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RandomPauI posted:I'm fine with frozen insects but other people here aren't. To the point of hysterics. I'd rather avoid the drama. If this were GBS I'd tell you to hide the fish food in an empty haagen dazs container. Then if someone freaks out you can yell at them for trying to steal your ice cream.
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Apr 23, 2017 21:05
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Dead shrimp today, must've happened last night or during the day as I didn't check carefully in the morning. The water is fine as far as I can tell, with 0 ammonia, 0 no2 and 10-15ppm no3. Temperature is 23C. So I'm attributing this to natural causes or a freak accident. I didn't change water last week as seems perfectly fine, but would it be better to change it anyway? I can't have them dying before they start actually reproducing 
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Apr 24, 2017 18:30
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Has anyone tried the Seachem Ammonia detector? I held it above a bottle of ammonia and it immediatly turned blue (Toxic amounts of ammonia.). I'm not planning on relying on it but I think it might be a great helper for me, because I will not test things on weekends when my spouse is home ( too many arguments). I I hope it wokes like it's supposed to because it turned back to yellow (safe ammonia levels) when I put it in.).
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Apr 24, 2017 21:07
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Not personally, but it was discussed a few pages back. The popular opinion seems to be that it can be a dud or just fail and you'd have no idea.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:20
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mobby_6kl posted:Dead shrimp today, must've happened last night or during the day as I didn't check carefully in the morning. The water is fine as far as I can tell, with 0 ammonia, 0 no2 and 10-15ppm no3. Temperature is 23C. So I'm attributing this to natural causes or a freak accident. I didn't change water last week as seems perfectly fine, but would it be better to change it anyway? I can't have them dying before they start actually reproducing What's your kh, gh and do you have live plants with them? Also might want to check your water for copper. Copper is toxic to inverts since it has some sort of inhibitory effect on their haemolymph function. I had to get an R/O system and treat that water with buffers and dechlorinator before I had much success since my local water is loaded with copper and phosphates. Gh could mean they had trouble molting and they need something like 8-12 degrees of hardness to be happy in my experience. Low kh could mean a pH spike happened which again from experience shrimp do not handle well at all. Plants again would be a pH thing especially if you are doing any kind of CO2. Shrimp are pretty fragile especially when adjusting to new conditions so it could be that too. Also if you have a betta in there the shrimp could have annoyed it and met an unfortunate fate.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:22
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It works for me, and detects actual dangerous ammonia.  I have no way of telling exactly how accurate it is though, because my tap water has Chloramines, so the API ammonia test basically always says the water is chock full of ammonia and going to kill everyone. Fresh water right out of the tap is 0, but within a few hours of adding the dechlorinator it detects dangerous levels of ammonia in water that has just been sitting in a clean bowl. The Seachem Ammonia detector doesn't react to the neutralized chloramines, but does react to household ammonia.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:30
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mobby_6kl posted:Not personally, but it was discussed a few pages back. The popular opinion seems to be that it can be a dud or just fail and you'd have no idea. Thank you I read that they can be duds, but for me I think it's an excellent back up for when I can't play chemist for testing. Not planning on relying on it - just to give me an idea, I dump so much prime in the tank on friday night/saturday morning so I don't have to worry. - It's hard to do things when someone is berating you about not doing other thing haha!.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:00
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Ugh was doing the water change rounds today and found a fluval 206 canister filter tucked under the desk that I had disconnected, intending to rinse out and use in a different tank, and never got around to it. It's been festering for weeks so I took the plunge, opened it up and prepared to clean it out. Oh god, the smell. Combination of ammonia and sulphur, the sponges were all black with anoxically decayed duckweed. I've rinsed it all off but I think I'm going to run it on old water for a bit to make sure it gets flushed before I put it back on a tank with livestock in. I won't be making that mistake again.
