nabokovfan87

I have a LFS saltwater shop (because none freshwater) and they have 2-4 tanks for fish, usually empty, and mostly just sell corals and a few items. I was working on breeding amano shrimp and paid 3x the price for a refractometer I later saw from amazon.... the exact same one they just sold me..... for much cheaper. It happens. As long as you do your research and know what things are worth, you'll protect yourself as a consumer.

some corydoras can be immensely temperamental to things like light, vibration, or an audience. They can come off as very picky or extremely piggish eaters. I would try something like feeding right when the lights ding on or right after the lights go off and make sure they have an open section to eat on while they have a covered section to hide if need be. When I feed I almost never see them eat these days. I drop food in and leave it, sit back 5+ feet from the tank and observe them and sometimes they will eat right away. At other times, they are just extremely picky or shy towards me. Having a lot of cover really, really helps the behavior because they just go and do their thing. Keep in mind that you're talking about 2 corydoras. Getting the number up to ~25 is about where I see them just ignore the world and go full blown herd mode on me. They just act like tank bosses and graze all over. If you can get 8-15 in the tank it would help a lot with their comfort and behavior, but I understand you do have some low numbers at times.... I have as well. Lastly, if you want to or are able to get a feeding dish! It helps them to find the food, but it also helps you to know they're eating the food you drop. 🙂 Welcome to the forums! ^^ This was the first time the pandas ever were introduced to the food or the first couple of feedings for the food I was trying out in the case of the black corydoras.

you'd basically want to run something like bleach through it via a small pump or something..... It's really tough to say. You're best case would be bleach at a sterilization dose and something like a pipette/pipe cleaner. I don't think it's worth it, honestly. Airline is pretty cheap out there depending how much you need. Someone might donate you some for a plant trimming or something.

Yeah, it seems to be a common thing. @modified lung how do you manage yours?

Drain the water to the height of your net, then be persistent and if need be remove hardscape. Meds for a lot of the fin stuff would be aquarium salt, botanicals, and kanaplex.

I can only imagine.... the wonderful things you made with that. Man I am hungry for some italian food all of a sudden. 😂 I read the thread and had to giggle a little, my mom's side of the family, they are the Baker's. (Literally) It's one of those things where I absolutely have the skill, but not the patience to bake. If I needed to knock out a pie or desert or whatever it was, totally can, but I much prefer the free form style of just cooking some good food. Nothing beats homemade pie, chocolate chip cookies, and some of the winter holiday foods. I am going to have to make some gingerbread soon after seeing @Chick-In-Of-TheSea cookies. Kind of looking forward to it!

Cutting a garlic clove breaks its cells and releases stored enzymes that react with oxygen. That triggers healthy sulfide compounds, such as allicin, to form. Letting the chopped garlic stand for 10 to 15 minutes before cooking allows the compounds to fully develop before heat inactivates the enzymes. It's about how garlic works. It gets "slimey" when you cut the cell wall because of the chemical reaction. Then something like steam as well as washing it can cut down on that slime. My opinion is that there's nothing beneficial in terms of health with that removed and if it's a matter of healthy as opposed to unhealthy, you're heating the garlic and there's not much left there in terms of what garlic is traditionally viewed as. Yes there's going to be some nutrients, but similar to boiling a vegetable too long that goes to mush, there's a lot less than there once was. (hopefully that makes sense) Some foods use rosemary, maybe that's a better route to go than garlic. https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/unlocking-the-benefits-of-garlic/

I cut the shorter branch off and then arch it as mentioned above. You basically can't to much with a big Y shape piece unless you're making a slingshot or something, but having different lengths and branch cuts gives the wood some interest visually. It looks "more natural" as opposed to one cut across two branches in the original piece. I would cut it here if the piece is just a really bizarre shape to use. The small piece can be used in a fry tank or just used elsewhere as a detail piece. The way I use my curved piece of wood is to either wrap it around rocks that fit the shape and it looks like roots growing across the surface of the tank, very common technique, or as a lean-to style setup against a wall or larger hardscape. This gives the fish some cover as well as something to swim through.

