Recent content by mudraker

It certainly ups your game in aquatics

Hi Scottish - while there are a large number of great CO2 units on the market, the one used in this sticky is a Milwaukee. I see now that I made this post over five years ago. I can tell you that the unit I put together is still in service and has worked flawlessly in all that time. I bought...

The worm farm is very easy and surprisingly easy to keep. It's in the BR because I'm still rebuilding my fish room and its taking forever. I feed all sizes of wigglers to the darters. Two darters will tug on either ends of one large worm, until one gets the lion's share. A lot of people just...

The worm bin is on top of the mini fridge. The shot of the tank shows mostly greenside darters, but there are six male rainbows and five females also. Not very good shots, but I haven't had time to try to take something decent.

Backyard? I keep mine in my room, lol. One advantage to being an old fart I guess. It's a surprisingly clean enterprise, and good for the environment. But seriously, I hope the darters work out for you. I love them and they are like no other fish I know.

I agree with Brook - I've kept four adult bolivians in a 30 for several years with no real issues. Yes, they fight (beyond the usual squabbling) when they spawn, but have never seen an actual injury.

I know some sands will scratch if the surface if it gets stuck in the pad between the magnets- I've had it happen. It's funny because I was contemplating posting a thread regarding problems with a float mag and fine pieces of Ecocomplete sticking to the magnets. My theory is that its iron.

You might want to invest in some frozen blood worms and start a red wiggler colony for fish food. Mine will eat freeze dried blood worms in a pinch. They do well on frozen blood worms, and got absolutely stout when they were fed red wigglers I started growing in compost for fish food.

I hate those types of self-inflicted boners :) If it were me, I would just leave it. Mainly due to laziness issues, hahaha.

How long is the light on? Green water is actually a harmless bacteria that grows from excess nutrients and light. No amount of filtration in the world will stop it. Decreasing the amount of exposure to light will. Possibly decreasing the amount of food you are feeding might help also. If...

You have several issues going on here, which are probably not related to the filtration system. How long has the water quality issue been like this? It sounds to me that you have excessive nutrients in the water. You don't mention other fish than the pleco: how many and what kind of other...

This is the absolutely true.

Cool that you are making this first step. It's been a long time since I did DIY C02, but I would suggest you add plumbers tape to that list. Most people I know (me included) had bottles that leaked around the lid without it. What kind of bottle and diffuser are you planning to use? And best...

What do you mean by "water parameters are fine?" How long have you had all these fish in the tank together? When was the last time you added new fish?

I've been keeping bolivian and german rams for about five years and never had them harm another fish, despite all the squabbles. What type of synos are you talking about? Some types of synos can be aggressive - some are very mellow, some are in-between, or just occasionally get overly...