nabokovfan87

Very unfortunate. Awesome! I've been watching a bunch of there lofi video/music noise background things on youtube just to have something cool and chill while I work. Very good to hear. He still doing good? I wanted to ask when he eats if you see him try to dig a lot or how he's interacting with the tank / substrate and stuff. I wonder if their mood changes when they are on sand and stuff. Some video and stuff of another fishkeeper with a ram we were talking about stuff last night trying to get the guy happy too.

Yep! I think having time and having more members on the team has really helped them to focus on developing products, which is cool. Especially for partner stores. For reference's sake, here's the directions on Easy Iron. I like the part where it says "look out for signs of"

Still some ammonia, but hopefully the plants take it out pretty easily. If you can, in future, I'd recommend getting a 15L or 20L tank. It's a lot more water, slightly easier to care for. It's a ton of space for a betta, but it's also just a nice size tank for a countertop and a lot of uses. Just wanted to mention it if you're ever looking for another one or moving this to a different place. That's awesome. It's a really beautiful tank and you're definitely setup for long term success. I hope everything continues to improve and the betta is healthy and happy.

Isn't it always funny how the fish want to be with them. LOL. Fish A: "They must know something, let's see what they do." Fish B: "Yep, definitely up to something, let's follow them!"

It's algae. specifically BBA / Staghorn. I have had a heck of a time and trying to get things fixed on the final few plants. They sat in tubs with extremely high light for far too long and got smashed with algae over 3ish months. They've been in a small 10G tank since winter and I haven't done much to recover them because I've been focused elsewhere. the fish were in the tank doing well and my focus was on letting the algae be the plant at that point. I've moved that 10G tank to a 29G tank and that's where I'm trying to "figure it out" with regards to getting the algae to back off and the Anubias to come back. Please be sure to let us know how the lighting goes for you and how things change over time. Best of luck!

100 Agreed. This is why I've brought us all here... 😂 I assume there's a good reason why we have the 3 bottles available. Just thinking, what on earth would even make sense for a 4th. Maybe it's just a mix of 2-4 common deficiencies for when the plants need a boost? I'm not sure. I am someone who just wants to have a nice tank, let it do it's thing, and let it be well. Something like a dosing pump, whenever I do have one of those, makes my life a bit easier and I can passively give the tanks what they need. I wish I was better at plants and something like easy green has made that remotely possible. There's a big responsibility to calling something "Easy" and I know Cory and the ACO take that pretty seriously and spend a lot of time trying to get everything right for the consumers! It's not an easy task, that's for sure.

I would recommend having the air pump and adjusting it so it's basically silent. I have a tank next to me, it has 2 sponges and a ziss bubble bio, I can't hear it. This isn't by choice. I am constantly looking over to make sure it actually has power to the air pump. If you use something like a gang valve, the ziss airstones that you can adjust, you can tune it so you literally don't hear anything and have pretty awesome aeration. I really don't recommend having a shrimp tank without air at minimum. They will try to get out of the tank and find some flow, higher flow water, oxygenated water, and shrimp are pretty awesome are crawling around the house when they decide they want to. The exchange would also benefit feeding the plants CO2.

I feel like this leads to me trying to borrow a microscope and identify these worms I have. LOL Nice work. As always, very interesting stuff.

I have the exact same issue. After 2-3 days of it being in the tank and not sinking I gave up and got new food.

Hey everyone, I am simply curious. We have a ton of amazing planted tanks and it feels like the next step, if there ever was going to be one, would be an Easy Potassium. Some plants need a bit more than usual and I think this is likely the only one you'd want to specifically dose / offer at times. Maybe even something like the Nano version of Easy Green is a good way to offer this product? Seachem has some of the liquid potassium available, that's honestly my only barometer for what could be useful to singularly dose to fix common plant deficiencies. What is the most common deficiency? What is the one that makes the most sense for the next product in the line?

There are some plants that get red based on high light, others that get red based on having high growth / CO2 / "being healthy". I couldn't tell you which is which, but there's definitely some options that might not require CO2. Something like Scarlet Temple is a good one to look into also and it's a plant where people can get it to grow and it changes colors based on parameters.

Root Feeder: Dwarf Hairgrass. Especially when it's short. I really appreciate it when there is a uniqueness to the plant and having an underwater lawn is just very unique to me. It almost always looks good. Stem: Hm, probably the most difficult one to answer because there is so many options. Staurogyne Repens and Hygrophilia Pinnatifida are very unique and look really nice to me. SR reminds me of something like mint plants, very nice. HP is new to me, but I have seen a billion photos and I am looking forward to actually being able to have some around. Honorable mention, Bacopa, especially when used in a pond. Floater: Salvinia mini. It's not as frustrating as duckweed, looks nice, short roots, and it is just easy to manage compared to a lot of other floaters. Pond: Mosaic plants. Hands down, they just look awesome. The only knock on those plants is that they aren't lillies and those flowers are definitely wonderful. Rhizome: Anubias, any variety. Specifically I'll recommend coffeefolia and my second favorite being nana petite. A second one for this category is this plant, it's very similar to java fern, but a bit broader leaves. It's sold a lot as El Nino fern (Bolbitis Heteroclita). It's a very unique, fun plant. I had success with it once, removed the thread on the rhizome and then never could get it to grow again. Very small rhizome! I'll give you one more.... Carpeting plant: Easily for me this is Staurogyne Repens

My guess is that because you have a planted tank, 0 nitrates, the light is allowing the algae to do it's thing. I would recommend reducing light power slightly, try to use that as a main method for fighting the algae. Slowly introduce your fertilizers, but keep in mind that the algae itself is going to fight for that because everything is at 0 right now. The "safest" way to push things back, especially with green hair algae, would be to blackout the tank for a week, then try to give the plants what they need. This would kill the algae, let the plants recover, and then they would be able to grow once the algae is off of the leaves. Keep an eye on new growth, if you're having any. If the algae is taking over new growth, reduce lighting. It is though! 1. CO2 comes on (before lights on) 2. Lights come on, CO2 is available for plants at this time. 3. CO2 is used up, then the tank enters siesta 4. Lights resume lighting window, CO2 is again available for the plants.

