nabokovfan87

Well. I need all the isometric views! LOL If the one in the middle is a leaf, they all look like leaves to me then. If I'm remembering correctly, it'll send out a stalk and then that opens up to flower. Been a long time since I've seen mine doing that though.

It looks like it could be. Difficult to say right now.

If you haven't seen it. Worth a watch. Texture, color, location, size of the mop all can be relevant.

Definitely interesting! I look forward to seeing what you uncover.

Canister for the 75. Id run your AC110

yes If all the active ingredients are identical and are at the same %, then I would say it's likely they are similar. However, there may be some other stuff in there that's not listed, and all anyone can say is "it hasn't been verified yet. I used the API stuff for a long time and recently ordered everything from the co-op for meds so I have some on hand. My others had expired, I need to treat my fish, but it's just something where I wish to have something on hand than a risk of something going poorly and I lose my tank again. I do have prazipro, but I also ordered the other 2 meds that are used to treat internal parasites. I plan to run the med trio for a week (going to follow the directions) and then I plan to give the fish a break, and treat with the final med from the ACO for internal parasites. I hope that covers everything, but the entire point here..... I understand the frustration you're going through. I would ask, what are your water parameters? When you go to the local shop, please ask them what their parameters are for comparison. How are you acclimating fish?

Anubias might be perfect, what does the tank look like?

Interesting. I basically try to hose it off, power wash it as best I can with a hard spray. Then I boil it / soak it as need be. It's interesting because there may have been some residuals on the surface that didn't get off with only a short soak, especially if the surface wasn't cleaned off and then the snails went to town on it. If you see the color of the mulm as similar to the wood, it's likely from that. If it is the color of the food, could likely be from that. I would expect the snails to be all over the wood. If it's algae it's going to be black, tan/brown/red, or green/blue-green.

I literally only know of two, well 3. The eheim one, the ACO one, and the giant one that Cory used on the 800G. Maybe you can find the one he used on the 800G? But it's not cheap. The eheim ones work fine, but you do need to tape the exit, usually. https://youtu.be/fAv0q3YKtT8?t=253

Should work absolutely fine. If you have issues you can just up the flow on the air and they should filter the tank well.

You can definitely target feed them after the lights go out too.

Very likely is just where the flow settles. I didn't have any issue with the black flourite that you're using. When you got the wood for the tank, how did you prep it? Do you see snails on the wood?

Sort of depends. Let me get a video for you. In my tank, nothing there. You can see about half of them, maybe 2/3rd. It's basically an Amano tank with some fish in it that sit on the bottom. They are somewhat sensitive to light and do tend to be way more active after the lights go out. If they have wood, you might see them a bit more active but that's down to personality. Some of mine would honestly just hide all day underneath the wood. Edit: The tank started getting dark and it's lights out for them. They all scattered from food when I turned it on so I grab a video tomorrow. 🙂

What a weird one today. It's sunday, so the obligatory WC happened. I decided to attempt to use the python on the 29G tank. I realized I can hook up the hose to the python (and not need to detach the hose from the spigot) and then I can move the end of the python where I need it to drain for the sake of watering the plants and stuff. It was a neat little "trick" I realized helps out slightly. The exercise of using the python only really makes sense for me to do so when I'm not cleaning the filters because I don't have anything to squeeze sponge into. In the tank in the front of the house, it's only running on sponge to make it easier to clean, so this was just a "test" of ease so to speak. I'm standing there watching the siphon do it's thing and I realized why the background never stuck to the back of the tank. I felt slightly derpy, but it's been a stressful few week so I'll excuse myself. The local winds get into the insane speeds here and it usually means 70+ MPH at the front door and when the door opens I had the background fly off the tank a few times. Right now I have it taped up to the back of the tank, but it's been 2 weeks or something and I just now realized the grid pattern that I was supposed to remove to expose the film itself which would adhere to the glass slightly better. It's not adhesive, but I felt slightly dumb for completely not noticing a grid on the tank. Especially given how often I've stared at this thing and the herd of pandas. I moved the decor a bit to give Grace the shark her space. I had pushed the sponges further into the corners, but she was laying vertical trying to keep her head covered. She has her wood in the tank now and it's her cave that she grew up with. It's got this little eye hole in it and she would always hear us in the room and poke her head out to see who it was. I'm hoping she goes back to that behavior, but I also know she wants to feel protected. Hopefully the slight tweak means she feels like she has a place to hide. What was pretty interesting was that I did find some bacterial slime on the underside of the lava rocks. It was a surprise of course, but makes a lot of sense. The flow on the tank is pretty decent and the underside of those rocks is probably the place the bacteria wants to be. I didn't clean the sponges themselves, but it'll be something I keep an eye on over the next two to three weeks. Since I don't have substrate on this tank, my hope is that I have an easier time keeping things clean with a quick gravel vac. I hope I don't have to lift up all the hardscape every time to get the gunk out. That's ultimately why the sponges are there. I added some boards to the bottom of the stand so I have something for chemicals and a place for the pump. It almost feels like the family tank is actually in place and doing well. I am excited for the day when I do get to wake up, see the kids eyeballing the panda herd or saying good morning to Grace and it's not just a thing that's there, but something they enjoy.

