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Where should I place my co2 diffuser? I have a bit of a weird setup in that my HOB is on the side and not the back. Currently have it under the filter outlet but it seems to mostly collect behind the filter or get sucked up in the intake. Should I put it on the other end? Directly under the intake?
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Jan 10, 2016 18:40
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Got a Fluval Spec V today that I ordered last week. Petco has them for $59.49, and I want something other than my 55. http://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/fluval-spec-v-aquarium-kit-in-black Anyone have any strong feelings on Caribsea Eco-Complete vs. Flourite Sand vs. ADA Amazonia? I have a spare CO2 cylinder kicking around so I'm going to put pressurized CO2 onto the thing and put on a 18" Current Satellite LED + or Pro + and grow some plants.
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Jan 11, 2016 20:54
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skrapp mettle posted:Got a Fluval Spec V today that I ordered last week. Petco has them for $59.49, and I want something other than my 55. http://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/fluval-spec-v-aquarium-kit-in-black I use fluorite sand and my stuff grows pretty good.
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Jan 11, 2016 21:51
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Does anyone here know the efficacy of activated carbon with regards to removing heavy metals from water? The snail I bought a few days ago has died and the only thing I can think of is that it was an excess of copper. I test the water regularly and levels come back perfect, but I don't have any way of testing for heavy metals, and the current batch of carbon I have in the tank is nearing the end of its effective lifespan. I'm going to take a sample of my water to a local aquarium to get it checked out before I get another one. Assuming that carbon isn't a good option for heavy metals, what solutions are there?
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Jan 12, 2016 09:35
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Goodpart posted:Assuming that carbon isn't a good option for heavy metals, what solutions are there? I am 100% sure one of the de-chlorinators I've used claimed to react metals out of the water - definitely mentioned copper on the label - if a RO unit is out of your budget. They won't all do it but there are probably many that do. I haven't kept track of which brand does what since I switched to RO. When you treat your water you should let it sit overnight or longer before using it to make sure the chemicals have time to work. As far as I know activated charcoal does next to nothing for heavy metals, it's better for removing organic compounds (that is, not aquarium muck organics but carbon-based compounds like benzene which really shouldn't be in your tap water anyway). Also in my reading I have come across a consensus that activated charcoal doesn't last very long at all in a fish tank. Your best bet will be to find a water conditioner that reacts the metals to a safe state, and maybe get a copper testing kit to make sure you're getting the dosage right. On the other hand, any new livestock have usually been through a lot of stress before they arrive in your tank and are susceptible to illness and death, so you didn't necessarily poison your new snail to death. It's definitely worth testing the water if you're worried though for peace of mind when getting future livestock. skrapp mettle posted:Anyone have any strong feelings on Caribsea Eco-Complete vs. Flourite Sand vs. ADA Amazonia? I remember reading some stories about some ADA Amazonia batches breaking down and causing cloudiness, and needing to be capped with something else to keep the mess under control. Not sure if that was quality control issues, or old batches that had been stored wrong or who knows. The plants don't care obviously, it just looks gross but capping a small tank like a Fluval Spec V with fine gravel or something wouldn't be a big deal I don't think, if it became necessary.
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Jan 12, 2016 10:01
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I currently use Chloromon as a de-chlorinator but it states nothing about metals: only chlorine, chloramine and ammonia. So it's possible that there are quantities of other things floating around that I'm not aware of. I always perform water tests prior to getting new additions to my tank just for peace of mind but metals aren't part of it. I'm going to invest in a copper test kit before I even think about getting another snail. RO is probably outside my budget, but I'm quite low on Chloromon so I may look for another conditioner that also covers other avenues when it comes time to replenish my stocks. Thanks! Goodpart fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 10:10
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Goodpart posted:I currently use Chloromon as a de-chlorinator but it states nothing about metals: only chlorine, chloramine and ammonia. So it's possible that there are quantities of other things floating around that I'm not aware of. I always perform water tests prior to getting new additions to my tank just for peace of mind but metals aren't part of it. I'm going to invest in a copper test kit before I even think about getting another snail. Seachem Support posted:Prime reduces heavy metals that are found in tap water at typical concentrations. Typical concentrations are normally very low because tap water is for human consumption. Heavy metals include lead, copper, nickel, zinc, iron, etc. If a person has high amounts of heavy metals in their tap water that are above normal, then he/she may want to consider filtering their tap water with an RO unit prior to use. The primary function of Prime is to detoxify chlorine, ammonia, nitrite, chloramine, and nitrate. Prime will reduce and detoxify heavy metals, and make them fall out of solution (the by-product would be a salt). So, yes, the metals will technically still be in the aquarium; they can become "available" again if your pH were to ever drop significantly
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Jan 12, 2016 17:14
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I found the one I was using: Supachlor BENEFITS: Australian Made 5ml per 200 liters Water Ager Removes Ammonia Removes Fluoride Removes Heavy Metals Removes Copper, Iron, Zinc and Aluminium by chelating Removes Hydrated Lime Does not contain Formaldehyde I've seen it in a couple of online stores, thetechden is where I bought mine. If you're in Australia like me (judging by your avatar) you might not come across Prime or other Seachem products very often.
