intake path. Could be a bad seal with a very tiny hole, it could be hoses, there's a lot of options. The main thing is to focus on the path into the pump and check everything along the way. Make sure you're using something like silicone grease (available in dive shops and on amazon, 100% silicone grease) and use that on all the rubber seals. Once you are confident it isn't an O-Ring, then you open up to further issues along the line. Impeller Retainer = the cover that holds your retainer from wobbling and holds it into the pump shaft. You could also opt for just buying a new impeller, it's likely time to do so. The magnets wear over time. That rules out a few issues between the impeller and the O-Ring. So.... take a look, let us know what you see.
  21. nabokovfan87
    A bit of foreshadowing, I believe this may be one of the final posts on this project. 🙂 Ultimately, I opted to remove the unmodified tidal 75 from my aquarium. There are a few reasons for this and a portion of the reason here is my own personal setup on this tank. To be clear and fully disclose my reasoning here, I am leaving the modified filter on the tank for a very specific reason! My main concern here is that I am losing a good portion of biological filtration on this tank. There isn't a ton of plants in this tank either, which makes things a bit risky from a water parameters standpoint. One of my biggest frustrations, and one commented by everyone, is that the skimmer is literally a plant eating monster. I wake up daily to leaves, food, plants, and I've woken up to the darn thing swallowing fish. That one aspect of the filter absolutely needs to be modified by the company involved for me to feel comfortable recommending this filter in any capacity. Which means, I can no longer recommend this filter to anyone if they do not fully intend to modify the filter in the method presented in this thread. There are some wonderful reasons to purchase the filter, but the negatives far outweigh the cons. As a single example, I want to fully demonstrate the cyclical issue I am having and the main reason I am removing this filter. Attached below you will see a net full of plant debris, food, mulm, and what amounts to organics rotting away in my aquarium. While it is very normal to have some amount of gunk that gets inside of your filter, the goal of the filter is to mechanically filter this out, easily let the user clean that filter media, and the proceed to remove it from the system. I think everyone knows by now how detailed I can be when it comes to cleaning my tanks. I siphon the gravel, I clean the tanks often, and I finish that with regular water change. I am not afraid to pull apart the filter if I see things get a bit dirty. I've checked pumps week to week and I've gone through great detail (see above post) as to what you'd expect to see while running this filter. It has been well documented that you will see plants in the skimmer, around the pump, near or on the impeller, inside of the filter basin, and on the bottom of the sponges. That large debris on the bottom of the sponge blocks flow into the media, which essentially encourages that gunk in place. Water flows through all of the cuts in the basket for bypass and that in turn pushes the large chunks of debris from your filter through a large cutout in the basket and often back into your tank! When you turn off the filter, plants settle and you see a lot of debris released into the water. When you lift up the filter basket to clean the filter, a lot of those large chunks of plant debris and food are left inside of the filter basin and not removed. When you are done cleaning the media, you turn on the filter, you will see a lot of gunk get shot back into the water column. Much moreso, I would argue, than any other filter on the market for some pretty obvious reasons. One of the biggest methods to fix that issue is simply put that you add a big chunk of mechanical media to block that debris from going through the large cutouts in that basket. So what does that lead to....... Either you have clogged biological media with a lot of mulm and slime all over it or you have this: Below is the photo where you can clearly see food from "a while ago" that went right into the filter, didn't make it to the sponge, and is in the basin of the filter box. After I removed the filter from the tank, this is the junk that was in the bottom of the filter. It was something along the size of a billiard ball of rotten plants, food, and gunk that made it's way into the tank when I poured the water back into the tank. It looks green in the picture, but it is certainly brown sludge covered moss. The bright green moss is just the "fresh stuff". The vibrabites food you can see is from 3-4 days ago. That food sinks pretty easily. This wasn't from the food itself getting mechanically removed from the bottom of the tank.... this is simply what the skimmer does. If you feed the tank at all with the filter on, the food goes right into the skimmer and right into that chamber. If you have some floating particles after feeding, frozen food floating in the water column, etc. all of that food makes its way into the filter box and sit there. That food simply rots away and there is no way for the fish (or shrimp) to get at the food. I watch them often trying to get their arms into the skimmer or grates to try to graze on that rotting food, but they cannot. I think this is a major reason where you can associate this cycle of rotting debris that is very difficult to keep clean.... even when diligently trying to do so.... with some pretty persistent algae issues. The adage that a picture says a thousand words, well, this one has a story attached to it, but I think we can finally close the book on this filter. I will end by saying thank you to everyone along the way who helped. A big thanks to @TeeJay for taking the time to try this out on his own filter! Thank you to everyone who checked out the thread and followed along. It means a lot when we can dive into something this bland of a topic and have meaningful conversations that impact the lives of our fish and plants in the tank.
  22. nabokovfan87
    Someone around here has to have some Pygmy Sunfish.... Gorgeous fish.
