nabokovfan87

Yes. Photos would be very fun. I bet they are all named bandit. 😃 I think Otos is a very fun project, especially zebra otos so you can sell us some on the forums! I think Otos can work with a lot of species, potentially with some bolivian rams. (or dean's dark ram's if you can get your hands on some!) I would say a 29G. They are going to spend some time on the glass and having more glass is good for them, especially with aufwuchs on it. Mine liked their caves, so maybe clay pots and stuff or those hotels might work as a surface for them (if you use a smaller tank).

Update for you..... I have 4+ females spawning as we speak. They still prefer the anubias, but to be fair it's still a gigantic ball of BBA / algae and it's very difficult for them to lay on the anubias because it's a small variety they are trying to lay in. I also caught one laying on a rolled up seachem tidal media bag that's sitting on a sponge filter. She did try to lay on the glass, opted not to, and went back to the anubias. I don't know if I'll end up with fry, but there's a LOT of movement in the cory herd tonight. That's what ya get for feeding vibra bites! I apologize if the video is dark. I do keep this tank pretty dim because it receives artificial and ambient light most of the day. Hopefully the info is beneficial for your studies!

I have probably 2 years worth of unopened carbon from filters I am finally going to be able to use! It'll be nice.... It's a good thing when you don't have to use it, a good sign, but I think everyone shouldn't be afraid to use it when they need to or wish to. I actually don't think you need to replace the filter at all, just modify it! Pondguru does this a lot and you learn a lot about how to modify them with his channel. Here's Cory's video, it's a fun one.

I was reading a tangentially related topic. They mentioned specifically zeolite to deal with chloramines.

Does anyone have experience with the glass variety of "pool filter sand"? I am doing research on my end because of trying to understand pool filter sand and it's use in the industry, why it would or wouldn't work for the aquarium. There is 3 main varieties: silica, zeolite, or glass. We all know what zeolite is. The case for glass over traditional silica sand is because it's used in the case of where a pool might have algae issues. It also, potentially, has an ability to filter out finer particles, but most importantly it's made from a recycled material and is potentially better longer term. Here's one example, and of course the price is much higher than usual due to it being on amazon. I am not sure what it would be at a local pool supply store. https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Glass-40-Lbs-Bag/dp/B00WES8YGS/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=HARSCO+METALS+%26+MINERALS&qid=1657168793&sr=8-2 My assumptions: 1. It's probably a good idea to tumble it for "a while" to break sharp edges down and allow for a softer edge for any tank with bottom dwelling fish. 2. It can potentially be contaminated, as it's a recycled product. Rinse it well. 3. May or may not have a very specific color and look that could look bad. Difficult to say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_California)

I'll check back in the thread, but this makes me wonder what filtration is on the tank/system. (Edit: Ok so I see two sponges.... the investigation continues) ^^ It might help stability to add some hardscape. Lava rocks or something. Just more things for bacteria to grow on that isn't wood or sponge. I think what you have is perfectly fine and will work, but I just wanted to mention it for the sake of trying to give you some options if you run into issues. Adding the pots also works! Very fun reading this! Love it. omg........ Poor little anubias! 😱 The one on the right I am guessing is barteri/coffefolia? What is that one on the left! I like it.... very beautiful!

Agreed, that is peculiar. Especially with amanos. Potentially the corys were more sensitive than the amanos. Needless to say, if the tank has a heater, I'd verify it's working properly. I'd verify temperature in some way as well if you're using one of the glass thermometers (sometimes the little paper inside can move). I recently had an issue in my personal tank where amanos were stressed. I asked on the forums regarding the issue and they showed signs of redness. If you see some redness (shell color) compared to the normal black or clear coloration, I would note that here as well. If you don't, that's a good sign. Is it possible there was a power failure and filtration stopped? I have had corys survive an extended power outage.

I think your assumption about temperature makes a lot of sense. Did the shrimp have issues and look "cooked"? Does the tank have a lid or is there some way to keep the tank lower (if desired to do so)? I have seen it, haven't used it, but it's basically just something to give you a constant reading. I would recommend using the strips.

I believe it's going to be something where you do it as needed. If you see them eating but with sunken bellies, then you'd want to treat accordingly. Whether it was done a year ago, or 2 weeks ago. Welcome to the forum! @mountaintoppufferkeeper What is your regime like for internal parasites?