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Apr 25, 2017 17:10
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Thanks for the  Azuth0667 posted:What's your kh, gh and do you have live plants with them? Also might want to check your water for copper. Copper is toxic to inverts since it has some sort of inhibitory effect on their haemolymph function. I had to get an R/O system and treat that water with buffers and dechlorinator before I had much success since my local water is loaded with copper and phosphates. While many already molted successfully, I suspect that this could be it, there could just be a higher mortality rate when low Gh. I could add a few corals I have laying around to bring it up a bit. I also tried to do a postmortem on it with a reverse macro trick and it seems like that could support the theory: 
mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 18:16
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mobby_6kl posted:Thanks for the From the looks of it and what I have access to no one has explicitly gone and done a dose response curve for copper and cherry shrimp. The closest thing to it I've found comes from a crappy predatory journal stating that 4ppm of copper is where things start to die off, you're bellow that if I did the math right. Fixing the gH should help also you might want to look into picking up alkaline buffer, not regulator as the regulator has killed shrimp for me before. Are you using the API kH kit? I've had trouble telling what "bright yellow" is since there never seems to be a pale or bright one it just turns yellow. I ignore how bright the color is now and it seems to be close enough to keep the pH steady. Another thing it could be is temperature as the shrimp prefer it colder than the betta. If you have a dissecting scope you could do a necropsy to look for parasites but, that's probably more trouble than its worth.
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Apr 25, 2017 20:22
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So after comparing the colors in photoshop Kh is around, like, 3 degrees maybe. I'm using JBL strips which is generally pretty easy to read, but this is just kind of brownish. I guess much higher values would've been easier to determine, this just doesn't change much from the initial one. I have 3 small corals (about 150 grams/5oz?) that I understand should gently bring up the kh in the tank wich is also pretty small. My only concern is that there's likely still some salt on them, even though I soaked and washed them. The amount has to be pretty minimal, if any, but still... The temperature is 22C / 72F which I think is close to ideal of them. I don't actually have any way of regulating it, that just happens to be the average temperature in the room  . I don't have a microscope and yeah, I doubt it's worth it - I can just get a new one for 40 cents and the berried one will hopefully come through with a whole bunch of them soon.
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Apr 26, 2017 19:02
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That temperature is good and the kH is low but, not low enough I'd think pH was a problem. I'd rinse it then add the coral which should help with the kh/gh just watch the pH closely to make sure they don't make everything too basic. From the sounds of it you probably ended up with some less hardy shrimp and they didn't survive the transition to your tank.
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Apr 26, 2017 19:11
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Residual sea salt would really only add a smidge of hardness (gH possibly kH too), there isn't anything in it which is inherently toxic unless it was collected from a polluted area. So I think rinsed coral skeletons would be fine as long as the coral is well dead and gone, you don't want rotting dead coral adding ammonia to your tank. I've used coral skeletons myself in my fish tanks with no issues. Some info I came across recently about cherry shrimp suggested that the males do fight and will pick on a moulting competitor. It's usually only a problem in more crowded tanks though, and I can't tell from your pic if your dead one is male or female. Another issue is when there are too many females in a tank, the males are spurred to swim around like mad every time a female moults. If you have enough females that there's one moulting every day the males never get to rest and can succumb to exhaustion (another reason I'm keen to split up my colony), I don't think this related to your issue but I found it interesting just the same. I agree the temperature is fine and probably upping your hardness wouldn't hurt. Shrimplets born in the tank will get on better in that water than shrimp you bring in so once they get breeding the following generations should do better. With regards to the copper, as far as I know 1mg/L = 1ppm so your copper levels are quite low. Copper is an essential trace element even though it's poisonous in larger concentrations, for example shrimp blood uses copper ions to carry oxygen the same way our blood uses iron. So they require some copper intake or they'd die and I'd assume they'd be getting enough in their food.
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Apr 26, 2017 19:39
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mobby_6kl posted:So after comparing the colors in photoshop Kh is around, like, 3 degrees maybe. I'm using JBL strips which is generally pretty easy to read, but this is just kind of brownish. I guess much higher values would've been easier to determine, this just doesn't change much from the initial one. I like boiling things. A good rolling boil for at least 5 minutes will get into all the nooks and crannies and encourage any residues to boil off. It also kills most hitchhikers, but that probably isn't a problem with a long dead coral.
