Posts by Avery

With the big difference in how the heat is exhausted in different types or chillers, and their specific setup within the tank, which chiller do you use and how would you rate it?

Since buying some foods can be ideal (and easy), in some cases (specifically with fry or smaller fish) - have you ever made your own food supply such as with brine shrimp, daphnia, etc.? If so - how successfully was it?

I feel like they will sadly sell them regardless since there are far too many people who want to get a cheap pet and think that fish bowls are the way to go. In some stores, you can tell the fish bowls are barely touched since they are coated in dust/dirt.

I’ve seen plenty of people and places use fake coral since it’s by far less demanding, allows for the fish and appearance from afar to look like real coral, and let’s places/people just focus on the fish vs. have to deal with coral and the fish.

Quote from votavk

Time to win! Do we post when we follow the bonus entries too??

Nope, just once as you did to confirm you are wanting to enter into this contest. Once the contest period ends, we’ll calculate every user to see if they have none (or multiple) of those filled out and will then check who follows us on where based on those usernames/profile names.

Heaters tend to break when they are turned on/off too much, or if there isn’t enough flow around them which results in them heating the water too much around their area.

Some good brands include (in my opinion);

Aqueon, Ehemin, Jagex, Fluval.

Some brands that are iffy for a ton of reasons include Marineland and Tetra

If you want to avoid all of those (and the hassle with a soil based substrate capped with sand), you can always try some of the following;

Seachem Flourite

Carib Sea Eco Complete

Fluval Stratum

Seachem Oynx

They normally use pre-loaded volcanic clay that holds onto fertilizers and releases them over time. Normally if you use those, throw in root tabs before laying down, and then dose fertilizers like once a month it will pretty much stay charged for a very long time (others the charge normally lasts for a few months to a year before being depleted and needing to be recharged via dosing).

There are tons of common saltwater algae types, including the same types we see in freshwater. Those include;

Hair Algae, Brown Algae (Diatoms), Green Algae, Red Algae (Cyanobacteria), and what is known as Bubble Algae.

I agree, I think that they are pretty cool looking and when done right, can really make a tank look super cool. The only downfall is that many of the GloFish tanks that are sold as a kit tend to be WAY smaller than what is required for the fish that are being sold.

Their original reason for becoming a thing (to have researchers be able to tell if the water is safe, not toxic, and could be drinkable when boiled) was genius.

I honestly haven’t done much to this tank. Currently it’s growing good plant wise, and the snails have a massive population. I might start trying to sell these snails since maybe people charge an arm and a leg compared to giving them out for pennies on the dollar.

It’s actually pretty easy, here are some of the steps. The biggest thing is to make sure that you get the bleach out of the Purgien otherwise if you add it back it will kill all of your fish.

1. Remove the bag full of Purgien from the filter (or it’s location)
2. Measure out bleach and tap water into your tupperware in equal parts. This should be enough to fully soak it on both sides.
3. Let this sit for 24 hours inside of the tupperware.
4. Rinse the Purgien heavily in dechlorinated water.
5. Soak the Purgien in water for about 12 hours.
6. Rinse the Purigen again under dechlorinated water heavily until the smell of bleach is fully gone.

Some highly good beginner plants that take in low light (and need really nothing) include; Java fern, Java Moss, Anacharis, Water Wisteria, Anubias, Marino Moss Balls, Hornwort, and lastly Guppy Grass.

African Dwarf Frogs are slightly blind (they mostly go by the smell in the water and their hose and also by the feeling they get from the water movement around them. A lot of times it’s just recommend to either have them in their own tank (as they take their time eating), or to try and feed them at night since the other fish should be sleeping and it will give them a better advantage when it comes to finding the food first.

Dependent on what that area that you picked the tank up from, it could be hard water stains (mostly an obvious sign of it disappears when it’s wet or filled with water but appears as it drys out).

To get rid of those, I’d just recommend using vinegar and a rough rag (some people even highly recommend using those magic erasers). I would personally avoid using any harsh chemicals since it tends to be harder to get those out of the aquarium when it dries or washing them out since some may slightly soak into the silicone.

I’ve had some in WAY worse shape due to the hard water where I live, but after an hour of rubbing it all out it should come off with ease.

Sadly, no news yet. The issue isn’t having to do with the app itself, but more of the extension on the forum side (it’s just not up to date as it should be from their end). I’ve created a few different support tickets, but they keep saying that they are looking into it and are planning on having a resolution pushed out shortly.

We’re actually working on some of them now. Sadly, with the time it takes to write them to be detailed enough to be helpful, it can appear as if none are being written.

So far we have a good amount up on freshwater, then will come some saltwater (helpful articles, how to, common diseases), and then back to freshwater to to over common species (and then back and forth in this type of method). Stay tuned though, we have a lot coming soon!

That looks just like Brown Diatoms which is common for a ton of reasons. Try reading this article and it should guide you on the fix and resolution on it.

Brown Diatoms

It really boils down to a lot of various publications (and studies) done that contradict each other, only show half of the test, or have very inconclusive results. Many who discredit heat say that it only kills it at a given stage, or increase its lifecycle so fast until it cannot reproduce (or be visible enough to the eye that it still is there).

I’ve personally used the heat only method a good chunk of times, but that is with fish that can handle it (many cannot, therefore you must use medicine to treat) or they have tanks that cannot survive that heat (think planted tanks, for example where heat will kill the plants).

Many people also simply just don’t know what source to trust, since even other professional websites with lots of data and details regarding various infections note that heat cannot cure it and must be mixed in with salt or additional medicine). That’s why we offer all methods here, with heat being a primary method to be recommended due to personal and other people noting that it works.

Either way, use whatever method that you are most comfortable with whether that be heat only, medicine, heat with medicine, or any other variation.

The yellow color is more than likely from something called “tannins”. This is leached out by the driftwood in the tank, and can also leach out from soil if used in the tank as well. It does not mean that the driftwood is toxic at, it’s just a common thing and why the water near boggy areas is always dark black/yellow (due to all of the wood leaching out tannins like this).

A common way that people get rid of this from the start is to do big water changes, and then boil the driftwood for 10-15mins. That makes a vast majority of the tannins release right away compared to slowly over time. If you don’t want to boil it (or it’s too big to boil, not a good shape to) you can always add in a bag of Seachem Purgien to your tank and it will absorb all of the tannins until it needs to be recharged (bleached, and then rinsed with a ton of water).

Maybe people may recommend doing water changes, but this will resolve the current color (it will come back again in a few days).

I’m not too sure that there is a good guide you can read that will help you. Most people try to follow the 2/3 ruling where you have 3/4 of the visual elements on one side, then a gap, and then another 1/4 on the last side.

Other times it really just comes down to what you think is visually pleasing (which is an opinion, so that’s why people find art either good or bad). I just would follow what you think looks good, or if you want to try to become better at it, watch some aquascape competitions and see how they set it up and what they did specifically. A lot of time it’s all about the flow where the fish aren’t there or are there just as a color aspect.