It's basically just saying you need to have a cycled tank. Essentially there's a variety of ways to view a tank as "cycled" and there's a set of parameters people use for fish only, planted, or other tank setups. One of the main things we do when starting a tank is get impatient. Testing gives us gates. The logic being, when you go from gate 1-3, then you can add fish. We want to see ammonia turn into nitrite and then nitrite into nitrate. The first gate is pretty easy to get to. Have a box with some water, aeration, flow, movement, and it takes a very short amount of time if there is something for the bacteria to thrive on. Getting from nitrite to nitrate takes a little while longer. Something like weeks longer by comparison. It doesn't mean that you will or won't see nitrates, I just mean that to have enough bacteria to handle load you're talking about a much longer process than simply getting ammonia into nitrite. From my view, with bacteria in a bottle, you can have a tank up in 14ish days. If you're not dosing daily for a week, then I honestly think you should wait minimum 1 month. It takes about a week, sometimes two for the first stage and then several weeks later for the nitrates to show up. Then you're waiting for stability. THIS is where people make mistakes. THIS is where people dump a ton of fish and bioload and cause issues. Input X ppm of ammonia from food and waste, then how long does it take for that to be cycled into nitrite and nitrate. How strong is the bacteria colonies in your tank? Stability reduces stress, patience gives you stability. Agreed!

It depends on how much. You can add salt to alleviate things like ammonia / nitrite damage. If you're under 1 (I know, very difficult to read at times), then you should be ok to let the tang try to handle it. The point here is to monitor it daily and just keep an eye out on major swings. Instead of a daily change, maybe every other day or once a week can be sufficient.

If you're dosing bacteria daily, it should be about a week. You're partially there with nitrites showing and nitrates should be 2-3 weeks for it to be fully cycled. If I *had to guess* that would be my safest estimate. That being said, I don't think you need to do daily WCs with nitrites. Here is a really good guide by the co-op. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/water-changes https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/nitrogen-cycle

I'd recommend GE filters (what we have on the fridge and they have in-line filters) it's very similar to what you see with the zerowater. But, absolutely, the idea of the tank to precondition some water is going to be good. Take some lava rock from the garden section, use that as substrate, then have your aquaclear as your filter and add some carbon in as a safety measure. As for the undersink, I would highly recommend calling or emailing that company and see if they can help out. For your own use as well as the fish, it's pretty important to get those dealth with. From their website: If anything, you'd want to add a 4th stage and double up on the GC filter. I believe something like this would work and you'd be able to add it at the beginning or end of your current setup and just replace which cartridges are where.

Test results: PH: 7.0-7.4 (difficult for me to read) KH: 60 GH: 300+ Temp: 76 Nitrite: 0 Nitrate: 10-15 Issues: Worms 😩 I have been sick and so has the house, so things have been sparse. Please forgive me if I miss something or repeat something mentioned previously. I'll attach a thread above for what I've been trying to diagnose and deal with. I am being told and am in agreement that these are very, very likely detritus worms. There's a few reasons it could've happened, but the point of mentioning the story is that it happened and I need to find a way to deal with them long term. Attempt 4: Hopefully these plants take hold! I got the new plants today and just finished adding them to the tank. I inspected for nasty things, but honestly anything that would come into the tank is going to get treated for next week. Snails I can deal with (didn't see any, don't want any) and everything else should be handled by removing these worms. The idea being with this batch is that I desperately need to add some plant load to push back this algae for good!!!! I have added 2 stem plants, moss, susswassertang, and re-planted more of the dwarf hairgrass as well as staurogyne repens. I tried to get plants from a different source simply because I was trying to get a few plants not offered by the co-op. I have been trying to get susswassertang for bordering on 2 years and have yet to find a good source. I found some on steel mesh (not a fan, it's cut up my fish before) and opted to superglue that mat to some suction cups and stick it on the glass. I also added my giant seiryu stone for the sake of balance on the aquascape as well as having a location for the moss that will be a nice little wall for the corys to lay their eggs on. (Think, fern canyon wall in northern California) I also got the little anubias nana petite and stuck the guy back on his spot. I apologize every time it gets dislodged during a water change, but I am trying moreso to be gentle with my refills. I HOPE, desperately, that these plants take off. When they show signs of receding, I am planning to turn on the CO2 tank and just go full swing back into trying to have a fully planted tank again. The stuff that's very small is the older plants that I've had for a while now. Behind the S. Repens is some Hyrgophilia Pinatifida (and some hairgrass to start the carpet on the left side) The little guy and his little amano friend. You can also see the new vs. old DHG on the right there. Tissue culture moss on the rock, the substrate is now sloped pretty heavily front to back (higher in the back) and the rocks provide a higher level and can hold up a section for the plants behind. Once the DHG does decide to grow outward it will fill the front area and hopefully progress leftward to fill the carpet out. I'm trying to show the side mounted mat here. It's not perfect but I think it will hold. I might have to go around the mat edge with some silicone or superglue to try and seal any sharp edges. I'll mess with it the next WC if it has any issues. I had half a mind to try to install it into a hang-on box and give it lower flow. At this point, hopefully something decides to take off and the suss stays around this time. The stem shown here was purchased as a potted plant, it wasn't. It was a plant that was from trimmings and stuck inside a miniature pot and had some rock wool to keep it in the pot. ZERO roots. We'll see how it goes and needless to say I'm pretty mystified at why in the heck I had to pay an extra few dollars for a pot when I didn't get one. You live and learn. Anyways, it's a purple version of a bacopa species. I do have some iron on hand if need be and it's going to be very near where the CO2 will be mounted (below the skimmer). My hope is that things can take hold, I can finish with meds, drop in CO2 and see it go nuts.