Very awesome! Congrats.

Hikari Crab Cuisine might be a good thing to feed them along with your bettas food. They will absolutely go after anything you put in the tank like little bandits! It is very likely you will see them release zoeys into the tank (baby shrimp) and potentially that is something the betta might eat. The shrimp unfortunately won't develop into fully grown amanos because they require brackish water to do so, but I always think it's a nice symbiotic relationship for my tanks that do have them.

I have two pretty good size pieces of mopani in my tank. The pandas have been with these pretty much ever since I've owned them. It was kept in a tub with a light on and far too many nitrates because I just couldn't do WCs. When I was able to move the fish out of the tub into the tank on dresser for winter the hardscape was decimated with BBA algae. It was so bad to the point where I was basically scrubbing it as hard as I could and it just laughed at me. I've since developed slightly better techniques to handle it and I am trying to reduce the hold this algae has on my hardscape and anubias. That being said for context, here has been my experience. My black corys don't use mops and I have never gotten them to reliably spawn. They did spawn once and it was near 100 eggs. Out of that spawn I managed to have 2 fry survive. (I now have the things on hand to pull eggs into a tumbler / breeder box). My pandas were in a 29G tank with Seiryu stone. I started with a few more, but after acclimation I ended up with 3 and now I have 25+. I got some variety of moss, not java moss, and I used that on my seiryu stone and that was the catalyst for them to spawn. I wasn't trying to spawn them, but I have seen eggs on the underside of these big pieces of mopani. I've seen them on the moss itself as well as on the glass. I can't be certain but I am pretty sure I have offered these pandas mops and they didn't use it either. There is a lot that goes into it, like the color of the moss itself. I do see them in the roots of anubias like you've described and I do see them in big bushes of plants trying to lay eggs. The big takeaway for me is that pandas just want their eggs hidden. They want to try to protect them from predators and they simply are trying to find a place where they have a good chance of survival. I wonder if this algae spot you've mentioned is simply better protected than other spots in the tank. I definitely think they "prefer" some surfaces over others. It might be the right texture, but not the right texture in the right place too. They can be pretty picky in my experience. I try to keep "things I know they like" in the tank and once they do use it, then I check it every so often or I will see a fry one night. In the same tank, they would lay eggs on PSO once it went crazy and was the right size to hide the eggs enough. One example of this, I have a really nice red lava rock that had a big bushel of anubias inside of it and it made this little cove for them to lay in. They do enjoy the bottom of anubias leaves, but because these leaves were in the corner of a tank and protected, they loved to lay on those leaves in that spot. I'm at this point too 😕 I don't know if I should scrape certain parts of the tank to give them a clean surface or not.

