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nabokovfan87

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Everything posted by nabokovfan87

  1. nabokovfan87
    I've got two on standby. 😂 Sterilite is the go to!
  2. nabokovfan87
    I would recommend starting here. What is the KH in the tap? Maintenance routine?
  3. nabokovfan87
    I bombed the tank again this morning trying to move substrate around and for the sake of trying to flatten things out, get the level of fine to the right thickness across the tank. Every time I tough it the tank turns to mud, so I think I'm going to just have to live with it for the most part. Left half of the tank is "a bit chunky" in comparison to the right. I can get some of the fine and top it off, but that's something for future me to worry bout. I posted photos showing the difference in the pore size across the tank, but the goal is that there is a good removal of the old stuff I wanted to get rid of and the soil/active substrate is in place to do it's thing. So that moved around and then I replanted everything that popped up, moved swords and hardscape slightly, and then went off to go do other chores for the day. I also added a tad, very minimal amount of KH to the tank. Barely anything for the sake of whatever is going on with the substrate absorbing stuff from the water and not a ton of things in there. I didn't add ferts right away because I knew that I was going to do a few water changes. I did add them today. I may end up having to siphon a little and change out water again.... but there is a pretty fun development. The "side tank" is back alive and well and it's for QT right now. The goal being to have a place to view some fish and keep an eye out for disease. I will take water from the big tank, feed it to the side tank, and that will be for plants more than anything else. It has my new light, may have co2 in future, but it's just a good setup for growing some stems. This is the view doing water changes tonight.... not bad at all.
  4. nabokovfan87
    Well.... there's about 60+ MPH winds out tonight. Very gusty. Tomorrow there is also a chance of snow and it would all be perfectly fine and lovely if I didn't have stuff expected to arrive that doesn't like the cold! Plants for shrimp are on day 3-5 in the mail and they will likely spend the freeze in a warehouse somewhere, hopefully warm enough to make it to me. Local hobbyist, their first time trying to ship plants, so we'll see how things arrive. There will be some floaters for the shrimp as well as some pearlweed. I made a trip to the store to try to find some tiny pots for the shrimp tank. I've also put a goal on myself to actually ensure that I love the tank by the end of the year. We'll dive more into it in future posts, but the point right now is simple.... get some plants growing to help keep the shrimp thriving. I forget if the pots need to have the hole in the bottom or they specifically don't need to have the whole in the base. These don't. My hope is that I can get some stems or something growing and just have a bit more of some easy plants thriving that grow a little faster than the anubias. I am going to get some buce kedegang going in here as well and it's one I am impatiently waiting for.
  5. nabokovfan87
    Here is a study for this fungus. Lagenidium. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269701279_A_Fungal_Infection_Caused_by_Lagenidium_sp_and_its_Control_Measures_in_Hatchery_Reared_Shrimp_Larvae_Penaeus_monodon_in_Bangladesh I also found this... might be related, Cladogoniun (ellobiopsidae). Starts one color, ends another color as it grows. https://aquariumbreeder.com/ellobiopsidae-or-cladogonium-ogishimae-green-fungus-in-shrimp-tank/
  6. nabokovfan87
    Moving a big tank and need a pond/pool to hold some fish while you work on the tank? --->Tote Working on trying to keep all the junk that you use neat and tidy on your table, but drips and things happen a lot? --->Tote Need to store all the stuff you use every few months or just have some "dust free" long term storage for the supplies you don't really use daily? (or need to store things in the garage to free up space...) --->Tote Need a qt tank and all you have is stuff around the house....? ---->Tote Need to move a tank and don't want to toss out 40 gallons of water? ---->Tote It's sort of been the go-to for me with buckets, anything and everything that can hold water has a use, at least once!
  7. nabokovfan87
    Found something cool for ya. https://www.garnelio.de/en/blog/shrimp/neocaridina-xxl-fact-or-fake
  8. nabokovfan87
    Yeah! I wasn't sure and they look like some black caridina or something patterned. The first photo looked like neo shrimp, the last one with the "broccoli head" looked caridina-ish to me! I am digging through my stuff trying to find out what this thing might be called or verify with a secondary source from the book provided. They definitely will breed a lot at that temp. It makes things go faster. I mention it off-hand as a concern because maybe it's letting the parasite thrive as well. There are a few studies based on temp where the shrimp are living at 82 degrees, tested hotter, tested cooler. 80-82 is "fine" but it's just not great in the long run. For now, it's perfectly fine and just something to note or keep an eye on going forward with your colony. I'll keep digging.
  9. nabokovfan87
    Just a note that this might be a bit hot for shrimp. 72-74 is a lot more optimal. I understand it's a betta setup. Just something to note. Is there a road nearby? Is there human activity, pets, things walking on the yard regularly? I think this could be a source of the contamination, potentially.
  10. nabokovfan87
    I literally just setup a sterile tank and the hope there is that it acts as a QT tank for me. There's a few things that I did. First is that the hardscape in the tank is lava rock, which is essentially biomedia. Even if I was just running air stones in the tank, it's got a biological filter. I also tossed in ceramic media to the base of the tank. Not as a substrate, but as just a pile for bacteria to colonize. I have a sponge filter in there and I will also keep an eye out for how the cycle is doing. I will add a pinch of food or something, squeeze out another filter into this tank, or something to get some sort of biological life going in the tank. I have a light for the tank, but that light also isn't going to be on any sort of timer or anything. Ambient light only for QT and I'll turn the light on or use a flashlight to visually inspect the fish in that system. That's my method.... hopefully it helps. I also have a spare Hob I can toss on the tank and it is purely there to host strong bacteria and hold some media. It also lets me run carbon too, if need be.
