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Slugworth posted: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. Yeah it's a mercury vapor bulb. The first couple bulbs were Zoo Med Powersun brand and this one is an Exo-Terra Solar Glo. I think you are probably right and there is some defect inherent to the bulb, maybe it just isn't well designed to put out such a huge amount of power and burns itself out very quickly. It's weird that two different brands both have the same problem. I have another new bulb to use after the one I have now dies, and I think after both of those are dead I'll just replace it with a 100W version of the same bulb since those seem to work much better. Honestly the 160W bulb is overkill anyways, I have to keep it about a foot and a half above my turtle's basking area or it will get incredibly hot and cook my turtle.
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Jan 22, 2016 15:00
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Just had my second Finnex digital heater die on me in as many months, woke up to a temp of 70 in my 90g tank. I got just about 3 years out of these, and still have a few more in use, so now I'm worried the rest will go out on me at any minute. I'll be replacing this one, and the one in my 120g tank, with titanium heaters + temp controllers, but I don't want to pay that much for my 40g and under tanks. What brands are you all using these days?
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Jan 23, 2016 01:02
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Enos Cabell posted:Just had my second Finnex digital heater die on me in as many months, woke up to a temp of 70 in my 90g tank. I got just about 3 years out of these, and still have a few more in use, so now I'm worried the rest will go out on me at any minute. I'll be replacing this one, and the one in my 120g tank, with titanium heaters + temp controllers, but I don't want to pay that much for my 40g and under tanks. What brands are you all using these days? Weridly enough the 300 watt $15 ViaAqua heater I got on Amazon hasn't been bad. That said some of them don't read right; turning the gauge to 83* makes your tank about 79. Otherwise I use Catalina on my zebra pleco tank.
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Jan 23, 2016 01:09
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Cowslips Warren posted:Weridly enough the 300 watt $15 ViaAqua heater I got on Amazon hasn't been bad. That said some of them don't read right; turning the gauge to 83* makes your tank about 79. Otherwise I use Catalina on my zebra pleco tank. Hah, I'm using a 7-8 year old 300w Via Aqua right now as my emergency backup in the 90, and it is still working like a champ. And yeah, mine reads about 3 degrees off too.
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Jan 23, 2016 01:21
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Looking for second opinions on something here that I've been doing the last few months. Rodi water for top offs. I am of course still using tap water for water changes, but the more I used fresh RODI for top offs in my saltwater tank, the more it bothered me that I wasn't doing the same for my freshwater tanks. Specifically, I am just doing it for my ten gallon open top tank which sees a lot of evaporation. I have hard tap water, so with enough evaporation and topping off with more hard water, my hardness was slowly rising, then dropping when I did water changes. The rodi top offs seem to be keeping things more stable. Is there anything I am overlooking though? The practice seems logical to me, but you know, nobody else seems to be doing it.
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Jan 23, 2016 14:42
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Well. RODI water is more expensive than tap water and for the most part freshwater tanks don't need the parameters to be nearly as stable as your average reef tank. If you use RODI water on your freshwater tank you need to remineralize it somehow. When you do saltwater the minerals are added back in via the salt.
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Jan 23, 2016 15:06
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A lot of the yuppie grocery stores around here are really into this stupid "alkaline water" trend, it does F all for the health benefits it's marketed as having but it seems really awesome for remineralizing RODI water. I have a bottle of this, that I want to try for that purpose: It has a pH of at least 9.5, and added minerals in the form of sodium bicarbonate, dipotassium phosphate, magnesium sulfate, and calcium chloride, some of which seem to be great for plants.