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Jan 12, 2016 20:43
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Hi, Freshwater Aquarium! I am getting set to interview for a position involving water quality and filtration of animal pools at a park. I'm rather limited on my knowledge and wanted to ask if anyone had any sites they've referenced for this information. The OP was very helpful in its basic outlining of filtration, and has given me a good starting point while I google. I figured y'all might know some avenues to search or sites I can study, too. Thanks!
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Jan 12, 2016 21:42
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I just grabbed 250ml of Supachlor, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks!
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Jan 12, 2016 23:33
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aidoru posted:a position involving water quality and filtration of animal pools at a park There's a bit of a difference between water for a hippo or a polar bear to swim in vs a koi pond vs a duck pond etc. We probably need a bit more information about what the pools are for before we can say anything meaningful, but maybe a good starting point is YouTube. I've seen some pretty informative stuff by people who make big ponds for a living, people who run marine parks, and more, showcasing what filtering they've used, how they got the flow rate right, and so on.
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Jan 13, 2016 05:03
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Thanks! I don't know too many specifics, unfortunately, just that they are animal pools as opposed to aquariums. I believe there is a koi pond as well. I was mostly hoping for information about the actual system mechanics, especially mechanical filtration, but like you said it's likely very dependent on the size of the pools and its usage/contaminants. I will check Youtube, though, I hadn't considered that.
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Jan 13, 2016 05:29
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I lost two of my blue mystery snails over the past week. They were fine then I found them on the bottom dead. The big guy keeps on going along and the rams horn is steady. Nothing has really changed in the aquarium, water tests show high hardness and a ph of about 7.5, the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates are at 0. The tank is heavily planted. Shrimp and fish are doing fine. No issues with them, just the snails.
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Jan 15, 2016 07:41
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What about the tank's nanobubble concentration?
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Jan 15, 2016 08:01
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My boyfriend has just got a 180l for his neon dwarf rainbows to move into so I get his old 55l tank! It already has some ember tetras that are staying there, so I did some research to find out what other fish inhabit the same areas and will be adding some julii cities and some dwarf otos. I also want some Christmas moss for the wood, but I'm thinking I might leave it at that, I like the way it looks already.
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Jan 16, 2016 00:58
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minema posted:My boyfriend has just got a 180l for his neon dwarf rainbows to move into so I get his old 55l tank! It already has some ember tetras that are staying there, so I did some research to find out what other fish inhabit the same areas and will be adding some julii cities and some dwarf otos. I also want some Christmas moss for the wood, but I'm thinking I might leave it at that, I like the way it looks already. It looks really awesome! Like a realistic environment.  My baby snail of mystery (not a mystery snail) is definitely a ramshorn. It's so cute and tiny! It's really fun to watch it growing up. 
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Jan 16, 2016 02:45
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 The miracle of life... is kind of gross. The same day one of my mystery snails FINALLY laid eggs, my mating pair of giant spotted Sulawesi snails both died. I still have about 10 babies of theirs to raise but I'm going to miss them. I really wish I had about $100 to drop on a bunch of adult giant orange and yellow Sulawesis in the hopes of getting some that are willing to mate. 
republicant fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 12:12
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I just killed all my girlfriends fish. We were moving her family and we set up the tank at the new place and put in the fish.
