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OK, got ya both, expect tracking numbers sometime in the next week or so, I don't leave the house mush lol
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Aug 25, 2021 01:59
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Hi posted:Or are you just referring to how much light they get? I had the lights on a loooong time, like 12-14 hours a day for a while in hopes it would coerce the plants to grow quicker but seems like all its doing is pushing algae into over drive. I readjusted to 8 hours on the timer, I could try that mid day break too. I think those coloured lights are for min-maxing light wavelength to target the highest efficiency photosynthesis, but plants will use any light that is bright enough. The limiting factor with aquatic plants is usually access to CO2, unlike terrestrial plants where atmospheric CO2 is plentiful so they are limited by access to light and soil nutrients. The upside to aquatic plants, aside from that you don't need to remember to water them, is they have the ability to absorb nutrients through their submerged leaves at all times, not just when they've been given a feed. They need NPK and trace elements the same as terrestrial plants, and in theory the fish are providing N constantly and the fish food provides the P. It's fairly normal for K and magnesium to be deficient in tap water though depending on your source water so they are common additives in aquarium GH boosters and plant ferts etc. You can definitely burn Anubias and crypts with too much light, in a shallower tank, but your tank is deep enough to avoid those issues I think. Edit to add: as in nature, too much phosphate can cause algae issues but you're more likely to see free floating greenwater algae. Staghorn algae tends to grow with lack of circulation, black beard algae tends to grow with fluctuating or deficient CO2 levels (one of the most common algae types in a low tech tank). So the type of algae you see helps to work out what might be going on in the tank. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Aug 25, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 05:09
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Stoca Zola posted:I think those coloured lights are for min-maxing light wavelength to target the highest efficiency photosynthesis, but plants will use any light that is bright enough. The limiting factor with aquatic plants is usually access to CO2, unlike terrestrial plants where atmospheric CO2 is plentiful so they are limited by access to light and soil nutrients. The upside to aquatic plants, aside from that you don't need to remember to water them, is they have the ability to absorb nutrients through their submerged leaves at all times, not just when they've been given a feed. They need NPK and trace elements the same as terrestrial plants, and in theory the fish are providing N constantly and the fish food provides the P. It's fairly normal for K and magnesium to be deficient in tap water though depending on your source water so they are common additives in aquarium GH boosters and plant ferts etc. My tap water is extremely hard, I live in an old mining town thats now mostly farming, so between the zinc mines and then agricultural run off my tap water is always absurdly hard. Im out of strips at the moment but usually my nitrates and trites are low, my pH is high but not worryingly so, and my hardness is absurdly high. Im guessing the culprit is too much light and over feeding... since I was leaving lights on 12+ a day mistakenly thinking it would help the plants out grow the algae, and the tanks upstairs so my 8 year old who has no idea what "just a pinch" of food means feeds them when Im at work.
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Aug 25, 2021 14:35
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Hi posted:my 8 year old who has no idea what "just a pinch" of food means feeds them when Im at work. What you do for that is get one of those day-by-day pillboxes and preportion out the food. I did that when my brother fed my fish while I was out of town, and it worked great. Here's my full tank, and a naughty cat. My tank light is only on from 8am-5pm, but the overhead light is on until like 11pm. 
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Aug 25, 2021 19:46
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:What you do for that is get one of those day-by-day pillboxes and preportion out the food. I did that when my brother fed my fish while I was out of town, and it worked great. I like that idea, also thats nice looking little tank. my cats are obsessed with my tanks as well.. I have a home made ~300 gallon koi pond in the basement that constantly baffles one of them, the other cat has developed a taste for koi food and will follow me into the basement to fish pellets out of the water with her paw and eat them herself. 