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Jan 23, 2016 16:48
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I don't think there's anything wrong with RO top ups vs evaporation, you're still putting minerals back in with tap water for full changes and I doubt the tank inhabitants are consuming the minerals faster than you put them back in. If your tanks are happy and healthy, and you are happy with the results keep doing it! Do you add any fertilisers for the plants? You're probably going to see mineral deficiency in the plants before you see problems with the fish since fish get their nutrition from the food not the water. I use remineralised RO for all my changes since I don't trust my tap water as far as I can throw it, and so far I haven't seen any problems. I've been doing it for at least 6 months now and my guppies spawn like crazy with no losses to fry, my barbs and danios are still spawning (found some accidental fry out in the pond where I tip my change water) probably my only casualties have been from an overzealous water change in my shrimp tank. It's hard to say since some of my shrimp have been looking a bit seedy lately, I don't see as many as I used to but I've not seen any dead ones so it's a bit of a mystery. You're the best judge of your tap water because we all have different water supplies, different plumbing and different treatment plants so stick with what works. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 18:23
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Rallos posted:Well. RODI water is more expensive than tap water and for the most part freshwater tanks don't need the parameters to be nearly as stable as your average reef tank. If you use RODI water on your freshwater tank you need to remineralize it somehow. When you do saltwater the minerals are added back in via the salt. My thinking though, is that remineralization isn't necessary for top offs - The water lost to evaporation contains no minerals, so the water that replaces it should also technically contain no minerals to truly maintain levels properly. I agree that freshwater is way more forgiving, but I tend to have a 5 gallon jug of rodi laying around for my saltwater top offs anyway. Cost isn't really an issue, in that I make my own RODI. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was overlooking that made this a disastrous idea. Stoca - What do you remineralize with? On a related topic, I have been looking at salty shrimp gh/kh lately, as I discovered last year that my tap water kills cherry shrimp at a truly impressive rate (our town sent out notices that our water contains lead above EPA safe standards - Not, hopefully, like, Flint MI levels though). I had given up on shrimp, but dammit, I'm gonna make it work come hell or hard water.
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Jan 24, 2016 00:23
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I'm using Seachem Equilibrium http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Equilibrium.html which contains calcium, magnesium and potassium; and Alkaline buffer http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/AlkalineBuffer.html which is phosphate free and plant safe. I don't mix acid buffer and alkaline buffer to set a specific pH as per the instructions but that is something that you can do if you need a pH less than 7. Stuff like Proper pH isn't plant safe.
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Jan 24, 2016 01:55
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Stoca Zola posted:I'm using Seachem Equilibrium http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Equilibrium.html which contains calcium, magnesium and potassium; and Alkaline buffer http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/AlkalineBuffer.html which is phosphate free and plant safe. I don't mix acid buffer and alkaline buffer to set a specific pH as per the instructions but that is something that you can do if you need a pH less than 7. Stuff like Proper pH isn't plant safe. Huh, found this in the equilibrium page which answers slugworth's question to some extent: quote:HINTS: Do not use Equilibrium™ when replacing evaporated water.
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Jan 24, 2016 02:13
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Correct! I'm using it for my water changes not for top ups (all my tanks are covered, I only need to do top ups in the Fluval Spec V and I use drinking water for that since I'm lazy, its already filtered and the dispenser is right there).
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Jan 24, 2016 10:45
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In case of you fishgoons live in AZ, we have a convention coming up in March.  Info can be found here: http://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/pet/5398586219.html
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Jan 24, 2016 18:00
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Finnex Planted+ 24/7 really makes things look good through all its cycles. Thanks for you guys vouching for this light. I live this thing. I may buy more, another one for this tank and one for my Goldie's.
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Jan 25, 2016 05:44
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Dammit! My first time intentionally breeding fish isn't going so well. The parents are a pair of zebra danios rejected from my sisters tank and now proven to be a male and a female due to the little feral danio fingerling I found out in the pond from tank change water. They did spawn on the very first night in the breeder tank and produced plenty of eggs. I used chunky seachem matrix instead of marbles to protect the eggs from predation, but I suspect it was a little too abrasive for the fish. I rinsed some hornwort as the breeding mop which needed to be weighted down before it was deemed acceptable by the danios. Taking the matrix out after the fish were done was a real pain in the arse! I could see by the second day that some of the eggs had became fungused so I used some medication to hopefully protect it from spreading to the rest of the eggs. Just now I checked an egg under the microscope trying to see if it was fertilised or fungusy and there was a really clear embryo visible! Unfortunately a jealous cat jumped up and knocked the egg from my hands as I was putting it back in the tank and even though I searched every puddle with a torch I didn't find it again, so that's one egg that will never hatch. I didn't realise until after then that four fry had already hatched. Even though I'd rinsed the hornwort it still dropped gunk all over the bottom of the tank so instead of a nice clean hygienic tank there is all kinds of detritus making it hard to see what's happening. I hope it provides a nice environment for infusoria rather than being unhealthy for the fish. It's a bit early yet but I've added a pipette of water from out in the pond hoping to get some infusoria going so they'll be there when the fish are ready to start feeding. Not sure how long the eggs are supposed to take to hatch or how much variability there is supposed to be because there was a big difference between the hatched fry that I spotted and the unhatched egg. Maybe it's natural that so few of the eggs seem to be viable or that they are hatching at widely different rates. The mother of these fry has been looking a bit seedy lately, as far as I know she is quite old, one of the few of my sisters fish that has lasted more than a couple of months so I'm glad she still had it in her to spawn. She is starting to get a slight hunched look to her spine which I've read could be due to old age. The father is a golden medium-long fin, enough finnage to look graceful but without affecting his manoeuvrability and the feral that I brought in from outside also looks more golden than the mother fish so it will be interesting to see how these fry turn out (if they survive).
