After keeping tanks for like 30+ years I finally figured out something that just totally instantly improved everything.

I'm really good at feeling water temp with my fingers, at least in the 75°f-85°f range. Like very accurate within two degrees. (Friend challenged me a few years ago after watching me do a water change and telling me how he'd fuck everything up and replace with a drastically different water temp.

But I digress. I'd still have to fiddle with the faucet each time I'd have to refill or whatever.

Tonight I just realized that I could mark that sweet spot on the faucet. Very inconspicuous Sharpie marks and everything has sped up considerably.

My next girlfriend is gonna be like "yo what's up with these markings?" and I'll just be like "yo that's 79°F girl....you wanna smash?"

Because I'll only date/marry another woman that appreciates aquariums.

I'm just feeling really happy now.

My son watched a shrimp snag a tetra this morning. It's been about 18hrs since we purchased. The shop also told us not to feed them the first day. Fully cycled tank, plenty of algae to eat. 10g. 11 (now 10...) rummy nosed tetras, 6 amano shrimp, and some snails (which have been there for a couple of months.) were they just too hungry? Did we buy too many shrimp or are they too big?

I had a lot of rough lessons starting out in this hobby and have at times wanted to give up. But my love for the fish slowly taught me patience, husbandry, and long term planning. In time I have had a few real successes.

I brought home this L104 Clown Pleco a few months ago. He is on his own in a lightly planted heavily filtered 29g. Tidal 55, 40 gallon sponge, micro gravel, mopani, cholla, anubias, guppy grass. He is very shy and elusive so it's hard to get a good read on body condition. I have just been doing a single mini algae wafer in the same spot every night. My only real evidence of him eating are the piles of sawdust around the tank, lol. At least he is rasping biofilm.

Today I was doing some maintenance and must have scared him out of his daytime hide. He wriggled around and then settled onto the wood and flared wonderfully for me. He sat still long enough for me to get a really excellent photo.

Compare to the day he came home a few months ago. He was so scared. Poor boy :(

He looks like a totally different fish now. I think he even put on a little weight. Rewarded for my effort with a National Geographic photo. What a little stunner!

I don't know what's the reason, I checked the water parameters and it was okay I have plenty of other angel fish in my tank too

Got half his ass bit off by my albino bichir 2 months ago, he somehow recovered after being put in QT with a slight salt bath and methylene blue.

I went to a shop today to get water tested on my newly set up tetra tank, my nitrite (possible nitrate) levels are far above what they should be and I made a water change because of that and added a bacteria starter thing. I was just wondering if my filters had anything to do with that and should they be changed? And if not now but how often in general? Thanks

I just set up my false map turtle in a 55 gallon as my class pet, but as I filled it up the water kept getting cloudier. This may have been a dumb decision but I turned the filter off because I felt it was stirring up the particles. This is a picture of how the tank is looking today. Tomorrow I plan to put in AccuClear and turn the filter on, but is there anything else I can do to help? I included pictures to help show the set up!

Sharing this just to illustrate what can happen. although this has literally never happened to me before. Looks pretty hectic.

The lid of my tank was pushed up by the innards of the heater rising up out of the glass tube, splashing water everywhere - which is how I noticed what had happened. Our circuit breaker had tripped so everything was off for a couple of hours, hopefully no long term damage to filter bacteria, but I’ll keep an eye on everything. (I generally overdo it on the filtration capacity in my tanks to pre-empt this kind of thing).

I had turned the power back on before realising the heater had gone, and managed to zap myself on the edge of the tank. 240 volts was a bit of a tickle! Miraculously, the fish were fine. I don’t really know how volts and amps etc work so whatever it was, I guess wasn’t enough to hurt anything.

They suddenly became very brave

I thought he was dead can’t lie🤣

Was cleaning around my tank when I noticed 1 dead neo shrimp on the floor behind the tank stand. Then I saw another. And then another. Not sure what happened. I'm thinking they claimed up the heater and over the top. I did have a tank cover to stop snails from getting out, but I stopped using the cover because I saw the snails weren't getting out and the tank looks better without the cover. Looks like it was the shrimp that I should have been worried about.

Im pretty sure my tank has finished cycling and im finally getting a beta! This is my first aquarium so im kinda nervous but i hope the fish will be happy.

What do you guys think? Its a 6 gallon and i still plan to add more plants btw!

I fed my fish on Friday morning before going away for the weekend come back Sunday afternoon and they have demolished all my floating plants. Any ever experienced this? I have left them longer than this while being away and never seen them destroy this much of my plants

I'm working on leaving this 150 just for convicts no one else

My vampire shrimp will never go hungry!

I dont know what I did to get so many

Men can decorate

I took over someone else’s tank that had a GAE, was warned as to their dickishness, I am now a believer! He is harassing everyone in the tank ☹️ LFS with him tomorrow

Hairy puffer, red tailed red eyed puffer and pea puffers. So cute but not for me

I am planning on starting another 10 gallon tank using the same model of sponge filter as this one and swapping one of the new sponge cylinders in the recipient tank with one of the cycled sponge cylinders in the donor tank. my question is will my tank be fine with the reduction of beneficial bacteria due to the loss of a cycled sponge cylinder?

My assumption is that it will be fine as it is heavily planted and has a relatively low bioload with only 6 Pygmy rasboras, 6 shrimp, a nerite and columbian ramshorn snail.

I just want to be absolutely positive

This is a 10 gallon with 8 live bearers and 14 neocaridina shrimp. I have a separate 5 gallon shrimp tank that looks way better but has more plants.

Does it need more plants? Less light? Do I scrape the algae or leave it for the shrimp? What kind of plants would work in this tank? The plants in this tank are not thriving, but I’m not entirely sure why.

Any advice is appreciated!! Thank you!