nabokovfan87

It's been a day.... Have you ever had one of those dreams where you wake up, you don't know exactly what was going on, but you know it was positive or negative. The connotation of the moment had left some sort of residual feeling on your mind and that's what you wake up to. I know this morning I was pretty frustrated. I went to go get some work done out of the house, hoping to be done with the big painting project I started weeks ago. Halfway through the day I checked my youtube feed and got the news of Filipe Oliveira passing this week. I spent a good amount of time just sort of feeling the weight of that. As I type this I'm watching yet another video he was on that I haven't seen yet. It's a fun one, I really am enjoying it. It's always tragic when the world loses a person with a wonderful, kind soul. RIP Filipe, I'm thankful to have been introduced to you, but also that you are no longer suffering. A day later than it should be, but the maintenance is done. Having the shrimplets in the tank is motivation enough for me to just want the best for them. It's been a day of getting work done and returning home, checking on everything I did push myself a bit to get the room back in order. The fish totes are now the fish tote (one in the other) and most of my equipment I need is actually where it should be, in the stands. The shrimp tank, for whatever reason the left door now isn't aligned properly and I need to figure out how to fix it. I might just need to shim it, but I did play with it last week and wasn't able to fully fix it by adjusting the screws. The big tank I need to adjust as well, but that's a project for another day. I finally have the entire floor clear, my rugs in front of each tank, the spaces next to each tank clear for buckets, and I can sit and place the chair and view the tanks. I'll try to squint real hard and see the shrimplets and avoid the worms.... I promise. I dosed in everything in the tank, wanted to share the experience of trying to clean a tank with the shrimp in said tank and having the added stress of the tiny shrimp in the filter. They definitely do use that foam as a place to get cover and as a place to graze. As I pulled the air off the top of the filter there were two things that happened, the worms went everywhere and the shrimplets went elsewhere as the movement made them pretty unhappy with me. I did have to let them get off the foam and there was a bit of "worms and stuff" that went into the water column. Ultimately, the filters themselves do not really need to be cleaned, but as a force of habit I do want to keep some diligence when cleaning them. I do have the clown pleco in there, so keeping the substrate clean is beneficial for the aesthetics as well as the removal of the worms as best I can. I got a few out, that's for certain. To give you an idea, some of the tinge of the water is from the blackwater nature of the tank, but here is my view when looking for the shrimplets after cleaning out the filter. I definitely used the flashlight to try to persuade anything that was in the foam to leave. The worms and the shrimp do not like the bright light. There wasn't any in the foam or the bucket, so that was nice. I can also confirm that siphoning up shrimplet molts by the dozen is pretty nerve wracking. I would like to keep that in there for them, but I will feed them some calcium tomorrow. I am thankful and content now that the tank got the new water. Watching all the tiny oxygen bubbles all over the tank was just a reminder of why I choose to keep them the way I do. Here's the test results, but keep in mind these are immediately after dosing in everything in the tank. I also, call it the stress of the day getting to me, have basically no confidence reading the test strips today. I will plan to get a GH/KH test kit when I can to help me with things. I can run a PH test with liquid, assuming it's not expired in my kit. Test Result: Temp: 73.5 Nitrate: 10 ppm Nitrite 0 ppm GH: 150 ppm (could be 50-150) KH: 80 ppm (could be 60) PH: 7.2 (could be closer to 7.0) From the above, the only real concern I have is GH in this tank. I have the ability to buffer in KH as I need it, but the GH I do not.

