nabokovfan87

Mine stick to only glass, but I'll let you know whenever I can find one. can you just flip the lid or swap the lid from the left to the right side (hole stays on the left side but to the right of the brace)

rubberlip pleco are really awesome glass cleaners. best I've seen. If you can, push the tidal all the way to the middle of the tank for better flow patterns. There's some plant location adjustments you can do to help things out too. Overall it sort of depends on what you want the hardscape to be, then adjust the plants where they "fit" that setup. Just quickly looking at the layout these are a few things I would adjust if it was my setup. Red = move the filter over so your intake and output in around the middle of the tank. Right now you have very low circulation off on the right right of the tank. purple = move the stem up front that's being blocked out by the fern over towards the middle, consider location where the wood is now or where the fern is right now. You could also leave the fern right where it is, but move the stem so it doesn't get shaded out and replace it with anubias perhaps. Blue = move the amazon sword (I think that's what it is) towards the left corner where there is slightly less intense light, and move the yellow stem somewhere in the middle segment of the tank. The wood is right under the brightest part and slightly middle of the tank. For golden ratio, you'd want to just push that towards the right a little bit, centered about where that grey stone is. (sort of swap the wood and the stone maybe). edit, that fern on the rock you could also push toward the back corner somewhere and it'll be able to grow tall and give you some depth. Especially with the anubias in front of it that in the middle of the tank. The tank is growing and it's at the cranky teenager stage. I'll be excited to see it when you get things growing like crazy on you and you've got the plant mass going a bit more crazy! 🙂

I am not sure when the last time was, but the canister filter got cleaned out today. I am watching the sword get caked in BBA and while I surely can grow some new leaves, it's not a good solution long term. Shrimp are going to town on that algae (or something forming on those leaves), but I don't expect to see much change until things are dialed in. I swear I've said is every other post about how there's just this one tweak and then things will be "dialed in". I still need to change the tubes, still waiting for tubing to come in stock. I am still waiting for 1 plant to arrive for certain, but hopefully more show up in future. I am planning to remove some things and increase aeration on the substrate level as well as slightly adjust the fert method going forward. The ludwigia I plan on growing will be the first medium-high demand plant and it'll give me a good indication on what I need to do with the lights. Getting the microsword to carpet will boost the plant mass and tremendously help fight off the BBA. I was also checking water change method using a calculator this week and I am pretty certain that's been at play too with things not being "dialed in". Either way, keep pushing forward and adjusting as we can to improve the situation. Substrate is on the way, just hit the button. I'll have to tab the tank once I get that in there too and plants in final locations. I put the background on the 20L today, so that will also be ready to go.... if there's enough substrate. If not, it'll just sit there on the stand until I sell some stuff. Not really worried about it too much, honestly. I moved the rock work today, a few plants, as well as a light siphon. The rocks were upside down to try to black out the BBA, which didn't work, and it's still there being a pain. I have the sluggish bulb over next towards the ones that is doing well, hoping it sees the one next to it doing well and the similar setup helps. I am pretty excited to wake up and see what it looks like. I think the layout makes sense and it's close to being done. I'll test things tomorrow on all of the tanks and adjust any buffers I need to. It's been a busy two or three days working on the fish tanks and it has been fulfilling to see progress. More to get done in future, but now.... enjoying the moments. From the picture after planting the microsword... You can see that bba on the granules of the substrate. No real rhyme or reason, but it's all over the tank.

Really nice work... the stone balanced with the green and the gradation of color on the stone really works!

You'll have to show me whenever time allows. I have one that has cataracts, but had a ghostly white eye that was treated. (Black corydoras) I spot feed her and she's removed from the group. I am unsure what caused it, why it happened, but maybe it was from movement during shipping. 😔 No idea how many I sent originally, but good to hear they are alive and kicking. I tried this new food from aqueon, nutrinsect, which doesn't have fishmeal or fish oil. There's some reasons for that, but it seems like a really good (and cheap) corydoras food. Ingredients aren't bad either. Just a heads up. I can mail you a little bit of you want to try how they do with it.

