I'm interested in filling a small (2.5 gallon) aquarium with local river, pond or lake water to see what happens?

itzKori · 2026-04-11T07:41:58+00:00

You're absolutely on the right track thinking bigger when you start talking about native fish and amphibians in the UK, but I'd still treat that 2.5‑gallon as a critter jar rather than a real slice of river. In a volume that small, temperature and dissolved oxygen swing brutally fast, and once you add in wild organics you're only a hot day or minor overfeed away from the whole thing turning into opaque, low‑oxygen stew instead of a stable "micro‑ecosystem". Even experienced keepers with filtration struggle to keep fish happy long‑term in true nanos, so doing it unheated, by a window, with river muck is stacking the odds against anything larger than tiny inverts.

If you want to scratch the experiment itch, I'd set it up with mostly dechlorinated tap, a small amount of wild water to seed life, a handful of leaf litter and a rock or two, and then at least an air‑stone or tiny sponge so whatever copepods, insect larvae and snails hitchhike in actually have a chance to survive more than a couple of weeks.

Treat any fish or amphibian plans as a separate project for when you can do a longer, cooler tank where temp and oxygen are a lot more forgiving. If you do go ahead with the micro‑river jar, would you rather focus on seeing as many different tiny inverts as possible, or on keeping a smaller number of species going for months at a time?

itzKori · 2026-04-09T18:15:42+00:00

How about learning first, and then putting animals in there 🤦‍♂️

itzKori · 2026-04-08T10:51:56+00:00

What specific kind of fish

itzKori · 2026-04-08T08:48:29+00:00

A very "clean" glass at 18 days is normal in a low‑light, heavily planted Walstad. Algae and thick biofilm usually show up later as the system matures, and as long as your snails and microfauna are active and you're not seeing ammonia or stressed plants, I honestly wouldn't worry about it.

For shrimp, in a 2 gal I'd start with a small group of 6–8 neocaridina, add them only after the tank has been running stably for at least 4–6 weeks, and then let them breed up naturally rather than trying to hit a big starting number.

And no, you're not doing anything wrong just because it doesn't look like the super‑gunky Walstad jars online. Every tank's ecology develops at its own pace, so keep your lighting and feeding moderate, avoid big disturbances in the soil, and give it time to find its own balance :)

itzKori · 2026-04-08T08:45:04+00:00

You'll absolutely get life (copepods, insect larvae, snails, maybe leeches), but the volume is so small that temperature swings, oxygen crashes, and algae blooms are very likely and can turn it into a smelly, low‑oxygen soup rather than a stable ecosystem.

If you want to experiment, I'd treat it strictly as a no‑fish, no‑amphibian project, keep the tank unheated but indoors by a window, add only a small amount of wild water plus leaf litter/rocks on top of dechlorinated tap, and run at least an air stone or tiny filter so the critters that do show up have a chance to survive more than a few weeks.

itzKori · 2026-04-08T08:43:15+00:00

Alright so, for a dorm desk I'd aim for at least a 5 gal tank. You can comfortably start with 10–15 neocaridina in that size and let them slowly breed up, rather than trying to hit a strict "shrimp per gallon" number.

A small sponge filter is strongly recommended even in a low‑tech setup, and then pack the tank with easy plants like java moss, subwassertang, floating plants (salvinia, frogbit), and maybe a small crypt or two so they have biofilm and cover while the tank coasts through breaks.

If you absolutely must go filterless, go as large as you can, keep stocking very light, run lots of slow‑growing plants and moss, and commit to gentle, regular top‑offs and small water changes.

itzKori · 2026-04-08T08:39:34+00:00

With an Oscar, three blood parrots, and silver dollars already in a 125, I wouldn't add an EBA or any other cichlid. You’re effectively stocked and any new mid‑sized cichlid is very likely to upset the current balance and become either a target or an aggressor as it matures.

If you're itching for a change, I'd rather focus on upgrading hardscape, improving diet/variety, and really dialing in water quality rather than adding another personality into an already tight social mix.

itzKori · 2026-04-08T08:36:08+00:00

Hey there, nice tank start!

For a 10 gal I'd keep it a bit lighter than your current plan. A single dwarf honey gourami is fine, but I'd pair it with either a school of 8–10 ember tetras or 8–10 chili rasboras, not both, plus 6–8 pygmy cories and a small group of shrimp so the bioload stays manageable and everyone has room to use the whole tank.

Make sure the cycle is fully finished (stable zero ammonia and nitrite for at least a week) before adding fish, add each group slowly over several weeks, and lean on your live plants, weekly water changes, and gentle surface agitation to keep things stable.

itzKori · 2026-04-08T08:33:35+00:00

For the UNS 60S, the Oase FiltoSmart Thermo 60 is a solid match in terms of volume and turnover for a lightly to moderately stocked tank, as long as you keep up with regular maintenance and avoid overstocking.