32 oz I believe. I got one that hooks to a table, I have a table I can hook it to as well. 🙂 I basically begged to use it and was told "nope" a bunch of times. It's now being used in the living room for plants, which was too strong for them, so it could be used for the jar now. I'll check out the one you got 🙂 I need a better jar, but I have this 10 gallon aquarium that seems to be jar shaped..... 😂

For stems and basically all plants that send runners I tend to use a "claw method". I will take my hand and fingers a distance away from where any plants are and then gently feel under the substrate for the root system. Gently disturb and loosen the substrate around where I feel the roots, as I guide my hand under the base of the plant, then claw machine the entire plant up while supporting the plant. Generally that works well for me and keeps the plants whole as much as I can manage. I toss those into a container or bucket and then keep them wet until replanting. How long has it been setup? What do you plan to replace it with apart from eco complete. Eco complete is essentially lava rocks that is in a certain particle size. Corvus Oscen, Pecktec, and a few others have a nice series of videos discussing substrate. Corvus has a really good one. He talks about the tank setup and his method, the logic as to why. He uses a soil based substrate and then uses something that will store nutrients as well. Eco complete would be the second in that category as the nutrients can get stuck into the holes in the substrate itself and the plants can then feed off of that. A finer substrate would be a bit easier to clean as it keeps the things at the top of the surface. Larger size gravel does this.... This is often why it's recommended for corydoras and bottom feeders to have a specific granule size in the substrate that is finer. I had sand capped stratum in a tank that very quickly became sand in one spot and stratum in another. I can pretty much guarantee based on that experience that the stratum being exposed to the surface isn't causing ammonia. What was mentioned above was the issue of chloramines in the water, especially in your tap water. If you dechlorinate your tap water and it has chloramine, that frees it up to then have ammonia or to show an ammonia reading. Does your tap water show ammonia before doing anything to it on your testing? What are the testing results you're seeing in the tank itself? (a buildup of waste could show ammonia as well)

I cannot say "it'll be fine" but perhaps there is someone who did the research on a cube tank rim removal specifically. There is some indication, not saying it is correct in any way, that there is a higher quality silicone used with a higher tensile strength for aquariums that are rimless. A cube tank as opposed to a rectangular tank would have a generally equal load distribution, that is working in your favor. it's difficult to say what will be safe long term. The first response when trying to google for a forum where someone has removed the rim resulted in a few comments and concerns. Namely, eurobracing the aquarium after you remove the rim, the height of the glass being too much to remove the rim (without bracing it), silicone strength mentioned above, and being able to clean up the edges of the glass after you remove the rim. The tank in question was made by visio (not sure who made yours) and the rim was 4 individual pieces, decorative, to keep the edges safer to work on as they were unfinished.

The only thing that's kind of funky is the GH. Your KH is fine, stable, and depending on the substrate you choose you could easily buffer that down without much hassle. Long term, 8.0PH is cichlid territory and that would be Zenzo's territory. (Tazawa tanks on YouTube) That would mean things like plants might not be there long term. The real question is if you want plants or is there a specific African cichlid that you think catches your eye. Based on stocking you'd want to have either: Active substrate - buffer the KH down a little, use seiryu to buffer up your GH, then you have a good community tank setup. African Cichlid Substrate - keep the tank with rocks and wood, little to no plants, and then bigger fish. I would start by verifying your water. Even though PH starts at 8.0+ it may drop a little. 1. Test the tap water immediately 2. Aerate the tap water for 24 hours with an air stone and retest. (This is what you'd expect the tank to be) It's a very big tank for a Betta. Flow for them isn't a good thing and can cause stress. When I get some time I'll check stuff out and grab some more detailed notes.

No it was literally just plants and substrate. Trying to get some of the S. Repens trimmings to plant. The substrate wasn't rinsed well, wanted the junk in there to feed the plants. I did a few changes, after a few attempts at fixing things and getting it clear it wasn't doing anything. I didn't have enough light for the jar I had. But, the film on top of the jar was pretty gnarly after a day. It's proteins and just from the standing water. I have a light, I can try again. But the dark color is just the light on the jar and the black substrate.