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Apr 27, 2017 00:07
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 I've been forgetting to test the water before changes. I bought a plant attached to a suction cup and also a piece of wood. I suspect I'll have to move the suction cup plant. I plan on removing the last silk plant (with a real plant attached to it) and the plastic rock in favor of attaching the lily pad and the real plant to that piece of wood. The wood decoration will move to the front where the plastic rock is now. I added plant fertilizer and water clarifier to the water in the same change. The water instantly went cloudy. It's mostly clear now but the part of the tunnel and part of wood closest to the filter have white stuff on them. Almost certainly the iron and potash mixture of the fertilizer. I've got 5 pounds of gravel, a shorter/wider tunnel, a moss pad, some nano moss balls, and some testing stuff coming in the mail soon. I'll still keep the other tunnel but Bullet's the only one who uses it. The shorter tunnel will probably go to the back of the tank where the lava cube is. That cube'll be moved to where the piece of wood is now. The plants on the tunnel are continuing to recover from being in a tank where they were getting eaten alive. It has four plants on it, but the fourth one is basically a stump. The rhizome thing is still green though and it looks like a new shoot has started to grow. Meanwhile, I can't think of any way to get the banana plant to stay in place.
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Apr 27, 2017 09:26
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Facebook Aunt posted:I like boiling things. A good rolling boil for at least 5 minutes will get into all the nooks and crannies and encourage any residues to boil off. It also kills most hitchhikers, but that probably isn't a problem with a long dead coral. Boiling rocks that spent time in the ocean or saltwater tanks is a terrible, potentially fatal idea. Palytoxin poisoning is no joke.
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Apr 27, 2017 13:59
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Enos Cabell posted:Boiling rocks that spent time in the ocean or saltwater tanks is a terrible, potentially fatal idea. Palytoxin poisoning is no joke. That is fantastic. Death by boiling rocks. How has this not been an episode of some crime drama yet?
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Apr 27, 2017 17:38
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Thanks for just killing me! Hope you're happy! I did the roll call while doing some aquascaping with the corals and one more shrimp seems to be MIA. Not sure when that happened, could've been at the same time or before as it was behind some rocks. I did a big water change even though the parameters were perfectly fine just to be safe though. Really strange as the water quality's been stable for weeks now and I haven't changed anything recently. Will see soon enough if the water change and corals helped with whatever caused the issue.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:00
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My levels are all fine but for the last couple of months I keep waking up to a cloudy film that's skimmable and creates white strands. I assume this is some sort of weird bacteria situation but I don't know how to stop it, water changes don't seem to make any difference! What's going on?
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Apr 27, 2017 22:54
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Enos Cabell posted:Boiling rocks that spent time in the ocean or saltwater tanks is a terrible, potentially fatal idea. Palytoxin poisoning is no joke. Its pretty neat http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/personal-experiences-with-palytoxin-poisoning-almost-killed-myself-wife-and-dogs
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Apr 28, 2017 01:35
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 If I ever do get around to doing a reef tank I'm putting that poo poo in our drying oven that heats to ~500C. Bollock Monkey posted:My levels are all fine but for the last couple of months I keep waking up to a cloudy film that's skimmable and creates white strands. I assume this is some sort of weird bacteria situation but I don't know how to stop it, water changes don't seem to make any difference! What's going on? White hairy things? Could be fungi I'd have to look at it with my scope to tell you for sure.
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Apr 28, 2017 01:57
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I did a water test. The nitrogen cycle seems to be starting up. I finally have nitrates, 10ppm! My ammonia tested at .5 but I've used the stuff that converts ammonia to ammonium so that's probably an iffy reading. No nitrites yet, and no chlorine. My alkalinity is ideal, but the tank water's testing very hard and my PH is 8.0 ppm. The hardness should be easy to manage so long as I test the water before adding it; the PH is probably high because I added bottled water to the tank this morning to raise the water level. This weekend I'll move Saphire and Bullet to an isolation tank before adding more gravel and plants, moving tank stuff around, changing the water, and starting the API perfect start kit.