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Aug 26, 2021 03:36
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Hi posted:I like that idea, also thats nice looking little tank. my cats are obsessed with my tanks as well.. I have a home made ~300 gallon koi pond in the basement that constantly baffles one of them, the other cat has developed a taste for koi food and will follow me into the basement to fish pellets out of the water with her paw and eat them herself. Oh wow, that sounds amazing. Can we see more pics please? My kitties seem to love the smell of fish food, especially the hikari fry food. But, they don't take any more interest in the tanks/pond than to take a drink. For pre-portioning food, I'v started making a big batch of repashy in a takeout container, cutting it into small chunks once set, and then freezing those chunks. Then, when I'm away, whoever I get to feed can just toss in a frozen chunk of food, and call it good.
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Aug 26, 2021 15:54
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I've decided to tear down my 125 gal. I want to fix up the lovely base cabinet to be more useful and the tank itself has a large colony of cyanobacteria growing in the sand. I've also never really enjoyed how I scaped it, I think it needs more height instead of a flat 1" layer of sand at the bottom. I'd like to switch to a black sand, but don't want to spring for the Fluval Flourite. I've seen quite a few positive reviews for using black blasting sand, and it's only $8 for a 50lb bag at Tractor Supply. It's quite a haul to Tractor Supply, so I haven't seen it in person so my concern is that it looks shiny in videos, so maybe it's got glass or is sharp and could potentially harm my snails or Cory's. Has anyone here used anything similar? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000AXAUQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_1V48RGA5DCA5JDGS34C6 PS - speaking of cats eating fish food - my two Heeler mixes will IMMEDIATELY snatch up any algae or shrimp pellets that I drop while walking from tank to tank, but they refuse to eat salmon or fish based food!
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Aug 26, 2021 20:09
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candystarlight posted:
I'm looking at mixing in some darker gravel when I transfer to the 70 gallon tank to try to get the fish to color up more when the lights are on. I've got the peace river caribsea gravel in there now and picked up a big bag of their blue ridge gravel discounted a few weeks back - hoping to find a good looking mix of the two.
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Aug 26, 2021 20:37
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candystarlight posted:I've decided to tear down my 125 gal. I want to fix up the lovely base cabinet to be more useful and the tank itself has a large colony of cyanobacteria growing in the sand. I've also never really enjoyed how I scaped it, I think it needs more height instead of a flat 1" layer of sand at the bottom. My biggest complaint about the tractor supplies at the one close to me is so understaffed it takes forever to get my stuff, but that said make sure you get the medium grit blasting sand, not the fine stuff. The fine as far too fine and it'll just make a horrible mess, but the medium grit is going to do great for your cories. I have it in pretty much all of my tanks, just make sure you rinse it well.
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Aug 26, 2021 20:59
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Cowslips Warren posted:My biggest complaint about the tractor supplies at the one close to me is so understaffed it takes forever to get my stuff, but that said make sure you get the medium grit blasting sand, not the fine stuff. The fine as far too fine and it'll just make a horrible mess, but the medium grit is going to do great for your cories. I have it in pretty much all of my tanks, just make sure you rinse it well. I've never been to on before, so thanks for the heads up! I'll plan on spending extra time there. I hadn't considered there being multiple grits available and DEFINITELY would have gone with the finest. I was also just thinking about my assassin snails - I have a pretty good little breeding colony going (started with 8 and I'm up to at least 20!). Any suggestions or thoughts on a reasonable way to sift through the current sand substrate to get babies out?
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Aug 26, 2021 22:52
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candystarlight posted:I've decided to tear down my 125 gal. I want to fix up the lovely base cabinet to be more useful and the tank itself has a large colony of cyanobacteria growing in the sand. I've also never really enjoyed how I scaped it, I think it needs more height instead of a flat 1" layer of sand at the bottom. Make sure to get the proper grit of this stuff. It's not labelled well. They usually just stamp a box somewhere on the bag. I ended up accidentally going with the finer sand and absolutely hated it. It took ages to settle, was stirred up by almost any motion and massacred all my previously healthy stem plants. That experience was enough to keep me away, but I know lots of people have success with the coarse stuff.
