nabokovfan87

One of the plants I've never been successful with. I'd recommend next time, keeping it in the pot for a week or so, give the plant time to adapt to your water, then plant it. It's gets nutrients from the water column typically, so there's no issues there. If someone has experience, I'd love to know what water conditions scarlet temple thrives in. I've tried everything. Grown algae on the leaves like a pro, but the new growth never kept up.

I've run both versions of the imagitarium for years (wood and the metal versions) I recommend both without issue.

Something Dean said about his rams/angels (pretty sure rams), but they will eventually learn to not eat the eggs. Give them a few attempts and then try other methods. In his eyes, it's better for the parents to care for the eggs. Entirely up to how you wish to run it, but just giving you that bit of advice. It's something I have done for my breeding projects.

there is absolutely no way steel or hardened steal should wear this way. I worked in aerospace with metal parts daily. It absolutely blows my mind that this is even an issue. I could list 4-5 materials that would never have ANY wear issues and last a lifetime. Again, something I posted in another thread, but if someone, anyone with a metal shop... you measure the length and the diameter of the shaft. make it out of better material, you can even anodize it and make it "fancy". It would be such a cheap part to make and thousands of hobbyists would buy it. WHY doesn't AC/Fluval just fix their stuff........ the ACs shouldn't have issues starting. 1. is the pump working.... (is the shaft or impeller broken) 2. If it's slow to start, you simply move the flow control and it purges the air in about a tenth of a second and you're done and the tank is going. I really enjoyed mine. I had a special stack of sponges to get mine to use non-cartridge media and it was the first tank I ran like a champ. They take the same filter and slightly modify the depth of the basket, it'd be the best one out there.

I run the Seachem filters. They have their own issues but the pumps are extremely solid. I also like the aqueon but those are a bit difficult to use custom media in. I definitely encourage you to do your research and check out a ton of videos on the topic and ask any questions you might have. I'd recommend focusing on videos that show different mods for filters, or issues, as the focus for research. Layout and flow is going to be pretty typical but how things work for HoBs is all pretty unique depending on which one you end up with. Edit: the reason I gravitate towards those two is because the pump is in the water and you don't have to prime them if the power goes out. Second to that, the seachem has very good flow adjustment but severe bypass issues.

Maybe a tank decoration sign?

I stopped using them. Bad design and just not reliable. I had it happen every time I cleaned the pump, even when I had silicone lubricant on the shaft and it was spinning freely. I put the pump back in the housing and magically.it doesn't work. Jam my finger in there, reassemble, return to the store and try again. I had 2-3 Impellers on standby at the house and I finally said enough is enough. Needless to say, it's a design issue and they need to update their materials but won't. This shaft is just... Not round. That's the issue sometimes. It wears down way too fast.

Such an amazing tank. I love the separation of the two styles at the waterline and how the contrast to highlight the other. Very nice work and I'm looking forward to see where you take it. Are you slowly working to remove the duckweed or embracing it?

Works just fine and does exactly what you need it to.

Panda Cories and WCMM are perfect together. Mine are kept in the low 70's and thrive. I really wouldn't shy away from your initial setup if your temps are in the 68-74 range. I keep mine at a target of 72. sounds awesome to me!!!

Aq Advisor is a pretty cool resource for stuff like this. I would just be careful of what you put in based on the size of the mouth of the rainbow. Something like WCMM I would avoid, but something bigger, rasboras or danios might work well depending on temps and such.

It looks like breeding behavior to me in some capacity. There's a video in my journal I'll add of mine. I see the same behavior coming from yours. Essentially, big water change, they are following the female around a bit.

One of the "features" I like from the E-Series is the cage (which this has) as well as the color coding warning system. It's pretty blatant when you see a big red flashing light to know something is wrong. Is there potential to customize the color of the LED away from red? I would also just add as far as a comparison, one of the big things that kills heaters is not having enough flow. Have you done any testing regarding a comparison, or can you think of a test that could be performed, which would equate to the cage design on this heater vs. the fluval when it comes to flow of the cage? Is there a possibility of adding any sort of warnings to a "pro version" in a distant future if demand and industry standards change to push that feature for the heater market?

Oldie but a goodie.

Yep. I totally understand it's a planted tank. Here's a video that might help.