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Apr 28, 2017 02:45
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The nitrates get converted from the nitrites so all your nitrites sound like they are being processed which is good! 10ppm of nitrate is a good safe amount. Some people water change after it hits 20ppm, some people with planted tanks let it get much higher with no apparent harm to fish (but personally I would not put fish at risk for the sake of plants). As far as I know it takes two types of bacteria to do the two processes, ammonia can't directly convert to nitrate so the bacteria must have built up enough to keep up with the nitrite load at least. There could have been some extra bacteria on the plants that you added and the plants themselves will consume some of the wastes. Ammonia is more toxic at higher pH but 8 isn't too far out of the ordinary and pH is linked to KH hardness anyway which is why there's no point trying to adjust one if the other is already where you want it. Adding Indian almond leaves might bring the pH down a bit but as long as your nitrogen cycle is working the higher pH won't hurt anything (unless you're trying to get fish to breed). As an aside, pH is measuring the concentration of hydrogen ions but it's some kind of weird inverse logarithm, otherwise the numbers are too big - a lower number than 7 means more hydrogen ions H+ vs hydroxide OH- (which together make water H2O) so it's just a number, not measured in parts per million or any other unit. The relationship between hardness and pH is pretty hard to map out, especially since dissolved gasses affect the pH as well as dissolved solids. A well oxygenated tank will have a higher pH than one with less surface agitation that is absorbing CO2 over time and becoming more acidic as carbonic acid forms. Too complicated for me, really all you need to know is try to keep it stable and within a fairly wide range that fish can acclimatise to. My test strips from Amazon arrived today! I was pretty confused because they have labelled the package as "women's beauty shaving product" which I definitely did not order. I wonder if the seller confused them with waxing strips??
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Apr 28, 2017 05:48
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Bollock Monkey posted:My levels are all fine but for the last couple of months I keep waking up to a cloudy film that's skimmable and creates white strands. I assume this is some sort of weird bacteria situation but I don't know how to stop it, water changes don't seem to make any difference! What's going on? I have had some pretty gross jars of water in my time, from when I was keeping tons of flatworms (they make enough slime to foul a small jar very quickly) and trying to grow green water or infusoria and I've never seen anything like that form. It sounds kind of gross! Does it smell like anything? Have you got any kind of surface agitation in your tank? How big is the tank, and what livestock? Any plants that aren't doing well, or overpopulation of snails? Any kind of breeding activity? I've heard that penguin tetras produce enough milt when they spawn that it can foul up the whole tank, and a surface film could be from extra proteins in the water. Grossness that appears overnight does make me think it could be snail slime leavings or frisky fish proteins since both of those are from nocturnal activities rather than built up wastes that a water change would remove.
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Apr 28, 2017 06:04
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Shrimp have way too many legs. I got some blue cherry shrimp yesterday. Slowly acclimatize them to the water in my tank over a few hours. They weren't freaking out, so I let them go see the sights. A couple hours later I notice a couple of them are . . . dancing? Just standing in one spot, legs doing a little jig. Oh god, is something wrong? Are they dying? Do I need to try to catch them? Take off my glasses and peer really intently at the little guys. Oh, those aren't their dancing legs, those are their eating legs. They are gorging themselves on delicious biofilm. Okay then.   A half inch shrimp is also ridiculously hard to photograph, at least with the cellphone autofocus. Little blue guy in the upper left corner, upside down on a bit of driftwood.
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Apr 28, 2017 07:27
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Fuckkk I think another shrimp bit the dust tonight. I have no clue what's going on any more - I hadn't had a single death in like two months, then probably two within a few days despite not changing anything, now another one after doing a big water change and adding the corals (that seemed to raise gh a bit already). The only variable was the new fertilizer that does't fully correlate with the deaths and is supposedly safe but I guess would be safer to remove now. And just as two of them are berried and one is probably pretty close to the end of pregnancy 
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Apr 28, 2017 10:28
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I've got a half a berried shrimp I found tonight that her tankmates ate the front half of her before I found her. No idea why she died although I did spot a tiny planaria on the glass the other day so I might dose the tank with a bit of fenbendazole just in case it was a worm attack. I'm attempting the egg tumbler egg rescue method (there are a few youtube videos on this topic) to see if I can hatch any of the eggs. If you want to try this method you might be able to bodge something with an airstone and a small container or similar if you haven't disposed of the body yet, the eggs just need water circulation to stop them from fungussing. I already had the tumbler and had used it to raise my last 2 batches of peacock gudgeons. How many shrimp do you have, and how old are your shrimp? They don't last forever. It's very hard to tell what is going on with the health of shrimp and some breeders don't have good genetics in their colonies any more. Or if your colony is old with no new blood coming in you can have the same thing happen, the shrimp just don't live as long as they should, and seem to become more frail. Anecdotally I've heard that assassin snails can harm or kill shrimp, but then they'd eat them and you'd see that happening. If you bought adult sized shrimp when you got them, there's no way to tell how old they were so if they were already pretty mature its not surprising to only get a few months out of them. And might also explain why they haven't been breeding as prolifically as you'd expect, too.
