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I ordered a big bag of ammonium chloride from Amazon and it works great. I used it to cycle my first tank and had it keep cycles going in empty tanks without issue. Considering it takes like 1/32 tsp to rocket a 29 gallon to 2ppm ammonia, I feel like I'll be working on this bag for years.
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Mar 2, 2021 04:54
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I went with Dr. Tims ammonia and had good luck with it. It took just about half the bottle to get my 125gal to 2ppm. I would have tried regular ammonia instead (because I am cheap) but at the time all the ammonia was still sold out with the rest of the cleaning supplies from COVID.
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Mar 2, 2021 05:52
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Omg I started an ammonia conversation didn't I lol!?!
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Mar 2, 2021 13:18
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Par for the course.
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Mar 2, 2021 16:11
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nunsexmonkrock posted:Omg I started an ammonia conversation didn't I lol!?! Happens to the best of us from time to time
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Mar 2, 2021 16:25
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Schwack posted:I ordered a big bag of ammonium chloride from Amazon and it works great. I used it to cycle my first tank and had it keep cycles going in empty tanks without issue. Considering it takes like 1/32 tsp to rocket a 29 gallon to 2ppm ammonia, I feel like I'll be working on this bag for years. Do you have a planted tank, and if so, how do the plants react to this? I'd guess they might like it quite a bit. Here's a horticulture thread cross post I just stumbled across the 20th Anniversary Aquatic Gardeners Association International Aquascaping Contest results. It has some amazing plant photography, and I dig it. vvvvvv cool. That's nice to know. B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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Mar 4, 2021 09:23
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B33rChiller posted:Do you have a planted tank, and if so, how do the plants react to this? I'd guess they might like it quite a bit. It was planted while I was cycling it and the plants seemed to grow as normal during the cycle. A few pond snails even survived in the 2ppm ammonia water through the whole cycle.
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Mar 4, 2021 18:44
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Got a lot of tank stuff planned for the weekend, excited to finally have my frontosa moving back into the house! Last night I temporarily relocated my discus and mbuna tanks from the rack where the stock tank will be relocated to. Tomorrow afternoon one of my brothers is coming over, and we are going to move the broken 180g/stand out of the basement and into the garage for later offloading on FB marketplace. Once that is out of the way I can move the rack over to the wall where the 180g was. Then I can begin the process of tearing down the 150g stock tank in the garage. I'm picking up a spare 55g from another brother tonight, so I'll have two 55g tanks and a 40g for temp frontosa housing while the moves take place. Once the fish are out I'm gonna clean the tank, move it into place, and then probably work on aquascape for far too long. I think I'm going to try implementing a waterfall into the FX6 return, but we'll see how that pans out. Hoping to have all the fish back in their final tanks by Sunday evening, fingers crossed.
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Mar 4, 2021 19:11
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Enos Cabell posted:Hoping to have all the fish back in their final tanks by Sunday evening, fingers crossed. That sounds awesome! Do you have any tank mates with the discus? Discus was my original plan for the 125, but the high temp requirement didn't seem compatible with any of the other fish I wanted. Also, it sounds like an ABSOLUTE TON of work to accomplish in one weekend. Godspeed, lil' doodle!
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Mar 4, 2021 21:20
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candystarlight posted:That sounds awesome! Do you have any tank mates with the discus? Discus was my original plan for the 125, but the high temp requirement didn't seem compatible with any of the other fish I wanted. Thanks! I started off thinking I could keep discus in my 125g rainbow community tank, but after losing 2 I relocated them to their own tank. I've got 3 now in a 40b, 2 of the 4 juvies I originally bought plus a malnourished adult I rescued a month or so back. They are doing great now in their own tank, and last step of this move project is putting them into their final 55g home.
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Mar 4, 2021 23:18
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Phase one complete, frontosas split between the two 55s, 4 in one 3 in the other. 40b has ~20ish julies, green phantom pleco and 8" synodontis multipunctatus catfish. 
