Recent content by Sorg67

I think they do live here, but they may be an invasive species. It is illegal to release anything from a fish tank into the wild here. Even if it is a native species, you are not allowed to release it since it may have acquired a disease in captivity.

I have a tank that has nothing but Assassin Snails and plants. I want to shut it down. I feel bad about killing all the Assassin Snails. I have given Assassin Snails to my LFS in the past. But it seems a bit excessive to waist an hour and a half of my time to run a few dozen snails up to a...

Yes, basically just filter and returning. The point is vacuuming debris.

My tank maintenance has been pretty much reduced to express water changes. I use a pond pump to drain to the bath tub. I use a python to refill from the sink. It is very fast, but involves zero vacuuming / cleaning. For periodic cleaning separate from water changes I am contemplating a DYI...

I have both a sponge filter and HOB or canister on my tanks. The aquariums are in a guest bedroom. The hum of the air pumps may be disturbing to some guests. Therefore, I put the sponge filters on the light timer. They run about 9 hours a day. Since I have another filter, I am assuming that...

No, I am not sure I only have 5. The most I have counted recently at one time is three. Guessing there are at least a couple more. I like the idea of leaving the Rasboras in there and giving the shrimp a place to hide. However, It would be nice to see the shrimp. In the 20 long, I formerly...

I re-started keeping fish about two years ago. Went from zero tanks to six in the span of a few months. Now I am working my way down to two. I formerly had a lot of feeder / wild type guppies I was breeding. Or more accurately, they were breeding and I was buying fish tanks to accommodate...

Hope they work for you.

These pumps are not great quality nor very strong. But they seem adequate.

We have a lot of power outages here in Central Florida. I have battery powered air pumps as part of my power outage kit. They can run the sponge filters I have in each tank for about 36 hours on a pair of D cell batteries. I also have a generator. But I do not turn that on unless we are...

This is a biggie in my opinion. If you keep tank water similar to tap water, you do not have to worry about shocking fish with a change. You can move fish from one tank to another and be confident water will be similar. You can do a near 100% water change if you have an emergency need.

I bypass my water softener for aquarium use. I found that my fish tolerated the water softener water okay, but the plants did not like it. Whether your fish will tolerate the softened water will depend on the species. My water softener has valves to allow water to bypass. I run the faucet...

Many new faucets have restricted water flow to conserve water usage. I have that issue after we installed new faucets in the bathroom. I can solve the problem by running the python out the window to a garden hose and get as much suction as I want. However, I find that to be a pain and that...

Glad to hear that. I like HOB better. Do you advocate sponge in addition to HOB for back up and additional aeration? Do you put a sponge cover on HOB intake to avoid sucking up baby shrimp?

Do I need to worry about the flow rate? The existing HOB seems to create a lot of water flow.