nabokovfan87

During the winter months, I'd be making repashy and stuff for the freezer. I got 3-4 trays of those large coctail ice cube molds (3" square" and I freeze those into large 5 gallon bags. You'll go through a LOT more ice than you think and I really worry about the temperature difference causing issues with the glass stresses. That being said, if I ever have a severe issue, that's my current play. Especially adding one to the HoB over a day might be what "works" to drop temps. Note: it's over 110 degrees in the summer here.

What else is in the tank with them? I've got a mass of 20+ pandas and I swear there's like... 5 in there at any given time. When food comes they all swarm out and I check on things when I do my WCs. I know they are doing fine, breeding, happy, but it's just funny how they love to hide. You can also check at night, or dusk/dawn, and see if they are a bit more active. These varieties have different personalities, so I'm very curious how they compare in your experience. 😂 I've noticed this as well. What is the flow like for your pygmy cories? Do they tent to swim in flow when they get in the mood to do so?

Very awesome. It's so nice when you get to meet or interact with people you admire!

Hey everyone, I have a tank (journal link below) and I need to add crushed coral and rely on either the HoB or some other method to buffer the water. The issue currently is that my KH is right on the edge of being bad and I am seeing PH drops throughout the week. I am thinking, because I have a good pre-filter on the ziss filter, it would mean that I don't have to worry as much about the filterbag or media getting clogged up. If I filled the ziss with a media bag fulled of crushed coral, do we think it would be a good amount of flow to erode away the minerals and buffer the water? Right now the crushed coral is in the top of the tidal HoB but the weight of the media is causing me some concern and causing additional bypass (sponge being crushed). Thoughts?

Brief update..... Progress!?!?!? I see new growth and it's very exciting. The shrimp are hitting the algae hard and the deep clean seems to be working decently. I have not done the water change yet today. Here are the parameters this morning. PH 6.5 KH 50-60 GH 300+ Temp 74 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 10 I do see PH and the KH falling off slightly. I am working on getting a lot better results with the crushed coral by trying to fix the HoB itself. I might end up adding an aqueon or something just to house the crushed coral. During the deep clean I also removed the indian almond leaves to better give the plants a chance to carpet. One of the leaves against the glass started to fungus, no big deal, but I just don't think they are beneficial to the tank right now. The "before" pictures were taken on the 16th: Today's Photos:

Could it have been used for saltwater previously and you're just having one heck of a bacteria mix right now? Depending on local water, It could be hard water (stuff on the lid / rim that acts very similarly). GH might be an indicator for that one. I don't think having any "old substrate" would be doing anything like what you're seeing but it could mean you have less of a risk of chemical contamination. If they didn't take the tank to the front yard and hose it off, it's likely they didn't use any harsh cleaners or anything on the inside. It may also be crushed coral if its not translucent.

I spent the night getting yelled at for the tank, and the morning trying to actually finish setting it up. LOL What a mess. Long story short, the floor still sucks where the tank is at and despite it being flat, I really don't trust the location. Plan B, means I have to have an outlet put in a location that should already have one, but doesn't. The tank will end up being delayed for probably several months. We'll see.

Ah for me. I stopped with this one, had to look it up! Introduction to Linear Algebra and Differential Equations Introduction to the solutions of ordinary differential equations and their relationship to linear algebra. Topics include matrix algebra, systems of linear equations, vector spaces, linear independence, linear transformations and eigenvalues.

Next up, let's cut out this basket and "attempt" to do it without power tools, without making it look like someone took a chainsaw to the plastic, and without completely destroying the plastic. My idea was to use pliers. These, specifically will probably be the best tool for the job. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-4-75-in-Mini-Flush-Cutters-48-22-6105/305760837 Here is my plan: Using the pliers, I'd like to cut out these section. Leaving a part of the bottom grid intact but opening the bottom of the container in such a way that we aren't using a drill or relying on small holes (these did not work for me previously, so if you go the drill route, you need at least 1/4" dia holes. I have the clogged sponges, I have the filter running, and I will show the before and after. I am not going to clean any sponge, I will simply move the dirty media to the new basket and let it run with the cutouts. Here is what it ended up looking like: I may end up taking a file or some sandpaper and cleaning this up a bit, but for now this will "work" for our testing purposes. Here is the before photo, sponges as they are right now in the filter, and the before video. The key note here being that the coarse sponge isn't doing much cleaning right now because it's not getting very much flow through the sponge itself. This is very evident when looking at the sponge because while there is "some much" on the surface, it's very light and not something I would expect to be "clogged". The second foam in the pile, the black one is slightly more fine, and it's pretty much clean without any gunk on it whatsoever. This is pretty typical. I also included a photo of the basket. We see that the filter itself is bypassing very badly before any modification. The input of the pump was actually filling the little black shelf with much as you can see in the video. This often happens when there is high levels of bypass. Here is the after: You can see that this is a VAST improvement compared to where we started, but there is clearly some severe bypass still happening in the window cutout on the front of the basket. Overall I would call this a "minimal effort" fix for the bypass but I do believe this is not solved by any means. I will be very interested to see how this is running in 36-48 hours and how things change with the next big change.