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Jan 25, 2016 19:16
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Hmm noticed the tap water tastes about like a chlorinated swimming pool while cleaning my teeth just now, I think I'll dose a tiny bit of dechlorinator in my RO this week just in case any chlorine sneaks through.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:25
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Stoca Zola posted:Hmm noticed the tap water tastes about like a chlorinated swimming pool while cleaning my teeth just now, I think I'll dose a tiny bit of dechlorinator in my RO this week just in case any chlorine sneaks through. If your water utility normally uses chloramines, this is a popular time of year to switch to 100% free chlorine for a few months to clear out biofilm.
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Jan 26, 2016 01:37
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Interesting, they do use chloramine here. It's summertime in AU and the water where I am comes 500km by pipe so I had the idea that all the chlorine would be gone by the time it got to us. I bet they do up the dosages while it's warm though, no one wants amoebas in their water. Today's survey of the hatchery tank reveals 10 of these little guys just hanging out on the side of the tank (photo taken with webcam lens puttied to ipad camera) and I put some java moss in last night so there are possibly more using that as cover.  That's still a bit of yolk sac I think and they aren't really "swimming" so its probably still too soon to need to feed them anything. I haven't seen any more survivors out in the backyard pond and while the water has cleared up nicely, it is deep reddish-black from tannins. The snails don't seem to mind and I saw a pupating chironomid larva swim past so it's not a dead mess as I'd feared but I don't know how suitable it would be for fish at the moment. I really should scoop all the muck out of the bottom, hopefully all the dragon and damsel fly larvae are done by now but 
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Jan 26, 2016 07:27
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 My micro crabs are a lot bigger/more visible than I was led to believe they would be. I love these things.
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Jan 26, 2016 17:43
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Ordering a fluval spec V to put on my desk, since my 20 long is just too bulky to have in my room (and $50 shipping from petco seems like a pretty good deal for it). Would like to get a cherry shrimp colony going so that I can move the extras into the big tank, but for now I'm going to just get it planted and growing I think (not sure it'll work super well with the hard, hi ph water I tend to get here) Anyone have good tips or ideas for a 5 gallon tank like that?
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Jan 27, 2016 00:24
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Mr. Despair posted:Ordering a fluval spec V to put on my desk, since my 20 long is just too bulky to have in my room (and $50 shipping from petco seems like a pretty good deal for it). Would like to get a cherry shrimp colony going so that I can move the extras into the big tank, but for now I'm going to just get it planted and growing I think (not sure it'll work super well with the hard, hi ph water I tend to get here) I wouldn't worry about hard, high ph water with a cherry shrimp tank. I have the same stuff and my shrimp tank thrived. Was getting new baby shrimps hatching every week after a while. Those guys are super hardy. I also had some cardinal tetras in a 3 gallon for a while, but they seem to be way happier in a 20, so they'll survive, but don't know if they should really go in a nano tank.
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Jan 27, 2016 05:50
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A lot of small fish aren't suitable for small tanks since they aren't happy unless they have room to school in numbers. Inverts are likely to be happier but you might need to put a mesh on the overflow comb to make it safe for shrimplets. I've stuck my heater in the same part that the pump is in, and cut some holes in the outlet hose to get a good water flow in that chamber, I think the main tank looks cluttered with a heater in it. Without holes in the hose the outlet flow is fairly strong.
