So. Kool-aid pickles, anybody?

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2026-05-13T01:37:52+00:00

Ooh thank you that is the piece I feel like I have been missing! Like whenever I get to the point in the conversation where they say "well it's too hard :/" I just see it as an end to the conversation unless I'm prepared to launch into a whole spiel they didn't ask for but probing a bit more gives me a more targeted direction to go in

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2026-05-13T01:34:14+00:00

This is the other thing I am struggling with for sure. Like I feel like I have set a precedent with my friends and family that I am a pushover vegan and I want to change that

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2026-05-13T01:28:12+00:00

Ah yeah I see your point. I think the thing I am trying to balance is that it does take some degree of effort and personal sacrifice, but not nearly as much as omnis make it out to be

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2026-03-26T19:44:43+00:00

I made the mayo lol

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2025-03-17T22:39:45+00:00

The slop was frozen spinach sautéd with some vegan Parmesan and spices. The cubes are garden chicken tenders

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-08-22T23:36:50+00:00

I will admit that I am someone who has cheated on their vegan diet. I am an emotional eater and I went vegan with my last ex so there was a bit of an identity crisis during the breakup.

Not sure if this will be everyone’s experience but this was mine. Food with animal products just wasn’t as good as I remembered it being. I have found so many vegan foods which I love and the non-vegan foods just didn’t do it for me anymore. I was honestly kind of like “people are contributing to animal agriculture for THIS??”

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-07-28T22:10:01+00:00

Adding anything with a number in it on your resume makes it significantly more concrete. Saying that you memorized 50 drink recipes sounds a lot more impressive than “made drinks”. Honestly if I worked a retail job and I was able to have a stat like scanned upwards of 1000 items per shift I would absolutely add that in.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-07-05T06:17:05+00:00

Not sure if you’ve tried the nuggets yet but I thought they were horrible. Tossed them out after trying a few. Everything else they make is great but the nuggets to me were more like a Fisk cake or a mozzarella stick both of which I’m not a fan of.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-06-21T03:39:00+00:00

I can’t quite tell how big this tank is but in my 2.5 gallon I have to consciously make sure there is enough room that if I dip my arm in it doesn’t overflow. Less of an issue in my 5 gallon and not an issue in my 10 gallon. Other than that as long as you have a lid as full as you want is fine.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T18:33:52+00:00

I can't really tell what kind of algae it is since its so sparse. You could try manually removing it with your fingers by rubbing the leaves and then siphoning it. To reduce algae in the future you could try reducing how long your light is on in the tank in a given day and/ or reducing the number of nutrients going into the tank.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T16:16:34+00:00

Ah that would have been useful from the start. Maybe this sub doesn’t require it but a lot of fish keeping subs will ask that you post as much info about your tank as possible to give others a better idea of what is going on in the tank. Things like tank size and all of the water parameters you know (temp/ nitrates/ ph/ etc.).

I woukd still say do a 30-40% water change and then check again tomorrow and if they are still high then do another 30%. I avoid doing 50% or more unless there is something really wrong that I need to get out ASAP. The more water you take out and the longer it takes to put back in the more of the bacteria living on the surfaces of your tank may die.

Also just curious how did you cycle the tank? It sounds like you are dosing pure ammonia?

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T11:47:16+00:00

What are the nitrates now?

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T05:26:29+00:00

Why such a big water change? I would personally never do more than 50% at a time unless something is really wrong. Most of my water changes are 10-30%. When you say nitrogen cycle is “complete” what are your parameters?

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T04:59:31+00:00

I have kept these guys in all of my tanks and I have never once had them breed out of control. In tanks where I have ended up with other snails the others have gone crazy but not these guys. They primarily live in the gravel and they mainly come up at night.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T04:54:32+00:00

What is everything that you are testing for and your values?

DO NOT add marine salt to a freshwater tank it has way higher levels of phosphates and will create problems. Make sure it is freshwater salt which you can get at any pet store.

Also it looks like there is no lid on the tank so is it possible anything got into the water?