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Apr 28, 2017 11:13
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The berried ones are still alive, I'm just very concerned about them at the moment. Sorry if I wasn't being clear. I'll definitely try to salvage the eggs if anything happens to them, thanks for the tip! I had 11 for about 2 months or so, now down to 8 during the last couple of days only. Dunno how old they are - they seemed pretty adult-size when I got them. With the first one I certainly thought/hoped it's just old age, if they live 1-2 years on average then it's very likely that one could die within a few months of ownership. But three dying within a few days is very, very unlikely based on back of the napkin probability calculation so I'm worried something's badly messed up.
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Apr 28, 2017 13:58
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Azuth0667 posted:White hairy things? Could be fungi I'd have to look at it with my scope to tell you for sure. Stoca Zola posted:I have had some pretty gross jars of water in my time, from when I was keeping tons of flatworms (they make enough slime to foul a small jar very quickly) and trying to grow green water or infusoria and I've never seen anything like that form. It sounds kind of gross! Does it smell like anything? Have you got any kind of surface agitation in your tank? How big is the tank, and what livestock? Any plants that aren't doing well, or overpopulation of snails? Any kind of breeding activity? I've heard that penguin tetras produce enough milt when they spawn that it can foul up the whole tank, and a surface film could be from extra proteins in the water. Grossness that appears overnight does make me think it could be snail slime leavings or frisky fish proteins since both of those are from nocturnal activities rather than built up wastes that a water change would remove.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:43
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Bollock Monkey posted:Not hairy, no. When you skim it, it's like white strands in the net. If its not fluffy its probably not fungus, not hairy so not algae. It really only leaves bacterial growth and that will just keep growing as long as you're giving it conditions that it likes. Oh poo poo, I wonder if its columnaris? I've read claims there are 4 different strains of columnaris, one spreads fast and can wipe out an entire tank in a day or two, one spreads but kills more slowly over weeks and causes ulceration (this is the version I lost some of my early fish to), and then there are the ones that thrive in cooler water, one which makes fluffy growth on wounds on the fish and one that will grow in the tank without needing to be attached to a fish. I've never seen it myself so I don't know whether it is anything like what you describe. I don't even know if axolotls could catch columnaris, anyone got any ideas? It doesn't sound like it's hurting the axolotl at all at this point, but I'd imagine if the film is forming every single night and the surface agitation isn't breaking it up, it could get to the point where it blocks oxygen exchange and does start harming the axolotl. I'd be tempted to try and get rid of it even though one of the best rules I've learned about the aquarium hobby is "Don't fix it if it isn't broken". So here are some ideas I have: Is there any substrate? If it's rocks or gravel, can you vacuum it really well, or stir it around? If it's sand there's less likely to be gunk stuck in it but there could be some gross bits under the surface just the same. I wouldn't stir sand but I'd poke it with something. Can you fast the axolotl, or feed it a different food? Could be the film is from food leftovers or is a result of the products of digestion of that food. (Do axolotls poop a lot? Are those poops big and easy to remove, or loose and available to feed bacteria?) The film might not be columnaris but it could be bacterial, and since you don't know what it is, you can't really medicate for it safely. You'd have to disrupt it in some other way. Something that might work is adding salt, if thats something you can do with an axolotl. Columnaris doesn't like salt and it might work for other bacteria. A decent UV steriliser in line with your filter might help too, although they're expensive if you want a proper one that actually sterilizes, and they can run hot although that shouldn't matter since you aren't supposed to run them all the time. Maybe put your axolotl in a temporary tub and give the entire aquarium a big clean out? If you can, take everything out, wipe everything down with white vinegar, rinse the substrate (if you have any) really well, let everything dry out or even dry it with a hairdryer so it gets nice and hot and dry. Kind of a big effort for a bit of scum, but scummy films really aren't normal for a filtered aquarium. Could there be something wrong somewhere in your filter, maybe a colony of bad bacteria in there is overflowing to form the filmy layer in your tank? mobby_6kl posted:The berried ones are still alive, I'm just very concerned about them at the moment. Sorry if I wasn't being clear. I'll definitely try to salvage the eggs if anything happens to them, thanks for the tip! Oh good, I'm glad you didn't lose those berried shrimp. Two months isn't that long in the scheme of things, if those shrimp were sick or stressed before you got them it could still affect them even after 2 months have passed. For shrimp I would still count 2 months as "new" and it really isn't unusual to lose livestock that have come to you from unknown conditions. I'd argue its likely they've all been exposed to the same stressors, adverse conditions, maybe even diseases or organ damage from inappropriate exposure to medications, at the same time, so it isn't that surprising that some of them are dying at around the same time. Don't give up yet! It's pretty unlikely that if you screw up it will only kill a couple of your shrimp, you're much more likely to kill all of them at once if something you've done is responsible. Like forgetting to dechlorinate your water, or an actual thing I did once: accidentally doing a huge water change after forgetting I'd left a tank draining and then panicking and adding too much new water. I lost every single shrimp from that tank although they didn't die straight away, they stopped thriving and faded away one by one over a few weeks. The dumb thing is the "old" water was right there in a bucket, I could have put it back in, I just didn't think. Anyway what I'm saying is I don't think you've screwed up anywhere. All you can do is watch and wait, remove dead shrimp as soon as you can and do small water changes as necessary and hopefully you'll soon have a bunch of strapping young shrimplets who were born in your water and thus will love living in it.
