nabokovfan87

.......remember when..... This was how you did tank maintenance.

He talked about it on a stream, starts about 45-50 minutes in. Should be queued up if you play it on the embed.

She's ready for coffee too. 😂

Hey everyone, I recorded this yesterday morning while mentally taking a bunch of notes watching the fish. It took a silly long time between my phone and YouTube editing to get the sound fixed. Hopefully you enjoy. I'll tag ( @KittenFishMomhere as this was intended to show off the cloudiness of the tank related to another thread topic) Observations... I woke up this morning to the slight red glow of the LEDs switching on. The house was quiet and calm apart from the calming noise of the water movement. Grace was swimming around next to her panda bros and they were hunting together on the substrate investigating something. She paused and looked towards me, her usual morning hello that she gives me. Hard to understand what she wants, but she always just sits and stares at me every morning before she hides into her cave while the rest of the tank comes to life. I sit in the chair and hit record, starting to watch the rest of the tank, hoping to see here pop out. I don't feed the tank right away because I thought it was really interesting that they were in search of food. They get fed a good amount and there was a storm. I was watching the tank wondering if it was breeding behavior or just the pandas being pandas. I watched to the right corner and there was a few of the group hiding under the bolbitis plants. I planned across the tank and watched more of them diving their noses into the sand. The swordtails were also staring at me now, wanting their breakfast. I tried to open the food container one handed, but eventually tossed in some vibra bites. The swords were excited by this news but they have issues with this food until it softens up. I can give them a portion of I crush it with my fingers, but I specifically didn't do this during this feeding because I wanted it to sink and go right to the substrate. I watched a few of the pandas search the pile for their favorite piece. Some of them would push it out of their gills and go into the next. It is an interesting dilemma when watching them avoid the food. Maybe they are doing it because of shape or size or just the taste of the food not being what they wanted. The further I watched, the more I had hoped to answer that question of why they weren't happy with the food today. I added in some flake food for the rest of the tank, watched the swordtail fry finally able to get some food as well as the parents. They were happy and finally able to eat. Maybe this was easier for the pandas as well. One thing was clear... Grace didn't want all the flow to push food (and fish) into her cave as she started to try to sleep. Not fighting, but just a few moments of nosing and her letting those around her know, "hey the food is over there bud." Seemingly everyone enjoys the flake, but some of the pandas were on the hunt for algae, burying themselves in the sand to lay, or hunting across the wood. Breakfast in belly, the swordtails started their usual chasing. The fry weren't as silly and just swam around the wood looking for floating debris to test. I checked in on the female sword that has the tail rot issues and her tail is back to fully healed. She's doing well and swimming a lot better now. She's happy and lurking around getting her breakfast. She hangs out in the back section of the tank away from the other females where she can more easily rest in the flow. It's one of those things where I was able to see the tank be itself and I noticed a few things that I've known, but it was nice to see it verified again for the 10th+ time as it were. I need to get some stems in this tank. The bacopa died on me, but that's likely the future candidate for this tank. That would give the midwater fish a place to feel a little more comfortable as well as spots for the food to get stuck. The swords to perfectly well grazing off the bottom, but it's a lot easier when the food is on the wood or still floating for them. I also want to take some of this moss and glue it to the wood and rocks. I'd love to get a piece of the old 75G scape back and that was one of my favorite aspects. Maybe I will try some of that tumbled lava rock and make my own little moss balls of various sizes for the tank. I think it would add to the look as well as easily move around in the flow. Hm.... I should track down some fishing line. As always, I encourage anyone else to sit and watch their tank. It's a very important, but calming moment of the day. Just sip some coffee with @TeeJayaand try to enjoy the fish waking up. You'll see a lot of interesting behaviors when those red LEDs pop on. Because of all of this I've gone ahead and set my light into the "pro mode" trying to give a lot more reddish hue in the morning and blue lights in the sunset. I really enjoyed seeing those LEDs for a few minutes with that shade on the tank. Let's have a good day today. *Turns on the kettle*

Yeah, I am thinking of getting 2-3 different sizes for a type of project. Don't need a ton, but I really like what you did and I use that type of thing for my fish with moss so they easily have cover. Would be a great little thing for fry tanks and stuff in addition to other uses just to hold moss in place. Very cool thing now that I know it exists!