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Mar 5, 2021 04:54
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 I've got a little pond to clean up and stock. It's about 6'x10' and 1' deep. Outdoor Temperatures range from 55-100 degrees f. We also have some feral cats that use the pond for drinking. I think koi are out, too small a pond and too high a risk of predation. I was looking at some red shiners, and a pleco. I'd like to stock with some edible plants, taro, lotus, and watercress. I also plan to add a few more rocks and create some hides for the fish. Looking for a nice grass that would grow emergent to break up the waters edge line. I'm prepared to lose the fish I stock, but also want to take precautions to limit predation. Any holes in this or suggestions? Other fish ideas? I'm new to outdoor ponds, any major differences from aquariums? Edit: Actually, red shiners might be out. Invasive species are a concern should they escape. The pond also gets used for native frog breeding and we'd like to keep that. Any other good fish suggestions? eSporks fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 16:09
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eSporks posted:
ETA: He has a care guide video as well B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 17:54
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From the point of view of plants, I don't know many grasses but bacopa caroliniana and lobelia cardinalis might be nice marginals, I've had them in aquariums so they don't mind wet feet and I think they'd like sun better than they liked it in my tanks. I've seen irises at the edges of ponds too. I know a few fish that will survive those temperatures but they're all exotic so stick to natives if that's a concern for you. On that note, there aren't any fish that are compatible with frogs, all fish will eat eggs/tadpoles/compete for resources etc. My parents had a separate fish-free pond for their garden frogs so maybe that will work for you, or maybe work out a way to use mesh to protect egg masses once they've been laid. Fish that I think would be okay in that temperature range, rosy barbs, melanotaenia fluviatilis (Murray River Rainbow), japanese rice fish, white cloud mountain minnows, they're all schooling fish and there are some colour variations or long fin options if you want fancier fish, but for survivability against predators you want plainer colours and regular fins. I love how bigger schools of small fish move in a pond compared to huge koi bobbing about begging for food like puppies. I mean I can see the appeal of koi but I love seeing a school moving around. You need a deep zone in the pond for winter temperatures so work out what your deepest point is to make sure it's deep enough (maybe there's a guide online somewhere for recommendations?). It doesn't sound like you're in an area that gets frost but it's nice to be prepared for freak weather events. You probably don't need to remove detritus as often as a fish tank, especially if you have a skimmer doing a lot of the work for you but you should still try to scoop muck out, do regular filter/skimmer maintenance, stuff like that. You might need to do water changes or top ups so work out how you're going to treat your water for that, work out what food your livestock need and so on, so I guess that stuff isn't too different from aquarium keeping.
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Mar 6, 2021 18:54
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eSporks posted:
Not fish, but you could probably house 2-4 native turtles in there quite happily. Maybe reach out to a reptile rescue in your state? They’re usually replete with wild-caught turts that either became somebody’s pet or can’t really be released willy-nilly into the wild for some reason or another. I say adopt some rescues because I would not advise you to just go collect some wild painted turtles or sliders to put in your pond.
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Mar 6, 2021 19:16
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Stoca Zola posted:freak weather events The more I think about it, the more native species sound like a good idea. I think it had a turtle at one point, but I'm not sure how that got a long with the tadpoles. Iris are an excellent idea! I'm much more interested in the plants than the fish, but some schooling fish would be an attractive touch. I think I will start with iris, lotus, taro, and watercress while I do more research on fish and turtles. Or maybe just leave it animal free and see what it attracts, it's a wildlife rich area.
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Mar 6, 2021 21:43
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Turtles will probably eat any small fish. Or big fish if not fed. Its bit of a gamble really.
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Mar 6, 2021 22:04
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More details There was a population of small 1-2cm minnows of unknown species. It was never stocked with turtles, but would on occasion attract wild ones. The turtles, minnows, and frogs all coexisted in beautiful harmony and lived happily ever and before the big freeze. I might just use a bait trap to catch some local minnows and go that route.