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Jan 27, 2016 16:37
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These Oto Cats are hysterical. They zoom all over the place just munching away. Watching the danios try to get them is pretty funny too. I saw a ghost shrimp standing on one who was stuck to the glass. that was also amusing. Speaking of ghost shrimp, 2 of mine are carrying dark brown eggs. Nothing will come of it but it's cool to see.
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Jan 28, 2016 00:45
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Stoca Zola posted:A lot of small fish aren't suitable for small tanks since they aren't happy unless they have room to school in numbers. Inverts are likely to be happier but you might need to put a mesh on the overflow comb to make it safe for shrimplets. I've stuck my heater in the same part that the pump is in, and cut some holes in the outlet hose to get a good water flow in that chamber, I think the main tank looks cluttered with a heater in it. Without holes in the hose the outlet flow is fairly strong. Yeah, I read some stuff about doing those things, I'm holding off on picking up a heater until I have my hands on it so I can make sure to find one that's stashable. e. this looks to be sort of what you're describing? http://spec-tanks.com/fluval-spec-aquarium-betta-friendly/
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Jan 28, 2016 01:30
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What are the fish which look like miniature salmon? I'm sure I read about them in here somewhere but no amount of googling variants of "tiny salmon" has found them.
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Jan 28, 2016 01:33
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Tactical Grace posted:What are the fish which look like miniature salmon? I'm sure I read about them in here somewhere but no amount of googling variants of "tiny salmon" has found them. Uhh maybe rainbowfish? The males get really tall bodies but keep their relatively tiny heads. They look ridiculous.
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Jan 28, 2016 04:42
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No I don't think so, for reference they look like this (spots and all): but teeny tiny.
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Jan 30, 2016 21:12
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Tactical Grace posted:No I don't think so, for reference they look like this (spots and all): hmm, I found the more classic pink salmon type so maybe that is it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rainbowfish
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Jan 30, 2016 23:08
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Tactical Grace posted:No I don't think so, for reference they look like this (spots and all):
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Jan 31, 2016 00:56
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Dwarf spotted danio are pretty small too but I'm not sure that they look much like a salmon. Seriously fish dot com has a lot of fish pictures and write ups grouped by fish classification so if you find one that looks almost similar you can search for more from the same family. danio fry update - they're all free swimming now, seem to be doing fine powdered food and are eating from surface like pros. I had a brief attack of effort and emptied the pond entirely and now it has fresh (non-black ex-tank) water and no black muck, there was easily a bucketload or two of black stinky filth in the bottom so I'm hoping I can keep it more clean than that from now on.
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Jan 31, 2016 05:41
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I need a real camera and I need to clean my glass. Desert Bus fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Feb 2, 2016 |
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Feb 2, 2016 21:26
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Feb 2, 2016 22:24
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Cool fish Desert Bus!
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Feb 3, 2016 17:27
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Enos Cabell posted:Cool fish Desert Bus! Thanks! I started out aiming for a semi-aggressive community and got it. Then the Rainbow Cichlids entered my life so I am slimming down the stock list before everyone gets bigger. This is the current inventory of what's living in my tank: Plants: Green Myrio Red Cobamba Red Crypt Dwarf Amazon Sword Anubias Nana Red Ludwigia? Madagascar Lace Something green and pink but it's new so not very pink yet, it needs to absorb more iron Java Moss Snails: Colony of Malaysian Trumpet Snails 1 2.5" Black Devil Spike Snail 1 Zebra Nerite Fishies (all sizes estimated): 1 2" hybrid Mbuna, it's blue and has stripes sometimes 2 2" Rainbow Cichlids (hoping for M/F) 2 2.5" M/F Kribensis 1 3" Female Opaline Gourami 1 1.5" Rainbow Platy 1 3" Siamese Algae Eater 1 2" Clown Pleco 1 3.5" Female Albino Bristlenose Pleco 1 4" Striped Raphael Catfish 12? 1" Harlequin Rasboras 1 2" Bolivian Ram The Bolivian Ram and the Clown Pleco will be going to a friends tank in a week or so, the Mbuna goes back to the friend I got it from sometime in the next few weeks, next time I go to my LFS the Gourami becomes store credit which becomes one or two Harlequin Rasboras or a second Platy of some sort. Tonight I might get two Farlowella sp.??? around 3", and maybe 5 Harlequin Rasboras since Petsmart is between my roommates work and home. I'm hoping the Farlowella are F. gracilis, but I'm not too picky. I like all Stick Fish.