Hygro and the ammania are going to be your medium light plants. Everything else is either very low or low light. The swords can handle medium light, but too much on their leaves and you're looking at a ton of algae. So your plants centered under the light should be those two, the swords can be towards the back but not necessarily right under the light. The swords that are labeled as medium would be closer towards the middle of the tank than the big Amazon swords. Secondarily, let's consider something like tank height as well. If you have a 12" tall tank compared to an 18" tall tank then your swords are growing tall and taking in a ton of light. Something like 20"+ compared to 18" is going to give the swords a little bit more room, but it's depending as well on where the flow is pushing those big leaves. Quick flow right on the ends of the leaves gives you BBA in some cases. Awesome news. Good to hear. That type of algae is awesome food for algae eaters and omnivores. That's what I've seen as the start of BBA too. It's similar to green spot algae which grows strands and turns into green string algae. I've got some photos of my tank before we moved that had BBA on surfaces and it just looked like a discoloration, once things progressed I understand what I was in for. 😞 I would argue against this. I have the same plant under lower light duration and it's doing well for me. I don't think any plant requires a minimum of 10 hours. I'm not sure where that information came from, but I would just suggest further research on that. I can send a DM on this as it's something I am exploring on my own for my own tanks when I get deeper into advanced stems. The suggestion just being to make sure you're using root tabs every 3-4 months (9-12x a year basically) for those plants that really need it. Something like was mentioned earlier, there are companies that sell iron tabs and that might be a great way to supplement those plants as well if you're not looking towards dosing easy iron. I very much understand. It's always tough when you just aren't sure what is the best method and the best routine. There's a lot of great resources out there and there's some great books on aquarium plants. Also, some very skilled and highly practiced plant experts (I don't use that term lightly) here on the forums. There's some beautiful tanks and hopefully one of them can chime in and better guide us for the schedule or care of the swords. @AllFishNoBrakes sent me some swords and we've been watching them grow. What is your lighting setup for them?

You've got the rings in there so you should be seeing Ammonia drop. A single 80-95% water change first followed by daily 50% water changes would be the recommendation and do that until ammonia is greatly increased and hopefully below 1.0. If you haven't recently, I would double check the tap. Stuff happens. I have a friend who just found out ammonia in the tap happened and they had some severe issues crop up in the tank as their only indication. A lot of people have been having issues this year, myself included, with tap issues. As long as filtration is setup and everything is good to go whatever is leaching should lessen and that should start to cycle properly into nitrate. Ammonia into nitrite should happen very quickly. It's the second step of nitrite to nitrate that takes a bit. It's a process, but getting KH, PH stable, filtration stable, that is all part of what's going on here. Best of luck, keep us posted.

it appears to me to be brown diatom algae which could be controlled by lowering light hours and using a toothbrush or something to remove it from surfaces and into the filtration. on the glass, rock, and the plants in the top photo, that's your brown diatoms. The other ones are showing a nutrient deficiency.

ammonia in the tap?

Not dead, always the opportunity there to extend the conversation! There's also others that will see it if new issues pop up! 🙂 Sounds like magnesium, potassium, or iron deficiency. Nope, just once should be plenty, but it seems like there is more to the story... More things happening and that's leading to playing a bit of whack-a-mole where one problem dies down, things develop, and then the next issue rears it's head up. 10 hours or light can be tough on plants. Some only want say 6 hours or 4 and others want very extended hours (in that 7-10 range). The normal recommendation has always been to cap it at 8 hours. I do a rise of 1.5 hours and a fall of 1.5 hours each cycle for my tanks and that can all be adjusted. Basically, the tank is only getting full power for a few hours out of the day. This is similar to nature where you're not blasting the plants 100% light for the entire lighting window. So let's start there. Does the light have a mode where it can gently rise or fall for sunrise and sunset until it reaches full power for you? Let's adjust back the timings and then see what the algae does, as well as what type of algae you're experiencing. Generally, very much generally speaking, plants with big wide/broad leaves want less intense light and others that have smaller leaves will fight for much more intense light... Even only needing that bright intense light over a very short period. This is something I did in my own tank to adjust placement and I kicked all the plants to the sides or corners of the tank that didn't need the intense light. Hopefully this helps cut down the algae as well.