We just call them water bugs/water beetles here. (West coast)

There's a few main ways to do this. I cannot speak to vacuuming with the loaches, but with the shrimp I am one of the few I think that thoroughly cleans the sand in my tank. We do have a tripod so I can try to record it for the journal one day. Basically: Option A. Use a net or a pain strainer to strain shrimp that might be siphoned up. Option B. Just ignore the shrimp and go ahead and siphon like its any other tank. Try not to send them for a ride, of course, but also be sure to check the buckets and any filtration (sponges) before you turn the water to brown gunk. Option C. Try to clear a section of the tank as best you can and go very intently, but slowly through a section. Be on alert and be able to pinch the siphon hose for the sake of needing to let a baby shrimp or shrimp swim back into the tank from the siphon tube. Option D. Use a tea strainer+food container (idea from marks shrimp tanks) or pantyhose or something on the end of the siphon to keep shrimp out and proceed as normal. Some tips and tricks.... Move hard scape and feeding dishes before you start the siphon, feed the tank on one side and come back in 10-15 minutes. That should move the shrimp to one side of the tank and let you clean the other half. Next week, you have one side that should be fairly clean and you just clean the other half. It is almost critical to keep the shrimp feeding area clean. The reason for this is because all that detritus, waste, and food ends up in one concentrated section. Not cleaning that up regularly is one of the easiest ways people get hydra, planaria, or detritus worms en masse in their colonies. Mentioned above, but practice and be able to siphon by "pumping" which is to say the technique Cory shows in his video where you pause the flow and the debris goes into the siphon tube. Because of that, then you can inspect for shrimp each time you turn on the pump/flow. What this does is allows you to seriously slow down the rate of water you remove as well. This means lower volume and stress on the shrimp to top off the tank after maintenance as well. Which gives you the flexibility to use as much or as little water as you want. For those that drip water back in, very effective methodology! Shrimp will "learn" to avoid the siphon. They learn the routine and they learn that it's not their friend. At first shrimp will go towards flow and it's pretty common for them to follow that path. Over time they will basically stop that behavior due to understanding what it's for. It's just something I've noticed with both types of shrimp I keep. Flip aquatics talks about this and their method is to keep a very small layer of substrate to help with letting the air remove the debris. I've never had the strongest of air pumps be as effective as a siphon, even on a bare bottom tank. That being said, potentially that helps.

The real interesting thing there is that the majority of anubias sold is based of barteri. Here we just call a lot of it nana or nana petite, but all of the ones we see and think of as "anubias" and the common size versions are all from barteri and names as such on certain plant sites with the details or places like tropica.

🤞 For sure hoping! I am anxiously awaiting to add to the herd. It'll be a new one for me to see how they do with the shrimp. There is a ton of little critters in there and I sat there one night and watched them crawl all over the wood, purely ignored by the shrimp. Always so interesting this tank seems to be. Pretty sure one of my female amanos spent all day checking every sword lead for eggy snacks. 😂

Keep an eye out. If you ever see redness like that start with adding some air. You can add in some salt too just for a week to help them perk up.

I see two or three of my favorite anubias! Congratulations on the awesome haul. 😁

Plants can go ~14 days without light and be pretty fine. 7 days is usually for a blackout. Best case you kill some algae off. No big deal at all, they'll be good.

Eggs moved this morning. It'll be the first time I give the shrimp a go at raising them for me. I added some mulberry leaves to each tank (they smell pretty amazing). I ended up swapping the heater in the shrimp tank before I took off for the day. It was running a bit cool and I'm not sure if it's the heater or if it's the flow. We'll see! I did leave all the eggs on the bottom of the sword plants, thank you again @AllFishNoBrakes, and they will do their thing. I love colony breeding the letting the eggs and parents raise them. They really, usually do a good job. This also might be one of the last times for Grace to raise up more corydoras fry for me.

