nabokovfan87

Baby shrimp on the back glass this morning. It feels like forever since I've seen that. The shrimplet is colored up a little bit so it's at least around a week or two old. I was checking on them last night and tried to feed Riddick, but ended up with all the shrimp taking her food again. 😞 I did see 3 females all together, all berries, so we should have some new shrimp soon and we'll see how they do with these new filters!

One bottle = 50 weeks for me of the current size.

Not sure how much the older, large size costed me, but shipping was always the concern. I think the only real question for me is that if the pump is an issue long term, can I just order it and have it sent without it. I'll be ordering soon and we'll find out. I've been doing research on other fertilizer bottle designs and most of them come with 2ml pumps. Based on price and based on amount used, Easy green ends up being literally.... Half the price. I use ~10 pumps a week, may eventually be at 20. I'd have to do the math for what that ends up being in terms of size per year! 😉

If you continue to have cycle issues, I would look into swapping out a portion of the scrubbers for something like lava rock, pumice, or other types of biological/ceramic media. Get some sleep, one day at a time! Hopefully things improve though and we're all here to help! No stress, just questions and things to try to figure out. 🙂

Definitely unique, beautiful texture! I'm excited for you to have 100-150 corydoras in that tank when you're ready! -------- I woke up today, checked on the fish and looked to my right. I decided to just break down my old 29G plant only tank and remove the last little bits of susswassertang out of it. The tank was kept up in case I was going to order fish, but right now I think all of that is either on hold or not going to happen until I can sell things first. I ended up deciding to dispose of the tank because it's lived it's life and not worth the hassle of resealing. The stand that held the tank has my 10G QT tank and that's all I really need on standby right now. If I do get a plant only tank the goal is to have a 20L or to have a bookshelf style tank that isn't as tall as a 29G. I already have the lights and the equipment for all that. I use the stand to hold the CO2 canisters in place and needless to say I just don't have the space to keep tanks up and running in that space. It'll be nice to regain that stage and clear off the floor/equipment I need to have out! The next project of the day was to remove my dead house plant and then I decided to repot my ZZ-Plant so the rhizome is not in two separate pots. Previously the rhizome split on me and the plant itself was just in one large pot. I did a little research and understood better how I needed to plant it, so I tried to fix both of them. Fingers crossed I can get them to actually grow now.

I lost one too. 😞 I'm not sure where he went. I've been trying to find him for 3-4 days so far.

It's a fun puzzle. I had a similar type of issue where my plants weren't getting tall and they were only getting so much growth. The idea for me being that if they were growing taller, then they could reach the light and grow a bit easier. Ultimately there's a few things we need to verify and review. The first one is your substrate. What is it, when was the last time you added root tabs? Second thing is your fert schedule and light settings. What are they, please provide as much detail as you can. That out of the way there's a few things to keep in mind.... 1. How long to the plants grow naturally? Is the plant just at it's max length or a shorter "dwarf" type of plant? 2. If the plant should be getting taller, do you see it bushing out and going wide? What is the new growth on the plant saying to you? 3. Are there any issues with the base of the plant deteriorating and only the top of the plant growing? 4. Are you seeing any algae issues at all on any of the plants from too much light? 5. Is there too much surface movement and not enough circulation for the CO2 to fully reach all of the plants?

There is a KH:PH chart that gives you a dissolved co2 level as a result. (From Tom Barr) I would start there as a sort of check on the value you're measuring and see if things are close. As always, if you have a question when it comes to a test, just try to verify it with a secondary test somehow.

Saw this and right away though about the rocks and things you've been thinking over. It might spark some thoughts or creative thinking. Yeah that seems a bit much! Neo aquario sells air diffusers that might work well for you, or just get a ziss style air stone you can adjust the bubble size on. I've never had a Venturi I liked. I feel you there. Visually and the noise is just not something I can tolerate either.

Before cleaning, 5 pumps After Cleaning, 5 pumps: I did go and clean out the pumps and I felt a little bit of crystallization not in the head or the straw, but in the spring section of the pump head. I submerged the pump to try to dislodge that and got a little bit of it out. I'm not sure if I can submerge it in vinegar or anything to help remove the stuff inside. Hot or warm water is what I usually use.