  23. nabokovfan87
    Yes you can gravel vac it. You would want to look up a technique similar to how you vacuum sand substrate where you're not necessarily plunging the siphon deep into the gravel, but a lighter technique where you're only cleaning the top couple of inches. Green aqua has a ton of great maintenance videos as well that I will nudge you towards. This is another technique that might help you out as well. In Europe there is a common technique we've seen where they stick a turkey baster in lieu of a chopstick and get the debris up by lightly using air to push the debris into the water ahead of the siphon hose. This "chopstick" works too! You can use gravel to make it a bit easier. Certain caps can be used to help hold plant in as well. Corvus Oscen (Joel) uses seachem flourite with stratum. Pecktec does the same thing. So that's another option if you prefer the darker substrate colors. The idea being to make sure that your cap is thick enough so that when everything gets siphoned and moved around, that you aren't just mixing the layers. It will happen over time. One of my biggest issues with stratum was that it is just so light. When I tried to cap mine, I didn't have nearly a big enough cap and the filter alone was pushing the sand and things mixed near immediately. I am not sure what you mean here. Using "aged water" isn't normally an issue. Just keep in mind that you'll bring along some nitrates and stuff with that water.
  24. nabokovfan87
    Everything looks good to me. 🙂
  25. nabokovfan87
    Hello everyone, I hope everything is going wonderfully on your side of things. It is one of those days where I feel deep in thoughts. I feel this sort of near overwhelming urge to hit a reset button, find a time machine, or just this urgent need to decide that everything is ok right now in this moment. I saw a video and it wasn't anything too out of the ordinary, but I think when you pause a bit and sit and think about a few key things it is a pretty profound piece of content. I think it's been this process for me, over and over, where I have to pause when I see an old photo of my tanks. I do this simply because I am trying to recall the person that was making that tank at the time and what has changed since then. What did I learn? How did my techniques change? What moments do I remember that stand out? I watched the video above with the intent of focusing specifically on the music and trying to really not think too far back in the scenes or to think too far ahead to more recent shots of Corvus' tank. My goal was to really see how he pruned the plants, replanted, removed, and how is style of tank changed over time. A piece of hardscape would come into frame and it was as if I was recalling the 2-3 videos when he would go back and discussed his eventual removal of that piece of wood or rock. Trying to show it off again because it had been hidden over time by the jungle. the goal again to reset and just focus on what was in front of me, not the outside noise. When I finished watching the video, foreshadowed by an early moment in the day where I realized I need to go work on the big tank and try to fix an issue, I was contrasting all of those thoughts while watching the above content with my own tank. Much like this thread, I have a very introspective mindset and I wanted to really try to fix some issues that I know I have let progress. As usual it is certain things where I have simply opted to "give up" and feel so defeated. It is the part of the planted tank where I literally do not understand what I am doing wrong. The aspects where I have tried so many things to see what works and time and time again I have simply made things worse for myself. Recently I saw the algae making a comeback, so I tried to clean things, I did an extra water change, and then I went ahead and treated some plants in the tank for that algae. I wake up every day to two things. First, there is moss in the skimmer and the second being that the amano shrimp accidentally detached the moss from the hardscape while trying to eat off the algae from that moss. This morning I noticed that the sheer amount of flow I have in the tank is a bit too strong for it's own good. Maybe that explains some of the moss issues. I spent a good amount of time trying to decide if I go down the route of removing every scrap of moss and starting over or if there is a better method. Do I need to clean the wood, remove the outer surface that is a bit softer and rotten or is this type of moss simply never going to attach in the way that my other tank worked? Is this an issue of mopani wood vs. ghost wood or is this tied to the specific variety of moss? Is this a light or flow issue where the placement of the moss itself is causing the issue. Is there something else that I'm missing? Today is Plato's Cave and this constant reminder that sometimes you cannot solve a problem until the information itself is clear as day in front of you. I am trying to research and figure out the next steps for the tank. I am mulling over what specific things to do, the order, and the importance of each step. It sort of reminds me of the journey of a sushi master trying to learn for 10 years just how to rinse and cook rice properly. Ultimately, you set your own standard for what you feel is the goal that you wish to achieve. I know I need to handle this wood and moss situation. I need to observe if the moss is doing extremely well in any specific placements or if there is the BBA showing up on every inch of that main tank. I need to pull one of the filters and try to lessen the flow in a region for the fish. I may need to revise the way the spraybar is directed to allow for a better relationship between circulation and algae with regards to the CO2 and the BBA. I need to be able to ensure that when I use an algaecide, it's not just haphazardly used in such a way to result in no difference in the end. I need to decide if using one is even worth it anymore. After using one for months you would assume that a dent should've been made, but the simple answer is always going to be that you cannot overcome the algae without fixing the root cause of the algae in the first place. Is the cause simply that the algae was introduced into the tank or is the cause much more complicated than that? Hopefully I can get some work done on the tank today and make the right steps. I will leave you with this.... It was something that I really enjoyed watching and there are a few very good tips when it comes to how to place plants in your tank. I admire the little details that this aquascaper shared. I especially enjoyed the note by Amano about how "you can fit a plant then."
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