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Apr 28, 2017 19:04
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I hadn't seen any of my shrimp for about a day and a half, so I was pretty happy when this little lady came dancing out.
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Apr 29, 2017 05:43
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 This should be the final form of the aquarium unless anyone has any suggestions or critiques. The changes included: 1) Adding 6 nano moss balls and 1 java moss pad. 2) Adding a big flat rock that I hope to use for feeding Bullet 3) Adding a big silk plastic plant to help obscure the heater 4) Removing the ever shedding coconut tunnel and the last of the small silk plants. 5) Keeping some of the plants from the ever shedding coconut tunnel. 6) Adding a sunken tunnel and five pounds of gravel. 7) Adding some cut up bits of a sponge aquarium filter to the filtration chamber. Hopefully, they'll be able to seed the tank between bag filter changes. 8) Letting the tiny plant float free again. 9) A 50% water change. Come to think of it, I'd appreciate any advice anyone would have for obscuring the filter.
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Apr 29, 2017 08:04
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I like the crazy mix of different coloured gravel! It's a bit Egyptian now, lapis and turquoise, carnelian and jasper etc. It's going to be hard to come up with something that will fit in such a small tank to obscure the filter, you could try something like a moss wall although they look worse than nothing while they are being established. A moss rope might be less obtrusive and look less bad while its growing in, but since they aren't rigid like a moss wall mesh they could be harder to attach. I've done one using a suction cup as one end and a ceramic filter noodle as the weight on the other end. Actually a moss rope is probably preferable since you don't want the abrasive edge of some mesh to be a hazard for your fish.  These ones are (not mine) Taiwan moss on the left, susswassertang (or subwassertang), and some kind of fissidens moss on the right. Personal experience with susswassertang is that it's very brittle so I don't know how whoever made this managed to attach it so well. The kind of bare one shows how these ropes start out, you unbraid a bit of rope and then use three strands to plait a new braid, tucking bits of moss in as you go. I find you get better bushy growth from moss if you trim it every now and then. Edit to add yoyo update: http://i.imgur.com/AODtFoP.gifv I love these guys! They were in the tank a matter of minutes before they started chasing the tetras around - just trying to check them out or school with them, and the tetras are extremely perturbed. Exactly the result I wanted. The yoyo loaches were visibly excited about there being other fish around, doing some playful swimming antics. I don't think the tetras will waste energy bullying each other now with these yoyos to distract them. So tetra bullying problem most likely solved, with the bonus that I've got some utterly delightful loaches to watch. They're already investigating every leaf, hopefully eating all the snail eggs even if they're a bit too young to hoe into the larger snails yet. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 08:29
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Is that a planted tank? If so I know the look I'm going to go for when I upgrade this tank to 50g.
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Apr 29, 2017 13:50
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I keep finding the occasional shrimp on the floor- I think I need a better way of covering the tank, because I think they're climbing the air tubes or something. That said, it's absolutely adorable to watch one reach a leg up and scratch its back like it's a cat or something.
