Jump to content
Watch our video on the rules of this forum.

nabokovfan87

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    11,092

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    69

  • Feedback

    100%

 Content Type 

Everything posted by nabokovfan87

  1. nabokovfan87
    Looks great! I really like the open section of the substrate for the bottom dwellers.
  2. nabokovfan87
    This is a relevant video to your setup I think. 🙂 The safety is almost always going to be a drain of some kind. Let's say you overflow to something, that has a float switch. If the main sump overflows (bottom tank fills too full) then that would drain off. All of the tanks wouldn't be able to siphon themselves dry, by design, because everything overflows top to bottom. This is also similar to what they use in the big box stores for each "rack" of tanks.
  3. nabokovfan87
    They tend to do that when they are trying to avoid the chaos and just do their own thing. No sleeping per say, but just a calm area to breathe and rest a little. Mine do it all the time laying on the CO2 checker, S.Repens, Moss, Heater, Tubes, Etc. Something on the substrate as well, but it's all the same behavior. I would wager a guess that the spot where the oto is either quiet with a specific type of flow that oto likes to bask in.
  4. nabokovfan87
    How to start a siphon with very little water in the tank for moving. Push the substrate to the sides, angling down towards the hole you just made. This allows the water to easily flow into the hole once it gets below the level of the substrate. Fill the hose of the siphon with water as best you can initially. Put your finger on the end of the hose (not the siphon tube (big end). Hold the hose in the bucket as low as possible, raise the other end as high as you can to force water into the tube and let the air purge out. Repeat this until it's as full as you can, then let the water flow through the hose.
  5. nabokovfan87
    Mine are like a shark at the surface and they can't get the bait.... I will be excited when I have the "community setup" to go ahead and set things up to handle the smaller critters. I really, really do enjoy rotifers and things like that in the tank. Worms..... NOT QUITE.
  6. nabokovfan87
    This morning I watched one of the females deposit eggs and berry herself. This afternoon I started to break things down and move the tank to it's final position. Shortly after that, I removed the heater which revealed a decent amount of shrimplets. I was able to find and net a good amount as well as the adults and finish moving the tank. I am dripping the shrimp right now waiting for them to acclimate. I'll double check everything, but I should be able to get them in here shortly. Exciting, good, still want to see better molting behavior, but I do have a good feeling now that I am seeing the things I need to see for success with the shrimp. I ended up removing a bulky chunk of wood, treating the BBA in two pieces of wood with hydrogen peroxide to try to help while I broke everything down. We'll see how they do. I have a room again, the tanks are setup, and it's going to be nice to wake up and have that view again of the tanks and waking up as all the lights tick on in sequence.
  7. nabokovfan87
    You may have gotten some BBA spores from your tap water. Unfortunately, that's BBA. Treating the tank with flourish excel is going to help as well as spot treating problem spots. You'll need fish like BNP, RLP, or otos to try to clean off algae on big leaves like that, but there's not a lot that will go after the BBA itself. Does the new location have excess ambient light through the day? Do you think any of the lighting itself needs to be turned down, given that anubias really don't require a bright light. Given the SAEs in there aren't taking care of it. try to cut back on food and get them grazing on the plants more.
  8. nabokovfan87
    Hey hey everyone, I just wanted to share two "tricks" I did today. Please feel free to share some of your own if you have any. Issue 1: Trying to clean an old siphon tube that had algae in the tube. I don't have a "tube cleaner" and I don't have one that's long enough. The siphon is the first one I got years ago and it works very well! It's for my QT tank and very small tanks because it doesn't drain water extremely fast. It's a store brand one that's blue, but what is cool is that it's slightly narrower. Anyways, attempt 1 was to just see if the pipe cleaner used for drinking vessels I had would even fit in the tube. Check. Second issue was trying to get it to go through the entire 5-6 feet of tube. I had to use some pliers, but I bent the end of the pipe cleaner from a circle into an oval, worked well. Then I had to figure out how to push/pull the cleaned all the way through the entire tube. I grabbed some yarn I had for spawning mops and cut a length of that. I tied a good knot and then tried to feed it through the tube. It went fine through the places of the pipe I could clean, but as soon as I got towards the more algae'd parts of the tube it would stop. Hm. So I tied a knot into the end of the string to give it a little bit of weight. Still nothing. This is when I figured it out. I got the string in a portion of the way, fed in a bunch of string into the end so it balled up. Then, blow air into the tube and push the string further along. AWESOME. I got the string in there, pulled the pipe cleaner through in reverse (tied string to the oval in the handle) and then yanked it through. Worked like a charm. Issue 2: Pumphead doesn't mount well to the glass due to orientation, falls down when not secured. I installed my larger aquatop style pump, the one ACO used to stock before having their own. This one is attached to a spraybar kit which pushes CO2 into the tank instead of letting it float to the surface. Works really well, but after a day the pump started to flop down. The tube of the bar is held in place and the pump is just supported via the tube itself, attached via a 90 degree fitting. I tried adding more support (suction cups) to the heavier side, but that didn't work. Eventually you quit trying to be "fancy" and I used one of the large suction cups designed to hold the tube as a rest for the prefilter so that the pump can only drop so far down. I imagine you could make a support, 3d print it, and handle it that way as well. Not complicated, but some pretty fun ways to tackle problems was my day today.
  9. nabokovfan87
    you need to clean impellers and pumps at least every few months, better is every month. There's no issue with using a pipe cleaner on the pumps either (or stuffing some sponge in there to protect the pumps from junk getting in there.