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Aug 26, 2021 23:22
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Schwack posted:Make sure to get the proper grit of this stuff. It's not labelled well. They usually just stamp a box somewhere on the bag. I ended up accidentally going with the finer sand and absolutely hated it. It took ages to settle, was stirred up by almost any motion and massacred all my previously healthy stem plants. That experience was enough to keep me away, but I know lots of people have success with the coarse stuff. Im actually a store manager at TSC, I had no idea people used the blasting grit in aquariums.. it is made of coal, so I would think it would be very shiny under aquarium lights. all the stores in my area carry 3 variety of U.S. Mineral blasting grit, the bags are a transparent/grey color with either red blue or black highlights on the sides. Red is Fine, Black is Medium and Blue is coarse. I cant imagine it taking you more then a few minutes to get the product, you can always go to the website tractorsupply.com and order it for curbside / pickup in store. Theyll have it ready within the hour and waiting for you, at least their supposed to I dont know about the shoddy stores you guys have near you. If you know what you need and where its located its probably quicker to just go get it yourself instead of finding a team member to retrieve your online order for you though. In theory as soon as you walk in you should be greeted by a cashier and within a few feet of them will be big red cabinets full of online orders, if you say youre there to pickup an order they should be able to just walk over and hand it to you in and out in 30 seconds... but if youre complaining that it takes long cause of understaffing then that stores probably not running how its supposed to be and all bets are off. edit: I did say I lived in an old mining town, the bike trails thru the woods are literally made of coal slag 
Hi fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Aug 27, 2021 |
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Aug 27, 2021 04:23
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B33rChiller posted:Oh wow, that sounds amazing. Can we see more pics please? My kitties seem to love the smell of fish food, especially the hikari fry food. But, they don't take any more interest in the tanks/pond than to take a drink. like 90% of my life revolves around photographing my cats, so yes, yes you may.  up to no good  uh oh, careful koiboi  oh... nevermind she just came to steal your pellets  I dont have any good pics of the koi, despite having a water proof phone and a water proof camera I never manage to get any good ones.
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Aug 27, 2021 04:35
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Hi posted:Im actually a store manager at TSC, I had no idea people used the blasting grit in aquariums.. it is made of coal, so I would think it would be very shiny under aquarium lights. The stuff I used definitely left a glitter on everything whenever it got kicked up. When I finally removed it, I found a few missing nerites and a bunch of rotten roots. Like I said, I've heard lots of good things about the coarse stuff! I ended up with the wrong stuff because my wife was at a TSC for some other reason. It's like an hour drive, so I asked her to grab me a bag. Between her not really knowing anything, me not knowing what to look for and the cashiers being pretty clueless about the stuff, I just ended up with a random bag. Once she got it home, I found where they'd marked the coarseness. There were four boxes on the top flap, one of 'em had an ink dot on it for 'fine'. I think my next cheap substrate experiment is going to be pool filter sand. It's more expensive than Black Diamond, but the grain size looks fairly large. I need something to put on the bottom of a 40 gallon I've got just sitting around. Figuring I'll use it to grow plants out a bit.
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Aug 27, 2021 04:41
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Schwack posted:The stuff I used definitely left a glitter on everything whenever it got kicked up. When I finally removed it, I found a few missing nerites and a bunch of rotten roots. Like I said, I've heard lots of good things about the coarse stuff! Most TSCs usually have a couple variety of sands as well, from very fine contractor sand for laying pavers and stuff to playground sand to real course sand bags filled with almost more like crushed shells than actual sand sand.. getting towards end of the season so individual stores may very but they also carry 50lb bags of stone, egg rock, river rock, pebble, limestone, lava rock etc
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Aug 27, 2021 04:57
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Hi posted:Im actually a store manager at TSC, I had no idea people used the blasting grit in aquariums.. it is made of coal, so I would think it would be very shiny under aquarium lights. Do you have an opinion on the various plastic and metal stock tubs that TSC carries and their suitability as indoor/outdoor ponds and animal enclosures?