Does it still have the white eye? Very sorry, hopefully everything nis going ok. Welcome back! We get the amazing little advantage of being able to see how to recover a tank now! 😁 That's so tough to have that happen. I'm very sorry for all of your losses.

How about some rummynose Rasbora (very beautiful and calm) and something like hastatus corydoras or panda corydoras?

Best of luck with it. Hopefully you can find something that works in the end.

Coloring up is definitely a great sign. There's two things that I would always encourage anyone to sanity check on their tanks, Filtration and KH. Yep, ammonia and nitrite should be zero, but if you happen to use an active substrate, you absorb KH into the soil and then you are left with very unstable water until you "cycle" the substrate and charge it up. You are showing kh, but it's slightly low. This means that we should double check the tap and see what KH should be, then we can adjust method accordingly. (Let's shoot for something like 50-80 as a minimum KH if possible) https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh The second thing we would want to check mentioned is filtration. Basically how is it setup, how is the Hob setup and is it good to go in future. We want to avoid something like a cartridge and go towards something reusable like sponge for mechanical filtration. The secondary thing often recommended for stability is to have some sort of biological filtration media, be it rings or biomax, matrix, etc. Lastly, welcome. Welcome to the forums and welcome to the hobby. Happy to have you here and it'll be great to see your journey unfold.

Alright. Yeah the reason I ask is just trying to think of the oomph you'd need to get the flow across. Usually 6-10x the GPH on the pump is pretty good for that. If it's purely due to the length then maybe it's purely about needing some sort of a spraybar, unfortunately common with longer tanks.

Is the filter on end? The tidal 35 is pretty strong and the way the exit is designed on the title can work "well". If it has a spraybar output this might work. You can try to put it beside the cabinet instead of in it.

Welcome to the fun!!! 😁

It happens! Unfortunately. Maybe you can donate the fish to a friend or return it to the store? How many tanks do you have in total? Welcome to the forums, also! Happy to have you here.

bolivian rams and tetras - about 78 degrees most corydoras - about 72-74 degrees german blue rams (per Dean and Cory from Aquarium Co-Op) you would want to keep them warmer at about 80 degrees or so. That being said, I don't know what works best for the situation. I wouldn't advice or recommend keeping a tank with both german blue and bolivian rams. They are awesome, but I would focus on just one type. If you want to have corydoras, try something like sterbai or trilineatus/false julii as a good option for warmer tank setups in a tetra/ram community tank. Here is some inspiration for you and one of the coolest ram setups I've ever seen.

Plenty of movement and filtration. That's awesome. I use a little needle or push pin / safety pin and poke a tiny hole in both ends. It's one of the struggles of using gel caps, but it shouldn't be detrimental. Keep an eye out for a major algae bloom, ammonia spike, nitrite spike, over the next couple of days. All you would really need to do if anything happens is water change(s).

