nabokovfan87

They have the shrimp dishes like above mentioned. If you want something on the surface you can potentially try a feeding ring or a worm cone. https://www.amazon.com/Betta-Feeding-Ring-inch-Practical/dp/B07M6VWH9V They also might have something like a glass spoon rest that would work as well. Secondly, you can make one out and use a suction cup / airline hose. That might be enough and you might have the supplies on hand.

I would check the impeller and just verify it's installed right. Could've had a weird issue from shipping or something getting in there. Mine was literally silent and yours should be too. If you hear it grinding or anything like that it's likely something rubbing where it shouldn't be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIj5bBPzpyY

Should be plenty! I would try feeding them right before sunset and see if that gives a response. Definitely! Let us see the little fry when you get some 🙂

What was the filtration setup like? Was there a big mass of floating plants? Definitely interesting. One of the big triggers apart from temp and barometric pressure is to just feed them heavily at dusk. Right before lights out and they get a big meal, when it's their active hours at night they tend to go pretty crazy for me. Whether I have successful fry or not is usually just dependent on if they have a place to lay eggs and if those eggs survive to hatch. (that's where the high flow comes in again or floating plants can play a role)

I think you can just remove it entirely. If you're worried about bacteria itself, set it inside the tank for a few days while you are dosing the bacteria from the bottle to seed the new media. The way you have it setup is perfect! Whenever you clean it, be sure to inspect that input grate on the bottom for junk, food, etc. and try to clean it out as best you can. I don't know if this helps, but it is in the manual for this filter and there should be some way to disassemble it to check the pump. If not, depending if you have the click or the screws I can try to find a video. I'm always worried I'm going to snap a little plastic clip, so I understand the concern about getting into that pump/impeller. I totally understand the concern. I hope that signs on your betta improve and the slight tweaks are allowing for a no-stress environment for him.

Yes please, I'll take 1. Absolutely beautiful work!

Very cool, you'll have to show off the setup when you get it to a point where you're happy with it!

Reminds me of Lamont's tank 🙂 I would trim mine, stems and tall plants like this, when it got to about 3/4 of the height of the tank or started blocking out lower level plants. PSO loves to grow tall and take over plant lights for me.

That's awesome! Thank you ACO Team! @Zenzo

I am not sure how to explain this, but I will start with a brief attempt with details at the end. I have a potential experiment for someone who actually has a rack and the means to do this. I have one tank and have essentially been slowly experimenting with filtration over different iterations of multiple tanks the past few years. Backstory: I often have issues with certain types of filtration and I've been trying very hard to find something I'm actually happy with. Because of that I view filtration in a certain way and I'm not sure what the "final outcome" really is, but there are some things I've noticed. Potentially this is just a cut and dry pros and cons for different types of filtration also. The past few months I've been working with a few bigger projects. I have my work on the Tidal series of filters alongside setting up a new tank with sponges. I cycled the tank using cycled media and unused sponge filters and ran the tank for over a month. Because I had it available, I also added a ziss bubble bio filter. This was mostly on there to have a place for "extra air" to go because I had a pretty strong airpump on the tank. Here's what I think is worth testing: A. Performance of sponge filters based on an air pump marketed for the size of the tank compared to one marketed for double that capacity. B. Performance of a tank with 2 sponge filters compared to having one HoB (bare bottom tank is best to highlight this). C. Performance of a tank with a HoB sized to the tank in question compared to one that is rated for double that capacity. D. Repeat the test B with different types of substrates and compare to bare bottom tank performance. Essentially, I think as a new hobbyist it's very easy to get stuck in the overfiltration side of things and often I find myself running double, triple the filtration that what a tank is rated for. In my main display tank I removed a lot of extra filtration and that resulted in a pretty significant issue with detritus worms appearing. On the second tank, I ran it with sponges. I would find muck under rocks and I would find uneaten food on the bottom of the tank (bare bottom). This is expected, but what surprised me was that I had assumed the slime I was seeing was from the tank cycling and it was a bacterial slime. After seeing this for 2 months without fail I don't think this is the actual cause. I think it was mostly just uneaten food that wasn't caught in the sponge mixed with waste. In the lower flow parts of the tank it deteriorated and turned into a type of mulm. The tank had tannins from the IALs and this was on a tank running with 2 sponge filters and the added ziss bubble bio. Flow on all 3 filters was pretty high and I was still seeing a lot of detritus on the bottom of the tank compared to the actual filters themselves. Under the wood, rocks, and IALs especially. Yesterday evening I took that same tank and hooked up a Tidal into it so I could run carbon. Within about an hour the entire bottom of the glass was clean, Tannins were gone, and the glass looked pristine. My experience with a sand substrate compared to a bare bottom tank using this same HoB filter made me think about what that causes. If there was sand on the bottom of this tank the mulm would have something to "grab onto" so to speak and it's the type of thing where the more "rough" or "course" the substrate is, I think this encourages a certain type of behavior from the mulm. This is what I mean when I say "performance of the tank". Ultimately we all have our own goal for how the tank will look! Some mulm is fine for one hobbyist while others want a pristine tank for fry with lots of clean water. It's an interesting dilemma, and I think one of the reasons I have struggled with sponge filters is simply because I see too much mulm when I use them. If I was only seeing the mulm on the sponge I'd be happy with that, but seeing it on the bottom of the tank just makes me inherently feel like I don't have enough flow. I apologize for the long post, but hopefully this makes some sense!

