nabokovfan87

I swapped the sponge out with the standard, original seachem sponge. Currently we have the modified skimmer, modified basket, original sponge, original intake, original pump cover. I will run this test, potentially two or three versions, and then report back with some final thoughts. Here is the bottom of the basket when cleaning, bypass demonstrated in the post above, you can see this is not very clogged with muck. Again, this bypass issue is pretty fickle and difficult to resolve easily. For the sake of clarity, here is the other pertinent views of the filter box. There is some moss in the bottom of the HoB cavity, which isn't anything out of the ordinary. The pump was clean of any worms and looked like it had just been cleaned. Clearly it is working well, so I didn't worry about cleaning the impeller shaft itself. The second photo below is of the chute cover and the chute cavity. There isn't any blockages, the adjustment dial was reinstalled and cleaned just for the sake of doing so. One way to "fix flow" might literally be to stuff that cavity with sponge, but I have a few other ideas to try first. For the sake of demonstration only, this is the intake sponge I have for testing. I'll end up ordering a smaller one or looking for one. This is designed to fit well on the Tidal 75, but does not really work on the tidal 55. This should be the ACO "large" sponge filter based on dimensions. You can see it pushing pretty hard against the glass and rim of the tank, forcing the HoB at an awkward angle. It's easy to tell if you look at where the rim of the tank is and where the HoB is designed to rest. I removed the intake sponge, set everything up and verified the level of the HoB itself. I then reviewed and measured the bypass on the filter. There was some pooling on the chute itself, but not anywhere else. This is acceptable. The water level was about 1/8" below the rim of the basket. That isn't great. Especially considering we removed a layer of foam from the basket itself and the water level should be lower. There's nothing in the chamber to restrict water right now, so the full force of the pump is going into the foams. I fully expect this to clog pretty quickly, but we'll see how many days until the basket starts to bypass on me. As an example, this is a photo from earlier in testing of a sponge on the "window cutout" of the basket. When we compare this to the sponge above in this post you can see how much capacity there is for this sponge to clog a bit more with detritus. I would fully expect a filter to last and operate a bit longer than indicating maintenance is required.

Hello! Welcome to the foum. I would recommend heading over to this thread so that was you can see all the info over there. Some fish that come in to your possession might be starving and require food. The recommendation to not feed food, or to feed sparingly, is to ensure the fish are able to pass anything that is in their system. Sometimes, with something like internal parasites, bacterial issues, you might actually dose the food itself. Limiting or slowing down on food is a recommendation to basically try to reduce stress on the fish as well. Fish can be without food for days and weeks depending on conditions without issue. In the wild they don't eat daily or multiple times a day normally and have to work harder for food. When you're feeding every few days during meds, this is a good frame of reference so you understand the fish is actually ok not having food / fasting for a day, several, or for a week.

This is what I would go by as well. You don't know what's actually in the vinyl, could be additives or something. If it's 100% vinyl it might work, but you also might just have issues using it compared to other stuff.

Yes you can. There is a few videos I would recommend watching before you dose or use any meds at all. There's a couple ground rules that need to be followed. If you have questions, please feel free to ask! We have a ton of amazing, smart, awesome hobbyists who are really good with med advice and questions. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/faqs/can-i-use-the-quarantine-meds-trio-all-at-the-same-time https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/how-to-treat-sick-aquarium-fish https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/quarantine-tank https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish

Hopefully it's just some fry. Best of luck @Huckleberry Welcome to the forums 🙂

Yep.... Can't get mine to eat green beans or anything. None of my fish. I've tried several things a few times with various omnivores.

Here's a pretty awesome demonstration of how to setup Co2. It should start at the CO2 part. If you need an in-line bubble counter, they do have those as well.

Depends what the substrate is.... If you don't value saving it, by all means don't. Find a way to reuse it or repurpose it. -Planted substrate I would take out to the herb garden. -Gravel I clean really well, rinse really well, dry it on a towel for 2-3 days and rotate progressively through that process, store it in a bag or bucket covered. -Sand, I would do the same thing as mentioned with gravel, but you can't really use a towel to dry it. Likely you'd need a metal tray, foil, or some paper product.

Specimen Container time!

I think this is the one I just got. I'm excited to see how it does.

Shrimp could've had issues with the substrate. It's difficult to say. Was there any signs of stress on them? I recently lost 2 in my tank because of a nitrite spike and drop in flow. Can you share your light settings also? Dosing weekly? Hm, definitely a fickle tank. I can totally relate! What is feeding like, what is your usual method? Have you noticed some of the CPDs not being as aggressive towards food as others? I know the rasboras wont mind it, I also believe the shrimp won't mind it, Danios also, They all might just prefer to have the heater lower. It's something where you might see a difference in behavior, less algae even, and it might be a very slight thing when it comes to a change that you see. Here's a fun video about fish behavior / temp. One "trick" might be to grab some polyfilter and see what exactly it absorbs from the tank.

Jimmy has a few videos on the topic. There's one where he talks about putting the lens right on the tank itself. I can't find it, but it's a good one!

Definitely. The nice things about smaller tanks is it is humanely possible to move them with a little bit of water at the bottom.

Sending strength and hope your way. Please hold your head up and try to focus on things one day at a time.

I agree it looks like fry or maybe some kind of larvae (tail seems weird for fish to me). Do you see eggs at all, new plants added recently? Maybe the aggression you saw was breeding behavior?

Definitely. One of the things I like about these is that it's a different type of filtration that marineland is trying to use here. Instead of sponge or ceramics/rocks it is a fluted particle filtration. These canisters I think are even readily available for spas and are of similar shape and size. Reusable, longer lasting, and all of those things make me want to get my hands on one eventually. If only it had a spraybar option!