It's all flow. In the wild shrimp zoeys/shrimplettes are river species and they travel downstream. That's all the filter was doing. In terms of size you're talking about something where they can be two tiny little specs and the size of single celled organisms when hatched. This is where something like a corner matten filter might stop that. Pecktec has a video on how to do this, probably the best way in addition to the secondary prefilter sponge. It's a kit you can easily buy from swiss tropicals.

Much like anything else, they should just avoid the siphon or learn to. They do sell caps, but you can just ask easily stuff the siphon with sponge. When I have fry I usually end up just siphoning things and then checking the bucket. I also use hardscape to hold the siphon and act as a block from fish or other things being foolish and trying to swim "up river" / up the siphon tube. Totally doing the same thing, using the rock to cover the end of the siphon. 🙂 Sidenote. I really need some neo shrimp to test my methods. My amanos literally don't care and would want a 90% water change every time.if I let them have it. As long as water going in matches, I've not had issues. When the water company changes things on me, literally the only time in years I've ever seen issues.

He is definitely a passionate hobbyist. If you can ever catch one of his talks on YouTube or elsewhere, do. I always learn when I see him talk.

I'm definitely not an expert! Not even close compared to some of the other skillsets and experience levels we have here! Temp should be fine for the fish. 78 is pretty common. I don't think that alone is a cause of benefit for this type of algae. Just change one factor. Leave every the same. So start with larger water change. Just verifying that you're not overdosing. We'll see after a few weeks if the increased change in volume works out to reduce algae (it should). If it doesn't, we wouldn't necessarily say ho back to the smaller WCs, but would simply try to reduce light or dosing at that point.

20 is the norm. 40 on the high end. I try to keep mine between 5-15. I want the bioload low, nitrates from dosing. Are you dosing a full dose twice a week? You might just be overdosing a slight amount. I would start with one dose, once a week, or 1/2 a dose every 3-4 days. Especially when new, plants take time to condition and settle in. Using just root tabs up front is a great technique to help them settle in a little bit easier. At least for the first week. Once you start seeing algae, it's usually a sign of too much nutrients or light, especially if you're seeing it on new growth. Not seeing any growth is it's own issue. So, trying to figure out which one of those is going on, that's sort of the crux here. Is it an issue if you try to change more water during your changes? say, 40% instead of the 25% you're changing now? That might help get the nitrates down and that one shift, keeping everything the same might be enough to clear up the algae and get things going.

Coffeefolia is really nice. One of my favorites, probably the favorite I own of my anubias on hand. Just nice to have the difference of big, medium, and small anubias. I saw some new varieties (new to me) recently and I'm excited for the day I can get some. You'll really enjoy the coffee one!

It'll be interesting to see how much that bioload shift helps the plants out. Nitrates being from fert as opposed to waste. I know snails are useful, part of nature, but yeah..... I just always feel like that's going to happen when I see one, let alone a few dozen.

I wouldn't dose in iron just yet. Between lighting and fertilization there's some stuff going on to review prior to that step. Can you talk us through what you're doing weekly for the tank in terms of maintenance, dosing, etc. Go ahead and add in your root tabs, being new to planted tanks is tough, but we're all here to help! 🙂 Red X = locations where I would be adding tabs right now (first one I usually go pretty heavy) Purple plant looks like Hairgrass in the back, I would move it to the front until you get it to grow in. For your stems, you'd want to spread these out a little bit. Same with the water sprite if it's also bunched up. Just give each stem a little bit of space, 3/4"-1.5" between each plant. Good catch!

Welcome to the forums. Do you have any root tabs?

@Jeannieb yes you can use them together.

Turning it off for 10-20 minutes won't change temp, you're saving the heater because you cut the flow in the tank.

In a perfect world the spraybar would be at the waterline or slightly below. I keep my pump submerged but the output as high as I can. Longer flow path (across the topmost layer of the water) does diffuse the flow a bit for the fish. It hits at a 90 degree or something into the glass wall, that's where you see the majority of the flow get diffused. If you were to point it slightly down then you'd improve circulation mid-water. Pointing it up, not sure why it had a negative affect, but my suspicion is that the flow was just concentrated to that half of the tank in a circle whereas now it's more of that oval shape.