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Mar 6, 2021 22:28
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Big move weekend is completed, but not without some tragedy. Suspected heater failure on one of the 55g holding tanks, found 3 of the 4 frontosa in that tank dead on Saturday morning less than 8 hours after I checked in on them Friday night. Really bummer way to start a weekend of tank work, only silver lining was that my alpha male and top female were in the other tank. After taking care of that, I got down to business and had all the tanks up and running by the end of Saturday and fish are all tucked in. Today was lots of organizing, and I think I'm finally ready to call it mostly good for now.         jPlumbing the fountain into the FX6 worked out really well, makes for a nice chill area to sit and watch fish.
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Mar 8, 2021 02:53
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eSporks posted:I've got a little pond to clean up and stock. If you put fish in there you will probably not not get any frogs...I like frogs
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Mar 8, 2021 10:11
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a smaller, much much more affordable alternative to koi is comets, just make sure you get healthy ones. Otherwise you can get pretty much all the basic koi looks and colors if you find good selection. regular goldfish issues apply, but they don’t have any of the problems that the notable mutant strains have
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Mar 8, 2021 10:14
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Sticky Date posted:If you put fish in there you will probably not not get any frogs...I like frogs As mentioned minnows and tadpoles have coexisted in there previously. It looks like fancy guppies could be a cheap option for something a little flashier, internet is saying they won't eat tadpoles. I think a pleco should be safe too, only concern then is resource competition. Still considering a no fish route though. I started cleaning out the muck yesterday, and to my surprise the minnow population survived the freeze somehow. I saw some adults, and some tiny fry.
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Mar 8, 2021 15:48
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Over the weekend I did a very deep clean of my GHA infested FOWLR tank. When I was done rearranging everything my triggerfish started harassing my scarlet cleaner shrimp. I suppose the two of them is an accident waiting to happen so I moved him to my 20g reef. Already much more active/out in the open, will post some pictures later. I also discovered a pretty big hermit crab that somehow has avoided the trigger this whole time. When I added the trigger I caught whatever hermits I could and moved them to the reef because I didn't want them to get devoured, but this guy is stayin' alive like a champ. Maybe I'll add a few more and hope for the best. In other news, I've adapted my Eheim cannister into almost an aquatic vacuum cleaner and it works awesome. I scrubbed as much algae loose as possible and just sucked it up with the Eheim hose.
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Mar 8, 2021 19:05
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:In other news, I've adapted my Eheim cannister into almost an aquatic vacuum cleaner and it works awesome. I scrubbed as much algae loose as possible and just sucked it up with the Eheim hose. That's awesome, when I was battling GHA in my tank I did a similar thing. Ran the vacuum tube section of a Python down into a filter sock in my sump. My return pump is able to handle the extra flow into the sump, so I can let it run for hours without disturbing my tank otherwise.
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Mar 8, 2021 19:27
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Thanks to th fucker who stole my catalytic converter, my dream for starfish tank has had to hit on the back burner. that said, once I do get some funds saved up and hopefully no other catastrophes erupt, is it better or easier to buy pre-made salt water, or just make my own?
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Mar 8, 2021 21:03
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I dunno about specific starfish requirements, but in most cases you want to mix with RODI water so that's ~$100ish in upfront costs*. Salt mix is fairly cheap though, ~$50 for a 200g box of Instant Ocean on Amazon and I've seen LFS run sales cheaper than that. On a small tank it might take a while to offset that cost, but buying and hauling water seems like such a hassle. * you're also going to want to have RODI water on hand for top offs, so it gets extra usage for that
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Mar 8, 2021 21:15
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Why RODI specifically? When I had marine tanks before, I was in another town, and we had well water that was super high in phosphates, so tons of algae. But the owner never went for RODI because of the price.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:11
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Enos Cabell posted:I dunno about specific starfish requirements, but in most cases you want to mix with RODI water so that's ~$100ish in upfront costs*. Salt mix is fairly cheap though, ~$50 for a 200g box of Instant Ocean on Amazon and I've seen LFS run sales cheaper than that. On a small tank it might take a while to offset that cost, but buying and hauling water seems like such a hassle. Every time I visit my LFS, there are dudes lugging giant containers into the store to fill with RODI and salt water. I love the look of salt tanks, but that bit looks miserable. Maybe one day I'll get the nerve to try out a tiny tank to get my feet wet. On another note, can anyone ID this driftwood? I snagged a few pieces because they looked cool, but I'd like to know exactly what I'm plunking into my tank. Even if it's only so I don't sound like a dumb dumb in front of more experienced fish keepers. 