Hoping that someone can offer some advice. Here is the link to the meds in question. https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=94474f6b-9742-47c3-b9c4-c980ec6983ac If possible, I would try to order some Mardel Maracyn from the co-op or the med trio and treat the fish in a QT setup so you don't have to treat the entire tank. It might be better to treat the entire tank, but keep in mind for a 55G you'll need a certain amount of packets per the directions on the back of the box (photos) or via the website. If you don't have any, some fritz salt as well. Edit: They have different active ingredients and Maracyn may work better for this situation. You can also look into adding it to the food for the betta if they are still eating.

needless to say.... I understand. This is my tank similar situation to yours. I had a random addition of another community tank that ended up here. 2 glofish, some livebearers, and they all got along just fine with everything in the tank. The glofish definitely won't care where they are and what color the other fish are, lol. Chili rasbora and glowlight tetras are pretty awesome looking. There is also neon green rasboras, the typical neon tetra and green neon as well. If you don't have any, panda corys might be the jam too.

Calc 3 is definitely a LOT more fun than Calc 2. Oddly. Calc 2 (for me) got into a bunch of weirdness and down a rabbit hole I just got annoyed by. Infinitely adding an axis to a coordinate system and then doing things over and over. I wonder if this equation is similar to (or how similar to) a lot of the math on something like half life. There's got to be some crossover there. The difference being, you're assuming with half-life the nitrates are your chemical and they never increase. Higher water changes means a shorter half life. Smaller water changes means a longer half life for your "tank issues". Very interesting stuff.

Looks awesome! It's always exciting to see the new growth.

Keep an eye on their behavior. If they dig a lot and show stress signs, change it. If they dig and just enjoy the challenge, the corys will just have strong muscles. The substrate isn't sharp, so I think it's perfectly fine. Adding 2-3 more will help their behavior as well as just having cover for them in some capacity or a place for them to hide out away from the light. you can, they might not school together. Entirely up to you. You can have 3-5 of one kind. 3-5 of another. I won't be able to find the video, but I can hear Robert clarifying this. Something like albino is based off a bronze cory, so it will swim with other cories of that same type. Others wont, etc.

Tank looks awesome. I don't even think I'd add more to it.

I would try vibra bites and or flakes. Put them into a bag and try to get it into a very very fine powder. Then try feeding that to see if you see any improvement or increased appetite. Whatever is easier to get to a fine powder, go for that longer term. I think you might just have issues where they are eating, but not as much as they could. When I have had cory fry, I never did anything special, but some of the foods I have (like the sera spirulina tabs) turn into a fine powder pile after a little while. They usually eat off the mulm in a colony type of setting. Whenever I do get more eggs, I'm going to be going through a lot of what you are and I definitely understand the stress side of it. Little bits, less than you think, as your food and just see what they respond to. Beyond that, I just don't know what could be causing the falloffs. Corys are usually pretty easy to know when it's temp/oxygen or something like that so right now I think you've narrowed it down to chemical / food issues. It doesn't seem to be a chemical thing based on what you're seeing, but there could be a residue from when the tank was cleaned that wouldn't show up on a test. rinsing heavily should resolve that if we know for certain food isn't the issue.

I don't think that's the issue then. What food options do you have on hand besides the bug bites? Edit: To clarify, if you want to "clean the tank" so to speak, I'd drop the level by 10-15% and then you would rinse everything around the rim area into the water column, scrub the sides, etc. Then you go ahead and drain it a bit more until you're about halfway (with fry it's difficult to do this in a large volume). Then I'd go ahead and rinse everything with a new sponge or something similar scrub anything you need to with clean water/sponge, and then do the rest of your water change. Try to get everything into the water column and then out.

I don't think there's any issues running carbon at all. It definitely doesn't hurt to do that. Turn off the pump for a second, check the water surface, do you see a film or no?

What does the black mountain minnow look like?

I really like the tank decor! Hopefully it's a fun and exciting tank for you. woot woot!

For the corydoras do they seem stressed, breathing very very very rapidly? Could it a temp issue? I don't think it's oxygenation based on setup, but that's the only other reason I can think for what you're seeing.

This setup Cory had may or may not indicate what's going on with flow. (middle sections doesn't have the flow it needed, etc. Looking forward to seeing it!

I absolutely agree. It's such a.... challenge to know what "fixes" and what truly is the base cause for issues a lot of hobbyists are having. It's one of the most discussed topics in the hobby generally because it's something we all run into. Yeah exactly! It could've been as much of a solution to turn it up and lets the plants progress just as much as it could've been turning it down.

That's a good thing though! Even on a gravel vac, very fine small particles like that tend to get sucked up.

It was pretty good. I did have an issue with the order, absolutely understandable but it was resolved within a few minutes of the box arriving and my taking photos. I had ordered otos and amanos from them. I'll definitely be getting more amanos here shortly.