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Jan 17, 2016 01:26
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How is it your fault the fish are dead? Did you wash them with soap or something?
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Jan 17, 2016 02:40
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I was the one that filled the tank and put the fish in. I just feel super bad about it.
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Jan 17, 2016 02:52
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It's probably not your fault in any way. Some fish are overly sensitive and do not handle getting moved well, no matter what you did the stress may have just been too much for them.
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Jan 17, 2016 03:50
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They were glowfish tetras so maybe that was it?
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Jan 17, 2016 03:52
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Yeah I think tetras are a bit touchy and stress out easily.
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Jan 17, 2016 11:20
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Len posted:They were glowfish tetras so maybe that was it? Those are like a buck fifty. Go buy some.
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Jan 18, 2016 02:13
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Errant Gin Monks posted:Those are like a buck fifty. Go buy some. Not sure where you live but they cost $9 each here, assuming we're talking about GloFish tetras. Unrelated but I'd never heard of fish lice before today. I'm not squeamish at all about normal land bugs, spiders don't bother me at all, but if I saw this in a tank I'd probably scream. 
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Jan 18, 2016 02:53
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As an update none of them survived the night.
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Jan 18, 2016 03:15
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Used an underwater camera to make an in tank video of my frontosa tank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_QSqtnNBmc
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Jan 18, 2016 07:06
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that's the look of "what the gently caress is that thing doing in here?"
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Jan 19, 2016 02:21
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Oh psh you should see some of the poo poo that lives in the mulm.. wait till you break it down one fine day that's when you will see the really creepy creatures.
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Jan 19, 2016 02:53
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Ahhh goldfish. I like you even though you are stupid. Started working on planting and remodeling their tank. One of them is working on rooting up all the plants, just obsessively and constantly rooting and rooting. I will defeat you Mrs Dots. I have wrapped the roots in lead. You are too small to uproot these. Stormy has taken a different method of destroying the plants and has decided just to eat them. She may succeed. 
Errant Gin Monks fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 04:25
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 Our assassin snails refused to ever breed and I had no idea that they finally did, until this little guy turned up in the tank today. So now we've had successful assassin, mystery, rabbit, Columbian ramshorn, regular ramshorn, and Japanese trapdoor snail breedings. It sucks having hard water sometimes but it's great that snails love to breed in it. I got two 5-gallon Seachem Hydrototes and found a machine at a local grocery store that sells carbon-filtered, micron-filtered, UV-treated RO water for 30¢/gallon so fish breeding experiments may be in the works soon.
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Jan 21, 2016 14:49
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I found two itty bitty little tiny snails on my plants today. Too small to take a photo with my phone. They look perfectly round though. Could my mysteries have mated? Or are these dreaded invaders? No big deal the goldfish will probably eat them.
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Jan 21, 2016 15:22
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Not sure if anyone here has their lights on a timer but if someone does, have you ever had fluorescent or UV lights not work well with the timer? I'm on my third 160 watt combination UV/heat bulb within a span of maybe six months and they're supposed to last much longer than that. They work fine for months/weeks/days, then start flickering and turning off and on when the timer turns them on in the morning, and then they die and are replaced. This one began flickering to the point of being unusable so I took it out of the fixture and let it sit for a few days, then today I put it back in and switched the fixture on, and it flickered once and has now been on for a couple hours with no issues. I'm really not sure if the issue is the bulb, the timer, or the fixture (which is made for a 160 watt bulb so it's not being overloaded), but it's working now and the only variable that changed was the timer not turning it on so it might be that. But the thing is that I have the same type of bulb in a 100 watt version in another fixture, and it's been working perfectly going on and off every day with the timer for about eight months now. Hopefully I won't have to replace the fixture or stop using these 160 watt bulbs, but I just wanted to see if anyone has had issues with timers and fluorescent/UV bulbs to see if that's likely to be the case. (Also if it's relevant at all, it's not the long skinny type of fluorescent bulb, but the screw-in type.) republicant fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 21, 2016 19:04
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republicant posted:Not sure if anyone here has their lights on a timer but if someone does, have you ever had fluorescent or UV lights not work well with the timer? I'm on my third 160 watt combination UV/heat bulb within a span of maybe six months and they're supposed to last much longer than that. They work fine for months/weeks/days, then start flickering and turning off and on when the timer turns them on in the morning, and then they die and are replaced. This one began flickering to the point of being unusable so I took it out of the fixture and let it sit for a few days, then today I put it back in and switched the fixture on, and it flickered once and has now been on for a couple hours with no issues. I'm really not sure if the issue is the bulb, the timer, or the fixture (which is made for a 160 watt bulb so it's not being overloaded), but it's working now and the only variable that changed was the timer not turning it on so it might be that. But the thing is that I have the same type of bulb in a 100 watt version in another fixture, and it's been working perfectly going on and off every day with the timer for about eight months now. Hopefully I won't have to replace the fixture or stop using these 160 watt bulbs, but I just wanted to see if anyone has had issues with timers and fluorescent/UV bulbs to see if that's likely to be the case. Bad ballast perhaps? That would affect turning it on. I'm no electrician though, just seen that commonly at work where the lights just flicker or can't be turned on. The facility people would just go replace the ballast and all was good again.