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Aug 27, 2021 05:50
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Hi posted:I cant imagine it taking you more then a few minutes to get the product, you can always go to the website tractorsupply.com and order it for curbside / pickup in store. Theyll have it ready within the hour and waiting for you, at least their supposed to I dont know about the shoddy stores you guys have near you. That's cool that online ordering is an option! I've never actually been to one because there isn't one nearby, so I definitely want to check it out and see what it's about in general. Schwack posted:
I'm currently using pool filter sand and I do like it. It was easy to tell when it was clean (but it took forever), it worked really well with fertilizer tabs for all my plants, and I notice it doesn't get sucked up during gravel vac'ing as much as the finer/more decorative stuff. It looks really good with some crushed coral for a beachy vibe. What I found I didn't like is that the top layer seems to stain over time, so I've just been stirring it with the lighter stuff underneath to keep it light.
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Aug 27, 2021 08:29
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Yeah, I think my tractor supply place just kind of sucks in general because I did the online ordering and it still took them about 20 minutes or so to find my order and bring it to me when I was in the store but hey what you going to do, at least I got the stuff. I finally found some young Panda garras at a local fish store, about 2 weeks ago so they're still in quarantine, but just watching them zip around the tank I wish I had bought the entire tank full at the store because they are so freaking entertaining they pretty much make me forget I ever wanted to start a saltwater tank.
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Aug 27, 2021 14:03
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Cowslips Warren posted:I finally found some young Panda garras at a local fish store, about 2 weeks ago so they're still in quarantine, but just watching them zip around the tank I wish I had bought the entire tank full at the store because they are so freaking entertaining they pretty much make me forget I ever wanted to start a saltwater tank. I've got 6 Panda and 6 Spotted and I love my Garra friends. They are the best fish.
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Aug 27, 2021 14:12
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Ok Comboomer posted:Do you have an opinion on the various plastic and metal stock tubs that TSC carries and their suitability as indoor/outdoor ponds and animal enclosures? Both are good indoors, outdoors the metal tanks will fluctuate water temp wildly unless you completely bury it in the ground. the structural foam (big black rubbermaid stocktanks) and actual plastic ones are better at not boiling your fish in the sun but they will crack and leak usually right at the drainage plug after a couple years if left outdoors. At least they definitely will up north where it freezes, even if the tub itself has a heater just condensation on the outside getting in the threading of the drainage plug then freezing and expanding. You can stretch it out a few more years by patching it up as it cracks or just epoxying over drainage plug maybe but neither option will be as long term as digging out an actual fish pond and using a liner. the rubbermaid tubs probably have a pretty good life expectancy further south where they arent exposed to freezing temps Ive used stock tanks in the basement before and they worked fine, a lot of hatcheries use the big circle metal tanks, or cheap walmart pools. If youre looking for cheap and like to live dangerously you can buy the equivalent of like a 500 gallon tank, in the form of an inflatable pool, that comes with its own pool filter for like 80 dollars from Walmart.. I did that one summer just to have a pool full of fish. Worked well but definitely seems like youd be tempting fate using it permanently. Worth noting regarding tractor supply, if your local store sucks or you just dont have a local store thats local enough, they will ship almost everything they offer to your home as well. If you want to save money on shipping , if you go to a local TSC store they have a kiosk by customer service labeled "the stockyard" which is just a computer with a debt card reader glued to the side of it, if you order off that terminal it will automatically deduct $50 off any shipping costs. I guess incentive to get you in the store. Some items they will not ship, and theyve been broadening that list since the pandemic came and theres been issues with in stock. Theres also an option to have items delivered same day, which I do not recommend unless money aint a thang cause its expensive, its essentially doordash/grubhub, they will utilize a third party company called roadie to bid out the delivery to a random local guy in a pickup truck. One last thing to mention with TSC ordering, if you do ship to home and happen to be ordering something extremely large or heavy, ie anything that wont fit in a standard sized ups/fedex truck , theres a good chance its coming on a full size 57 foot tractor trailer, and if you live somewhere a full sized tractor trailer cant easily get to theyre just going to turn around and leave your product at the closest TSC store. Hi fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 27, 2021 |
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Aug 27, 2021 14:39
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Those Rubbermaid stock tanks are gold, I've been using a 150 for several years now. I'd have sprung for the 300 if I thought I could fit it through the door in my basement. Also been using the Black Diamond coal slag for years now too. You have to rinse it a ton but it looks great and the price is unbeatable. Tons of people on the plantedtank.net forums use it for plant substrate, and I've never seen any issues with my cories barbels. Dunno how regional it is, but locally TSC only carries two grits: fine and medium. Fine is in the red bags and medium in the black, and you definitely want the medium grit. 