Hello, welcome to the forums. Please show us the tank and if possible a video of the fish itself. Bettas breathe air from the surface. Apart from rapid gill movement, what other things are you seeing? How often do you change water, how much? Please also let us know your filtration and any secondary equipment like airstones that you might be using. You can add in some aquarium salt and Indian Almond Leaves (Cattapa leaves) if you have those on hand. Those all should help with an issue like this.

Definitely going to follow along. This is the type of work I should be doing, but just really haven't gotten my feet wet enough with it to be comfortable with the coding side. Skeleton for ideas (please feel free to use anything you think is useful!): 1. Feed Mode -Pumps / filtration / heater off for 15 minutes 2. Night Mode -Blue lights on at a specified value, everything else normal to previous 3. Maintenance Mode -Pumps / filtration / heater off -Airstone stays on or turns on -Light on, but set to a "good amount of light to work" 4. Normal Mode -Everything running, light+CO2 runs through their own schedules. 5. Diagnostics -Pump off / on, flow test (export / chart results) -Heater off / on, wattage use check (export / chart results) -CO2 on/off, (binary check on solenoid) -Water level sensor check (is it above specified level) -export / record anything useful via probes to a chart 6. Sensors and Warnings -water level sensor -electronic sensor (making sure the water isn't charged with some sort of a stray voltage) -equipment failure warnings -heater on for too long -air pump warning -co2 on for too long warning -testing probes for what makes sense (PH is very useful as well as other things)

I with they had tweezers intended for plants like that, but.... yes they do! The jaws are about 1/4" or so long which means you can easily guard them in your hand and get into very tight spaces to trim. That's the advantage there. For something external to the tank like moss I like using them because I can be a bit more precise. It's the "pairing knife" of the aquascaping tools if you're familiar with that analogy. It just does a few jobs really nicely. I would suggest for "fine pinsettes" and for the spring scissors, try to get a decent pair because the cheap ones are..... cheap. I have been waiting for the black "fancy ones" to be back in stock a few places for over a year now it feels like. Straight ones are in stock, but not the curved. Honestly, $20-30 for one tool you'll likely never replace, I use some of these things once a week if not daily.

I have the fluval ones, my first experience with them. They are very handy for nosy fish! (especially the curved ones)

Alright cool. That's perfect. I am working on editing this video. My phone isn't letting me remove the audio and it's a 4k file so difficult to edit quickly. Hopefully I'll have something for you in a little bit.

The best part was "First, coffee, that's essential" (Nods in agreement) Might be wrong, but I'll just say it like it know what I'm looking at 😂 How are you enjoying the aqueon HoBs? (edit, I totally had to go back and see more of your setup in this thread!)

Yeah, Zenzo talks about it on some of his videos where he had some customers that flat out just didn't want to recharge it, would pay for a new one each time. I get it, and after doing that for a few times you'll have enough to always have some on hand. It's unfortunate... it takes a lot of time to soak / recharge and there's not really an indication when you're doing anything right or wrong. That was always my struggle. I would have it in the tank with tannins, so it turned a color, which might or might not mean it's "full". So then I would recharge it and drop a new one in. Then I had issues with the filter box design and how easily it floats. Chemical media usually is the last link in the chain, which means it just does not work for most HoBs. Which then means it's not in the right section. So then you recharge it, let it sit for a day in bleach water and it changes back to normal. then you soak it in dechlor to be safe / dry it out and then go ahead and re-use it when you need to. After 36-48 hours it's stained again, probably not full, but that's the cycle. Constant doubt. Or.... you get that carbon pack you never use from your filter purchase and put it in the filter. Then you just go "yep it's been a certain amount of time and the tank looks really clear". Night and day. 😂

Look at the eggs themselves. Solid white usually means it's a dud. If you see an egg that's translucent it could be one that bursted open or was infertile as well. Generally you'll see "something" when you look at the egg. An outer wall with an inner wall, usually something opaque with detail inside of some kind. I would recommend just letting the eggs do their thing. If anything, add rocks or something for the fry to hide in / around. I generally use moss for this. You have a really heavily planted tank, but something like a hairgrass/microsword/s.repens forest is what the fry are looking for. Something where they can hide all day, pop out at night to search for food. It doesn't really take much, but just that little tweak might really up your success rate here. I do expect a few to always survive a spawn, usually 1-3 is the common number. If you have hiding spots you might get 3-10+ To clarify that last bit, I mean "if you have a lot of good hiding spots" The final task is just making sure there is mulm / food for them.