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nabokovfan87

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Everything posted by nabokovfan87

  1. nabokovfan87
    Be sure to add extra airstones.
  2. nabokovfan87
    I like the rectangle shaped caves. I use 2 sizes (medium and then large) and I spread them along the tank. I would leave a few inches of room around each one. They are easy to stack as well, which is nice. My setup wasn't for breeding, but a general home for 3-4 species. The things I learned were about placement from that setup. Having them too close to the glass meant that they didn't like using the caves. They would hang out on them or on the side as opposed to in them. This would be a way to give fry a place to hide from the adults. I had them in bigger tanks, I had 4-5 plecos and then I had the caves spread around the tank. One on each side facing the glass of the tank to give the fish some protection and feel comfortable using the caves. In the middle of the tank I had two caves side by side with a piece of wood over them. That worked well. Some plecos wanted to use the bottom of the wood and then the others would use the caves. Certain species, clowns, really liked having the caves, but they could easily be bullied out by BNP/RLP that were a bit more feisty to get the cave. Adding enough or trying to "teach the fish" so to speak that another cave was open became the challenge then. Very cool setup. That tank screams for a black background! I like the little plates you have to support the caves when stacking. Very useful and looks great.
  3. nabokovfan87
    Steenfott has some videos on this method. On the anubias, I do not think that is BGA. It looks like black beard algae in the early stages. The stuff on the substrate, I've heard everything from salt to other things working. Manual removal is your friend. First I would try to remove it and siphon it off the gravel. Blackout the tank for a week and then siphon it off. During the blackout, every 1-2 days you'd want to perform a water change to remove BBA spores in the water column. UV or Maracyn would be the next step for me. In terms of cause, is the tank near a window? Have you considered blocking out the back/sides of the tank with something like window tint film to reduce algae issues? It's very likely that this stuff came in on a plant or some decor.
  4. nabokovfan87
    I'll mod mine tomorrow, try to get a decent photo to share. I may take a Dremel to my ACO ones to make the end of them fine tip. I have them held together with a rubber band so I'm up for any sort of mod on them to help me with planting.
  5. nabokovfan87
    It's an Oak Island stone! 🤯 That is an epic journey. Very cool photos and thank you for sharing the sights with us. I tried to pick a favorite, but I gave up. So cool to see the stadium 🙂 .
  6. nabokovfan87
    sooooooo I'm a derp. I totally pulled off and it is intented for the tips of these to be able to be removed. I need to bend mind a little bit to get better grip. Did you bend yours at all? Mine only touch at the very end of the tips and not along the length of the "claw".
  7. nabokovfan87
    I would soak them for a little bit with an airstone. Change the water every few days just to clean the deepest innards of the rocks themselves. Roll them around and let the air out from inside the rocks. After 7-14 days that would be sort of the minimum for me to feel safe enough to test them. Then I would go ahead and add something to the rocks first before risking the entire tank to make sure you don't have any crazy issues. Maybe a snail or something might work? Depends on what you have available. Water test everything you can for any leeching, just like you would with some unknown piece of wood.
  8. nabokovfan87
    I've shipped mine twice. DEFINITELY Intimidating when it comes to corydoras. Overall, they tend to do fine because they can get cold and handle it. Temp is a big thing. I use Deans method of taping the corners. I would highly encourage this for just about anyone shipping any fish at all, especially shrimp. I had 2 orders of shrimp come in crushed from this simple mistake. One was all DOA, the other only had a 50% loss. For corydoras specifically, Rachel O'Leary has a great video on how to ship them if you need any additional tips or visuals. I do not shake mine to release the toxin and it's not something I believe is necessary. Bagging them into several bags to minimize issues is what I recommend. Also, do not ship them with pure oxygen. Both times I shipped them I took the amount of corydoras I was shipping and split all the females between the 2-3 bags I was sending as well as the males. If one bag had issues, they still had a full colony available. I am by no means an expert, but that's how I approached it.
  9. nabokovfan87
    so... spas have basically the exact same filtration. You just have to find the size you need. Bring one to your local pool store or check online and you should be able to find them. They make them for pools as well, but the spa one is likely the exact thing you're already using.
  10. nabokovfan87
    @Gannon has an L333, but I don't think breeding setup. Here's another related thread from @Saltinthedesert 🙂 @rockfisher has some of the ones you're interested in as well! 🙂
  11. nabokovfan87
    Hello, welcome to the forums! I forget who all has the nice plecos here. I apologize, my brain is just mentally exhausted right now to compile the list. There are a few people I know who does focus specifically on plecos. I'll send you a DM with the directions on how to get in contact with them or which youtube channels to look into. 🙂 @Odd Duck does have some, but I don't think any of those L numbers mentioned. Let me see if I can dig up some others who have them or some related threads!
  12. nabokovfan87
    What a goof. He needs a hobby besides destruction.