Had a weird day, watched an amazing movie, and started to get to bed thinking a whole lot about a few things that matter in life. I was a bit frustrated, seems fine... So no concern there for right now, and I just need to keep an eye on fish behavior and how the fish are doing. I went ahead and turned the lights on so I could check them tonight before bed. The pups are tucked away and all the stuff done and I look into the tank. All of the floating plants definitely didn't make it and they are all dead, not surprised at all. I went ahead and checked the fish, they seem ok. Grace was up front and in my face trying to get attention. Water change is tomorrow, so I can do a good clean and check everything again. I'll be out of the house helping with some stuff and so it'll be a long day. The cut on my finger.... Might just put things off and only clean the sponge filter. (Yep, these are the things that we all think about before bed, right!?) There's very few things I know for certain, but universally speaking one thing I have learned and feel is a pretty solid lesson is that: you don't get to choose how you learn. Needless to say you might learn something and you're never going to be ready for it, expect it, or be able to fully understand it in the moment. Sometimes it could take a few weeks to fully grasp something, other times years. The main theme of tonight's movie was to understand what you want, to hope for it. If you don't know what you want, then you can't ask for it.... Among other things. So what do I want right now? Some plants to show up that are delayed. Fish to be healthy. Fish to be happy. The tank to be thriving. There's a lot of things I could hope for. A few days ago I woke up and had a single thought. I was working on the tank the day before and it was day 2 of sitting and staring. It was that moment where you stare at the tank, at the scape, and where you just try to understand if it's good, good enough, or needs some love. I woke up and I just felt really happy with the tank. It had taken 3-4 attempts to get some plants moved and it's not complete, but I'm actually happy with the style and setup. I've never done a triangle layout and seems to be the way the tank is speaking to me. I love having an open area for the corydoras again too. So what do I see when I check in the tank? It seems they're ok with it too. A bit late on their yearly adventures, but I'm quite ok with it and happy to see it. I'll check on things tomorrow. I get the feeling they just started this afternoon.

Hoping for the best.

That is what I'm confused about. Mine didn't build up. Its like I removed it all with a 40%WC even though I added a little booster back in. I think ill just try to repeat what I did and keep better track with tests this time to see when things actually happen. yep exactly! Let's say the tank was 100... your tap is 60. If we "math it out": 100 ppm for 60% (water left in the tank) 60 ppm for 40% (water added to the tank) = your solution that was 100 ppm is still 100 ppm and you're diluting down the ppm. That "balance" of how much to add back in, how much to remove to keep water quality in check.... it's a balance! But it'll get easier. Once you get it dialed in, test once a month or something and you should be able to maintain things with ease.

Can you take a packet and split it into 5 "doses" and then add that in through the week? Is that stable for longer as it's not dissolved?

Ok. See if you can get your hands on that. They may have blackwater extract or botanicals in the betta fish sections. You could also use a piece of wood if available. Dose would be 1 tbsp per 2 Gallons of water. If you have live plants, it is recommended to move them while dosing in salt. Depending which plants are in the tank, some will do just fine with the salt in there (like anubias or ferns)

Thanks! This is my 55G --> 75G tank setup over time. 🙂 it had a small interlude in a 29G tank for a few months after moving.

OK @Dzoni . First off, welcome to the forums. @Colu and @Odd Duck would be the best to ask regarding the issue you're experiencing. There's a few things we can do while we wait for advice and guidelines. One of those is to go through what you have on hand and what would or could be beneficial in the long term. My gut tells me that this damage might be slightly permanent given the severity. 1. With any sort of ammonia or nitrite burns you can use aquarium salt to reduce the risk of damage. It also can be used for any external issues and at times of stress to help with thing like osmoregulation or removing external parasites. (it dehydrates them) 2. Botanicals can be used for antibacterial and antifungal properties. 3. Given the wound is smooth and not wool or cotton like, this points towards a bacterial issue. Meds like maracyn would be advised. 4. If this is caused by an external parasite, the location would point towards something like gill flukes or other protozoan issues. Ich-X is a med that could be used for protozoan as well as paracleanse for gill flukes. Let us know what, if anything of the above you have on hand. Aquarium salt is the easiest to get your hands on as well as botanicals.

Yes (and yes) both of those is alleged/reported to happen. Basically, the initial dose will impact the tank and then the buffer particles dissolve. Secondarily, they are reported to "fall off" and after a few weeks stop impacting the water. I cannot verify this as it's not something I've experienced. KH gets used up as the tank generates ammonia and I think that might be the source of the confusion. I have had GH and KH build up over time when using buffers, not drop off.