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Mar 9, 2021 01:48
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Cowslips Warren posted:Why RODI specifically? When I had marine tanks before, I was in another town, and we had well water that was super high in phosphates, so tons of algae. But the owner never went for RODI because of the price. Basically just for the algae reasons afaik, but if you don't care about algae and your tap is ok for freshwater it should be fine to use.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:56
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Yeah, commercial salt mixes are designed to produce chemically correct artificial seawater based on being mixed with pure H20. Any dissolved solids you add on top of that have the potential to cause problems. They may not, but the potential is there. If you just want to keep very hardy fish and no corals, I think most places you can get away with tap water and salt mix. I'm sure there's reefers who make it work too, I just read over and over to use RODI and it sounded like advice from people who had learned it the hard way. I bought a basic RODI system that I spliced into the water pipes at my laundry sink. Compared to buying RODI or mixed saltwater from my LFS, I'm certain it's paid for itself several times over by now.
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Mar 9, 2021 02:06
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How much do you guys spend on salt per month/year? I'd like to set one up but I'm a bit hesitant about that bit.
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Mar 9, 2021 02:10
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Honestly, if your tank is small and you can’t do RODI at home (like if you rent), you can get refillable-big bottle RODI at places like costco, Home Depot, etc. And in a pinch I’ve done top ups with gallon bottles from CVS (rewards card is  ). The important thing w/ a small tank is really to prevent evaporation with a glass cover, and I spend like maybe $3 tops per month on fresh water for my 10gal even with the lid off a lot of the time.I know ppl love open-top but it loving drinks water during the wintertime with the heat on. If your tank’s small and your light decent you shouldn’t lose much in terms of light. As for salt water, mixing your own is most affordable, least cringe I guess, but if your tank’s like 20gal or smaller and you know how to price match to the website I don’t know why you shouldn’t do your initial fill with Petco box water just to get it right. I think I spent $20 on my initial fill and it was easy and it took me 5 minutes and I didn’t piss off my roommate. Since then I’ve spent another $20 on replacement water in the last year doing regular water changes. I could probably do half as many and be fine. Also keep hardy livestock. I don’t keep anything sensitive and expensive in my 10gal and neither should you. But star polyps, clove polyps, zooanthids, and ricordia seem to like cvs water just fine. Depending on what stars you want to keep some species can be pretty tanky all things considered. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 02:53
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BONGHITZ posted:How much do you guys spend on salt per month/year? I'd like to set one up but I'm a bit hesitant about that bit. I used to buy the Instant Ocean 200-gallon* boxes when they went on sale for $35 so that's 17.5 cents per gallon. Had my own RODI system which I was not great about tracking costs on but I'd guess it was basically 1000 gallons of RODI water per $50 filter change (pre-filters plus DI resin) so that's 5 cents per gallon. Call it basically 25 cents per gallon to mix up fresh saltwater with assuming some extra costs for electricity and stuff, maybe RODI wasn't quite up to 1k gal per filter set, etc. Then it depends on how much saltwater you change and the volume of your system. If I'm doing 20% monthly water changes on my 50 gallon system then it's 10 gallons per month, 2.5 dollars per month, $30 per year. * It's 4 bags of salt that make "200" gallons at a lower salinity, I think it's spec'd at 1.020 while normal reef tanks run at 1.026. So yo don't quite get 200 gallons.
