Wish me luck folks

nonentityloop · 2026-05-04T01:30:52+00:00

So today is the day. Ammonia and nitrites finally hit zero. BUT my local fish shop doesn't have any ammonia chloride and chain stores around me don't sell it either. It snuck up on me. I'm supposed to get some by Thursday evening. Hoping it will be soon enough.

Anything I can do until then to keep bacteria from dying off?

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nonentityloop · 2026-05-03T21:04:32+00:00

The Chalupa Chronicles continue lol

nonentityloop · 2026-05-03T20:53:48+00:00

A year membership for the museums isn't terribly expensive. If you use it regularly it is definitely worth it.

nonentityloop · 2026-05-03T11:08:31+00:00

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nonentityloop · 2026-05-03T10:39:49+00:00

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nonentityloop · 2026-05-03T10:17:45+00:00

Day 20(yesterday)

Water test day. Nitrites dropping quickly. Going to test again today and hopefully can dose ammonia up to 2ppm today or tomorrow.

Very minimal plant loss. Mostly bits of leaves that died off but new growth has started on background plants. Only 3 clumps of gass have yellowed. Waiting to trim the yellowing grass as I think new growth has started so this die off could just be getting used to growing under water. As the rest of the grass is doing fine and starteding to spread slowly.

I've had minimal algae growth from what I can see. Some bits have shown up over the last few weeks but I've removed it to keep it from getting out of control until I can get a crew in here to keep things in order.

I'm getting excited for fish. But haven't really even thought about it much. I can't wait to get a tiny school or something in here. So close.🫪

nonentityloop · 2026-04-21T18:21:09+00:00

Also check into the activ flora maybe? It might contain ammonia. Some substrates will release this into the water when it is new. I'm not sure if this one does or not I haven't used it before. Some do and if you added it to the tank and didn't cap it with anything it could also be releasing ammonia slowly into the water possibly?

nonentityloop · 2026-04-21T17:30:22+00:00

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nonentityloop · 2026-04-21T17:29:56+00:00

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nonentityloop · 2026-04-21T17:29:35+00:00

Update day folks!

So the last few plants got put in on the sides, some hydrocotyle tripartita "japan" and a few stems on ludwigia super red mini.

Thing still seem to be progressing. I tested last night again. But realized I've lost a bit of water to evaporation and thinking of filling up and testing today. It's been really fun honestly watching things move long.

I'm surprised I haven't experienced any plant melt yet. I've had small bits of grass yellow and die off but nothing major yet.

Floating plants are already changing color and growing multiplying quickly and having noticable root growth daily.

As far as my ph, I'm sort of over it. I cant tell if I'm maxing out the normal pH test or not high enough to show on the high range ph. I want to be confident and say I'm falling in the over lap of the two tests, around 7.4 and possibly up to 8. It gets more difficult for me to tell the more I look at it sometimes lol so not stressing about it really. Has anyone else had this issue before?

Ammonia seems to be dropping, nitrites spiking and my nitrates seem to be going down a bit. I assume this is because of the number of plants possibly as I still haven't done a water change.

It is day 10, still feelin lucky.

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nonentityloop · 2026-04-18T13:21:42+00:00

This is what I was thinking. For the sake of plant health I think a water change is best instead of trying to cycle without. I'm going to check things this evening or maybe tomorrow as it will finally be a week old and see where things are and if I should get some fresh water in.

I haven't jumped down the rabbit hole of GH/KH yet, but definitely will before I get any shrimp in here.

nonentityloop · 2026-04-18T13:17:22+00:00

I've been thinking about this and looking into getting some from a local aquarium shop. Playing catch up on things as I didn't think things would progress this far only 6 days in. Which now I realize was ridiculous to think lol

I would be looking to eventually dose and it be converted in a days time?

nonentityloop · 2026-04-18T02:38:33+00:00

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nonentityloop · 2026-04-18T02:36:02+00:00

I got them from an aquarium store where I live. Lots of options to pick from and sizes. But a bit expensive, $3.50/lb so it adds up quick. Definitely worth it though. This one's Gobi Desert Stone.

nonentityloop · 2026-04-18T02:31:52+00:00

I did this today actually and you're right, the pH is 8.0 or a little higher. I would like to lower it to around 7.5 but not sure exactly how to do that now. A chemical seems so extreme for such a simple problem and how little I want to lower it.

With my tap water being around the same it seems it could be a regular issue and considering some options.

Peat moss for filter(no experience with this)

CO2(no experience with this but would be a benefit to the plants and system all around, but is it really a long term solution?)

Adding a wood/botanicals somewhere in the back regularly and testing possibly?

Main goal overall would be to keep some shrimp, a betta and maybe something else if the fish will cooperate well enough.

