nabokovfan87

I won't ruin the surprise.... This is amazing. I would definitely be excited if my sponge came pre seeded like that! 😂

It takes multiple days for no planaria to work. cc @Chick-In-Of-TheSea used it and got rid of some hydra as well.

This was the biggest issue I've had with this type of fish. They tended to really just pig out and whether it was my food habit with feeding them "enough" or just the food I was using, it was tough to really get them healthy and happy. I had them for a long time, but I just always had 1 or 2 that always seemed crazy bloated. When they would get that way they would get a lot less active and lay around a lot more on plants and hardscape. Fast forward a few years, those might've just been females. I can't guarantee it because of never breeding them out,, but yeah.... that was a learning experience for me and that jump from beginner to trying to know what on earth to look for when reviewing the fish in the tank. That being said, I will toss in all torpedo shaped barbs, rasbora, or danio into the mix. Odessa barbs are really awesome and fun. Pair that with a rummynose rasbora and maybe a few more species fit that bill. I don't think I'll ever get sick of keeping barbs.

In general terms the way you set up any filter is going to be: Mechanical --> Biological --> Chemical filtration Mechanical filter is your prefilter and sponge Biological is your biorings Chemical would be optional and would be things like seachem purigen, carbon pads, phosphate pads, or granulated carbon. The next step is to figure out flow. this determines *where* you place the media. Meaning, the flow is through the outside of the trays first (white foam only) from bottom to the top. Then it goes from top to bottom through the center portion. Essentially, by default everything looks good with the exception of the middle section of the bottom tray.

Basically this sort of a recommendation would be for whenever the current stocking is elsewhere, rehomed, or you're just at a point where the species in the tank make sense for the care parameters of the new fish. I would highly recommend a bunch of schools of cypranidae species. Odessa barbs, tiger barbs, rasboras, danios, white clouds, etc. These fish like a cooler tank (72-74) and would do well with things like a lot of your loaches, corydoras, etc. This also expands things where you might have a centerpiece fish like a rainbow shark or something you enjoy. I would swap out the pandas, but I do love them, for something you find interesting just to try out a new corydoras species. From there, it's up to what you want to do. The reason being, is that interacting with the tank is so enjoyable with how feisty and aggressive they are at times. Very active when they want to be, and it's just an enjoyable type of fish that really works well in a 75G setup. I would not like to misinform, but I currently do have shrimp in both red lizard and twig catfish tanks. I'm pretty new to twigs and if I am not mistaken farlowellas are more about algae grazing and snacking on algae tabs and sometimes veggies offered. My red lizards don't really eat shrimp I think, I keep them together with shrimp for a quite long time by now. They are more like cories I suppose. If the baby shrimp end up in their mouth, they may eat it buy they wouldn't go hunt any specifically. With only a few days of experience with twigs, the addition of shrimp to their tank made them feel comfier. Shrimp sometimes mistake them as branches going on top of them lol What I have been finding, even with my swordtails in the shrimp.... I tried the younger swordtails in the tank and they went a bit nuts going after baby shrimp. When I had the shrimp and swords in the 75G, the shrimp hid, were able to hide, and took about 2-3 months to acclimate to being around those fish. After that, the shrimp were safe and the swords didn't really bug them. It's very likely that a lot of fish predate on baby shrimp, especially under a few weeks old, but it's a situation where setup can be key. A lot of fish aren't designed for going after shrimp, so if they go after shrimp and they get one, they can choke on it. Just be careful with it and the recommendation is always to go with shrimp first, let them establish a base, then add in your fish after that. Expect some losses, but individual fish behavior varies. The shrimp will adapt to what you add to the tank.

I've been watching the "newbie reefer" series on youtube. There's also the obligatory (salt or freshwater hobbyist I'm talking to you) viewing of chasing coral as an inspiration for the enjoyment of all things nature in our care.... This was one that they had, I really thought was easy and they did awesome with it. It's a white hammer coral I believe. May also have been a white bubble coral.

Let me grab the directions to double check what is being done.... Alright so. Expel-p = levamisole is a one day treatment (24 hours) Then you move to paracleanse, which is your 2 doses over 5 days as directed on the box. For paracleanse: Day One - add meds Day three - add meds Day five - water change.

Interesting. I'm guessing the UV/Heat played a role too. Cool to see, thanks for sharing.