I do the same thing with a specimen container.

I think it really depends on the tank itself, the setup. Here is a pretty awesome, recent video of a barb breeder, and it was my first exposure to how they breed and how setups like this can be used. Pretty interesting little tour. I think one of the easiest ways, is one you mentioned, using an airline tube as a siphon. If you have a tank near it, or a bucket you can place higher than the tank, you can gently refill the tank with this method. You can even take a 5G bucket and drill a ball valve into it and then use that as your gravity pump so to speak. Here is a video on the airline method, pretty awesome little trick. It should be queued up to the airline part specifically. Another easy option is to just have the fry baskets floating, you lift them out of the water and then place them back into the tank, that essentially gives you the water change. this is a method Dean showed off by using a paint strainer as his fry basket. If you simply have a smaller size tank, I'd honestly just recommend using a potting pitcher like you would for the garden. The flow should be pretty easy to control and you can be gentle about it with water changes. You can take something like your hand, a towel, a plate, something that stands up to water (tupperware lid) and then pour the water onto that surface and ease the flow even more for the fry. Depending on setup, that seems to be a good way to handle things.

The wood is nice! Here's a video of Cory discussing how to plant the bulb. I think all you really need to do is set it on the substrate and then bury the roots themselves. This would free up the log to be decor itself and not be stuck with where it is to hide roots. The plant also might be happier because it can have an easier time feeding from the roots. It's a great looking plant, you've done well.

Do you aerate the water while it's sitting? Yeah, they tend to have some pretty cheap pumps. Make sure you're cleaning the impeller on it.

The horror!!!!!! Lol. I feel bad for them. I cut my hand open, trying to let it heal and then I'll end up cleaning the HoB and try to grab some worm pics for y'all. Hopefully nothing is there, but I don't have high hopes.

Stability: Bacteria in a bottle, only really needed when you first setup a tank, usually about 7-14 days. Pristine: Not recommended for use Prime: Water conditioner, removes heavy metals, binds ammonia, etc. I don't recall if pristine+prime causes issues, but I want to mention that there's a few products sold that contain chemicals that bind ammonia and we've had issues reported before where people were dosing both chemicals and that resulted in essentially dumping a massive amount of seachem prime + seachem prime (with other stuff, labelled differently) and caused issues with the fish. Seachem's website recommends dosing prime no more than once every 24-36 hours. It works long after it's been added to the water and will continue to work in the aquarium. When you change your water, you're going to want to add in the water itself to the tank, then dose the entire volume of water of the tank (5G). If you prefer to dose the water itself, add the water to a bucket, dose the bucket accordingly, and then add that water to the tank. I usually wait 3-5 minutes just for the sake of doing so. That being said, you don't need to use anything else during normal water changes beyond a typical water conditioner. It looks like everything is a cartridge based filter, and it sounds like you've modified it to add your own media / foam to the filter. This is the best way to run it and it sounds like you're doing everything right. I would recommend starting by verifying that you don't have ammonia leeching off the root tabs, that the ammonia isn't exponentially being added to the water column somehow. Finding out where the ammonia is coming from is the first problem. I would also test your tap water to verify the water itself as well as after off-gassing. 1. Take a sample of water from the tap, test everything you can. 2. Aerate the water for 24 hours and then retest. 3. Compare the results of #2 to your tank to get an idea of what's being added to the tank every time you do a water change. Secondly, if you're main concern is overfeeding, I would suggest you stop feeding the fish for 3-5 days. This will give the fish a chance to push out anything internally that may be causing discomfort as well as relax a little bit from all of the stress of all the water changes. If the fish is backed up, and you're trying to feed them, it might cause more damage. Stopping food is the best way to remove that as a factor. Third, fin rot, it's a gram negative bacteria and clean water helps, but I would also make sure you have the proper medications on hand in the case you need to treat it with medicine.

more flow means the CO2 is in the water column instead of going to the surface. more flow, but not necessarily more surface agitation. It also, as mentioned, just means that the plants in hard to reach areas, the full water column is dosed and not just one side of the tank. The same issue is prevalent with heaters on long tanks.

Good to know @Biotope Biologist I think my plan for now is just to go with the silica / black sand for the sake of ease. Depending on price, the normal aquarium stuff might actually be cheaper, ironically, in my area. I can't imagine floating glass will do well in a seachem tidal skimmer.

Trim it short and it'll expand on the substrate and carpet for ya. I'm assuming it's a stem plant, you can just trim it so it's 1" long and then take the tops of each of the stems and plant those into the substrate to push the carpet out. There are ways to adapt lighting to encourage it to grow wide vs. tall as well. Missed it on the notes, but plant the Val on the back, center of the tank. I would try to revitalize the moss. Pull it, cut it into 1/4" sections and the re-glue it to the log you have to try to get it to carpet on the surface. If you need to, move the log slightly to give the Lily some room to exist.

I very much enjoy how you did those pots. Second time I've seen it today and it's such a nice way to give them cover and a little maze to boogie through.

I see some anubias in your future. PSO is a GREAT and easy plant. Bacopa Caroliniana as well seems to be tolerant to my mistakes. The plant you have in the back, middle is actually a version of bacopa, so that's an easy one to one replacement and you can get your feet wet with plants!

I felt bad, she was getting swarmed hard. They had already done the T and she was struggling to get away to lay the eggs without being followed. Tonight, things are going again it looks like.