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nabokovfan87

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Everything posted by nabokovfan87

  1. nabokovfan87
    Very likely @Ken Burke but genetically I can't say it's even the same thing. Sort of like big box store vs. a specialty breeder. In my rookie eye, it's a lower tier, but very well could be fine, reviews say it is "good".
  2. nabokovfan87
    Yeah, that's the dilemma. Should be "good or great" quality, but it's one of those things where photos don't really do the item justice or make sense when you see what the species is labelled as vs. what you see elsewhere. It's something we'll dive into when things kick off here.
  3. nabokovfan87
    Question about your snail-o... Has anyone tried doing their own spirulina tabs? I'm thinking it would be something like the pure spirulina powder, some minerals, some stuff to make it a tablet / gelatine, and then maybe some garlic or something. Anyone tried anything like that or been successful with it? For an omnivore, I think they'll do well with it! I seriously don't understand why it's so hard or why Sera changed the recipe. Closest thing I found was kelp wafers, not spirulina 😞 .
  4. nabokovfan87
    Is it still there?
  5. nabokovfan87
    Dose in some dechlorinator to give yourself a break and do what you need to. Unfortunately, I understand the struggle. I had a pretty frustrating time with some sponge filters and I think after a few months I'm finally ok. I didn't have ammonia issues, but it was a situation where the filter was constantly fighting me. Hopefully things settle down, if you need anything, please feel free to hit me up. Best of luck with the furniture and moving. Try to enjoy the time with your family. Agreed.... So many questions sometimes!
  6. nabokovfan87
    I just want to stick my hands in the tank and move things around!!!! 😂 Grace (the shark) is definitely annoyed on move crap around day but she likes the change. Hopefully you'll sort out plant placement. I tend to remove everything and replant it all where it feels right. Maybe that's an approach here? Let you better see the hardscape / decor and place it where you want. I only say that in some instance where you are placing things to avoid a certain well rooted plant or something. Have you seen the other hobbit house scape tank? It's pretty epic..... She's currently working on a series in a bigger tank with a fangorn forest scene.
  7. nabokovfan87
    Ironically, Dean does discuss snails and eggs in fry trays (not his) in the video.
  8. nabokovfan87
    That's the Dean version. He uses backer bar on the upper rim to get it to float. Small snails will get in there and go to town. Bigger snails I would think avoid it. Especially floating and moving around, they likely won't bother. The fry will be ridiculously small, with a head and a tail and need cover (moss, yarn, plants, wood, something) and that will let them have surfaces to graze on as well. You dip in the powder food, that goes on the thing, then they graze on it. I can't guarantee the snails will ignore the basket, snails are snails, but ultimately it gives you the option to give those fry the best chance possible. It's a lot more manual work on your part with feeding and cleaning, but if you want a bigger hatch, moving the eggs somewhere and hatching them is how you do that. A jar or specimen container would be external to the tank, so no snails. I don't think Dean is on Team snail. He might be, but I think he does have some nerites in some tanks.
  9. nabokovfan87
    Java moss in a jar with an airstone, basically..... specimen container also works. The only real issue is temp. So you can use an internal breeder box, paint skimmer, or something similar and float that in whatever tank you want to until they are a bit bigger.
  10. nabokovfan87
    I'll try to dig up some details and attempt to help out. The way mine is setup (regulator) everything is after the solenoid. Needle valve and everything that follows is after the solenoid. This probably stops some of the muck / junk from getting in there too. Might just be a design flaw or intentional given the different technology. (I would imagine the solenoid getting gunked up isn't a good time either and you gas out the tank. First.... a bit of a history of this guy.... It's sold by a LOT of different brands and it's sold in a variety of configurations. The real reason that valve/solenoid is in that location is because the crossbar+needle valve is something that is a "completed design" and that assembly is basically adapted to whatever product line you want to choose. Similar to how you can have your own "algae wafer" and slap your youtube channel on there and call it a day, or other products that are designed, sold to manufacturers, and then packaged under that brand / umbrella with their specific design/packaging requirements. That's the... quick way to explain that. In terms of placement and setup, with the kit you have.... That's the setup. Things like having tubes and length of tubing are searched online and are used as a means to keep the equipment clean. That might be something to look into and might help keep the valves clean for you. Right now, every time you add more stuff in, I'd clean it just to keep things going. I had to do the same junk when my Tidal stuff was going bonkers and the tank was fighting me with algae and plant chunks in everything.
  11. nabokovfan87
    Getting plants to the shop requires freight and those costs have gone extremely high. Local breeding is going to be a way forward to offer quality and cost savings as long as we all become geneticists! Plants are just difficult and to get them at the scale needed it's always going to have a cost to that.
  12. nabokovfan87
    that PH is really too high for most corydoras. https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=267 Temp is also pretty warm for both of those guys. Ultimately if you want to keep them there, PH needs to come down, temp if possible down slightly is best. For otos, you want to make sure you have some wood in there. For both of them you'd want lots of oxygenation and added airstones to make sure they do well at those warmer temps. What kind of plecos are in the tank?