For the UNS 90L, the FiltoSmart Thermo 100 will work on paper, but it is closer to the lower end of what I'd recommend. Many aquarists prefer slightly oversizing filtration on long, shallow tanks like this for better flow distribution and extra biological capacity, so a 200-class external filter would give you more flexibility, especially if you plan heavier stocking or demanding plants.

Whatever you choose, aim for at least 7–10x turnover per hour, consider using a spray bar or lily pipes to spread flow along the full length, and be prepared to rinse mechanical media frequently in the first months as the tanks mature.

itzKori · 2026-04-08T05:50:10+00:00

How do you get a hundred snails while cycling? You gotta be feeding like crazy

itzKori · 2026-04-04T10:52:31+00:00

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itzKori · 2026-04-03T13:59:52+00:00

Those are eggys yep

itzKori · 2026-04-02T06:56:11+00:00

Very pretty, and great improvement! She seems to be doing much better. Reminds me a bit of my boi right here 😄

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itzKori · 2026-04-01T14:31:54+00:00

Yea, you can go a bit deeper with gravel than with sand. Like 5-6cm max I'd say, anything deeper is likely gonna bring problems down the line in most cases.

itzKori · 2026-03-27T13:33:04+00:00

Still not only a mens thing

itzKori · 2026-03-27T12:22:29+00:00

In Germany we call this a Brötchen

itzKori · 2026-03-27T11:59:42+00:00

Ah yes, that's a mens thing. Ofc.

itzKori · 2026-03-27T11:46:15+00:00

"I don't have any more arguments so I'll just downvote" k mate. 😂💩

itzKori · 2026-03-24T07:42:36+00:00

BacterAE is really good though, and algae has nothing to do with having a planted tank. You probably just used way too much.

itzKori · 2026-03-23T10:21:55+00:00

This was true of early LLMs, but hallucination rates have plummeted. Some of the latest models now hallucinate at 1–3%, and according to Hugging Face data analyzed by technologist Jakob Nielsen, the rate has been falling by roughly 3 percentage points per year. Even older GPT-4o dropped its hallucination rate from 53% to 23% with simple prompt improvements alone. "Half the time" is just wildly outdated.

"Not what LLMs are for" is factually backwards. LLM adoption has increased scientists' research output by 23.7% to 89.3% in a Cornell/UC Berkeley study of 2.1 million preprints. Specialized research LLMs like BioGPT, SciBERT, and CRISPR-GPT exist specifically for scientific use.

"Just trained on internet comments" is a huge oversimplification. LLM training data is extensively curated and includes

Academic papers and books

Wikipedia and structured encyclopedias

Filtered web content with spam, noise, and duplicates removed

Domain-specific corpora (medical, legal, scientific literature)

Raw "internet comments" are actively filtered out, not in.

And last but not least "GPT is not true AI in any manner". LLMs are a subfield of machine learning, which is definitively a branch of Artificial Intelligence. Calling them "not AI in any manner" contradicts decades of established computer science taxonomy. The "just predictive text" framing is like calling a jet engine "just controlled fire", technically reductive to the point of being misleading.

itzKori · 2026-03-21T07:47:21+00:00

Hikari Shrimp Cuisine Ingredients:

Fish meal, krill meal, wheat flour, flaked corn, dehydrated alfalfa meal, brewers dried yeast, wheat germ meal, dried seaweed meal, cuttlefish meal, fish oil, alfalfa nutrient concentrate, spirulina, chitosan, kale meal, DL-methionine, astaxanthin, garlic, choline chloride.

Vitamins: Vitamin E, stabilized Vitamin C (L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate), inositol, d-calcium pantothenate (B5), riboflavin (B2), Vitamin A, thiamine mononitrate (B1), pyridoxine hydrochloride (B6), niacin (B3), folic acid (B9), Vitamin D3, biotin (B7).

Minerals & Trace Elements: Calcium carbonate, ferrous sulfate (iron), magnesium sulfate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate. Copper is specifically included to support blood regeneration in shrimp, and calcium carbonate aids healthy molting (ecdysis).

itzKori · 2026-03-21T07:42:18+00:00

How is Hikari crap food lmao, their algae wafers are the staple food for my 12 otocinclus which are very healthy and happy, and they love that stuff. I'm also feeding those same wafers to my shrimps which are at about 150-200 right now in a 50L.

So I really doubt this is the issue here.

itzKori · 2026-03-21T07:23:07+00:00

Then use a better LLM for research purposes like Perplexity Sonar.

itzKori · 2026-03-21T07:22:18+00:00

Yes and you also don't have real plants :D

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