There's a lot going on here so let's break it down! Prime: Water conditioner you use each time you change water, before adding in your tap water Flourish + Trace: BOTH of these are your Macro and Micronutrients for your plants. You would dose these 1-2x a week depending on plant demand. Per seachem, don't dose them on the same day. Pristine: Not necessary, this is a chemical cleaning product which may or may not be helpful. Stability: Bacteria starter. You would keep this in the fridge and it would only be used if you ever run into something like ammonia, nitrite issues, or following treating with medications to build back up the beneficial bacteria Excel: This is an algaecide that you would use as directed for major issues. You will have the most success dipping plants as oppose to treating the tank itself directly. There is a lot of consideration here towards your own safety using the product (gluteraldehyde) as well as general safety long term of the livestock in the tank. Just something to research and consider. I have used it in the past and it is a nice tool for treating BBA. If you're on mobile I think sometimes it won't show up. There's two threads we have that can be of help, one of them is specific to the fluval 3.0 lights and the other is the sheet mentioned. DaySim Reducer I can give you a general idea of where to start based on the sheet above as well as my own setups. Essentially there's a few key things going on here. First of which, mentioned above, is going to be layout and placement. First and foremost is to pull up any Java ferns, anubias, or other epiphytes out of the substrate. They should be tied or glued to rocks or wood. The next thing would be to try to setup the tank for high vs. low light regions. I'll give you a map, but here is a video example as well. It's not a hard and fast rule, but larger leaves plants generally don't want to be right under the light or they will get a lot of algae. You can have them slightly off center in the medium-high regions. The ferns and anubias just don't grow quickly enough to handle being right under the light. The swords or any sort of bigger leaved stems can also do fine as more of a background plant just due to how big the leaves get. The stems you'd want to give more light to than other plants and so that is where the placement of everything really matters. That being said, your light at 100% is guaranteed to be causing issues. Partially you can see this in your floating plants. Those plants will take up a lot of nutrients, light, and will shade out the plants below. This just means that you want to keep the floating plants with ~40% of the water surface opened up to allow light to get to those plants below properly. Each week when you do your water changes, you'd want to pull floating plants out as you need to. I would start the light somewhere around 50-60% power intensity. Especially given the algae things, it might just be a balance of tuning the light, dialing in the ferts, and then dialing in your placement. You have a lot of good things going on, but it's just a situation where there is that final little tweak to get things working well for you. I would also suggest moving your filtration down as much as you can to increase the airflow / circulation in the tank. I think one final note here is your GH vs. KH ratio. Generally you would want GH to be higher thank KH. Finding a way to reduce KH for your tank might be helpful for the plants. seachem has a product called acid buffer which will drop the KH/PH. They have equilibrium which will raise your GH. More on this here. But the ratio of GH:KH can play a role with plant health and their ability to properly function in your tank. I would recommend getting a liquid GH and KH test kit, especially for the care of the shrimp.

You can do water changes like you normally would. If you're dumping in ammonia, it's not the same as having fish, which isn't the same as having food dropped in and rotting to cause ammonia to build up. It's hard to know what "the best method" is and I see a lot of people using ammonia based on products available. I've never used it before and I've never had issues before. If your nitrates are 40ppm or higher then yeah, do a massive water change without issue. If there's fish in the tank, 50% water change weekly until things get back under control. Your tank has all the bacteria in place when you see ammonia turn into nitrite and nitrite turn into nitrate. It's "cycled" when you no longer see nitrite or ammonia anymore. You then would look for things like diatom algae. I hope all of that makes sense and it's a very high level/quick explanation of what you're going through. You've got the plants in there and it's basically all about letting them grow and do their thing. Nothing too fancy or complicated, just do what you normally would right now as if there was fish in the tank and you're caring for them. Your nitrate levels would come from fertilizers (not necessarily from dosing in ammonia). If your nitrates are 5-10 ppm is fine, 20 is fine, 30 is a little high., etc. I measure mine before I do a water change and then I log that for say 4-5 weeks. That gives you an idea of how much the plants are using and you can go from there. When you add in the fish, you don't want to see a massive jump in nitrate (or other parameters) because that would be an indication of stocking the tank too much, too quickly. Slow and steady is 100% the way you have a successful tank.

Interesting! Very good idea.

Well is it Yogi or Boo boo?

