Aquarium hobby hacks

[Will Billy]

Anybody got any cool tricks or hacks you have learned during your experience in this hobby? I would love to hear neat ideas that made your life easier or your pet fish lives better. My hack i came up with one day was doing tank maintenance i was cleaning my glass on my hood from that gross dried up algae that builds up under the light, when an old bottle of seachem excell caught my eye. Then it hit me, so i put on some rubber gloves to limit skin exposure and scrubbed my glass lid with the excell. This has greatly reduced the amount of build up between tank maintenance and allowed me to go longer periods without need to clean the glass under my hood light. 

[Fish Folk]

8 minutes ago, Will Billy said:

scrubbed my glass lid with the excell. This has greatly reduced the amount of build up between tank maintenance and allowed me to go longer periods without need to clean the glass under my hood light.

This is a neat idea. Forgive my ignorance, but how does this actually work? How does the Excel cut that back and keep it off longer? 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

I pre-portion out dried foods into ice cube trays, mix with water, and freeze it. A few minutes of prep work and my feeding is quick, consistent, and feeds out better for my fish.

[Will Billy]

5 minutes ago, Fish Folk said:

how does this actually work? How does the Excel cut that back and keep it off longer? 

The initial theory was algae hates liquid carbon. By coating the glass with liquid carbon it keeps the algae from staring back as quick and treats any spots in cracks and corners where its hard to get completely clean. Eventually the algae does come back, but with a slower start to repopulate i found i can go almost twice as long before i have to clean the crud off again. 

[Will Billy]

10 minutes ago, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

 

I pre-portion out dried foods into ice cube trays, mix with water, and freeze it. A few minutes of prep work and my feeding is quick, consistent, and feeds out better for my fish.

 

Wow! I love that trick. I am definitely going to try that. 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

6 minutes ago, Will Billy said:

Wow! I love that trick. I am definitely going to try that. 

Cool 🙂 , One extra step that IMO is worth it is to freeze half cubes first before I add the food and the rest of the water for a little bit of a longer feed out time.

[Fish Folk]

30 minutes ago, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

I pre-portion out dried foods into ice cube trays, mix with water, and freeze it. A few minutes of prep work and my feeding is quick, consistent, and feeds out better for my fish.

I've heard of doing this with frozen foods, freezing excess baby brine shrimp, etc. How do you find it helps with dried foods, apart from consistent portions? 

[jkt001]

32 minutes ago, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

Cool 🙂 , One extra step that IMO is worth it is to freeze half cubes first before I add the food and the rest of the water for a little bit of a longer feed out time.

You just put the ice cube in the tank? 

[TheDukeAnumber1]

@Fish Folk

By softening harder foods and slowly dropping the food as the cube melts.

Nano extreme and other pelletized foods are not easy for fish to eat until they have a little time to hydrate and soften up, this is especially true for smaller fish. Also we all know "slow sinking" is thrown around pretty liberally on packaging, but when the food is per-hydrated and has a cube "times release" it sinks slower and at a more consistent rate,

@jkt001

 

[DShelton]

1 hour ago, Fish Folk said:

This is a neat idea. Forgive my ignorance, but how does this actually work? How does the Excel cut that back and keep it off longer? 

 

57 minutes ago, Will Billy said:

The initial theory was algae hates liquid carbon. By coating the glass with liquid carbon it keeps the algae from staring back as quick and treats any spots in cracks and corners where its hard to get completely clean. Eventually the algae does come back, but with a slower start to repopulate i found i can go almost twice as long before i have to clean the crud off again. 

The active ingredient in Seachem Excel is an algaecide (Glutaraldehyde). I have used it before to kill hair algae when the tank is almost empty during water changes, pipet with a bit of excel directly onto the hair algae.

[Will Billy]

37 minutes ago, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

when the food is per-hydrated and has a cube "times release" it sinks slower and at a more consistent rate,

That is perfect for my neons and white skirt tetra. My guppies are surface feeding little piggies, but my neons need the nano pellets. The rate in which the pellets sink is sometimes hard to target my neons. I have to put in just enough that some of it gets past the guppies for my mid water feeding neons, but not too much that a bunch get past the neons too. Its a bit of a juggling act to get food to everybody, without overfeeding my tank. 

[Duckles]

Probably common knowledge, but....

If it's not water change time and you want to suck up excess food, algae, etc in a very targeted manner.... siphon with a piece of air hose.  You can spend several minutes hitting the target areas to get rid of what you want, and not drop the water level by more than a few cups, so it's easy to replace.

[Stealth Aquatics]

Use a pond pump to pump water from your sink to your tanks. I put a 2.5 gallon bucket in the sink and get it to temp and then sit back while it pumps the water for me. No more 5 gallon buckets. 

[Gator]

Will Billy;

This hack is actually meant to make water changes easier.

Go to any Dollar store, big box store, grocery store, and maybe even a hardware store, look for and buy Scotch-Brite scrubbing pads, you'll get 5 to a pack. When you get them home, fold each in half and cut with sharp scissors, now you have 10 pads to use to clean algae on the walls of your tanks and just one will last a long time.

Don't buy the scrubbing sponges, the sponge part contains chemicals that will kill your fish. 

 

[Gator]

Will Billy;

I came up with another idea that I use and may work for you.

Go to any big box store, dollar store, or grocery store and buy 1 gallon jugs of iced tea, fruit punch, or orange drink, or whatever, just make sure it has a screw-on top and each time you buy new, make sure that the new jug has the same sized top as any other jug you have bought.

Drink the contents, but save the jug. I don't know what size tank(s) you have, so you will need several jugs and maybe more.

For starters, put 8 drops of a dechlorinater in the jug, fill with water, and set the jug aside somewhere out of the way. After a couple of days, take a look at that jug of water and you should see bubbles attached to the side of the jug and the water should be at room temp. Those bubbles are due to an extra molecule of oxygen in tap water caused by the strainer on faucets, if you had put this water directly into your tank after filling it, those bubbles would most likely cause pop-eye in your fish and pop-eye is nearly always fatal.

I don't know what size tank you have, but when you change the water, remove one fourth of the water and have at least one extra gallon of water to replace evaporation. In a 10G tank, I'll remove 3G, but I'll have 4G standing by.

After I remove the water, cleaned the tank, checked the filter, cleaned the hood and I'm ready to replace the water, I'll put in 1G and wait 15 minutes before adding a second gallon, and another 15 minutes before adding the third gallon.  

I keep all of my tanks temps between 81 and 83 degrees to keep diseases down and putting room temp water in my tank all at once may be too much of a shock for my fish.

I hope this helps you with your water changes and remember, all dead fish and unwanted plants go in the trash, not down the toilet.

[anewbie]

For short tanks a turkey blaster is useful for moving frys or sucking up excess food on bare glass/plastic bottoms.

[Celly Rasbora]

A hack from a cheapskate: save the plastic mesh bag that grocery stores sell produce in. Excellent at scrubbing fish tank walls (or pots and pans). 
 

Reduce, reuse, recycle ♻️ 

[Celly Rasbora]

31 minutes ago, anewbie said:

For short tanks a turkey blaster is useful for moving frys or sucking up excess food on bare glass/plastic bottoms.

I am tempted to try a turkey baster on snail eggs. Why do pest snails have to perpetuate the stereotype???