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Feb 3, 2016 19:49
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So I took a chance and got the 2 Farlowella ???, deciding that any Stick Fish is better than no Farlowella at all. There were two left at Petsmart and they were on sale, so why not? Well, the Gods smiled upon me and it looks like I am now the happy owner of two Farlowella gracilis, just like I desired. With any luck this'll be a male and a female.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:09
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Wow that was gross but gotten one tank broken down and moved all the plants and the lone shrimp over to the 10 gal. So much mulm.
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Feb 5, 2016 00:37
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Desert Bus, your pink and green plant is likely sunset hygro, aka hygrophilia polysperma v. "sunset". Iron won't really make it pinker, that's more a reaction to higher light levels. The stuff I had in my 90 would pink up nicely on leaves near the top of the (24" deep) tank, but the lower reaches always stayed green, despite pretty high light levels. Of course, if you're successfully growing red cabomba, you've probably got plenty of light for whatever. I vote for more rasboras, I love harlequins and their various lookalikes, and more numbers in schools/shoals is always more better. The rainbow cichlids are awesome too, it's always neat to see someone keeping cichlids that aren't OMG africans OMG or special snowflake ultra-rare cichlidus neverheardofitii. Not that there's anything wrong with africans or rare stuff, of course...god knows I've kept my share of both.
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Feb 5, 2016 06:29
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kaosAG posted:Desert Bus, your pink and green plant is likely sunset hygro, aka hygrophilia polysperma v. "sunset". Iron won't really make it pinker, that's more a reaction to higher light levels. The stuff I had in my 90 would pink up nicely on leaves near the top of the (24" deep) tank, but the lower reaches always stayed green, despite pretty high light levels. Of course, if you're successfully growing red cabomba, you've probably got plenty of light for whatever. I vote for more rasboras, I love harlequins and their various lookalikes, and more numbers in schools/shoals is always more better. Yeah, I've always noticed that it does get pinker near the top and your ID is correct. My Red Ludwigia and Red Crypt are pretty red and the Red Cobamba is slowly getting there. I'm slimming down stock a bit in the next couple of weeks to make it easier to grow out the Rainbow Cichlids. Hoping for M/F so I don't have to pick up a few more online. The 5 new Harlequin Rasboras are small, but they'll get there. This brings my school up to 17-20. The light I'm running is a Finnex FugeRay Planted+ and I love it. Thinking about getting a second and seeing if I can successfully grow ground cover like Dwarf Hairgrass or whatever. Malaysian Trumpet Snail at 1.125-1.25" (aka HUGE): 
Desert Bus fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 08:18
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Anyone have any experience with getting rid of a microsporidian infestation? I'm slowly losing all of my shrimp to it, and while I'm pretty sure none of my fish are infected it's something that might affect a fish with a lowered immune system. I think it came in with my very first batch of red cherry shrimp, some of them went milky coloured and died early on but the spores must have stuck around. The ghost shrimp I got a while ago have all started showing milkiness in their tail muscle tissue and I found a dead one yesterday. All my reading so far suggests that there isn't a readily available medication for it (and how do you medicate shrimp without killing them anyway?), the only way to kill the spores is UVC sterilization since they're resistant to chemical sterilization. Level 2 sterilization is required which means bigger beefier higher wattage devices; the sterilizers I've found that can do the job seem to be huge ones aimed at ponds, too big for my 30g tank and definitely too big for my little shrimp tanks. If nothing else I could empty the tanks out and leave them out in the sun I suppose. For now I'm going to avoid shrimp altogether and hope the infection doesn't take hold in my fish.
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Feb 5, 2016 10:54
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Slugworth posted:The spots and your use of 'teeny tiny' makes me think celestial pearl danio? It sounds like CPD's to me.. I have them and they are salmon'ish.
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Feb 5, 2016 15:51
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