It got retired. yeah. The modded one was beat up and held together with superglue (see tidal thread) and then the other one was unmodded and practically as beat up. They both are well-used, but I needed to stop messing with issues/patches and it was more about trying to give the tank the best chance of success with being a "healthy, high tech, planted tank." Good idea! The aquarium co-op measure is a wonderful tool. Buy two. I use em to feed frozen and meds and all kinds of things.

Pretty sure I saw the little girl and her mom checking out of the store with the same bowl and the same gravel and everything.... 1. I was happy to see a kid being introduced to the hobby. 2. The mom was clearly not fully prepared or understanding of what was needed 3. Thankfully, she asked questions and I was able to help out every so slightly. I tried to be extremely polite and explained small things to try to help out. The kid spent a good 10 minutes in line staring at the fish and treating it like she was holding a living thing. Beautiful to see. All we can do is hope more of the correct care spreads and that in the stores things are shared with the people to set them up for healthy, successful fish care. 🤞

This is a fun watch. Essentially, it's about why and how they are designed. I would always have wood in there.

That's what I have. The 407. I keep it clean. I wish I had kept my old pump/bottle. But yeah, I understand what you mean. Makes me want to get a dosing bottle and just do things that way.

Hey everyone, I have had this happen for the second time in what seems to be a short amount of time. I seem to have a recurring issue where the pump on my easy green bottle either breaks or fails to dispense the proper amount of liquid needed. I understand there is a bit of buildup that can happen, but I think this is more of a failure of the pump mechanism itself and not crust forming inside the flow path. That being said, I have a request and I'd like to ask for some data in case this is a larger issue than just one for myself. If you have a method to measure in mL then please take that known volume, try to dispense an amount of the fertilizer and then proceed to let us know what the actual amount dispensed from the pump is compared to that expected value. (Ex. 5 pumps should be ~5 mL) I'll be sure to do this myself tomorrow morning just for the sake of clarity as well as repeat the test after I clean the pump head out thoroughly and run water through it to dissolve any solids. I appreciate your help with this and thanks for taking the time to run the tests to gather data!

The general rule is 6x GPH for the size of tank. For higher flow fish I tend to find myself up to 10x the flow rate. Let's say it's a 20G aquarium, for this fish you would be looking for something that operates at 120-200 GPH range. Having good aeration (surface movement) is also another great idea as well for this setup. The spraybar works really well for that as does just having an air stone in the tank.

@beastie Can you show us the tank shot? My gut tells me corydoras and sell some of the panda garra off. Adding more of the hillstreams would be fun too, but I understand that's out of the picture. Maybe corydoras hastatus works for you?