PH: 6.5-6.7 KH: ~60 GH: 300+ Temp: 76 Nitrite: 0 Nitrate: 15-20 *I added 1 tsp of Alkaline buffer to the tank during this WC* (50% WC) It's been an eventful week for this tank. I did move fish this week from my spare tank to a dedicated 29G tank in the living room. Long story short, this is in lieu of having the 75G community tank mentioned in the OP. This also gives me the freedom to dedicate the tank we are discussing here purely for these Black Corydoras and my Amano shrimp. I did see PH/KH start to drop off, but I think my fixes to the Seachem Tidal filter as well as the buffer during WC is going to keep things stable. Ironically, if I don't change water weekly, PH sharply crashes due to KH slowly falling from ~55 down to 40. I want to get the buffer high enough so that I can run things bi-weekly if need be. I do need the plants to take off. On that note, I do have CO2 ready to go. The last item I needed was distilled water for bubble counter. I did order meds for this tank and will be running those for an undetermined amount of time to ensure these fish are healthy before I try to push hard into CO2. I don't want to stain the equipment while running ich-X and overstress the fish. Once things are ready to go, I'll turn on the CO2. I replaced the older mechanical timer I had with the KASA/TP-Link version and it's much nicer to have that. Instead of plugging/unplugging things during WC I am now just simply having to push the button. Again, this simply means everything is ready to go whenever the time is right for the tank. I am still seeing new growth on the plants, but not as much as I'd like. I do think this is because I am not dosing enough (weekly after WC). I have tried to add a half dose mid week and will keep monitoring to see if this helps or hurts things. I did see this perk up the Staurogyne Repens ever so slightly. Right now everything is in flux, but the hope is things keep moving forward. I added 3-4 more amanos that were in my QT tank, upping the total to just under 15. There are some that are very small and the rest are larger size, much older. I also added 1 oto from the QT tank that brings the total to 4, potentially 5. I am anxious, excited, impatient, concerned, but more than anything I just want these 5 fish (and their friends) to do well. I am treating for worms/internal parasites because there is a very high chance that it's been a cause for some lethargy in my clown plecos as well as my larger female corydoras. When I purchased them I did do the ACO QT method, but I did not realize there was a secondary internal parasite medicine. As a result of this, and watching their behavior for a very long time now, I am planning to treat them with everything I have (in stages) for the sake of ensuring I've done everything I can to give these fish the best chance of survival. My clown pleco has always been chunky, potentially has internal worms, but since removing the caves the coloration has come back for the first time in a very long while. I do think it could just be eggs, but it was from a petco, has been treated with the QT meds, but I think it makes sense to go ahead and re-dose this tank with everything and give them the chance to kill of anything harming them. If you have any advice for how to treat this many meds, when to add salt, how much of a break to give these fish in between each internal parasite med, I would really appreciate it!

I went ahead and installed the basket today. I have ~2 days to run it before I am going to be running meds for a little bit. I don't want to run Ich-X and discolor this new basket so I will check in on things after it's had time to gunk up. When cleaning the old basket (no mods at all) I did notice the sponge did absorb a bit of mulm and while there was bypass issues, it was "working" so to speak to an extent. It may have just been a time thing and I don't want to say anything definitive here, but it is good to see improvement with only the sponges in place that has some meaningful results. I cleaned the sponges, placed them in the modded basket. I took a deep breath and felt a little bit of impact from the gravity of the moment. Honestly, this has been something weighing on my mind for a long time and it's so nice to be able to see what on earth this actually does. Engineering an issue aside, It was nice to be there. The flow in the basket was dramatically improved. Initially, that's all I can really say at this point. Instead of the flow going through the window, it was going through the sponge and through the bottom of the basket itself. EDIT: I added meds today (7th) so I'll let the basket run until the first WC and then I'll go ahead and swap it over to the new one. This should give it about a week and I will check on the bypass issue after that time. I am going to run Ich-X and such after I run the paracleanse, so I didn't need to worry about discoloration yet.

I was trying to find an old video and I just wanted to take a second to point towards a few of these videos and "this type" of content and how much it speaks to me as a human and as a hobbyist. I don't even think I saw this video when it first came out, but it's the story of Aquahuna. We've seen visits to San Francisco's Ocean Aquarium, other shops, amazing stories. Even something like the Otocinclus videos. Project Piaba. (I would mention sharkwater in there as well, but that's not ACO content). I think what is nice to me is to see something about stories I didn't even know I cared so much to hear. I think a lot of us can speak to the enjoyment of a good book, a good movie, something impactful, dramatic, heartfelt, etc. Whatever that emotional connection and attachment you have to that piece of content, the fact that you feel something, that's what I really enjoy about these. It's like when you stare at river or pond and the water is still. Philosophically you are trying to view underwater to see beyond the surface, but you can't help see the reflection and yourself in that light as well. I want to mention all of these because in the first one I saw "An Aquarium Co-Op Production" in dramatic fashion. I really think that's a playlist, secondary channel, or tag on a video series similar to ESPNs 30 for 30. It's the type of content I think would be inspirational to people when they need it. I hope to see more use of that little tagline and I wanted to mention that I noticed it, enjoyed it, and I can totally see the potential for greatness there.