  10. nabokovfan87
    Sorry about that. He's got a few videos on substrate and a livestream he did, but that is the one that is purely on topic and not about a mix of things.
  11. nabokovfan87
    That's tough. Hopefully the floor and all that is ok. Very sorry about the losses. 😞
  12. nabokovfan87
    LOL. Kids always telling that one. The other one is "What kind of shoes do ninjas wear?" Popsicle stick, candy, string cheese jokes for days.
  13. nabokovfan87
    It's not easy to justify this one on the light, my apologies I just saw the post! Moss can be temperamental and it sounds like what you're dealing with is similar to what I've seen in other's tanks when trying to get moss going. In general, for moss there's a few key tips. A. Start with it trimmed and attached to something, I can send a few videos with different techniques for this. The goal being that the moss is cut into 1/4" pieces and then allowed to grow starting from a small piece. B. Cutting the moss encourages growth. Which helps with the activity level of the plant. Moss can be similar to anubias in terms of setup, very low demand and very slow growing. It can also grow "pretty quick" by comparison to other plants. C. The interesting thing too is placement. Structure is one thing, mentioned above, but the placement of moss also is key. If the moss is in a section of very strong flow as opposed to one that is calmer or even less intense you might have a different level of success with the plant. D. Dosing iron might help the plants in that tank. Given the photo, I would recommend using a fork or toothbrush to try to detach the string algae, then cut the moss up with scissors or a knife+cutting board and then attach it with some method. Super glue on hard scape is how I generally handle it. In terms of your setup, the settings on the light don't seem to be too intense. For my low demand tank this is the setup I have running. While I won't say "do this" in terms of the expert mode or anything. I was mostly just messing around with it. 1. The time the light is on seems good. Not too long. 2. In terms of my settings, the light is at about half of what your settings are. I would bump things down to 35% and see how that helps or things change. If you have more than just java Fern and moss in the tank, then reply and we can discuss further, but that's what I could see in the tank, low demand. 3. Consider turning down the cool white channel ever so slightly. Especially compared to the pure white channel. Don't be afraid of having blue in there (cool white) because plants do need that spectrum, but considering the range on this light it does push blue really hard and that tends to cause algae for a lot of tanks. Here is the moss in the tank with the lighting mentioned.
  14. nabokovfan87
    Still is one of my favorites and is one of my favorite things when it comes to being "present" when it comes to the hobby. A lot of my tanks get some eye time when it's dark outside, just before bed or early morning, and it's peaceful. The mind can relax and you just.... Are there. Definitely worth a second (or first) look if you missed this one.
  15. nabokovfan87
    "Worms are a sign of a healthy tank." Me finding a worm in the tank:
  16. nabokovfan87
    Yep! I only mentioned it because it is commonplace to move shrimp that tiny in some capacity using brine shrimp sieves and other things.
  17. nabokovfan87
    When was the last time pumps were cleaned and UGF tubes maintained?
  18. nabokovfan87
    What is your filtration and how is it setup? What is the tank size?
  19. nabokovfan87
    One day I will have baby shrimp!
  20. nabokovfan87
    I would start here.... It's probably one of the best videos on the topic and explains things, scientifically, very well! Up until about 2 weeks ago I would've been on the side of "never again" when it comes to capping substrates. The tank I just setup has contrasoil and seachem flourite on the top. while I can say I don't really like flourite as much as I once did, I do think it's serving the job very well as a cap on the soil substrate. The soil I am using is "extra fine" because that's what the shop had, but I would've preferred the fine size of the soil. I do think having an active substrate is very key for planted tanks. (I also know @Mmiller2001 has amazing tanks and also highly recommends the use of active substrates as opposed to something like inert with root tabs). I can't argue with someone who has a tank that consistently looks that wonderful. Whether is Corvus, Pecktec, Amano, Green Aqua, or Mmiller, there is a lot of advantage to just having active substrate in the tank, even in filter bags to absorb nutrients. I think the biggest issue is finding the right cap, and to ensure it's thick enough to allow you to siphon and plant without pulling up the soil.
  21. nabokovfan87
    Sort of depends on whats going on. I'll send some stuff in DM 🙂 .
  22. nabokovfan87
    you can take basically any food and use a pepper mill and grind it into powder for them. You can also feed them repashy powder as well. It would be a very small amount typically, think they end of a very fine paintbrush tip. When I was cleaning a tank with fry, same as with neo shrimp, I would let things settle and then use a light to try to view them. If there is any issues then just use a turkey baster or a small plastic dish or something to gently get the fry back into the tank.
  23. nabokovfan87
    It genuinely sounds like an easy fix, maybe a need to cut the wire and patch it. Ah well, good luck with it!
  24. nabokovfan87
    I had a 5G hex, might've been bigger but it wasn't huge at all. A very young and naive me who just wanted to have an aquarium again.... I went to the shop and the big box store sold me 3 bala sharks because you need "at least 3" per their sticker to help with aggression. I actually like hex style tanks as opposed to other cylinders and such because it doesn't distort the picture as badly on my eyes. I don't think at the time it was even a thing at the store (meaning, unavailable to me) to have a sponge filter. I would recommend running any hex off air just because it makes things easier and fits well. Something like a tidal 35 might be a perfect filter given the size of the walls and verifying that it will fit correctly. If you want to go HoB, go for it, but just make sure it fits!
  25. nabokovfan87
    I bet it's an easy fix! Probably a PC fan / molex connector. Send me a photo if you want! (I just saw the photo and was thinking about fish water going down all the tiny holes 😞 ) hm, interesting!
×
×
  • Create New...