Haha. She's got some size for sure.

Tank looks awesome. Is there by chance a planted substrate in this tank? I would estimate minimum 2 weeks for a cycle if you're dosing bacteria. If you aren't then you're going to expect 4-5 weeks. The black tube going off to the right, is that an airstone?

ME! Kidding 😂 In the family tank it's a red tailed black shark aptly named grace. In my main tank there is a female corydoras that is about 2x the size of everything else in the tank and she's the queen. You can see both here. They had a fun night swimming around.

It's going to rust and cause some reactions. At best, I would say definitely don't do that. There is other stone that can give you a unique look like that stone. Copper especially is something that you really don't want too much of. Small amounts is "fine" but even something like cooping in a copper pot isn't really advisable for humans. Soak it in a tub for 3-6 months and see what it does. That will tell you about the aquarium use itself. Be sure to have aeration as well.

Raising KH/PH - Crushed Coral Lowering KH/PH - Botanicals, tannins I would argue that using the acid or alkaline buffer individually is "safe" but again, keep in mind that doing it to the water before you use that water for a WC is the safest way. The water that the fish and tank is in contact with will be constant and stable and you can adjust it as you need to. Once you start raising and lowering things trying to hit perfection, I think that's where people run into issues. In my case I'm going from KH being 40 ppm to KH being 60 ppm. (Eventually 80) This is a necessity for me because I am having PH crash from 6.8 down to 6.0 fairly easily.

Alkaline buffer raises PH/KH. Acid buffer lowers them. You would add them at a ratio (seachem has some math on their website with these ratios) based on performing a small test in a bucket to determine what your goal is. I ran a test for 3-4 days, dosing a very small amount until I was confident in how much to use during my WC. Adjust it slowly, because it will cause stress if you're giving the tank a big swing in parameters. As always, preconditioning water is best if you do something like this.

Is this something that started recently or has been happening for a long time now? Can you describe the tank filtration please.

I saw a pretty awesome talk on this last night. Really interesting stuff about how to view your tank, how things progress (and specifically why), and how we give the tank itself a good environment as opposed to introducing issues. Essentially, nature balances itself, but the tanks we keep are specifically not nature because we control them.

awesome, best of luck with it. Hopefully you get it sorted out. I literally couldn't even tell you where mine went. Might've gotten lost in the move 😞 . It's definitely useful, especially for something like a QT tub just have on hand.

Seachem sells acid buffer, which would work for your situation. RO lowers GH, Acid buffer lowers PH/KH. I would try to get something like that if this is going to be a long term setup for the tank. Second to that, I would highly encourage it to be a tank with a lot of wood, tannins, Indian Almond Leaves, and Alder Cones. It should lower PH by ~.3-.5 or so depending how much is used and the other water parameters seem to be "fine" for the sake of having a stable PH that doesn't crash easily week to week. (Specifically what I'm talking about is keeping the KH where it's at but only lowering PH)

Here's my thread on what looks like a similar issue. Because you don't have fish in the tank right now it might be an easy solution to treat. 1. Add aeration 2. Remove plants to a bucket (if you want to clean them you can dip them in salt, seltzer water, or something else) 3. Dose the tank with high amounts of salt and let it sit for a few days, or you can dose with meds. Essentially, it is what looks similar to mine, detritus worms. If you have fish that will predate on it, they will be fine, but it's a sign of poor flow and/or poor care of the tank. You'll need to manually gravel vac them out of the tank, clean the gravel itself as best you can among anything else that you do. Planaria has a specific head shape, if there isn't that distinct head shape it is very likely detritus worms.

For the sake of my own sanity and not doing conversions literally *EVERY TIME* I have to dose salt...... Looking at dosage for salt on the ACO blog: Level 1: A hair under 1/4 cup per 10G Level 2: A hair under 1/3 cup per 10G Level 3: 1/2 cup per 10G On his salt dosage video when treating for ich in the 800G Cory mentioned that at the store they use the "level 3" treatment as standard (1 cup per 20G). Another way to make this really easy is to use grams. It can be measured out on a coffee scale, but everyone's tank height is going to slightly alter the salinity levels you're dosing to. For the sake of making it simple, and easy to do quickly, this is what I've always used and what always works for me. Literally this week, dosed my tank with salt, had to come down the hallway to ask someone to convert the salt amount from tbsp to cups because I had wet hands. I had a 1/3-cup measure in my fish bin for dosing salt, now I know why.

Depending on size of the tank, if it's below 20G it's likely easier to treat the whole tank. You'd be treating using Ich-X for fungal and then maracyn / salt as a preventative for bacterial or other issues.

Good! That's a good thing. This means you're having an issue with "strong bacteria". Please share pictures of all of your filtration so we can see if there's an issue there. Something could've happened where it's as simple as the pump slowed down and is causing everything. We need to ensure the impeller is working, flow is working, and that there is sufficient media for the bacteria (apart from anything inside the tank). Something similar to this would be my recommendation. It looks like the pump access is via the plate on the bottom where you can inspect the pump for clogs.

You can continue to dose the stability until the ammonia is 0. This is recommended to get the nitrogen cycle completed as fast as possible.