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Aug 27, 2021 14:48
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Enos Cabell posted:Dunno how regional it is, but locally TSC only carries two grits: fine and medium. Fine is in the red bags and medium in the black, and you definitely want the medium grit. Ok suckered back in to TSC talk. theres another, third? fourth? idk, option. If your local store does not carry an item other TSCs do have theres a good chance it can if you ask a manager to try and rain check it for you. Theres no simple way to just order what a customer wants, but they have a raincheck system that tells the distribution centers they have a customer at their store that wants X item but they dont have it. They will take your name and phone number and eventually (most stores only get general merchandise trucks once a week, so chances are youre looking at 2-3 week turn around on a rain check) when your product arrives it will be set aside and they will call you. No money up front, no obligation to buy it when it does arrive if you found something better in the mean time. If you can find the SKU for coarse blasting grit they should be able to rain check it for you. You dont pay any shipping costs this way though because it comes on their regular freight truck, which is why it takes so long. The catch being, if youre local store sucks and cant do anything right, they probably do not follow up on their rain checks either... which means they will place the rain check but no one will both to call you when it arrives cause its not automated and it hinges on a human being actually printing the report and checking it against the entire trucks bill of lading, on the busiest day off their week. Also some things just cant be rain checked and thats controlled by corporate nothing anyone at the store can do about it. Other things, like all the sand and gravel are special order and , in particular the sand and gravel has a 7 pallet minimum order before they will accept an order to the store, so good luck talking a manager into ordering 7 pallets of concrete so you can get a bag of sand for your fish tank. But anyway. lots of options to get cheap fish stuff from a store that does not sell fish stuff Hi fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Aug 27, 2021 |
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Aug 27, 2021 14:59
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 I missed a 20 dollar 29 gallon tank.I am hoping to go for 29 or 32 gallons. I think my Hillstream Loaches are gonna be awesome, cute little UFOs hovering about.
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Aug 27, 2021 16:47
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I'm really glad the stock tank stuff came up too, I've been stressing about fitting all my creatures in my spare 10 gallon tanks (3x, so 30 gal total) and the stock tank idea totally resolves all of that! Enos, that tank looks awesome! I think I'll end up liking the black sand in my show tank a lot better than the brown. Everything I have is orange-y and just shows up so much better against the dark.
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Aug 27, 2021 18:57
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If you order the 150 gallon stock tank Amazon delivery people will carry it into your backyard and you can show them your fish.
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Aug 28, 2021 15:25
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Hi posted:Some cool photos
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Aug 28, 2021 15:39
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BONGHITZ posted:If you order the 150 gallon stock tank Amazon delivery people will carry it into your backyard and you can show them your fish. Not if you live in Vancouver, they dropped off a 4'x1'x2' 50lb box at the bottom of 3 flights of stairs for my 13 year old nephew to bring up. Super lazy pieces of poo poo even excluding that. It's a third party company that has the amazon delivery contract and they're awful, but at least they do actually deliver your stuff so they're better than Purolator. But yeah I've had them call me because nobody was at home, I told them I was at work and would be home after 7, and they just hung up on me so gently caress those guys.
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Aug 28, 2021 15:40
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Help me goons. So I have a ton of wild neo shrimp (cherries that I never culled so their colors are random but mostly brown or clear) and my blue neos, which I keep separated from all the others. I have 2 tanks of the blues, one 10 gallon and 1 20, and they are in different rooms because part of me is paranoid that if one tank crashes, I will have the other for population still. But stock being what it is, I want to move some other fish to the 20, and move the shrimp out. That means I'll have both blue shrimp tanks next to each other, or if I can clear the culls out entirely of another tank, I can use a 29 in the same room. Then part of me thinks I am just way overthinking this: the Python is the same for both rooms, the water source mostly the same (it being summer I have water storage totes) and if there was some air contaminant, the room wouldn't matter. I haven't lost any full tanks in years but I am paranoid about keeping a backup for my special/breeder/hard to find ones.