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Jan 21, 2016 19:20
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JuffoWup posted:Bad ballast perhaps? That would affect turning it on. I'm no electrician though, just seen that commonly at work where the lights just flicker or can't be turned on. The facility people would just go replace the ballast and all was good again. That's what I thought too but since it's a screw in type those usually have the ballast integrated into the bulb itself. 160W seems like a ton of wattage for a fluorescent, even 48" high output tubes are like 100w less than that. Not sure what's going on here.
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Jan 21, 2016 20:05
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I finally found Rainbow Chiclids, at Petsmart of all places. They only had two so I'm hoping for M/F but they're too small to tell yet. Looks like I'm gonna be setting up the 40 breeder again. I hate ordering fish online, so I've waited years for them to show up somewhere and my two favorite LFS's can't get them in. I picked up one like an idiot, and it was getting picked on so I sent my mom to grab the second one on her way home from work and somehow the lady working in the fish section convinced her to grab the Bolivian Ram that was in the tank too. Not sure what I'm going to do about that. Probably trade it in for store credit when I ditch the rear end in a top hat hybrid Mbuna. Upside it's a 3rd target for the rear end in a top hat Mbuna and so far spreading out the aggression has resulted in no more fin nipping.
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Jan 21, 2016 23:25
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Trying to find panda garra. loving Wetspot says they have them in, and then literally sell them all out in between emails.
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Jan 22, 2016 01:45
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Hot Jam posted:That's what I thought too but since it's a screw in type those usually have the ballast integrated into the bulb itself. 160W seems like a ton of wattage for a fluorescent, even 48" high output tubes are like 100w less than that. Not sure what's going on here. It's a combination UVA/UVB/heat bulb made to put out a ton of heat and simulate the sun so it has major wattage. Actually now that I think about it I should probably post about it in the reptile thread, it's for my aquatic turtle which I always think of as an aquarium but this is one of those things that are probably more reptile-specific. Now that winter is finally setting in I'm realizing how crappy a lot of my heaters are... Somehow I don't think having the temperature swing between 69° and 81° is good for anything. :/
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Jan 22, 2016 02:26
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Alright so aside from the Oto cats I get next week I think I'm done stocking my living room aquarium. Giant Danios - 5 Zebra Danios - 5 Black Neon Tetras - 8 Cardinal Tetras - 8 Ember Tetras - 10 Kuhli Loaches - 5 Mystery Snails - 2 Amano Shrimp - 4 Bamboo Shrimp - 3 Ghost Shrimp - 5 Going to add 4-5 Oto cats and be done with it. Maybe in a few years when the tetras start to die I will start adding types of Rainbow fish.
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Jan 22, 2016 03:22
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republicant posted:It's a combination UVA/UVB/heat bulb made to put out a ton of heat and simulate the sun so it has major wattage. Actually now that I think about it I should probably post about it in the reptile thread, it's for my aquatic turtle which I always think of as an aquarium but this is one of those things that are probably more reptile-specific. Is it a mercury vapor bulb? If so, I dunno, supposedly they last longer than 6 months, but I swear most people seem to have the exact same experience as you. I've never bothered with them because they sound like a constant pain. The filament is pretty fragile, and for awhile there was some semi-scandal about one of the big manufacturers having a serious quality control issue.
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Jan 22, 2016 06:41
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