I think you're basically "almost there" and all you need to do is actually introduce food. I had the benefit of cycled media, fed the tank empty for 1-2 weeks and let the filters process the waste until I saw nitrates. One of the things to do when you're cycling is that whatever your expected load will be, at least something, is to feed the tank that load. Corys example, was if you eventually want to feed X cubes of frozen food, you'd slowly build up to feeding that amount of food over time. Obviously it helps if you have something in there to eat the food and produce more waste instead of letting the food go directly into the filter. I just use flake food. Because you have snails, if you feed the tank, you're going to see their population rise a bit. This isn't desired I'm assuming, and you want to over time replace that load with fish so the snail population can balance out. I agree with feeding bacteria. I think you're 1-3 weeks out on nitrates being processed and a lot of that is going to depend on how much you're feeding. If you use the bacteria in a bottle, you can edge closer to that 1 week mark. If you don't, you're likely closer to 2-3 weeks out before I would add fish. If you wanted to purchase the fish, start the QT process in tubs or something, that would be something to do now as well and the timing might work out nicely.

Blue = Current supports. Purple = Potential places to reinforce the support of the top board Red = Potential place to reinforce vertically given the load (you can also add the feet back if you wish, but add 1 on each corner, 2 in the middle) This is the part I'm trying to dig into. You are running rimless, so having the large/strong board supported by the 4 (5 including center brace) walls is definitely the way to go. The big question as mentioned in the earlier post is simply "how flat is flat". Have you seen the warpage over time, and how sturdy is that central board. OK SO.... Here's mine. I don't mean to post the above to say that you need to change anything, but just in terms of making sure the top stays flat, there's pretty specific types of hardware used that may or may not be used on the stand you're showing. If you have a piece of hardware horizontally (parallel) to the top of the stand, then you would want to make sure it has certain characteristics because of the load it is going to see. Every bit of furniture should have a load rating for each top surface and each shelf. The majority of this is based on those hardware and material decisions. 29G Imagitarium stand. This is very similar in construction to what you have. The top piece of wood is a bit sturdier and higher quality. There is some bracing on the side, and not much on the rear wall. No central brace (does have some all around the base of the top board, it's arguable how much of it is really doing anything vs. there for aesthetics) This is the underside of the top board Underside of the shelf (shows the middle brace) Legs (1 on each corner). Please excuse the water spots! 75G Sauder / Aqueon Stand This shows you the internal structure. 4 vertical walls, plus the top piece. Nothing special here, the sidewall is a support for the top surface Nothing special here, just a low load shelf 3 of the 6 legs. the leg shown here on the right, I can grab the schematics from online I think, but it's three pieces of wood attached forming a triangle to a square block/base with a plastic foot

Someone send this to FFT. He literally just talked about doing this. 😂 Absolutely beautiful tanks and such a nice place to sit and relax. It's so cool when you can combine two passions in life like this. PROPS to that owner for doing this.

The big board on the middle helps. A lot of stands don't have that support there. My 75G has two of them. The 75 also has 6 feet (not 4) so that speaks to the choice you made regarding supporting the entire footprint a bit better. 4 feet on the corners and then one underneath each of those vertical support walls. Depending on how robust that material itself is, I think you're "ok" with the two side tanks. Keep in mind that for glass with a rim you support the exterior, for Plexi or rimless you support the entire base. If that central wall pushes up on the center but doesn't support the sides, you might have a stress fracture. With those two tanks on the side, I would take a level and check to see how bowed or flat the top surface is. I had a very small tank on a dresser that was "fine" but after 3 months it wasn't. It might be fine now, but over time that amount of weight on certain types of materials just might not work. I'll grab some pictures of my stands and you can compare.the structure to yours for the sake of easing concerns or figuring out where to focus on for reinforcement of the stand you have.

Lol! Ok well, use one! Then you have three for art 🙂