nabokovfan87

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the movie: Jiro Dreams of Sushi It demonstrates the culture difference and the background of someone like Takashi Amano as well as everyone who followed in his footsteps.

Fluval sells some for filtration. You can also use bags of active substrate in the tank. This is common for Caridina shrimp tanks. What is your PH now? How far do you need to shift it? Adding some wood in the tank might be plenty.

Fluval E-Series Heaters. Yeah, that seems like the correct approach. Alright... let's look at my day today. The first "new thing" for me was acclimating them over a very, very long period of time. It wasn't flawless and I definitely made some mistakes, learned a little bit. I am doing two batches of 5, this is the first batch. The other one is supposed to be from a different genetic line, same store, but just a separate strain. Waiting for them to be added on amazon, then I can order them. I've been checking basically morning and night for them to be added, I got the email stuff setup and still waiting. My hope is that there's enough in the tank for these ones to do well. It's a very well seasoned tank, the corydoras won't bug them, there's plenty of places to hide. Alder cones are in there to bolster up even more surfaces for them, and I do have some good foods for them as well as the corydoras. I am adding these to the tank, trying to rehome the pandas, Move everything else to the 75 when I feel confident these guys are doing ok, and then make an effort to have a decent setup of shrimp to try to help pay for the hobby of sorts. I saw at least 2 of this set with really nice colors. 2 that looked like culls / black or grey. 7 in total went into the tank tonight. I am hoping that tomorrow when I check on things I see them doing ok. doing well and behaving like they should. I know it doesn't make sense, but part of me really wants to "have success" before saying what is going on in the hopes of not jynxing or dooming the project from the start. I'm already in awe of these little creatures and I just want to see them do well. I really, really want to see them do well.

Let's "clean the tank" mom said. Alright, so we get the big tub and move the fish out the tank. She get a scoop and takes out all the gravel into the pasta strainer and then I take the tank to the front yard to rinse it out. Clean the glass, wipe everything out while she rinses the gravel (always very dirty) and then we add in the stuff back to the tank and proceed to work on the filter. Clean out the cartridge and check the little wheel, probably dried out by now. Clean off the plants if they looked nasty and not the shiny plastic that was more appealing. The fish did well, surprisingly, we used dechlor and we did have a cloudy tank for quite a while.... but it was basically a "deep clean" far too often. I do really, REALLY hate that my love of sharks was mixed with the admiration of bala sharks as a kid. "Get enough of them and you won't have aggression". Yeah right. Got a marineland bowfront tank, I think it came without a filter so I got a quietflow. LOVED IT, but I had too many issues trying to cut scraps of sponge to fit and I was just bad at cutting sponge. Getting a new HoB wasn't an issue so I got something else. Then I got an aquaclear (pre-fluval) because everyone said they were the best and then a sponge filter because it was just easier. Then I got tidals, then I had an aquaclear again (larger size, fluval branded). Then I got a ziss bubble bio.... you get the picture. Constantly unhappy with filters and just not really being happy with what I had because I was constantly watching things about how everything else or something specific was the best thing ever. Buying the bulk pack of food because I needed to get enough $$ to get free shipping. Or the 4 pack of flourish iron and the bulk pack of prime to have "enough". Not buying enough plants buying enough plants but not letting them actually grow in before adding fish worms. All of that. Just worms. Don't get worms in your tank because the filter stopped working and you didn't catch it.

I believe in this video (one of the green aqua masterclasses, link is to the full playlist) they have a similar affect you might be going for with the rocks overhanging on the top down into the chasm. 🙂

Yeah, you really, really do know your way with plants. It's beautiful to see an artist do their work. I had some issues with mine, but I would love to try it again. Fissidens nobilis is one I am targeting to own and do well with. The "look" that you're going for is it something like what you have where the texture is shown as you have it now? Do you want to coat wood or rock and make a "bush" of sorts or what fits your design here? As an example, here is a susswassertang bush. Probably wrapped around a river rock in the video header image. tumbled lava rock (garden section) works well too if that's a specific shape you want.

Good to hear. I got to that point and did a second treatment just to be sure it was fully through the worst of it. About to go through it again with the Black Cory fry.

Looks pretty nasty. QT the herd. Treat them with salt + Ich-X for now and see how things progress. If you have IALs do that as well. Yeah, definitely a fungus of some kind. Underlying could be a bacterial issue as well when the fungus clears, so you'd want to keep an eye out for that.

Good to hear you're happy with it! Hopefully you keep seeing improvement with little Geppetto!

That rock in the middle there. Those white bands are minerals. That's going to impact water parameters a little bit. Not much, and it will go down over time. One method some people use is to "prep" seiryu stone by using vinegar on the surface to dissolve out some of those minerals and lower the impact. Same way of soaking wood to remove some of the initial tannins. Generally your rocks look ok. KH and GH could go up from evaporation as well as from the hard scape.

I'll try to dig it up. I think it was on his channel to give you an idea of what's possible. 🙂 eh... can't find it. A stream he did where people emailed in photos and he edited them live for us. This shows the process, but his skill set is just perfected for fish photos and landscape work.

