Posts by Avery

    I would honestly probably do a full water change over the course of a week (so like 80% or so water changes for every day for a week) to make sure that medicine is out, while additionally using carbon or Purgien to soak any small amounts out too. I believe once you are done with this, I’d say it is 100% safe to add them back in.

    From zooming into the photo, those are planarian (basically little worms that are harmless but have the appearance of a tiny white leech). They are not snails who left their shells (no freshwater snail does this), and they are not harmful.

    You have them naturally as they are attracted to excess waste/food being in the tank. I’d recommend feeding about half of what you currently do and they will reduce/disappear (from above the substrate level) once that is done.

    Do you know the weight rating of the unit itself? A lot of times they have a maximum weight limit, and then it should tell you a per shelf limit (since that particle board/wood can only hold so much).

    From there it should be easy to tell if a fully stocked 10 gallon would work on multiple shelves.

    We currently have had a third-party do status uptime checks (and page load speed tests) from around the world at a set interval. So far it appears that this trend is keeping (unfortunately) steady from around 2AM MST to around 4-6AM MST.

    In short; this has nothing to do with you, but rather is a database resource contention issue with our hosting provider. I’ve already set the caching limit to the highest setting with our CDN and have enabled AMP to prevent those errors from showing on our static set of pages - but anything forum related, registering, logging in, searching, or changing settings will trigger this around those times (as your requesting dynamic content instead).

    From doing some digging, it appears that for whatever reason the hosting provider we are using has their database server pegged throughout that time, which prevents some of the required queries we need to load content, gather dynamic elements, and more. I’ve already started the process to move our database to another system (this time, only bound by if there are hardware failures) and am just finalizing the security processes required along with other alerting types. So far this is roughly 1-2 weeks away, before I will migrate everything over (should only take 15-30minutes of downtime) for it to start spinning on our dedicated system and resources.

    100% agree, the bigger the better when it’s your first time with saltwater. Ideally anything above 40-55 gallons would be ideal since it has more room for you to get used to doing water changes, testing for various things, and making sure the lighting is right for anything you plan on keeping.

    How can you tell if it’s normal vs a disease or something? Like does fin rot turn pieces darker or some other diseases?

    Most diseases will end up either fraying the fins, or if it’s a color change, will either change to white (like a fuzzy white), red/pink (due to sores and blood), or black (dependent of its it’s a fungal issue). In almost all cases though, the behavior of the fish will have changed (hides more, eats less, less active, etc). Although color is a good sign of a disease, there are other aspects you can notice by simply watching that fish for a small period of time that would be more detailed and informative on what they may have.

    Stores normally have then exposed and closer to the light so it’s easier for them to sell, while also allowing for you, the buyer, to inspect them fully. Plus the closer you are, the more vibrant you can see their colorations and any possible issues they may have.

    Ironically, with saltwater tanks many people prefer not to use a glass lid (but do have a hood to prevent jumpers from being able to jump out) since it traps heat (good for freshwater tanks but not so much saltwater tanks), and any level of salt buildup on the lids would prevent enough light from being able to go in the tank.

    If you have a fish or inhabitant that is not known to jump (or long finned/slow), then using a lid or hood isn’t really required. For one that may jump when scared, it’s recommended to at least have a big good to prevent so (while also hiding your lighting equipment).

    I wouldn’t specifically say that they are necessary, but they are highly beneficial. Plants can soak up some ammonia, nitrite, and more specifically nitrate which is the last bioproduct from the nitrogen cycle and normally is only removed using water changes.

    Plus it adds in some hiding spots for smaller fish, those that are aggressive can get spots to rest in, and it really adds to their natural behavior compared to fake plants that don’t sway or feel the same for fish.

    I like the styles, but is there a way to change colors for links? Half the time the text on mobile looks like it isn’t a link but it really is and vice versa.

    Good suggestion that I ironically was thinking on changing too as on any device links appear exactly the same as regular text. This can be super confusing when viewing some of the pages as no one knows if they are a link or if it is just regular text.

    I’ll work on changing this out later today for all of the colorations, thank you!

    how are those tanks setup wise? Like was the Gourami your original intention or was it a backup plan since other fish don’t like the horizontal space?

    Ironically when I first started this up I wanted to do a bunch of Betta fry, but that didn’t work out due to the shipment place not having any (way before COVID). Then I went with a bunch of fathead minnows but over time they died off due to parasites (was trying to treat but I got them from a bad source overall). Lastly it was used as a grow out tank for CAEs (Chinese Algae Eaters) and then once that was done I just went with a lone Gourami. I may add in other fish or something else over time, but for now he appears pretty happy and content by himself.

    I personally have not used it as I find there are other methods to take care of algae then just dumping a product in.

    I know that some fish do not do well with it at all, and others have even said that if you dose even a tad over it will kill all of your fish (but others have said this isn’t the case).