  13. nabokovfan87
    Me too! 🙂
  14. nabokovfan87
    Still trying to gauge the right method. I do plan to and will use both chemicals. I have a bottle of h202 that has a spray nossle and I've sprayed hardscape pretty well.... Didn't work. Very likely my method and not letting it soak, from the research and advice I've looked into since. Which is why it's an item on the table still. I have the algae growing about as fast as I can clean and it's not showing much or any signs of stopping. A week ago I had anubias clean and then just yesterday I was pulling leaves with big balls of BBA on them and cutting roots off. All of that was new growth. So things definitely released some spores this week. 😞
  15. nabokovfan87
    100%. I woke up and realized the word I was trying to find. An arboretum! We have one local at the college I went to and you go from a bamboo forest and walk into a desert landscape. Some work and it's a really fun experience.
  16. nabokovfan87
    Yeah I can see that. A mesh top would work fine, I would think. They literally would eat out of our hand if you let them, but they just love food. They do get a bit over excited for their own good. I can see someone getting picked on and getting scared out of the tank. Depending what else is in the tank you can keep at least 1, but I do recommend ~25+!
  17. nabokovfan87
    Alright 😞 I went to the other big box store, finally, after months of trying to get a ride there. They had about 20 or so terrarium plants, they had probably 3 (literally 3) plants for aquariums that weren't in their planted display tank. It's a ridiculously small store and it's the type of thing where they don't have room for selection. One of those 3 plants they had was the java moss balls. the other was a little piece of anubias. I went to the big box store where I did see the marimo balls this week as well, it is indeed the time of the sales and the store was chaotic that day. I was pretty much in and out, checked for one thing and the one thing I wanted someone decided to stick their finger through the seal on the food jar. Anyways.... I did eyeball the plants, I checked on a few things, but I didn't see them. In California, as far as I know they are still banned for sale in some capacity. I can't really find any update, but there are ways to carry them following a procedure and a chart available to log issues for each tank a store keeps. I doubt they'll do that, but just a note. I have been trying to get to the bottom of all this. Best I can say is that they found a box somewhere, or randomly got one in for the holidays plant order and I just happened to be there when it was splayed out on the tables for sale. I'll keep an eye out, I have been, but I haven't seen them since that one day when I did see them back in December.
  18. nabokovfan87
    YEP! I miss them. I really, really do. Beautiful fish and such a fun tank.
  19. nabokovfan87
    In nature, a lot of plants are on very fine sand. It happens. Nature find a way. I used sand in my first real planted tank and I still haven't found anything I enjoy planting in more. Roots were everywhere and the plants did well. The tank did crash and I did have issues, but that's more on me than the substrate! I WISH I had a photo after things grew in, but unfortunately this is all I got. Pure fine grain sand here and some root tabs. Eventually with CO2. PSO, Bacopa did well, microsword, val did well, all that red stuff just melted away. Think of it like quicksand in some way. Sand compacts and hold. Like substrate velcro for some things. YES some fish will just toss plants around, but sand does a good job of holding onto things in some ways as well, it's all relative. Plants that toss runners will carpet sand with a grid pretty easily.
  20. nabokovfan87
    Sterilite containers is probably a lot better choice than a 5G bucket. Get some with snapping lids, 20-40G sizes and fill them 1/4-1/3 of the way with water. you'd want to have some method to keep them secure with air going into the containers. Every night you're likely going to want to do water changes and try to eliminate things like ammonia buildup. 2-3 days prior to the trip you'd want to starve everything and then you'd want to limit feeding (or wait) until after they have arrived in the new location. If you do feed, I would opt for doing so right before or while you change water. Shrimp should be able to handle temperatures a bit easier, but you're going to run into some issues with heat over that big of a trip. It might actually make sense to bag some and keep them in an ice chest or something to keep them warm with heatpacks or other methods. Blankets, insulation (especially from the floor) and other things you would want to look into. Ultimately, this is the setup, but you just have to work on making that work for your given situation while moving. Shrimp need things to hang onto. Which makes it a little tricky. You can dose dechlorinator once every 24 hours. That should help. Get yourself some of this stuff too....
  21. nabokovfan87
    Hey everyone, I had this idea pop into mind and maybe it makes sense for some places. It is definitely a long term project and something that would pay dividends and make a seriously one of a kind experience for the customer.... Imagine if a fish store could take their waste water and use it for plants, simple. What if those plants were alder trees, produced botanical plants, manzanita wood, and all those natural items we wanted in our tanks. OK... now you're talking. Now take it a step further, you go to the local fish shop, get to go and pick pesticide free botanicals, pick from branches that were trimmed, and then go head over to get your hardscape like it's some sort of aquarium decor orchard. Not only do you get to see and experience these things as designed, but you actually get to see a bit about the natural world in ways we really don't. Just imagine seeing that as a kid and what kind of an impact that could have long term. What kind of big projects, big ideas do you think is possible one day? (no cost or limitations to stop things from happening) ......and yes, I looked up details on planting an alder tree in the yard this week and I find myself always looking around when driving wondering if that bush that looks like manzanita is actually manzanita or not.
  22. nabokovfan87
    I dig this layout. If at all possible, especially for shrimp, I'd add a centerpiece rock.
  23. nabokovfan87
    Very cool. I had some capped aquasoil in the last tank, trying high CEC this time around and having some struggles, but it'll get there. Thanks for sharing!
  24. nabokovfan87
    THANKFULLY, this is in place now. I am relieved, but as before need to get at least one generation going.
  25. nabokovfan87
    Looks great! well done.
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