A Colu mentioned, photos help for this as well as parameters. I think you might just have a corydoras who happened to get injured somehow. Often to dart to the top of the tank and hit the lid, so be sure to keep the water level at the bottom of the rim to allow room.

yessssss! Are you going to move them or let the tank do it's thing?

Just be very, very careful. Smog, things like roads, those all pollute or add remnants to the leaves. A good rinse or even soak before you add them might be useful. Location away from roads, things like that is one of the "tricks" that people often share when collecting things for shrimp.

Black Shultzei Corydoras 🙂 This photo is screaming for a Jimmy edit. Darken the background. Color balance, what a ridiculously colorful photo. Beautiful! Reminds me of goofy a little bit with those eyes. 😂 Really awesome photo. Plecos are so underrated. Add this to the Jimmy edit pile too for the calendar. (if someone wants to have some photoshop fun with these, go for it!) Very nice fish!

Totally off topic. Did you use feeding mats to slow the cat down or? I have a pup that is exactly the same way. they got new dog treats and my analogy is the episode of impractical jokers when the guy was making a joke about trying to "one throat a chicken wing". LOL. You mentioned the food helping, we've moved to larger size (normal vs. small bites) to try to help as well. Dog is fine, but sometimes they need to slow down and chew and it's hard to communicate that. I've also seen the corydoras do that too with worms and scared itself half to death for a little while.

I woke up today, did the morning things, went off to go run some errands and be out of the house for the morning. I then got the notification (at 12) that the box would arrive a day early and be here between 10-2. It's 2 now as of typing, so any minute now!!! I cleaned the filtration really well, ran my tests, and went ahead and got through the usual routine. I tend to wait until lights out simply so I can let the plants do their thing. Filters weren't too bad, but I definitely have been overfeeding. I tend to clean these out every other week, I will be going back to every week due to the new stocking. I don't think there's a lot of waste, ever in this tank, but it's a shot of a bucket of fish water.... we all know it's cleaning day! QUESTION THOUGH for the hivemind. When it comes to things you dose in, be it baking soda, equilibrium, and PH up/down powders. What is the normal timeline for those products to affect the water? Is this something that happens as soon as they are dissolved?

Frequently (potentially) Asked Questions 1. Is this mod actually worth doing? Which parts? Why? Well, it is an interesting question and quite a dilemma if you have a certain perspective. I do enjoy these filters because of their reliability and their warranty. They do absolutely have some design issues and these things show themselves right out of the box. There are not any "do this and it's fine" methods for this filter. There are legitimate failures by the design team for freshwater hobbyists. Fixing some of those failures to keep the fish in the tank alive is the main reason why this mod is worth pursuing. 2. Why are there design issues? I cannot say why, but my best guess is that because the tidal (a bit on the nose there with the name Seachem) is designed for saltwater tanks, not fresh. Give me a "Forest" version of this product and I think you can easily make things work a bit better. The pumps have the GPH they do because saltwater is harder to move. The skimmer is there for, yep saltwater. The multiple intakes are there for a few reasons, but they do not work as well when most of the water is pulled into the pump chamber from the skimmer. 3. What are the design issues out of the box? "bypass" is the all-encompassing term, but the real issue is that the pump is pushing the water through a variety of holes in the filtration basket leading to the foams not actually filtering the water mechanically. Because the foams and basket do not have tight tolerances on the design (or were designed to interfere, i.e., press fit) then you have more gaps. The water cannot get into the basket to be filtered and goes right out back into the tank. It is pretty basic. What is the biggest hole? The skimmer and the window cutout. Where is the water going to go? Right through those two paths. 4. Can you do a partial mod and achieve success? Can I just seal the skimmer and call it a day? You can, but you will get a lot more input from the pump housing, which means you will get a lot more junk in the pump. There is going to be a final recommendation and I do like the tier system. If you want an "easy fix" then add some mesh to the skimmer or foam to give the fish a chance to get away from the suction. Something like tiger barbs or discus especially need this. A sleeping wide-body fish is just a matter of when, not if the skimmer will suck them against the filter body. 5. Is this fix reliable? Do you trust it? To an extent, I can say that I have ran this mod for quite a long time. Going back and looking at dates, the basket and skimmer was sealed in the first week of June. It has been running for over 6 months without failing catastrophically. The pump has been fine. There have been issues and those recommendations will be made. I do trust that the mod can be permanent. I do not plan to remove it and I do plan to mod all my tidals with this method. 6. What else is left? Is this "done"? I do have the weird intake issue where air bubbles make their way into the pump. I did find out that you can visually see those bubbles and so I need to follow that path and find out the root cause. I have my assumption, but I need to repeat the failure and keep an eye on the source. Second to that, I simply need to repeat it. I need to repeat the process, take more/better photos, and run it again for an extended period with the tidal 75 housing. I do have two of those, will be able to run them side by side. I do not want to call anything done with a test case of 1 or 2. Finally, I do need to finalize the input tube mod and finalize how to mod the grate. I have a concept, ran some tests and I'm not happy with it. I need to order parts from Seachem, but I do have another one I can opt to mod now. Once I can get that final detail to everyone here, then I will be "done" enough to make my final recommendations. 7. What was the biggest surprise in the process? Hm. I think one of the biggest challenges was finding out that the basket itself is not tall enough to do its job. I did not expect that. I expected things to work better when I tried diffusing flow in the base of the filter basket by using the mech type of baffling ceramic rings. 8. What was the biggest success of this mod? I think the filter itself is surprisingly efficient now. Let us say that previously I had "good filtration" mechanically speaking by performing the basic tier 1 mods. When all is said and done, you're talking about a massive improvement to the ability of the filter itself to intake junk and filter it out. It is a basic thing, but this filter is probably the best one on the market when it comes to mechanical filtration. I do not say that lightly, I say that after jumping from one hang on back to the next trying to get things to work well! 9. I like the filter out of the box except the blue stuff, can I just remove the blue stuff? YEP. You literally just remove the dial, open the half-moon shape on the intake and add one little gloop of silicone to seal the hole for the dial. Done. It probably is the easiest thing to mod out. It is blue because of seachem branding. They want to have that blue there so you know it is a tidal. That color is on just about all of their packaging, nets, etc. They do have a green they like to use a lot too.... they should use it on the freshwater update! 10. What is the goal of this? Why go through all of this? Part of me needs to get a job doing stuff like this! But seriously, I did this because I think that the information is applicable to any HoB and I think that there are filters out there that need improvement. I want to show you, I want to show corporations, and I really want to show Seachem / Sicce how you can fix in-line issues and improve your products. You should be doing this. There is no excuse NOT to do some of these improvements. Parts are actually cheaper, material costs go down, quality is improved, and the best part of the whole engineering perspective is that all I care about is the customer being happy. Which customer? The one buying the thing, the one making the thing, and the one assembling everything. Those are my customers.