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Apr 29, 2017 14:12
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Thanks for the moss rope/moss wall idea, it's something I never heard of before. My ammonia levels are 0 but they might rise soon. I lost track of three of the five pellets meant for Bullet. They got lost after I moved the aquarium wood decoration; Bullet found a way under parts of it and I didn't want her to get trapped if the wood shifted. Since my hands were already getting immersed in the tank I used that as a chance take out the small floaty plant and attach it to a suction cup. I attached the coconut plant survivors to another suction cup. I also added three of the silk plants back to provide more cover for Bullet. Edit: If I had a different lid I could move the filter somewhere else. And it would stop falling into the water so easily. This isn't a typical aquarium shape though. I wonder how easy/hard/expensive it'd be to get a new lid made. Edit 2: It might be cheaper to just get a filter with a smaller internal footprint or an external footprint. These look promising. Tetra 26316 Whisper Filter PF10, 5-10-Gallon https://www.amazon.com/United-Pet-Group-Tetra-Whisper/dp/B00W5TFH3E Aqueon Quietflow Internal Power Filter https://www.amazon.com/Aqueon-10-Gallon-QuietFlow-Internal-Filter/dp/B00AWV4R8I Zoo Med Nano 10 External Canister Filter https://www.amazon.com/Zoo-Med-External-Canister-Gallons/dp/B005DGHRU2 Rio Mini 90 Internal Power Filter for Aquarium https://www.amazon.com/Rio-Internal-Power-Filter-Aquarium/dp/B0002DGT78 Marina Slim S10 Power Filter https://www.amazon.com/Marina-A285-S10-Power-Filter/dp/B0032G8TPW RandomPauI fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 05:04
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RandomPauI posted:Thanks for the moss rope/moss wall idea, it's something I never heard of before. Could you suction cup the plants to the filter? Or decorate it in some way? Maybe get one of those plastic backdrops and glue it over the filter? Crazy glue is safe to use in aquariums, it sets within 20 minutes and it's fine. I've used crazy glue to glue java fern or anubis rhizomes to ornaments, just blot the rhizome dry and go to town. I also used silicone aquarium sealant to glue a bunch of things, but that wouldn't be good for a filter because it has to set for 24 or 48 hours before it is safe to put in the water with the fish. Obviously it also couldn't be used for live plants, since they couldn't stay dry for that long.  Here's an example: a little cave I made from an old plastic jar of activated carbon. The pebbles are glued on with aquarium sealant. That took a while since each one has to be glued on individually, and occasionally I had to take a 15 minute break to let it set so it could be turned without a bunch falling off, but I did it while watching TV so nbd. The little anubis and java fern are glued on with crazy glue -- it's been a couple weeks and they seem perfectly happy and the roots are growing. From most angles you can't even tell there is anything there, it's just a couple plants growing out of a little mound of gravel. Anyway, the food pellets you lost will probably rise to the surface in a couple days if they aren't eaten or sucked into the filter. When they start to rot little gas bubbles form in the mold and they bob to the surface.
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Apr 30, 2017 05:51
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I tried using the suction cups on the filter just to test it out but the curving is too much. I considered putting a backdrop over it too but since the rest of the tank doesn't have a backdrop it would still stand out. At this point, I'm leaning pretty heavily towards getting something with a smaller footprint inside the tank. And a moss rope or two for the way they look.
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Apr 30, 2017 06:21
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RandomPauI posted:I tried using the suction cups on the filter just to test it out but the curving is too much. I considered putting a backdrop over it too but since the rest of the tank doesn't have a backdrop it would still stand out. If you are set on replacing it, a sponge filter would probably do fine. The sponge does mechanical and biological filtering and a decent one should last for years - the sponge part doesn't need to be replaced until it hardens. The air stone gently circulates and oxygenates the water, but shouldn't throw enough current to disturb the betta or frog. It could sit on the floor of the tank behind the big plant an all you'd really see is the stream of bubbles from the air pump. Maybe the airline, but if you are careful with the placement it's pretty easy to have that obscured by the bubbles.
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Apr 30, 2017 07:24
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Stoca Zola posted:Clean the tank super well etc Thanks for the advice. I will move Max into his temporary tank and do a big clean. The substrate is sand but I can agitate that and scrub down the ornaments and see if that helps at all. A couple of photos to explain what I was on about as well - I came down yesterday to a pretty bad film.  
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Apr 30, 2017 10:07
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