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Aug 28, 2021 18:26
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One thing I've started doing is draining each of my tanks with their own hose into a brute, and then draining the brute. e: took a few pics to update progress on my new planted tank, 21 days of growth here. been dealing with brown diatoms but starting to clear up now, new growth all looks pretty good.  gold nugget pleco found his new spot 
Enos Cabell fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Aug 28, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 18:57
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Cowslips Warren posted:Help me goons. I'm inclined to believe an air contaminate would impact your whole home rather than a specific room assuming you're using central AC/heating. I'm sure there are exceptions to this like localized mold, etc. If it helps your peace of mind for air specifically, you could always pick up a HEPA filter to keep in that room? Costco had them on sale not too long ago and the Costco thread had nothing but good things to say about them.
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Aug 29, 2021 00:01
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candystarlight posted:I'm inclined to believe an air contaminate would impact your whole home rather than a specific room assuming you're using central AC/heating. I'm sure there are exceptions to this like localized mold, etc. Yeah the more I think about it, one tank of shrimp being in one room versus both in one room means zero really. Thank you, period side effects!
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Aug 29, 2021 00:31
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How often does Petco's gallon sale? I'm fairly far away and not sure they'd send a tank? 29 gallons is just fine for me.
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Aug 29, 2021 19:35
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Does anyone have any experience with UV in-line clarifiers, are they worth the money?
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Aug 30, 2021 11:00
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Back when I was trying to solve the plague cory problem I looked into UV lamps, for my purposes of wanting disease sterilization there weren't really any suitably strong lamps available. I relied heavily on this site: https://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/AquariumUVSterilization.html which I think explains how they work and what factors are involved in the efficacy of these devices; I don't know how up to date it is but I think it's a good starting point.
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Aug 30, 2021 17:19
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Bacon Terrorist posted:Does anyone have any experience with UV in-line clarifiers, are they worth the money? Afaik they're of dubious utility outside of dealing with specific recurrant issues of bacterial/algae bloom or for very sensitive livestock.
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Aug 30, 2021 17:48
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As far as I can remember, it sees more use in saltwater tanks. It's used to stop parasites and bacteria, and definitely a thing for reefkeepers. Edit: Wow, everywhere's sold out of the hillstream bros.  Guess they're popular! But I am gonna have at least 3-6 in a 20 that will be moved to 21, 29 or 30-ish aquarium. I'm gonna hold out for petco's deal or save up for a nicer tank.
Aerofallosov fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Aug 31, 2021 |
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Aug 31, 2021 00:02
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Just got home from a 4 day weekend away and wow, just how fast do ramshorn snails breed? I left with like 10 and 4 days later I could around 25. I started my anti algae regimen now that Im home, will report back with results.
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Aug 31, 2021 02:55
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https://www.instagram.com/reel/CTO-c60nyN6/?utm_medium=copy_link My babies are finally coloring up...
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Aug 31, 2021 10:51
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Hi posted:Just got home from a 4 day weekend away and wow, just how fast do ramshorn snails breed? I left with like 10 and 4 days later I could around 25. Fast. I went with Nerites for a reason - the eggs don't hatch in freshwater and they're not hermaphrodites so you can weed out the females before adding them to the tank to avoid eggs stuck to things. I stopped the liquid carbon a week and a half ago - so far it's looking promising. No new algae bloom and the nerites plus a few additional amanos are continuing to pick away at the existing growth.
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Aug 31, 2021 15:37
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pepperchomp posted:https://www.instagram.com/reel/CTO-c60nyN6/?utm_medium=copy_link
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Aug 31, 2021 16:57
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