Let's start here.... ...and all I want to do is share the headline and just mention it if you've ever had a tank struggle like I have. *deep breath, exhale slow* I woke up this morning and it wasn't anything special that caught my eye. Those that know me know that I follow certain aquascaping channels and my goal is to get towards having a nice tank again. Seeing something like gjcarew's or Mmiller2001's or Seattle_Aquarist or the countless other amazing plant minds on the forums has been inspiring and it's been one of the motivations for me as I did enter back into the hobby, struggled, and wanted to really learn some things I didn't know or understand about my own failures. Without knowing it, this is one of the more profound and subtle notions and it was ringing clear because of the time and the place of everything around me in the moment. Imagine a world of chaos and outside of the walls you see volcano erupting or storms surrounding. You see the trees being tossed by the wind or the ocean waves crashing against the rocks and spraying high into the sky, but you're safe inside the walls and you are focused on this little pod of nature that you and entwined with. I can mention George Farmer and his meditative approach towards tank maintenance or I can mention this clip above and the subtle notion that.... "2023 was full of new and exciting adventures and as the challenges presented themselves, we faced them all together with a unique persistence of an aquascaper." [There is definitely more to the quote above and so I encourage everyone to watch at least the introduction on the Green Aqua video above.] It is one of those phrases that has a lot of gravity to it and it's something that you really don't understand unless you've truly experienced it. I think a lot of people have seen the movie Rudy and been inspired to persevere. Maybe you've seen Miracle and been inspired to face some overwhelming obstacles and scars from the past. There is a lot of ways that we can find energy, momentum, and inspiration in this world thanks to things like youtube videos, movies, forum posts, and conversations with friends. ....and with all that being said I wanted to share a bit about my own vulnerable persistence. I was watching an old video and then I looked up at the wall and I saw this extreme shift in my tank. It wasn't subtle, but it was a moment where I cherished everything that happened for me to get to the moment that I was in. It honestly started here, with this tank and the first time I've ever purchased a single piece of hardscape with the intent of aquascaping something. Even then, USPS lost the package of the piece of wood that I had hand selected. This piece was sent as a replacement and it didn't fit the tank I had. I had to cut the piece of wood and then I had to wait for the opportunity to really scape something with it. I had a piece of wood and I had some plants, but it wasn't an aquascape. It wasn't meant to be, but it was a holding place for a future self. This led me down this path, which was my first attempt at an aquascape. It was my first real attempt at a carpeting plant and my first real attempt at something using a "planted tank substrate" in lieu of sand. All it needed to do was to grow and to work. I failed with how I planted the plants. I failed in how I cared for the plants. I failed in my analysis of necessary water chemistry, lighting settings, and that substrate I used has turned out to be another failure point. That tank quickly regressed back towards chaos. I tried continuously to make things works by adding "more plants." Some things works and some things failed. It was not about giving up, but it was consistently a journey about learning why. Why something worked, why something failed. There is always things out of your control and there is always going to be something where you might just have to start over. Try again to create something beautiful. But again, chaos ensues at times... and all of your moss dies off. ....and sometimes you get a lifeboat from a friend (or two, or three). Brown tinge is from blackwater extract being added! Stepping out of your comfort zone can be enlightening and focusing on the things going wrong isn't as impactful as dwelling on the reasons why things went wrong. There is an eternal hope if you have the perspective and the patience for it... new things will happen and that changes the parameters of everything. The point is that every single tank can be a journey if you frame it as such. Enjoy the journey as much as the perspective that can give you. Sometimes you start in one place, find yourself in another, and just need to follow your feet towards the direction you wish to go. Starting point when the goal was to have a planted tank, discovering aquarium co-op and wanting to grow plants for the first time. This was my 55G and it was just planted with a second or third plant order. There were some failures and I changed to a 75G with an active substrate with a cap.... in a tank mostly filled with anubias. And this is where we are now. Time will tell how myself and the tank grows. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along this journey and know that there is sincere gratitude for your help along my own journey, big or small, it's all valuable for me and being put towards this goal I have for myself. I'd love to hear about your own tank journeys below.

Think of it this way.... The strongest bacteria will have a few traits, they have either just been created or they have survived some things. Something I learned when I had the ziss bubble bio filter is that it breeds strong bacteria. Cleaning the filtration, it's not an issue because you're cleaning *mechanical* filtration and not biological. (That being said, what is your filtration and how is it setup?) You will clean it and knock off the dying or old bacteria which means that new, strong bacterial can colonize those surfaces. You don't want fat/lazy bacteria, you want the fit/strong bacteria to keep the tank stable! It's a bit of an analogy, but that's the goal with your equipment and your tank. Don't be afraid to clean the tank or scrape the glass, siphon, etc.

2 new plants incoming. Going to be pretty epic if both of these work out. 😁r Edit: First one done, came today...

Mark's shrimp tanks has a really solid video on the topic. Enjoy the time with your family!

Depending on temp you're looking at, panda corydoras are pretty fun and special, easy to find... And then option 2 would be trilineatus/false julii corydoras for slightly warmer temps.