Do you give the sand a few days to settle and then move it around with your hand? During water changes it's usually recommended for sand tanks to move the sand around a bit.

update on these guys. I moved them to the tank with my larger amanos. There is two pieces floating in the photo above. The top right is the nana petite. then sligtly left is the Anubias Nana I moved. This is them now:

what kind of sand is it? You just need to run fine filter floss for a few days. It can take days for something like this to clear up. Then, you'll want to disturb the substrate with your hand and get more fines into the water column and do a massive water change.

This is exactly how mine are. I appreciate all of the insight. A lot of what you're saying makes some sense. Last time I left the eggs in the tank and they definitely grew some fungus and others were eaten by tankmates (not the corys). I know that if I get the eggs to hatch, they will be fine. Beyond that, I'm really not concerned with the fish themselves eating their young. In all they seemingly tend to be pretty good parents. I got the tumbler to help with the fungus, I have a gang valve so I can very tightly adjust the flow on the eggs. Then move those to the breeder box, same thing, I can adjust the flow as need be. That was my plan initially. I have some botanicals arriving today to add to the tank. I have some methlyene blue whenever I end up ordering from amazon again. The tank has had some pretty severe algae issues I've been working through as well, which I'm sure didn't help the hatch rate on the eggs.

Just guessing... the pre-sets are set for about +5 deg. you're running two of them which gets you from 68 up to around 72. Because you have 2. 74-76. Adding the fluval one, which is a +10 is probably doing a lot of the work. I'd try to find a 150W (or two 100W) of the fluval ones if you can and pull the tetras. Keep an eye on when the thermometers are active. They will have something that forces them to cool off after a set period of time as a safety mechanism. That being said, if you're seeing them all or a lot of them running constantly, then it's likely the issue mentioned above entirely based on assumptions because we don't have those stats from tetra. I'll be interested to see how much the lid helps, but, I also would just keep in mind that the thermometers (tetra) are very not likely designed for this load and the fluval one is under wattage for that load as well.

The bacteria won't be "trapped". They needed to stay wet to stay alive with circulation in the water. The water caries the oxygen to feed the bacteria. So as long as the bacteria (substrate) is wet, with water, with circulation it will add to the cycle. The big question is just about what happened with the filter media itself. Not the substrate, as far as your cycle. Once you're done with this, you should be able to start adding fish. The fish are going to a higher volume of water. Just keep an eye on ammonia and change the water accordingly. You can give it 24 hours and test. Feed the tank some flake food and that will introduce some ammonia over time. Then you can test to see if it is processed. You can look up the slow acclimation method used for shrimp and sensitive fish. This might be the method you want to follow if you're concerned. You would slowly add water over a few hours until you have doubled the water volume. You can then drain water off and continue the process if you want and double the water volume again. At that point, I'd add the fish into the new tank without any concern on the PH difference. Someone else can confirm, but I honestly think you're perfectly fine to add fish. Your KH is low, which is likely why you have the drop in PH.

Extremely common. You just need to add multiple heaters. Let's say your tank takes a heater of 150W (just saying a random number). If you have the flow, you'd run multiple 150W heaters. This also evens out the heat on the tank so you have less cold spots. That being said, if you don't have enough flow, instead of running a larger more powerful heater, you can run multiple 100W heaters (again, random number). This will help you get a bit higher temperatures and not be running the heaters at full bore 24/7. Most heaters will say in the manual what they can actually do. The only raise the temperature above ambient a certain amount of degrees. After that it should specify a suggestion on adding more heaters or more powerful heaters. You're looking for something like: This is from the M-Series heater you have running: 50W = 15G recommended tank size. For the Tetra heater: The manual does not specify what the ambient air temp is for their heaters. I can assume it's a certain value, but we have no real idea if these are designed to be +5 degrees or what power of heater. The wattage you're running is on par with everything said above. That being said, you can view the tetra website and it's about 75% of the reviews being "it didn't heat the tank above 74". So perhaps there is just more to the story when it comes to those specific heaters and their set temperature calibration range. This video, talks about the issue you're having, but it also has a few tidbits from a heater manufacturer about proper use. It specifically breaks down use for pre-set heaters and some issues you might run into. Hopefully that helps!

I can't find the video, but Cory did a video showing his pond with basically everything discussed above. His pond had ice and everything. It was from this past winter. If someone can link it here please do!

The big question being from the OP: When do I swap mops out or switch tactics and offer different mop setups if they don't feel enticed to use the ones I have currently.

I think what you plan to run should be fine. The co-op sells a diffuser, there is a "new version of it" but it's entirely up to you. You can also run multiple if you're not outputting enough CO2 with that size of a tank. This is Cory setting up CO2 on the 800G