  13. nabokovfan87
    Sweet. Any idea how long? My only barometer right now for "yep that helped" is keeping track on how quickly mine color up. It's essentially supposed to speed up the color, the growth of those cells. I don't know if it increases their color depth longer term, but I would imagine so.... similar to fish in a pond vs. under an aquarium light.
  14. nabokovfan87
    It should be a special bulb. It's often available at the big box stores under zoomed brand I believe. That would be a great resource. In terms of what happened it probably got picked up by a bird maybe or pushed ashore by a wave? Very unfortunate it happened and cool that you noticed and tried to help out. They have some powders and stuff you add to the food to give them nutrients but I think something like algae wafers or pellet food would be the go to. Apart from that it would be cull/feeder fish (just avoid things with high thiaminase I believe. For clarity, I've never kept a turtle before so that's the best I can do to offer any advice.
  15. nabokovfan87
    Sometimes there is some remnant CO2 that makes it way across the bubble counter. Are you seeing movement at the diffuser itself? Last thing to do would be a "soap test" to check for leaks on everything.
  16. nabokovfan87
    This is a great resource and has the techniques in there to care for the air pockets. Please let us know if that helps! If it's easy to do so, the best thing is to move the fish tj a bucket with an air stone and siphon the tank as well as disturb it to release all the bubbles. Whenever you release them just make sure there isn't any fish above that area.
  17. nabokovfan87
    After lights out it kicks on. Daily.
  18. nabokovfan87
    A bit of a frustrating update.... 😞 I randomly decided to test the KH using the new liquid kit. It was off the charts high. Tap for me is 40 ppm KH which is about 2 deg. I figured I just went too quick, one too many drops and so I went ahead and double checked everything. The test changes from blue to yellow and the vial I had was a very deep blue. Added one more drop and the color shifted, indicating a very high test. Two things at play here as I've had time to mull it over. First, my strips are older, have always been dry, test normally, but simply don't seem to be accurate for KH/PH anymore. This could entirely be my own issue and my own inability to discern the color chart. It looked a very clear 80 ppm with PH in the 7.4-7.6 range. The liquid test however was indicating almost 9 degrees of hardness for KH. I think my final number on repeating tests was 8.5-9 degrees. This equates out to almost double the ppm. (151-160 ppm) I went ahead and tested the tap, similar results, about double what I see using the strips. Not sure what to do with this, but let's take a step back and point out the obvious concerns here: A. I have been doing water changes less often, so minerals do have a chance to build up now. B. I have been doing less volume for my water changes to increase stability, so this cuts down on how much I remove. C. I use a KH buffer, but if things are building up over time, I likely need to pull back on the buffer. Per the liquid test strips, things are slightly higher than I'd like, potentially contributing to those deaths I saw. Those deaths occurred before any water changes were done, but potentially the increased number from slightly too much buffer was the cause? Hard to say. Per the test strip, everything was fine, slightly high, but not out of the norm of where I prefer to keep the tank. This leads me to a few questions, but I am going to have to get used to liquid testing for those parameters going forward. I need to research equilibrium as well in terms of modifying GH. My goal is to get GH above the KH value and right now it's flipped reverse. This was recommended in a green aqua video (and makes sense) to ensure plants have the right ratio of nutrients. More research incoming, but for right now nothing is changing apart from no longer dosing in KH. I will be testing the tap as well as the tank to monitor changes over time.
  19. nabokovfan87
    Just a quick update here. I went and cleaned out the pumps on both filters. Nothing crazy, nothing too unexpected. Unmodified Filter Plant debris on the pump itself. The pump housing (black plastic that goes around the pump) was covered in plant debris as well as the skimmer. Because that debris was there, this also made it easier for other debris and waste to get stuck on those areas and gunk things up. The impeller shaft is sealed for the most part and the pump itself is labelled as "self-cleaning". This is just a reminder, if you have one of these filters in a planted tank, why it is a good idea to clean out the pump itself as well once a month. Modified Filter: Less debris than above and the photos look a bit worse than it did in person. Just some bacteria, algae, food debris on the pump and in the higher flow sections. The prefilter stops the heavy debris, but it's clear that the pump is still allowed to push some pretty good size particles through the prefilter foam.
  20. nabokovfan87
    They should breed at the lower range just fine. Not having a heater lets the tank ebb and flow with the day to day fluctuations. That can trigger spawns in some cases. A lot of people will keep Sterbai at very high temps, but I do think that most all corydoras do better cooler (more oxygen in the water).
  21. nabokovfan87
    Totally didn't see the species mentioned. My mistake! Thank you @Odd Duck
  22. nabokovfan87
    I vote roots or detritus. Not a big deal. If It bothers you, gentle push away the gravel and use a paper towel to clean the area. Siphoning the gravel helps but it's all basically plant food at that point.
  23. nabokovfan87
    Is it moving? Might be detritus worms. It could also just be plant roots 🙂
  24. nabokovfan87
    Based on the setup, there shouldn't be too much of an issue short term.
  25. nabokovfan87
    This thread we dive into that aspect a little bit. There are some names from that thread you could tag here and ask specific questions regarding which two or three might do well together.
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