  11. nabokovfan87
    I redid mine... Compare to the photo above. Based on what we were discussing and the "aeration" of the substrate as it were. Left side of the tank is pretty course, right side is pretty fine, but there's a good mix and hopefully things improve. I would try peroxide doses. In his journal @A3M0N just dosed his tank for BBA and it worked really well so far.
  12. nabokovfan87
    yep! They are really beautiful at max size and pictures don't do them justice sometimes. It's one of the single most common misidentified fish in the hobby and I think it's to the point where julii and false julii are almost synonymous for some shops.
  13. nabokovfan87
    Flawless. Well done!
  14. nabokovfan87
    I'll dig through this. AWESOME find. Thank you for sharing. *enhance!* It looks like a new one to me. I've seen it before, but it's just not something I am extremely familiar with and I need to dig to find it again. Second thing of note here is that these are Caridina shrimp! This means that there are some things that will be in play that aren't in play for neo shrimp. For basically anything fungal, Salt+Ich-X is a great place to start. I do not recommend anything higher than a 1 tbsp per 5G dose. For ich-X follow the directions on the bottle. So.... let's circle back with type of shrimp, setup, parameters, and verify what all is going on here.
  15. nabokovfan87
    Looks like it worked really well! That's awesome. My gut tells me to urge you to repeat the treatment in 2-3 days just to really give it the beans. BBA is really annoying and one tip/technique I've heard is that the first treatment only wounds it and makes it fight you, the second treatment actually kills it! Please keep us posted on how that goes in the next few weeks for you.
  16. nabokovfan87
    Hello @RubyFlutes Welcome! I love the setup you have and I think you're en route to a very fun planted tank. I am not quite sure, I am just not great with plant names yet, but I think.... You have pearlweed in the back there? It might do better for you up front as a foreground plant. You can just trim it and then take the "tops" of the stems and plant those into the substrate. Your AR in the back is really nice and it will look really beautiful once it fills in for you. After the stems are rooted and thriving, you can just top them and that should get rid of the sections of bare stocks for you and help it to fill in. I did want to ask two questions if I may! 1. How much substrate do you have in the tank? It looks slightly thin, less than 1" in some places. 2. What is that green thing on the sponge filter? is it part of a moss ball?
  17. nabokovfan87
    Makes sense, yeah. So next step is to stabilize the KH via water changes. How does your tap test out?
  18. nabokovfan87
    I've always heard every 2-3 months based on demand. Some people do it monthly even. The just of it, monitor how much the plants are demanding and adjust accordingly. If you're seeing a lot of deficiency issues then maybe there's a nutrient schedule or water quality issue (gh or kh).
  19. nabokovfan87
    I was gonna say that I had this happen to me and it's nuts! It's definitely distressing. In my case, also with Staurogyne Repens, it ended up being an issue where GH crashed on me. I would grab a GH and KH test kit and verify what's going on there. Rule of Thumb is that you generally want GH to be double your KH.
  20. nabokovfan87
    It's definitely a valid concern. They do sell gloves to work on tanks and you can use methods to sterilize equipment and reduce risks. Some species can be avoided as well to further reduce risk. Ultimately the key is to really be smart, be safe, protect yourself as well as those in the tank you care for. I've often stuck my arm in the tank many times a day and the key being to make sure you clean yourself off ans do the things need be in future to keep the you safe.
  21. nabokovfan87
    It's definitely not out of the norm and it's not something where it was a bad recommendation from my perspective. A brief explanation can hopefully shed some light on the reason behind it. Let's say you've had the tank for years, 10 fish in the tank. You're adding 5-10 more fish. Increasing the bioload. If you're adding similar fish, maybe the bioload doesn't increase a ton, but if you're adding larger fish then you might run into a situation where it takes a little bit for the filtration and biological to catch up and handle the new load. The tank in all reality should have enough bacteria for the sake of argument, but having some to help boost things isn't a bad thing. The bacteria might not be strong/active because of a very low demand on the tank. Adding in basically double the bioload will shock the system a bit and having strong bacteria to help that transition is the key. If you're confident in the tank having that strong bacteria, then you're fine, but if you have minimal filtration capacity or just a maintenance routine where things have been sitting for a long time, that's where the stability can be helpful for some.
  22. nabokovfan87
    Agreed. Hope all is going ok and the medical situation is improving.
  23. nabokovfan87
    The "best" ones I've used would be ones where spirulina is a main ingredient. A lot of them have fish meal as a main ingredient and it's not the best for a veggie wafer. New life spectrum has algaemaxx wafers, but I think a great way to go as well is repashy foods one a week or something. There's a lot of them you can try and they will be very easy for the otos to eat off of. Soilent green, bottom scratcher, super green, and others being the ones I've had success with. There's a brand ebi I think that has good ones as well. Just be sure to check ingredients is the main thing. Also, in terms of plants encouraging algae I think there's a bit of a confusion. Plants don't cause algae, but some plants can be easier for the otos to graze on. It doesn't mean they will, but it's potentially a source of biofilm and food for them. Flat rocks, flat wood, broad leaved flat plants are what makes sense for otos specifically. Sword plants, some crypts, ferns, anubias, etc.
  24. nabokovfan87
    There are risers on Etsy. There is also hanging kits that might work as well.
  25. nabokovfan87
    What are all the parameters? Putting one in won't hurt anything, so you're fine if you want to go ahead and do that.
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