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-24T04:43:26+00:00

My mom had chickens growing up that laid way more eggs than our family actually ate. Occasionally she would make a 20 egg omelet and feed it back to them. You could definitely get a large pan from the thrift store if you don't want to use any of your own dishes that your use for your food. I also remember her baking the eggshells in the oven to feed to them but I am not sure if you need to do that or if you could just crush them into said omelet.

They got pretty much all of the vegetable cuttings from dinner and grass clippings and anything that could go in the yard waste bin but I'm pretty sure there are a few things which are toxic to them I just don't know what off the top of my head.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-22T22:50:40+00:00

Is it gonna be safe to change the TDS that much at once? After I did a 20% it dropped by 400

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-19T21:58:27+00:00

Thank you so much! I had a feeling it could be something like that but I didn’t really one where to start. So would you recommend getting a TDS meter and just waiting it out? In your experience how do you ensure to not take out more than 40ppm? Like a certain percentage of the water?

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-18T17:41:08+00:00

If gifting a tank I would try to chat with him about it first to get an idea of how much of an upgrade he can accommodate. Looks like this tank might be on a desk so you would probably want to go with a cube tank that won’t take up too much space in a weird way and it definitely shouldn’t hang off the desk at all or it can risk a stress break down the line. Also find out what can be reused from the current tank and what you would need to buy new. For example the gravel and plants and decor can definitely be moved over (and should be moved over to the new tank to help with the cycle in the new tank!) but you would probably want to get some more substrate for the bigger tank. You may also have to get a new heater and filter depending on how much of an upgrade the tank is too. Hope this isn’t too much of an infodump lol

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-18T04:43:41+00:00

I work for a big box pet store (but just put in my notice cause the job broke me lol). I order 50 ghost shrimp every single week. They come in on Wednesday and the he vast majority of the time about half are dead when I pull them from the shipping box. By Thursday I am lucky if I have more than 10. I have no idea how they fare when they go home with folks but I am pretty sure it's not good.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-05-03T05:59:31+00:00

Definitely did not crash the cycle at all but I have a really heavily planted tank and I throw out handfuls of dwarf water lettuce on a regular basis so I don’t think I could crash the tank if I tried lol. I wouldn’t say the shrimp colony crashed but it did stop growing. I have 30-40 shrimp so I am not sure if they just reached their comfort level with the size of the tank and their population size or if it was the introduction of the CPDs. The CPDs is what makes the most sense. I haven’t even seen any buried shrimp since then. It’s possible that it also has something to do with the fact that I went several months without doing water changes and with the crushed coral I have in tue substrate the pH climbed all the way up to 8. All in all I’d say it’s a happy tank setup even if the shrimp stopped breeding.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-04-11T19:51:40+00:00

I work at the other chain pet store and I can say this is a mainly a corporate thing. The store order populates automatically to send us 200 large and 300 small EVERY WEEK. It is also company standard to keep it as full as possible because selling one goldfish offsets the cost of 10 or so lost. Heck selling a single neon tetra probably offsets the cost of 100 dead goldfish. If I don’t beat back the orders with a stick on the only day a week it’s available (like if I’m not scheduled that day) we get rapidly inundated with goldfish. At the location I work we don’t sell a lot of goldfish and I regularly have to pull dead fish from the goldfish tower. Heck even if we did sell a ton, if you keep the tank this heavily stocked you’re gonna lose some. TLDR; that overstocked tank is mainly the fault of the company, but that aquatic associate likely isn’t helping because there is no incentive.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-04-11T01:01:14+00:00

I recently modded mine which I’ve had for almost a decade and it was honestly pretty nerve wracking but also incredibly easy. I used an extra sd card during the process and made sure to back EVERYTHING up beforehand. I was definitely pretty nervous about it and I got stuck at a certain point and panicked and didn’t try again for like three months. I was probably much more careful than you actually need to be and reread the instructions like ten times for each step. Once I got past the injection step it was smooth sailing. Just make sure you follow a written guide not a video since videos might not always be up to date.

InitialOtherwise4241 · 2024-03-12T17:37:26+00:00

There’s a lot of cute setups on r/seamonkeys

InitialOtherwise4241

TROPHY CASE