It's a very low flow region of the filtration because its a dead spot. That's the design intent. That smell and scum is probably a reason for that issue. I think the spec foams (all the same shape for fluval) come with little plastic handles to pull them out. Not the greatest, but it's probably the only way to really work on them. This also is likely why the other methods and mods might work a bit better longer term for you. Something like a turkey baster that doesn't drip might be a good tool to use to siphon out detritus that gets stuck back there as well.

I was reading about this last night! https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/social-structures-great-white-sharks/ I was watching a brief scientific response to the documentary regarding bycatch this morning. One of the points mentioned was that when the sharks are released, they are so exhausted that a very high % of them dies. They also broke down the records available for fishing deaths, some sort of a data set, and it discussed the deaths across bycatch vs. other metrics. Bycatch was a very high portion of those deaths as a result of total shark deaths. I can share that via DM if you're interested. That being said, I was pondering this previously and I wanted to clarify something for the sake of saying the words out loud. If we say that fishing isn't a cause of major issues, then we open ourselves up for the fishermen to say that finning is the cause. This is a common tactic when studies are released and it's simply a point / counterpoint type of politics like lobbying in any other industry. Specifically in Costa Rica. A lot of this was highlighted in the sharkwater documentaries as a focus of how to demonstrate legal flaws in the system. For Rob, this was the main focus of his efforts. On the other side of the coin, anything that comes out and says how devastating shark finning is would in turn give fisheries a leg to stand on and use the massive nets and attempt to ignore bycatch. In my mind, I hope future politicians and policy makers across the globe can understand that bycatch, finning, shark byproducts are all detrimental to the ecosystem. In grade school I learned about the amount of mercury in some ocean predators is so high because it's slowly been building over time, posing a serious risk to humans. This is also going to rise again if we see continued use of shark byproducts. This is going to be the same situation with plastics and their toxins/pollutants/colorants that we are now eating, which was left out of seaspiracy. Another perspective for all of this, especially anyone who manufactures a product is the mentality of "out of sight, out of mind". Say I have a company that makes high quality foods for humans. As a chef, the encouragement is to make sure you're using whole, fresh ingredients. Once we start processing things down for big batches, once we start modifying things with preservatives and for the sake of freezing them for longer term storage, a lot of what makes the food healthy disappears. What this also does is shade what was done to the product before it arrived at your facility. In my previous job, we have government agencies, major corporations coming in to audit us. I think anyone who has been in those shoes knows that you put on a good face for that day. "Surprise inspections" really aren't the majority of the times and it's very easy to know when you're going to do well or when you're going to struggle. These type of interactions happen many times a day across a variety of industries as well as residential (city inspections) and once that inspector leaves, not much can be done. This is where a lot of the struggle, the question is for me now. If you two haven't seen it, I highly recommend sharkwater 1/2, and the playing with sharks documentary. If you have seen sharkwater 2, I won't ask you to spoil it here, but I would really like to know what the thoughts were after the ending. It hit me so hard emotionally in a way a lot of movies just can't. Genuinely, one of the nicest things anyone has said to me. I really appreciate those words.

I've only seen this video on it, there are a few more.

On the bottom of the first cavity, is that hole covered with sponge? I believe it is, but there's a small gap underneath the sponge. Edit.... Yeah..... well, At least in this photo they made the intake larger. I would get some sponge and add it here. Something like the AC50 might be big enough you can trim it to fit but it just won't be black. You can also try that sponge in the middle cavity and just cut it to fit shown below.

I believe is a subset of rainbowfish species like "neocaridina shrimp" or something. Looking forward to what you choose! Some beautiful fish.

It's a "pretty interesting" design flaw, likely. Because of the way the filter mechanism is designed you have overflow at the top of the chamber, which goes down into the sponges and then to the right. At the bottom of this chamber is a little hole right next to the pump. It's probably just a slightly decent amount of suction and flow that is causing the issues. Block it with rocks, no biggie, but it might be something where the fish gets stuck and spreading out that suction to a larger surface by modding in more holes (or diffusing it outward with objects/foam alleviates the concern. Different company it looks like. There's a few iterations. Even something like Dean's output spraybar mod would work pretty well when adapted here. Here's another one, mod for the bottom intake. ^^ Based on my use with the E-Series heater guards, those slots are probably too narrow but the actual suction might keep debris from blocking flow. When you add water to the rear of the flex it would also clean these out. Take a 2" PVC endcap, drill a bunch of holes, silicone it to the panel, same thing. Something like this would give you the same fix also.

Definitely some interesting replies there from manufacturer's. I can appreciate "good intent" and I can appreciate their efforts to try to do things sustainably. I think there's likely a reason to go ahead and try to have some of these things lab tested. One of my logics for doing so is something like aquaculture and foods uses in that industry. That directly impacts us. It is definitely not an easy issue to solve and something like the changes illustrated in the world from sharkwater 1 to sharkwater 2 definitely highlights some ways that "the industry" of finning has gone a long way to try and obfuscate what is being done. I read an article last night that stated that one of the only real methods to help the situation is similar to project piaba, tourism and people travelling to see sharks, hiring boats to do so, is something that is a means of encouraging people who are just trying to survive to earn money another way. That mindset is hopeful, but there's a lot that has to change for that to remotely be successful. There was a recent arrest on this called Operation Apex that highlights just how close to home this issue is for me, potentially a lot of hobbyists. I can't tell you the amount of times I've thought about taking a trip one day to northern California and being amazed when I see a shark at a beach or take a boat ride to go and see one on a migration route. I truly admire so many things in nature, and I really just hope that things improve.

Do they feel sharp at all? Would you be worried at all about a fish scratching itself?

Such a beautiful ram! Nice tank too, awesome little scape for him that reminds me of my old tank. Well now we're just going to have to request a video 😂