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Mar 9, 2021 02:55
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Oh no, I am thinking maybe 29 gallons with a few sea stars, mostly spiny/serpent ones, and maybe a few shrimp. Having a tote of premade marine water will be easy; it gets over 115 here in the summer, so I have to have 30 gallon drums to cool regular water anyway for my freshwater tanks. Having a spare 10 gallon of premade saltwater won't be that much more room.
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Mar 9, 2021 03:05
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Obligatory cleaner shrimp picture.
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Mar 9, 2021 13:30
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I love him.
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Mar 9, 2021 15:53
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I lost two of my female rainbows this week. One just showed up dead against the filter inlet with no tail, and I'm reasonably sure that happened post mortem, my best guess is that she tried to eat some food that was too big for her and it got stuck as it did coincide with that feeding. The other has had scoliosis and decreasing ability to swim ever since I moved her back to the main tank from when I was breeding them. I wasn't sure if I'd injured her in the net or if it was illness - I had her in a breeder box so she wasn't competing for food or fighting current and while she was eating okay, her condition and curvature kept getting worse, so I used clove oil rather than let it drag out. Now I have only one female and three males left and I'm a little worried that the males might fight more because they're competing for only one female, or that the female might get trashed from all the attention (in the way that female guppies do). Has any one seen rainbows behave roughly when their numbers aren't balanced? From what I've read rainbows are super peaceful but that's what they said about my murderous penguin tetras too. Once the baby rainbows are bigger I want to put them in the big tank with the adult fish so any problem like that should settle down but they're barely an inch long so it will be a while yet.
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Mar 9, 2021 21:50
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I just started a 14 gal nano reef tank three days ago with live sand, half dry marco rock and half live rock (with some live rubble in one of the sump chambers) and so far have discovered; two starfish one blue the other brown, a small/thin bristleworm, a med/large bristleworm which freaked me out when I saw it. The room the tank is in was completely dark and I brought a flashlight and turned it on to suddenly spot this big ol bristleworm hanging out on one of the live rocks. It wasn't red at all like a fireworm, more like a pearlescent blue/white, so I figure it's probably a benign worm that might help keep the sand stirred up a bit and also just fill out this new bio-verse I am now host to  . I tested the water the following day after setting it up and had 0.05 ppm ammonia, 0 nitrite and 2 ppm nitrate. I figure that's normal for what I have so far. I don't have any fish or other livestock other than the hitchhikers on these live rocks. I plan to dose Dr. Tim's one and only at some point but I don't have ammonium chloride or fish so I have ghost fed twice over the last three days. Should I just wait until I get an ammonia spike from the ghost feeding (possibly a month or two down the road) before I dose the Dr. Tim's? Or could I add the Dr. Tim's a week in and get one fish like a goby, or rasp or small clown to provide instant ammonia for the bacteria? I know patience is a huge virtue in this hobby, I just want to make sure I do this cycle right. Dick Bastardly fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 01:31
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Dick Bastardly posted:I just started a 14 gal nano reef tank three days ago with live sand, half dry marco rock and half live rock (with some live rubble in one of the sump chambers) and so far have discovered; two starfish one blue the other brown, a small/thin bristleworm, a med/large bristleworm which freaked me out when I saw it. The room the tank is in was completely dark and I brought a flashlight and turned it on to suddenly spot this big ol bristleworm hanging out on one of the live rocks. It wasn't red at all like a fireworm, more like a pearlescent blue/white, so I figure it's probably a benign worm that might help keep the sand stirred up a bit and also just fill out this new bio-verse I am now host to Eh. I assume you want some zooanthid/clove polyp/star polyp? Live sand and live rock+ their water already had microfauna, as do all the hitchhikers you’ve found. You could probably add a couple initial frags + the water they come with and be right as rain to add a fish or two shortly after. 14 gal isn’t a ton of room for a really active fish.
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Mar 10, 2021 01:40
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chuck in the tim's, I think thats what the instructions say to do anyway https://store.drtimsaquatics.com/assets/images/pdfs/DrTims-Fishless-Cycling-Recipe-and-Guide-0920.pdf
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Mar 10, 2021 02:00
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