nabokovfan87

It might negatively impast the marimo moss, that's why I was asking. So good to know. I wouldn't use it right now until you have a grasp on things causing the issue. Little rock wigs, 😂. Glad to see someone do this!

Looks good 🙂 I messed around with position a lot on mine too. You could try finding a 45 degree fitting for the input then you'd be able to rotate the pump 90 degrees and have the output higher up.

Unfortunately this is just "normal wear and tear" damage. Better quality tanks will have more clean seals which help to alleviate this. The other thing to keep in mind is what type of seal you're looking at. Custom Aquariums and youtube has a lot of videos on sealing a tank. There's two main stress paths. First, you have the glass to glass seam, and depending on the construction of the tank you might have a variety of edge constructions. Most of them are square ends where one side is attached and the load is horizontal for each side attaching to another side. Vertical for each bottom edge of the glass touching the bottom surface. This is the example shown in the left of this image. The one on the right is the 45 degree angle construction. So, secondarily there is often another bead of silicone used to ensure it's water tight. This is the seam you're seeing an issue with. Often when people reseal an aquarium they will replace the inner seal as opposed to completely disassembling the aquarium itself. It's a lot less work....

Kind of looks like mine in terms of the pattern / shape. Not mine in particular, but simply that it's similar patterning. These are the normal form of mine.... aka "Gold Flash" or "Gold Stripe" Corydoras. You're looking at something from Lineage 7 I think. This one is Aenus for comparison, where that black band across the side is a little bit narrowed: https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?task=&species_id=51 Given that feature, as well as other chiming in that's a pretty solid ID for me. It also looks a bit like this one, but the mouth is a different shape.

Yep, I was eyeballing them too. I missed the sale they had.

Yeah.... I watched the video above of the bathtub method. Night and day. Looks like normal "dusty sand" as opposed to anything I saw. Really, really weird. And yep.... BDBS in a high manufacturing environment from Tractor Supply and it was the course grade, same as everyone. It happens. I am very thankful the fish are doing well and recovered from the issues. Yeah, definitely. We need to make it clear. This is a recycled medium and there are variations. I think we are past the days of "it happened once or twice" and "someone got a few flakes of metal". Mine was mostly that bronze and brass coloration as opposed to mostly black with a little bit of flakes. The siphon showing the silt, you can see all those flakes coming out. I'm used to seeing those in beach sand, especially in oceanside, but that's more of a brown silt vs. actual bits of metal. No idea what that foam was, I rinsed it until it looked like normal substrate, but just yeah.... caution advised.

Your fish will display different behaviors based on feeding rate, the food you choose, and how you feed them. Fun little side experiment to the hobby.

Impatiently, anxiously awaiting. I need some amanos!

Hey everyone, I'll try to be brief when explaining this challenge! Pick a youtuber you enjoy, anyone! Go ahead and find a very old video of theirs you might've not seen. Then.... follow that with a second, more recent video. Tangent: I find myself these days wanting to check out older videos. Because I mostly watching through a roku it's not easy to find the original, older videos that some creators have made and so I feel like I missed out on a lot of videos. If you're a creator, this might be someone saying they enjoyed that one and would like to see a remake or something on that topic. I will start things off with one of Zenzo's older videos I definitely haven't seen, but enjoyed watching as well as one of his most recent that I really, really enjoyed!

Appreciate it. I am just dosing Easy Green and Iron right now.

Video is helpful too! There's a few things going on here: A. You have an in-line diffuser (awesome) B. Your flow is going across the length of the tank as opposed to front to back (good) C. You have a setup where the CO2 is going out of your output.... Something like my situation using the diffuser itself in the side of the tank vs. yours with in-line is night and day. On your tank I do see that you have bubbles on the surface of the water, not great, and you aren't using a spraybar output. If you can, or if you have the means to use one, go for it. Given the setup, you'd want to point the flow of the output to the lowest opposing corner of the tank. Right now it's at the surface, so you have bubbles at the surface.... First question, yes. I can record a video of my setup, but it's based on advice from Mmiller and his setup. I have a spraybar going across the length of the tank, the CO2 is on the opposing side as low as possible. You do want a very fine diffuser. I ran into some issues with this, which caused a lot of stagnation issues, pressure issues, and just a general weird experience trying to sort out why the high tech planted tank couldn't grow plants and was lacking CO2. SO.... the general idea being, CO2 comes out of the diffuser, you diffuse that around the tank before letting it go to the surface. Just like everything, you want good circulation not just things in water on one side of the tank. Second question, I highly recommend using the PH testing methods as opposed to just using a drop checker. My drop checker has been all over the place and my PH has been all over the place. Given the two, PH testing is a lot more reliable and you can dial things in a lot better. Third question, no..... they don't need to make contact with the plants, but you do want the bubbles in essence, meaning CO2 rich water to be in contact with your entire tank. You don't want a fish to go swim into a wall of co2 and have an issue, but you do want the plants all along to the tank to get CO2! Doesn't matter. You want the "dosed water" to go around the tank, in any circumstance. If you had a tank with one plant and were injecting CO2, sure put it right next to that plant, but realistically you want the tank itself to thrive, not just one little bubble.

May or may not be related. AH is in the middle of moving to a new location. I have been eyeballing an amano shrimp / fish order, but given that move I am waiting for a little while. Sorry about your issues. I did get Otos from them, I think I had 6 come in, 4 are doing really well. I don't have a QT tank, so it's fantastic to know about that issue with ich you experienced if I do order some. Hopefully next time, or the next place, you have a better experience!

