The Amazing Aquarium Thread- Why is Fishy Sleeping Upside Down? - General

Took mine a good month so im going with that

Ah damn if I knew that I would've gone shopping for it ages ago.

if you dont use purigen

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1861/78442a5c-e6d9-4e67-8911-65ea2438808b/IMG_20190219_113400.jpg Oh hey. its wedged against the top brace. I put my FX5 on there so Im wondering how long the cycle will take since like, 40% of the water is taken from my other tank and the filter is from the other tank... So really a lot if the nitrifying bacteria should be there and I just have to wait for it to chew through a small ammo spike, right.

This is what makes fish keeping more of an art than anything else lmao

Im not wood expert but after whats going down in my tank a word of "this happened to me so x". Guy at the store told me a bunch of bacteria would grow on the wood after like 2 weeks then go away after that, well it fucking hasn't and 3 months later the wood is still regularly covered in the shit and its impossible to clean off because the wood is so tangled in with all the plants removing it would take like half of them out with it. So if your gonna be sticking other plants in there maybe give it some extra time so once it fluffs up with that shit you can pull it out and scrub it all off.

It happened on accident. Mom was digging in there and it shifted into place. It just werks

Tank update time, the java fern from my old tank is heug now. Drwarf hair grass is still growing ultra slow https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134138/919029b1-faf5-4e86-b186-ef0220f9cf53/20190220_152711.jpg

Fish will gladly eat it.

Mine don't, even the snails ignore it. Its only now properly going away after I've been removing chunks of it with each water change.

My new axolotl arrived! I'm calling her Sushi. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/225195/fc45a7e4-0d3d-4928-838f-aa6e627db380/20190224_193718.jpg And it took her a day to find a way past the tank divider to hang out with Dumpling. They seem to be getting along, but I'm still going to keep them seperate for now, juuuust in case. Sushi is still a bit smaller than Dumpling, and I don't want any limbs going missing. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/225195/65ec731d-e78d-4a7c-b49a-74deaa09197f/20190225_072324.jpg

Out of all the fish in my tank I really didn't expect the two gourami to be the first ones to attempt breeding but here we are. The hot weather has caused the tanks ambient temperature to rise to 27c during the day where its normally 25c and apparently thats enough to coax them into thinking its breeding season. While I don't really have the space to properly rear any fry if some survive I won't be complaining.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134138/b2be54df-7610-4428-aaa1-bc642628f798/aaaa.jpg Rescued a bunch of shrimp from my canister filter, this one is massive compared to the others. Absolute unit

Wow he is so red I would honestly relocate and breed another strong shrimp with it. Get them superior genetics Is it any specific type of crs? I can only find bloody mary shrimp in Brisbane, no bright red ones like yours

I honestly have nfi about shrimp, I only know the ones I have are "Cherry red" nothing more. They grow fairly large though, I have about 3 of that size now while the rest seem to have either been eaten or have chosen to return to the filter, i'd consider a shrimp tank if not for the fact I already spend too much time on this one alone.

aw man i found my last remaining female betta trapped in a plant and dead. RIP

:c I only lost my female albino cory a few days ago to something similar, it sucks when they go from something like that. Were you running a tank with a few females beforehand?

Yeah, three females. First one died from disease, next one died because it lost an eye and other fish picked on it, this one got trapped. pretty awful turn of events for them bettas.

I'm having shit luck with Rams, one my original two disappeared, one of my new two disappeared, and my fourth one is very pale. I'm worried.

Finally got my tank set back up after a hefty bout of depresso and lazy. I got it completely set up about two months ago before falling apart and not doing much of anything on it. It got really funky so I changed out all of the water and as much substrate as I could. Looks good as new. Thankfully I didn't have any animals in it, but I really want to get an axolotl very soon so I can have something to come home to in the afternoons. Gonna test the water here in a couple of hours and see what needs to be done before I order my new pet. I'd like to get one this week or next if I can!

Finally got my axolotl two days ago. He's much younger than I expected, only ten weeks. I had to pull my entire aquarium apart. Right now I've got him in a large porcelain casserole dish at the bottom of my aquarium, surrounded by about two inches of water that's being circulated through my chiller, keeping him between 61-64F. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty nervous. I expected to get a fully developed animal and instead I'm having to improvise with a juvenile. I'm doing everything I can for him but I'm not sure what to think. He spends a lot of his time sitting still and I'm trying to just be patient and gentle with him while I presume he acclamates to his new environment. He's swimming occasionally and appears to be eating, so that's a plus, right? All the water parameters look okay. I'm going to be doing a 40-50% water exchange and test every day to make sure nothing is going wrong. It's just tough because I'm not really getting any feedback. Axolotls are already so inscrutable and having an even tinier one makes it that much harder. I'll be back with updates as I keep this up. Any tips would be very welcome.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/113148/153924fb-25da-4235-b772-ea63a79a5767/image.png My convict cichlid got a bunch of babies. We got the pair not very long ago.

So what lights do y'all have. I'm looking for a better solution for my 125g. I want plants but probably won't be super heavily planted. I just want the tank to be uniformly lit.

The ones that came with my tanks

I use the PlantGlo series from Aqua One. Can have them on full or half strength and they seem to work ok. Was running them at half strength for ages but lately I've had them on full strength and its causing my surface plants to grow completely out of control. I remove almost all the duckweed and not even a week later it covers 100% of the tanks surface. Related news I've been doing a lot of water tests these past few weeks and with the amount of plants + double filters its looking like all levels are a constant zero. Been experimenting with doing smaller water changes (10L + topups a week) and it seems to be resulting in far less brown growth on the glass occurring. If it doesn't make a big difference on the water chemistry I might consider keeping this up from now on.

Fluval fresh and plant 2, massive PAR, wide angle. But if I were to pick again I would get a custom built square to cover the entirety of the aquarium without shadowing.

I was looking at the Fluval plant 3.0 because it has a sick app and seamless day to night dimming but I'd need at least two 36 inch strips so I'm looking at other options

Unfortunately has lower PAR than 2.0, app is nice but it's a small difference with dimming, fish sorta get used to suddenly getting blinded each morning. I would recommend the huge box LED being suspended via wire for full coverage, that's my dream. But on the cheap for bright as shit lights, I would grab like 8x 25W Flood lights and make an enclosure. two 3.0's is a solid pick tho

We have some extra aquarium so it's likely some will go there. And then some for friends. The rest I have no idea, I was thinking maybe the pet store accepts them for free.

I've had great luck with a Finnex Planted Plus light. They have a much fancier model with a color temperature progression meant to simulate the natural transition of a day/night cycle. They're pretty affordable as far as LED lights go, about $120 for a 36" light. On a tight budget I've had good luck with 250w replacement daylight spectrum LED floodlights. https://youtu.be/I3r0YPSd_k0