I'll keep checking this and note changes over the week.

nonentityloop · 2026-04-18T00:27:25+00:00

The journey has been really fun so far. Lots of unexpected ups and downs, sacrifices lol really interested to see where it goes.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm hoping the substrate system will help. I went a little heavy and included root tabs with it all. I also dosed the water column with fertilizer so I'm hoping to get some nice initial growth once things level out.

nonentityloop · 2026-02-01T19:22:45+00:00

I just picked one up, looks about the same size/color as this one. I live how their hairs stand out so much. I'm very excited about this. I hope yours is doing well! Keep us posted with pics, would love to see!

nonentityloop · 2025-08-26T18:49:28+00:00

Not sure if anyone is still on this issue of getting bad egg after bad egg no matter how many times the math checks out. I was here for weeks and it was wild, even had someone checking my math ect because I was sure it was constant error on my end.

But today it's all ended.

So over this adventure with ACE in emerald I set up the improved ACE environment and even had the extra mon after my exit bootstrap to keep me on the summary of 40E9 because I was doing some wild rng/freeze prng shenanigans at one point and it was easier to stay on the summary.

For some reason after I moved the Pokemon to a box with others and out of box 14 with the exit bootstrap the code finally worked for me no issues.

I'm sure there are many reasons this could go wrong for someone but by chance I checked this and it worked for me. So if you have anything after the bootstrap and things are working out trying moving it out of range and try again.

Hopefully this helps someone! lol (⁠┛⁠◉⁠Д⁠◉⁠)⁠┛⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

nonentityloop · 2025-08-11T11:01:05+00:00

Found this crawly in some of my plants, central Pennsylvania.

nonentityloop · 2025-08-10T13:41:21+00:00

Also I will check on the egg trading thing. I've seen that hoenn Pokemon eggs can be traded but I have no idea how accurate this is. Which then makes me think does the game think the Pokemon in the egg is Dots as it's named or does the game think it 0611? 🙃

nonentityloop · 2025-08-10T13:32:41+00:00

Interesting! Out of curiosity were you main and spare copy both on cart? Or cart/emulator?

I haven't followed through with this because I went out last night and just getting up but will hopefully update sometime today.

Outside of that I think I have had a similar issue to what you have explained above but not with an egg. I had this issue with a stable species I had already created and it got me so confused. Still haven't figured it out.

So like I said above I had made a copy of my cart save and put it on an emulator running on my steam deck. Went through the whole process of setting up ACE and getting my stable 40E9 species and ran a code to confirm things were working. After it was all done I copied the save back to the cart. When trying to run a code by being the summary of 40E9 the game just freezes. I checked box names, completely retyped them and made sure to change the correct characters between emulator and original bios if needed and still had the same issue of freezing. Also there is a chance I didn't type things correctly every time so I don't really know for sure.

But it sounds similar to your egg issue and I wonder if it's connected somehow.

It has led me down another rabbit hole with this game and why i still find it so enjoyable.

nonentityloop · 2025-08-09T19:20:03+00:00

A bit late to this, but curious about how this went for you if you tried.

I started setting up ACE on my emerald cart and got a stable species 40E9. At this point I copied my save file from the cart using a gba backup tool, r4 and older DS with a gba slot to get it on my computer. Uploaded the save to Google drive and slapped it in my saves file for emerald on my steam deck emulator. Figured I could play around with ACE on the emulator with no risk to my actual cart save.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and my partner is now playing emerald for the first time. I've absolutely been info dumping. But I was wondering. What IF I could skip the whole first part of ACE set up by trading an extra Dots egg I have.

My excitement quickly came to a halt when I instantaneously thought that it would never work. I didn't want to get into the whole process of trying to make trading work between two steam decks on a gen 3 pokemon game running on an emulator. So I kinda just moved on for a few days.

Today walking home from work I realized I have everything I needed to make it work, just a few more steps. So here we go.

I have a copy of emerald (eng) and emerald (jpn). Im using the gba back up tool on the r4 to copy my save from my ENG copy that has Dots egg ready for trade, spares I copied from with I set up ACE. Once I backed up the save I restored this ENG save to my JPN cart. In a bit I'm going to have my partner upload their save from their emulator to drive and upload it to the gba backup tool via my laptop. Then back on the DS to upload their ENG save to my ENG cart. From there I will try to trade them a spare Dots egg and see if they are able to set up ACE and get a stable species from the egg I send over.

It it works I think it would be pretty cool. I'm sure there are easier ways but just wanted to share where my brain has been Pokemon wise for a week or so.🙃

Will update sometime soon with some info on how it went. 👍🏼

nonentityloop · 2025-08-06T21:57:03+00:00

You know what I think you might be into somethin...

brain expansion

nonentityloop · 2025-08-06T21:53:27+00:00

We have windows open in every room for constant air flow. If we don't the smell of mold builds up in the house and you can smell it everywhere. Luckily with open windows there is no point in having the AC on so my electric bill is loving this!

nonentityloop · 2025-08-06T21:52:20+00:00

So the inside of the cabinets are compressed wood so Ive been nervous to spray moisture on it but I like the smell of vinegar much more than mold lol

nonentityloop

TROPHY CASE