The main thing for me, if you look into it, was that I had to wear a mask + gloves due to my own health risks just to rinse it.... Which, given the intended use I understand, but when I rinsed mine I was legitimately pouring out metallic foam for a solid 30 minutes. I had a really, really bad batch. If you want to use it, go for it, but I highly recommend trying to siphon off those copper / bronze flakes I showed in the video at the end there. Those are definitely not helping anything in your tank. I highly recommend the CaribSea Crystal River sand. Second to that is likely pool filter sand or even tumbled gravel. I have Seachem flourite black in my main tank, have had a bit of issues, but I do enjoy the look. It does not hold plants well, but it does impact and compress similar to sand, which is good once they do grow a bit of roots. @Odd Duck has been running it for a long time and had really good success with it. Perhaps there is a technique or something in terms of maintenance or even initial setup that could be beneficial. Beautiful tanks OD shows off!

Perspective is important, I get it! I have an amazon gift card and am hoping to fix / help my tank. Decisions decisions. Aquascaping pinsettes are on my mind as well as those tumbled lava rocks. I ordered a case (yeah 12 pack!) of super glue gel so I can have some to redo all the moss in my tank. Tough to decide, given the conversation on expanding the S. Repens out, root tabs, etc. @Mmiller2001 I understand the stance on root tabs. Question, and forgive me for just not knowing this off the top of my head, when you're dosing your tank day to day are you doing EI type of dosing? Dosing pumps? Are you using a good substrate as your main method / nutrient base as opposed to having tabs in there? I do have issues with my substrate, love it, but have some issues.... so I am not opposed to replacing it with some capped soil.

Beautiful setup. I need one of those.

Sweet. Thanks Zenzo. Hopefully that detail can be added on the store page chart! "fits up to"

Really nice photo there. I enjoy how well It shows off the fish nicely. Awesome choice!

Might have to get some more hardscape this weekend if possible. She's just having issues trying to feel comfortable. Does Amazon sell PVC at not insane prices??? I adjusted things again, she was in her "secondary cave. I moved things so the mopani isn't as far up in the air, she fits a lot better, but wants a specific channel to lay in on a certain direction. She's cruising the tank as I type after the changes. I put a plant on the wall to shade her out and feel like cover, the rock is in the back now so the main piece of wood sits lower. I know, I know.... Doesn't make much sense. My apologies. She's facing the opposite way she usually does, maybe that's a good sign. She has a little opening for her cave, it was a bit tight for her on last attempt and she didn't feel like she could loop around. This little opening in the piece of mopani is why it's her cave. When she was smaller she'd sit at that doorway and peek out. When she would see something she'd slightly hover back and hide her body in the wood "cave". As she got bigger I've stacked rocks and things to get it to sit just right. She's having fun tonight now that she got more secure cover. We'll see tomorrow how her mood is! Terribly blurry. But tried for 30 minutes to get a picture. The phone is big and scary. 😂 Probably enjoys the warmth and the little hum of all the equipment 🙂

Photoshop is pretty hard to do! Good for you. You as well 🙂

Changing substrate should not negatively impact a cycle in a tank. If you're putting something that leeches ammonia, that's one thing, but swapping the substrate is something that's been done many, many times. Your cycle is safely kept in your filter and on other parts of the tank. They can adapt and recover as need be. I very much doubt this is a cycle issue. That being said, I would caution you with BDBS as mentioned above. It's a recycled medium and it's not sand. It can be blown around in high flow applications very easily and that can scratch the fish depending on what is in the tank. More stress means more ammonia. That's one thing to look at. Common things for fish stress are air, temperature, and salt. Make sure the fish are comfortable, temp is right, equipment is working, and that oxygenation is there or added too. Take your hand and stick it in the tank to check flow. Do you feel particles smashing against your hand from the BDBS being blown around? Do the fish look scarred? Rapid breathing? If the bag you had was mixed with some not nice things for fish, it's usually easy to tell visually (more metal flake in the substrate than normal) vs something that looks like powdered carbon. Especially with bottom dwelling fish, check bellies and things like that.

Bracket should give you 3-4 Inches on either side of the light for a total of 6-8. Someone else can confirm. That's what I'd expect. As an example, the slides on my light (non ACO) are roughly 3 inches long. Conservatively you're looking at 2.5-3 per side. So safely a 20" light should work for a 20" as well as a 24" tank.

100% I haven't seen a lot of his videos, not followed or anything like that. I just know how he runs things from what I have heard and know enough about him to appreciate all the things you highlighted. I think for a lot of us that watch Cory, especially the old vlogs, Joel was the one who did the sump and was knowledgeable with acrylic. Seeing his tanks, for a lot of people, that the first time they even get to see a tank of that magnitude. And given.... The video above he's showing how bad the tank is, talking about why, showing the severe algae issues and his methods. I just appreciate that view from across the room and seeing a tank like that. I really do.

I had a similar issue, let me grab the post and video I took. You might've had a similar batch issue as was my case and It's relatively easy to tell when you siphon and see the metal flakes. To my hand it felt like rough sandpaper texture as opposed to the sand texture I'm (and fish) are used to. https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/5-what-did-you-get-done-today/?do=findComment&comment=238136 This was after about 36 hours on the BDBS and you can see how tore up the fish looks.

CAE's don't really go after algae. Something like a rainbow shark, flying fox, SAE have different mouth shapes (same as a panda garra) and they will graze on the algae. They won't eat the ball though, most times they go after aufwuchs and things on the moss. When moss dies, most fish and shrimp will get rid of the dead tissue and leave the healthy sections.

He's had the tank a long time before any advertising. He worked really, really hard for a long time to get it that way. I get what you're coming from, but Joel does deserve credit for all his knowledge, passion, and efforts.