Very unfortunate. That's a pretty intense way to get breakfast. Hopefully you have some more fry soon, but best of luck with the rest of the fry. Hopefully they do well for you.

ORD. 😞 That's awesome though! congratulations and very excited to see photos when you have em. 🙂

@tolstoy21 help us out!

Let's not call it "over filtering" but hm.... adding less points of failure for the ecosystem. Nitrite issues is a pretty interesting one. If you want to review setup for anything, always feel free to tag me or send a DM with photos of everything. No worries at all and I get to use diagrams! The ziss bubble bio I ran for a long time and sometimes I felt like all I ever did was trap muck and not bacteria on the media. It might've been fine, but that's why I eventually added the fine sponge to keep the chamber clean and basically dumped in so much air that it had to ridiculously strong bacteria. That alone should be enough to kill the ammonia / nitrites in most tanks. Especially as a secondary filter with the tidal. If you want to go through that one, just need a video to review the air flow.

I really want one of the new neo diffusers so I can drop it lower in the tank. Nice work!

100% to what Mmiller advised. My own experience has been that CO2 and balance has caused a lot of my BBA issues. The substrate was basically growing it that's how bad things were. My lighting has been all over the place and I worked with him on figuring out some of my CO2 issues. I swapped diffusers, I added circulation pumps, and I went through a lot of trial and error before I ended up getting things to trend in a positive direction. A. Don't overfeed. B. Actually be very diligent about cleaning BBA off of surfaces, siphoning it out, and making sure it doesn't destroy your equipment. I have gone through everything from RR, peroxide, easy carbon, to a variety of other methods..... like literally scrubbing my wood with an algae scraper. I am at the point where you are, and have been there, of wanting to just nuke the tank and start over. Once that stuff is in the tank, it's basically impossible to remove. Control is one thing, but you won't remove it. C. You likely need to dose in CO2. I could run 4-5 taps of air and it did basically nothing to diffuse enough CO2 and running 3+ filters or having good surface movement didn't do enough to get CO2 into the tank. Directly dosing it seems to be one of the key factors to get ahead of it. (for me). D. Apart from directly removing it and siphoning things out, you likely won't ever have a strong enough UV bulb (wavelength and duration) to remove the algae spores from the water. This is why water changes matter. I can miss one or be a day behind and it just goes off. You have to get the plants growing, get ahead of it, and then you have to get enough plants to get ahead of it. E. Spot treatment of easy carbon (or flourish excel) works very well to push back the algae. With an infestation, you're never going to dose in enough to eradicate it, but that is a very, very critical tool to use when you are trying to fight it back. Peroxide is also another one.

December 2022 - 3 generations January 2019 - 2 generations This is the fry I found in the tank after weeks of focusing on the fry box and not the tank as much... HE WAS HUGE compared to the other fry. Color was vibrant, just a really beautiful little black corydoras. A bit of waiting to get this plant into the tank. Trying to find a good source and get the tank settled. It still isn't great, but I think this photo is a goal for me to obtain and motivation.... Please grow little Hygro! It is slightly difficult to explain why this photo is one of my favorites, but the depth here is just being able to wake up and see the sunrise through the tanks. I like waking up and being able to spend time watching the fish.... a photo is 1000 words and this one reminds me of a few 100 moments.