This is something I noticed as well and had to tuck in the back of my mind when looking at the tanks. @AllFishNoBrakes had just done the exercise of balancing a few sponges on his air system and that led to my own self-examination of my own tanks. I ended up pulling off one of the felt discs on the sponge that didn't have the air collar to loosen up the back pressure on my air pump and then the air collar is generally unrestricted. I run an air pump designed for a 150G "deep water applications". So let's ball all that up and explain what's really going on here.... 1. Any air pump has to overcome the depth of the tank. 2. Any air pump has to overcome the back pressure from the restriction of the actual air diffuser device. 3. There is a balance of the system where you either need to add more pressure (stronger pump) or adjust the actual diffuser itself to allow the air to flow easier. #1 + #2 leads to #3. In the latest video series with aquapros Cory was noting how well the water shoots out when the tank is drained slightly, and I do see that sometimes with the pump I'm running, but ultimately it's when I realized... "Oh yeah, he's got the linear air piston and that makes a big difference." In all, the air collar has very low, basically zero, restriction on flow or back pressure from the pump. It's also not adjustable in the sense of bubble size of something like the ziss air stones are. That means there might be a minimum pressure needed depending on the depth of the tank and installation setup you have going on. As mentioned above, I would be very curious to see your setup via video and the type of flow you're seeing. Everyone's setup is unique and it's helpful with questions like this to try to determine what's going on if we can see movement and circulation. This is my setup as well.

For sure. I had a red rili that got stuck in there and I'm still dealing with the ramifications from that. It was a bloody Mary, shadow red rili. That led to the culls. When I made this colony the goal was to cross 2-3 sources for strong genetics and to get things off on the right start. I would say it's less than you'd think that I do cull. This was probably the second or third cull in about a year, speaking in terms of a major cull effort. I also do cull ones that don't develop color as fast as their siblings. So it's not just that im culling for a good BM shrimp, but also ones that are very vibrant red..... I'm talking weeks old, sometimes days old. Yep! I've read a bit into a few studies on color development and I do some things to really give these shrimp the best chance of developing color quickly, deep color, and to give them the best chance at having full color / s-grade. There's a few threads out there and some posts earlier in this journal when I was in research mode for this tank. 🙂

After cleaning: I found a tank of a female. She looks healthy, content, and she just is the boss in the tank right now. She has really intense color and it's good to see one of the older shrimp around, especially with everything going on. I did a cull today. I pulled about 20-25 or so shrimp that were pretty good size. Adolescent adults. There was one yellow and all of them were starting to look a bit like zebra pattern. I don't know if this is a BM male trait, but a lot of the ones I pulled were indeed male. I do have some males that look really good. I am curious about what the baby shrimp in the tank develop as given all the adjustments I've been making the past couple of months with their food. I wanted to go ahead and point out something like this cull below. I have had a few people ask me when you should cull, what is the right size when you can tell good vs. bad. It's definitely a range over time and it's a bit like tasting for cooking or coffee, comparison is your friend here. This is the youngest cull I pulled from the tank. It's one of those... once in every 3-4 spawns you'll get a weird color. I pulled one that was actually yellow-red! This one looks to be, fingers crossed, another one of those shadow blue-red rili crosses. Update on corydoras watch, we definitely have more than one. 🙂 Before I realized I had the wrong color balance on: So yeah... I apologize that the "before" photos are that stark grey/dark color. It's just because of the color settings with this light. I am always flipping back and forth testing things and balancing it out to the right tone. It might seem fake/blown up, but I can guarantee you with some pretty clear certainty the more yellow/brown hue is 100% the right look to what my eye sees in person! (Tangent topic: A ton of people will get stuck on photos being edited and colors manipulated or blown up for the sake of showing a good quality fish. The goal for me is to always replicate what your eye sees in person. Photos, cameras, video, and software all play a role in that balance. I can take the same photo with the same hardware using different apps or software and it's a bit different. I can even take the same photo and edit that photo using different software and it'll come out slightly different based on a variety of factors. How accurate the screen your viewing the photo is plays a role as well! It's all a bit irrelevant for some people, but one of the things I pay attention to for myself and wanted to learn about growing up was audio/video editing and accuracy.... fun stuff!)

Tough to see what's going on without a video. As the fine holes clog, then the larger pathways are used. That bubble looks pretty big though.

Double dose is pretty common. Used for when tap has chloramines. That being said it's often stated on the bottle that up to 5x does is safe. The main thing is to just have oxygenation because the chemical does remove some oxygen from the water. Not any sort of major issue. Dose it for the tank, add back in your water. Bobs your uncle.

I spent a bit of the night before last looking for baby corydoras and just examining the tank. I see bba on the glass being a bit of nuisance and algae setting in on the swords. I am trying to keep that stuff in check, move plants around right now, and plan for propagating things out. The SRep has been hit pretty hard and I need to get something that grows fast to choke out the bba a little bit. I've gone ahead and put in the request via the bank for the refund on my plants order. 3 months, 3-4 emails, I'm just done waiting. I'll report back when that stuff is resolved, but fingers crossed it's a smooth resolution. Once that stuff is done... I am thinking it's going to seriously be time to add some fish into the tank that aren't bottom dwellers. I'm worried about what might get stuck behind the mesh on the back wall, but we will cross that bridge when need be. It's been a week. I need to dive into the tank(s) and just get work done.

