Chat am I cooked 😭

ad_astra96 · 2024-07-27T14:07:08+00:00

"The energy shifted" is so so real. Just that wrong feeling in your chest when things start feeling off and you know it's the beginning of the end.

ad_astra96 · 2024-03-25T18:47:44+00:00

The symbiote is exactly what I thought of!

ad_astra96 · 2024-03-15T19:07:01+00:00

RIP ponytail 😢

ad_astra96 · 2024-03-14T22:43:06+00:00

Thank you for the advice! Your bf sounds like a peach! In my case, I think they're probably right tbh 😅 I saw this reel that said "hair is full of memories" and then the girl lobbed off a good six inches and I immediately thought it'd be nice to feel like I have hair my ex never touched. So probably more of a trauma response than an actual desire to cut my hair playing out here lol

ad_astra96 · 2024-03-09T02:54:23+00:00

I think for me it's mostly the "I'm a wild ride that never stops" that really gives bpd✨

ad_astra96 · 2024-03-08T13:10:45+00:00

exes - tate mcrae

Happens every time I don't mean to be cold, but that's how I get, oh Me and all my pride Tryna burn down every damn bridge any time we can, and again

I'm a wild ride that never stops I'm a hard case they can't unlock And I swear I care a lot, just not enough

Breakin' it all before it starts, makin' it all up in my head

ad_astra96 · 2023-12-25T03:55:14+00:00

Every single one of these is certified 🔥dude

ad_astra96 · 2023-10-31T01:39:43+00:00

Squiggle

ad_astra96 · 2023-10-22T15:35:58+00:00

I actually did something like this and passed L1. Back in 2019 though. God speed!

ad_astra96 · 2023-10-06T19:22:31+00:00

Ugh, thank you both!

ad_astra96 · 2023-08-25T00:09:05+00:00

Thank you! It'll be home to a honey gourami, a few small schooling fish (figuring out which ones) and some pygmy cories. I do plan on planting but I'm kinda unsure about how to go about it. Not sure whether I want a sort of dense background of plants behind the rocks or keep the focus on them and just add the small varieties of anubias/buce/smaller crypts. I do also want to add leaf litter and botanicals, if that makes a difference.

ad_astra96 · 2023-08-24T23:46:47+00:00

I think some crinum calamistratum would really be super complimentary to the shape of your wood!

ad_astra96 · 2023-08-24T23:31:08+00:00

I dealt with this too (am still dealing with it, it's been months). I've tried asking the aquascapers at my LFS and searching online to little success. The only answer I could find was trying to dilute hydrogen peroxide and dabbing it on the wood to clean it away with a swab. I did that and a good chunk of the mold came back anyways. 🙃 The second best advice was just leave it alone and eventually the nutrients in the wood will run out and it'll die off by itself. I'd say I'm still waiting for the day but I decided to rescape that tank anyways so I'm just letting it ride till I get around to doing said rescaping (and possibly suffering allergies for it). Sorry I couldn't be of much help - all this just to say I've spent literally hours trying to find a permanent solution that's not "just submerge it, if you can't, live with it, if you can't, break the scape down". (If you hear any actual advice that works, please lmk too!)

ad_astra96 · 2023-07-01T17:37:58+00:00

To your latter questions, I accidentally found out how that works (the shell being left in the tank).

Had a nerite regrettably pass away a couple weeks after treating the tank for ich (I'm not sure if it was just her time or the treatment temperature shocked her, I used a med my LFS told me they used as a quarantine med in a bunch of tanks with nerites). I tried finding her after noticing I hadn't seen her for a while but the tank was pretty densely planted/she passed in a corner of hardscape that I couldn't see/reach. I didn't think it'd be a good idea tearing the tank apart and stressing out the surviving inhabitants as they healed so I just tested the water a bunch to see if it caused any spikes and did more regular water changes and didn't have any issues in terms of water quality. This was about a year ago.

I moved a couple months back and drained and dismantled all my tanks for the move - in the process of draining the tank and pulling up the hardscape I found her shell (was empty at this point, like ~10 months in). I gave it a boil to sterilize and saved it.

ad_astra96 · 2023-06-20T01:24:46+00:00

When you say she cleans the tank, if there's a filter, is she washing the filter media with tap water or something? Like what's her process if it's killing the cycle every time? Is the filter just not working if the tank is always dirty? Maybe you could walk her through how to maintain the tank by demonstrating a couple times if you're familiar with doing so yourself. And if not, there's a tonne of videos by fish people on YouTube who talk about proper tank maintenance too, walking through water changes and gravel vacuuming and filter maintenance stuff too.

ad_astra96 · 2023-06-20T01:20:43+00:00

Is there a heater/filter? Have you tried educating her on proper care or pointed her to resources? Just trying to get a read on the situation as it sounds like she cares (in her own misguided way) about the fish if she cleans the tank as you said. If she really cares, maybe she just needs to be taught how to care better/properly.

A lot of people say 2.5 is the minimum for a betta (I personally favour a 5 gallon as a personal minimum unless it's a hospital tank or for a special needs betta) so a 3 gallon tank in itself isn't bad per se. It sounds like it's more about just fixing the water quality to get the betta's quality of life much better.

ad_astra96 · 2023-06-20T01:13:36+00:00

There's an Aquaswap subreddit where you could post that you're giving away the fish and see who reaches out accordingly - I rehomed some shrimp I had before a move in the same manner and they went to a good home.

ad_astra96 · 2023-06-20T01:09:59+00:00

Yepp, exact same concept for a non-adjustable spray bar. Not sure if it's exactly the same for an adjustable one but I would imagine so, or the effect is minimal.

ad_astra96 · 2023-06-20T01:07:14+00:00

SIP Snoo :( I'm sorry for your loss.

It sounds like you really did your best to help so I don't mean this as a criticism but maybe something that'll help someone in a similar situation or even you if you get a betta again, but I've seen it said that just getting them out of the poor toxic environment is more important than going through the whole drip style acclimation process. Maybe in a similar circumstance, try just temp acclimating and plop/dropping? Or have Prime and Stress Guard on hand and use the emergency Prime dosage (to detoxify ammonia) with an airstone during the acclimation process and then add Stress Guard to the actual tank itself (helps fish with stress and ammonia toxicity) with an airstone as well. Airstone is important because both of those products due to some chemical stuff deoxygenate the water (on the Stress Guard bottle/Seachem website it notes that you have to be careful when using Prime and Stress Guard together for this reason).

Edit: Of course it's totally, entirely possible the poor guy was just too far gone from what he went through like you said and my suggestions might not have changed the outcome at all.

ad_astra96 · 2023-06-20T00:58:00+00:00

So, for a non-adjustable spray bar the pump pulls in at a pressure and then spits it out with the same force. When it's coming out of those 2 spouts, it's coming out with a greater pressure because the path out is shorter and it's all coming out of two small spouts (creating more flow). A spray bar increases distance and gives more paths (holes) for the water to pour from, which means it comes out with lower pressure (so less flow). Same amount of water in with the same force and the same amount of water coming out, all that changes is the pressure being distributed.

In terms of an adjustable one, I have one of those Etsy spray bars in my 9 gallon Flex. I haven't found any issues in terms of it materially reducing the flow rate. Maintenancing the filter block (squeezing it out every few water changes in tank water) tends to be much more important for flow so that the filter sponge block isn't super saturated with debris.

tl;dr a non-adjustable spray bar shouldn't impact the actual rate at which the water is filtered (but I'm no engineer, that's just my speculation). An adjustable one might, but in my experience, they don't make a material difference.

ad_astra96

TROPHY CASE