O For the snails, I think it's Dean or someone who said "squish em, it's good food". I wouldn't let them get out of hand and I'm not just saying because it's a snail. Pond/bladder snails can populate really fast if you don't keep an eye out. In that jar, I'd go with a horned nerite (the small ones). I'd probably just have 2-3 of them. For the film, not really sure.how to handle that. I had a big film on mine after 1 day. Some people disturb it to make sure there can be exchange.

Diagonal across the tank, meaning the opposite diagonal corner. Keep an eye on the substrate, if you see any dead spots then adjust it. If you can, turn the fan down so that the filter is still encouraged to do the work it needs to and get the stuff out of the tank to be mechanically filtered out. If the diagonal direction pushes the flow directly into a plant or something it could encourage algae. Not a big concern, but just something to keep in mind. We're you able to verify the tube and all that is setup correctly on the HoB? It was shown in the video linked above.

Looks like a sterbai a little. Can you take some more photos? https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=316 Here's that link for comparison sake. https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?task=&species_id=388

Nangi is pretty special. I also really like normal Anubias Nana. If I had to have just one it would be Nana.

I see the comments above. For a shrimp only tank I wouldn't expect nitrates to get much higher than this. Initially I would hope for them to be sub 10, but as the colony grows you'll see more. Overfeeding shrimp is really, really easy to do. In a community tank it's even easier to have a lot of food on the bottom and end with "the shrimp will get it" or "I've got snails in there for cleanup" or "yep, corydoras". Long story short, it just sort of depends on a lot of factors. If you're seeing +20 nitrates every 3 days, that's a bit. If you're seeing 40-60+ per week, that's a lot. Having plants in there really will help balance some of that out. Especially once you get a mass of quick growing ones to thrive. Ah, much harder to see given the body color on the shrimp. The molt looks very normal. Sometimes when a shrimp has a difficult time molting (or just in general) than they will over exert themselves resulting in what you're seeing. The red spots look like where the eyes would be, maybe it hurt itself fatally or something. If this is what it is, that's fine and you did good by pulling the body and shell. If there's any sort of disease causing issues in a death you don't want them to eat the body and pass on that parasite or infection. Keep an eye on the ones in the tank, see what you see 🙂 .

If you can next time snap a photo. Could be indicative of something and potentially there can be an adjustment made to help. New shrimp, it's pretty normal too. Unfortunately. Congratulations on the baby shrimp!

Very sorry, my condolences.

There is a feeding dish! I am also very much in need of a feeding tube 😉 I will probably clean the tank tonight if I get home early enough. I tend to remove the feed dish, siphon, the. Clean whatever need be. The sand is a bright white sand and it's very easy to see waste, difficult to see the worms!!!! I just went through where I had removed everything and siphoned it 3-4x extremely well. There's dragonstone in there so removing them isn't going to be easy at all or possible without meds or something. The issue as far as I've been reading is that the worms take up oxygen, need a predator in there to keep the tank in check. I have a mass of air, so clearly air is not an issue causing them. Did I overfeed the corydoras prior... Probably. Just one of those things, I need to be able to see in the dark with how nocturnal these things are. They come out when the fish sleep, go figure. It'll get sorted, reading about them isn't great, not like I'm overly freaked out or anything, I just want to be able to manage it better. 25+ days until fry.

Very, very difficult to tell from that angle.

Hey everyone. Tragic news finds us and I wanted to pass along this video as a means of trying to share this person with others. He was a light, a joy, and brought the world beauty and art in many different ways. If you haven't, I'd encourage you to check out his and other master series videos by green aqua. They do teach you a lot and I do enjoy all of the dedication they put forth. I'm thankful they share them.... I wouldn't have met him any other way. Please enjoy.