Today was one of the bigger cleaning days of the tank. I tried seriously hard to limit the amount of water I removed, but I can only do that so much. I pulled all the rocks to one side as gently as I could and I removed all of the wood as well. I did end up scraping off the glue on the wood, so that should be cleared up now and looking normal. I cleaned one of the filters and boy that was a mess. Troubling news of the cleanout was that there was ~6 dead adult shrimp and my gut tells me all females again. I don't know if this is old age or what, but I've lost a lot more shrimp than I'd like in the past couple of weeks. I have been keeping the GH in check, I will test again. I absolutely need to get the plant load up. I think it's between food/surfaces and there just not being enough. This is the colony crash starting to set in, or we are going to end up having something in my water from the water company causing some issues. I was able to finally fix the water movement issue by removing the taller pipe on the filter. The cone of bubbles leaving the chimney is about 3-4x larger than it used to be and the movement in that sense really helps. I do see a few corydoras fry in there and I'm not quite sure how many. Time will tell! It's a good place for them to grow up because the sand is filthy right now. (in both tanks) I am going to try to feed a lot more powdered food, potentially order in some bacteria food to feed once a week. I also am lacking bee pollen (out of stock when I ordered) and that is playing a factor here too. I am going to ramp up the repashy feeding, but I probably should get something dedicated for shrimp or limit myself to repashy super green only. Before photos:

Fish only, no dwarf shrimp, then I will often just do a 50% water change. The max ammonia I ever want to see is 0.25 at most. By the time you do the water change, that's cut to about 0.15 and after 24 hours you're back up. Ammonia --> Nitrite happens pretty fast, but nitrite --> nitrate takes a little bit longer to get done. 1.0 is a pretty high amount of ammonia, in my experience. The goal of water changes at this point is to keep ammonia from climbing too high, but it's also about getting the dechlorinator in there when you end up with any ammonia or nitrite. Once you see nitrite, you'll likely never see ammonia anymore because it can so quickly be converted to nitrite. Then you're doing that same thing with nitrite.

It would help, but it won't be as helpful as other things. That's good, lower is best!

Cycling for me has been with food to generate ammonia, not necessarily fish in there. Test for all stages of the nitrogen cycle as mentioned. Preferably every 12 hours. If you see any ammonia or nitrite, then you'd do your water change and dose in dechlorinator. (No more than once per 24 hours) If you have chloramines or very high levels, do a double dose of dechlorinator. Make sure you're running an extra air stone and that your filtration is working properly. If you see ammonia high (let's say above 0.5) or nitrite high (above 0.5) then you'd do that water change. If you run into issues with levels, use a bacteria starter like seachem stability or fritz zyme 7 for about a week.

Graeme uses something for his that I believe is exactly what you're talking about. It's just a multi-stage filtration thing that results in a water similar to RO filtration. It's a great little way to guarantee the quality of the water.

Heaters. Nope. We have a generator, but not a whole house one and I can run some heaters in a pinch. I would need something like a solar panel to charge a battery longer term. I have a single air stone that can run for a week. Media goes in the tank, clean the filter, and just run air. For my other tank, I would have to run it with batteries. I do have enough pumps and batteries to keep them happy. Just those heaters.

Definitely great decor for around the tank, just not in it. 🙂

You can try painting the pieces if you are unable to find a replacement. Especially having them above the water as oppose to in the water it might give you a better chance of alleviating any concerns or issues. Simply betta has a ton of videos on painting things for her tanks. As far as what those things are and where you would find them, I think your best bet might be mcmaster-carr or home depot / lowes. They look like a generic "channel" and you would use them in various industries with glass. The specific dimensions or spec sheet would be helpful to give you a part number to track down, maybe there is one stamped on the parts themselves? That being said I'll try to link below the closest I could find. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Thermoclear-1-4-in-x-96-in-x-1-4-in-6mm-Thermoclear-Polycarbonate-Multi-Wall-U-Channel-PCTWU-6MM/205202529 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Thermoclear-2-in-x-96-in-x-1-4-in-6mm-Polycarbonate-Multi-Wall-H-Channel-PCTWH-6MM/205202532

Amazing signs! 😁 That's awesome.

I'm very sorry for your loss @ShineOn75 Please feel free to send me a DM if you run into issues with them in future.

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea recently used it as well to success.