You can get a water pitcher of zerowater from something like walmart for pretty cheap. Something like a britta filter won't work as well but may also do the trick. I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying you should convert over 55G at a time, but perhaps it's an easy/affordable way to test out the filtration method used and to see if those types of media used to filter water would work for you. I imagine the system you have is something like this? Stage 1: membrane filter Stage 2: Carbon block Stage 3: fine particle filter (potentially another chemical filter internally) This is another setup: Depending how yours is setup, it should have something with carbon to remove stuff like that. Potentially you can add another block/filter. They make them so they can be modified from 3 to 5 stage filters. Essentially, you're looking at something like this in your hang on back (or just a bag of carbon in a media bag). https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/carbon-infused-media-pad If you can setup something to precondition water, especially on a 55G setup, you'd need 25-40G ready at any one time. I really like this idea! That's a good one. Set the water in there with an AC and just have a carbon bag in the HoB, replace it every few months.

They look giant! 😂 If you have something bigger it might eat them. The ones as food are generally pretty small from what I have seen. Pecktec just did a video about live foods with someone who grows batches and batches of different varieties of live foods. It's a cool one to check out. also... This video shows how to make the trap.

It looks like some contamination on the testing which can make it difficult to read the results. Here's an example video to show what can cause it. I would highly recommend having a towel or paper towel when waiting for the test results to process. I have the same brand you're using and haven't seen any discoloration like that before!

Is this sand still in the tank? Welcome to the forum! I am in a similar situation, so I understand the struggle. I have had a lot better success using the seachem stuff for additives in addition to something like easy green. I have iron on hand, which will be eventually replaced with easy iron due to ease of use. There is a video by Bentley Pascoe and an older talk by Cory and Lamont that's pretty in depth. If you haven't checked either of those out, I would recommend doing so. I am certain you understand how, but it's always good to take a step back and high level view of basic things to make sure something easy isn't missed.

Yeah, I'm considering getting one for the new plants until this is figured out as well.

Frogs are just too awesome. One of my favorite animals.

Definitely a good nano filter for me, especially if I can make some sort of a pre-filter. Why they didn't bother designing an actual intake is hillariously bad to me. I saw a video of someone who had moved recently and they thought they "lost the intake" and didn't set it up. I had a little giggle on that one. I do have an idea / recommendation for final mods, but I want to run some more tests. Given the issue on my tank (diseases section) right now with the parasites and how heavily it's impacting the filtration I don't want to pass information without running more tests. I appreciate all the feedback. More coming, soonish when I can run 3-4 more tests!

It's from a "big box store" and is guaranteed to have some recycled particles. It's a byproduct of coal mining as well. The link I sent is from the manufacturer of the product at the store that you linked to. Same people 🙂 A magnet is your best friend, they specifically make magnets for this purpose. https://www.amazon.com/SE-Magnetic-Separator-Pick-Up-Release/dp/B009RLGDPE/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=hand+magnet&qid=1657128638&sr=8-4 Here is the "fancy" version. https://www.amazon.com/AJC-070-MS-10-Inch-Magnetic-Sweeper/dp/B00002252O/ref=sr_1_31?keywords=hand+magnet&qid=1657128691&sr=8-31

I'm not sure if it is a help without having a side by side comparison, but this is what I'm finding.

Whenever we decide to setup one here (california) my plan is to use rice fish.

It is actual metal. A lot of times the sand is recycled and you have things that are screened out, but particles get through. "Lower quality" products will use higher volume of recycled materials and not have as good of a process in place to clean the material before re-sale. https://www.blackdiamondabrasives.com/protect/ It is a medium used for sand blasting, so it can have basically small portions of "whatever" was sandblasted, typically metal.