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea fun.... https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/nematode/soil_nematode.htm

Found a molt in the tank 🙂 I also found about a bazillion worms. One of them finally landed on the glass so I was able to see movement. Definitely was inch-worming. I took two videos to try to provide some details. I just want to confirm these are what we all think they are. @Biotope Biologist you had mentioned one type of worm moving without inching and one that inch-wormed. It takes a minute for the camera to focus, but it'll get there. I believe the one that glides is Rhabdocoela as opposed to the nematodes that inch? Sidenote, this is a helpful read. https://aquanswers.com/tiny-white-worms-in-aquarium/

Went to check on the fish tonight after the long day... Someone bumped the filter intake tube into the substrate. All the fish looked freaked out and Grace was swimming around very upset at things. I emailed Seachem, I have a few months left of warranty, so hopefully I can get a replacement. I don't know if this is a material vs. time issue or what caused it to fatigue. 😞 I'm going to end up spending some time watching her swim tonight just to make sure shes ok. I am willing to bet it's nothing more than the black swordtails annoying her and she gave chase and caught it with her tail.

For testing you'd do a plethora of them. Anywhere from 5-50 and run what is called cycle tests or fatigue tests. There's a few of them that are applicable here. Basically, operation, function, and making sure that the device works as intended and can be repeated. This is a check for manufacturing issues as well as other things that crop up during the process. Now... A prototype you basically get one shot. Let's say it's injection molted, you get a short run and then you bring in a batch of parts. You might need to make changes, which happens, but eventually you'd use something like 3d printed parts alongside other prototype methods to create the parts you need. You might machine it on a cnc instead of having an injection molded tool running. Vacuum form parts are a bit easier because you can mod the tool and run those parts a lot more cheaply. The price per part is probably going to be higher, but the up front cost is much lower. There is a lot of discrepancy when it comes to 3d printed parts due to the plastics shrinking and due to the need to replicate the actual strength of the material itself during testing the final design. 3d printed parts may or may not be solid based on the infill and may or may not be able to fit properly for fit checks. One method around this is to oversize things a bit and use something like sandpaper and Bondo to get things to a final shape. This also allows you to paint the parts and run samples for the customer to review as a means of showing what it would look like eventually without running parts off a tool. Not quite sure I understand what you are asking here specifically. You're asking about the load/stress terminology?

Yes you'd optimally remove the snails or remove the specific fish in question to a QT tank. Aquarium salt would be what you want to use, not Epsom salt (different things). As far as the levels for treatment in my tanks I've done all three levels and the fish (specifically corydoras) are fine with it. Whichever you're comfortable with is fine to use.

Were you able to verify the HoB filter pump is clean and that the intake tube is installed fully into the recess? It looks normal, just undersized for the tank. Here is how I would layout the tank: The filter being "undersized" is of course subjective. If you're seeing a lot of detritus, not a lot of water circulation across the substrate is one thing. If you are seeing the HoB filter unable to pull that detritus into the filter to be mechanically filtered, then it would indicate to me that you don't have a strong enough pump.

Zenzo has a series on this. I will try to find all the parts and attach them below. Welcome to the forums as well! Here is another great resource of trusted information.

Can you post a photo?

CC @Odd Duck With regards to the method outlined for me, I dose them within 24 hours. Meaning.... Day 1: Expel-P, black out tank for 24 hours. Day 2-6: Water change, siphon the substrate well, then dose in your paracleanse per the directions on the box. (4 days) Day 7: rest Day 8: repeat This was the regime I followed with Odd_Ducks recommendation: I would ask OD to expand on this as they've been helping @Lennie with his parasite treatment, guided me through mine, and it's awesome information that has been dialed in for which med, how often and how long. It's a really good treatment plan that worked very well. As for your corydoras, if you need any specific guidance on treatment or what could be going on with the fish, I'd recommend creating a thread for the issue in the disease section, or add onto this one, with photos and water testing results (including temperature). I wish you the best, please feel better little cory! Here is the video for Cory's recommendations on the meds. He does discuss both paracleanse and Expel-P. As mentioned, it is less stress if you can give the fish breaks on treatments (meaning paracleanse vs. expel-p). If you're treating for a known illness, as mentioned you'd want to do a few weeks of treatment, several rounds of the same med.