It's been a busy few days and today specifically has been a little bit hectic. First and foremost the pups were a little upset for some reason. Stress, anxiety, or maybe their new food. This is little Zoey sitting with me trying to calm her stomach and trying to de-stress so to speak. I gave them some chicken with their food to try to settle their stomach and they both seem to be doing well again. I spent a few days this week trying to piece together a full spraybar across the back of the tank. I got the kit (thankfully it was on sale, which arrived taped to death, used, and missing pieces. So once that got handled I went about trying to piece things together. The final setup looked "ok" but it's definitely not something I think fluval ever intended for someone to do and it's definitely not something where the filter in question is designed for this volume of water (despite any claims to the contrary). In terms of the surface agitation it looked like the pump was basically not running despite that it was. I could feel movement, there was flow, but it simply isn't what I would have wanted long term. You can also see in the back that the second susswassertang wall is now similar to the other one. I only had two zip ties and so I had to sew together all around the outside. That is definitely time consuming and I still have no idea if this will actually work well in the end. Fingers crossed, but at least now it is in place and not floating into the prefilter. So.... the frustration of the week is that once I cut pipes down to length, adjusted placement of the things in the tank, and fit everything into place, then I had to see what was going on with the flow and the CO2. Flow, very, very weak and it was barely moving water. The secondary factor here was to visually see how the flow was working with the CO2. That is when I knew we had a bit of a major issue. Intake is all the way to the left, co2 is all the way to the right. If you want a real world, visual example of the circulation in your tank, I don't know of a better method. The co2 was flowing about 1/4 of the way in the tank, no further, and the majority of the plants were not getting any benefit of the dosing. This means disassembly and back to the side mount scenario. There's no real way to run the spraybar across the tank with this specific pump. In-line CO2 or not, there's just not enough flow in that situation. I still have my doubts and knowing what I know now, I don't think I would've ever gone down this route. I saw it in a video... but here's the general idea of where the filters make sense for. 107 --> 10G 207 --> 20G 307 --> 29G 407 --> 40B In terms of raw value let's compare: Tidal 110: 450 GPH Aquaclear 110: 500 GPH Tidal 75 x2: 350 GPH (x2) = 700 GPH Fluval 407: 245 GPH of "filter circulation" pump is rated for 383 GPH Fluval FX2: 343 GPH circulation, rated for 475 GPH In general, I like to have anywhere from 6x-10x turnover. 8-10 being "about right" for the fish I keep. Tidal 110: 6.4x Aquaclear 110: 7.1x Tidal 75x2: 10x Fluval 407: 3.5x Fluval FX2: 4.9x It's a bit frustrating how blatantly bad the media capacity of a filter can determine the "size" of tank it's meant for and basic things like output design, how it operates, size of the thing, and other basic design parameters are often missed. I would never, EVER encourage anyone to run a single tidal 75 on this tank. I love that filter, but it's just not made for this length of a tank. Same thing with the 110's, the output flow is made for "on end" mounting and not designed to be a single HoB. The Circulation is too condensed to one area. So yeah, the pumps are giving you X amount of turnover, but it's only able to pull in such a small amount of water. We have the exact same conundrum again, despite having a spraybar and having the flow path designed for the tank to operate as it should. it can only pull in so much water, and it literally isn't able to suck in through the intake enough flow. Diameter is too small or whatever it is, but it's like trying to drink a milkshake through a coffee stirrer. https://www.tfhmagazine.com/articles/aquarium-basics/filtration I think this is one of the most common, basic pieces of advice that is given to new hobbyists. Yet, we go to the store and think to ourselves.... "these companies know more than I do, they made the product." I've seen so many people get a filter rated for a 10G aquarium for their 10G aquarium and I've seen just as many people given the advice to "choose the next size up. An example of a brand that makes kits for their tanks that they sell... HUNDREDS of them per year. 10G Tank kit: 100 GPH (10x) 20G Tank kit: 125 GPH (6.3x) 40G Tank kit: 250 GPH (6.3x) So it seems that certain companies do pay attention to specs and requirements! I also think it's pretty weird the discrepancy between a filter rated for a 10 vs. a 20G for the above company. 107 --> 10G Recommended // 95 GPH = 10x Stated for up to 30G aquarium = 3.2x 207 --> 20G Recommended // 121 GPH = 6x Stated for up to 45G aquarium = 2.7x 307 --> 29G Recommended // 206 GPH = 7x Stated for up to 70G aquarium = 2.9x 407 --> 40B Recommended // 245 GPH = 6x Stated for up to 100G aquarium = 2.5x And going back to the brand above, same thing. A 10G rated filter states "up to 20G". A 20G rated filter states "up to 30G". So the real question is why do we always have these mixed messaged and confusion of what is the proper size filter for a tank. YES, stocking matters, but that comes down to adjustability, not a pump specification. /endrant Anyways.... The other issue I had to mend this week was my plants. I will likely end up making a thread on the topic and asking for tests from users (again), but my pump head has been significantly underdosing fertilizer and I think that is why the plants have been a bit upset with me. For starters, it takes anywhere from 2-4 pumps to get a first "full pump" from the pump head. This is also the second pump head I have to use because the first one had a similar failure. After visually noticing that things don't look quite right I grabbed my co-op measure and sprayed what should be 5 ml of fluid. I barely for above 1 ml with that. Needless to say... this might explain a lot of the recent issues with the sword plants! I'll dose by hand now, measure everything, and I think I'm just done using pump heads. I don't think I can order it without and I feel a bit frustrated that I will end up not using them / tossing them. Not sure what to do moving forward, but I have been needing to order more ferts. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the tanks, despite any issues. It's been so fun to observing the fish with all of the changes and seeing how they behave. I love seeing the shrimp, amanos and culls, out doing their thing.

Bolivian ram? Gold ram?

What did you think at the end of them!? They were the one a lot of people liked i believe. You'll have to show it off for us one day. I think my favorite thing is honestly multiple spectrum static cameras.

Many thanks! Looking forward to seeing it. Did you get the onyx larger size or the sand size?