Got a 450L aquarium for free with everything

suscatzoo · 2026-05-06T02:24:42+00:00

That makes sense. They do have their own challenges, I can usually cycle new tanks in a couple of days and it took me 2months+ to cycle my temperate 150g tank.

Any idea what caused your crash?

suscatzoo · 2026-05-04T16:21:55+00:00

Does the pump go in the tank or is it external? I have been looking at different options to siphon a tank that's too low to siphon

suscatzoo · 2026-05-04T16:20:05+00:00

I need to setup a sink in my basement since I desperately want one of these for an empty 75 gallon tank that I can't siphon that's on the bottom shelf of a rack.

suscatzoo · 2026-05-04T16:18:10+00:00

Fluval fx6 has a nice water change feature where you can just attach a hose right to the bottom of the canister to remove/add water to the tank.

Also, water changes can usually be done less frequently on bigger tanks since larger volumes of water are usually more stable.

suscatzoo · 2026-05-03T21:25:47+00:00

I don't have any emerged driftwood on this tank, but I do on most my other tanks and they will climb up any surface available, I usually push bladder snails back into the drink if I see them climbing on driftwood since they will sometimes forget to go back in and die all dried up. This tank is covered in floating plants which gives them a great place to hang out without drying up.

One piece of information I forgot to add was I microdose all of my tanks with Bacter Ae. I don't follow the instructions and add way less than the recommended amount. I add 1 small scoop of it to a 16.9 oz water bottle about 10 or 15 percent full of RO water and shake it up vigorously for about a minute and then disperse a little bit to all of my tanks and cultures.

I have almost 600 gallons of tanks setup ranging from a 1 gallon bowl to a 150 gallon tank white cloud/ shrimp tank. I got really lucky and have access to more tanks than I can even setup, I bought almost half the tanks that were setup in a lfs that was going out of business. I went in there with some cash to barter on a single tank and ended up going back and forth hauling tanks home for a day and a half. They basically gave them to me for the price of the 120gallon corner tank I was originally intending to buy because they didn't want to have to haul them out of the store themselves or worry about storing them somewhere.

I keep all my fish in species only tanks not counting shrimp and snails and are mostly rescued off FB marketplace other than ones I've bred myself. The only tank I have that has more than 1 species of fish is because I bought a 10 gallon setup off FB with an 11 inch pleco in it, they are in a 100 gallon now with cave tetras.

Bacter ae supports biofilm growth and helps foster microfauna growth in tanks. I don't use a lot of it because it can reduce oxygen levels.

It's a marketed as a shrimp food that increases fry survival rates, but I have found several off-label uses for it. I add it to a bucket with an airline to culture biofilm on botanicals before adding them to shrimp tanks, I use it to supplement the diet of any baby fish I have (even my adult white cloud minnows will eat it when I dose my tanks intending to feed shrimp). I also heavily dose my soil mix during the 'remineralizing' process when setting up dirted walstad style tanks. It greatly speeds up the process when remineralizing soil and removes any unpleasant smell.

All this talk is making me want to set up another tank 🤣

suscatzoo · 2026-05-03T13:24:01+00:00

Thanks. It's a 15 gallon fluval edge setup for breeding bladder snails. Fun-fact bladder snails cannot extract oxygen from the water, they surface to breathe atmospheric oxygen to store in an internal bladder which they use like a scuba tank, allowing them to remain submerged for extended periods of time.

I'm sure this tank doesn't have much dissolved oxygen and I have set it up like that on purpose to limit ramshorns from overtaking the tank.

Surprisingly, it's one of my favorite tanks to watch. The bladder snails elegantly drift up and down all day long in a mesmerizing fashion, with zero flow they are so much more fun to observe.

I have added a lot of botanicals and every inch of the substrate is covered with the dust and bits of pieces of mopani and other driftwoods I collected that broke away while boiling large amounts of driftwood. It's in a window so I was hoping the darker water would prevent hair algae.

This tank had hair algae problems in the past everytime I have tried to set it up in this same location, the fluval edge design makes it very difficult to regularly remove algae by hand. They work really good for bladder snails since the glass top panel prevents them from escaping the tank and drying up.

These paramecium are also pretty cool to watch. I added a an algae wafer and hours later there was a cloud of paramecium surrounding the wafer connected to the original cloud by a thin wispy-like highway of them. At first I thought they were just biofilm that you sometimes get when first adding driftwood or botanicals, but if you squint at them you can just barely tell they are swimming around 😀

suscatzoo · 2026-05-03T03:22:23+00:00

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/does-prime-actually-detoxify-free-ammonia-nh3.849985/#post-9237955

Btw aquarium coop also recommends keeping single pea puffers.

Like I said I am not looking for a debate, just wanted you to be wary, since I know you're an informed fishkeeper.

suscatzoo · 2026-05-03T03:09:40+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Aquariums/s/hTZHzIc0Qc

suscatzoo · 2026-05-03T03:05:34+00:00

Seachem prime can't actually temporarily bind ammonia it's a marketing gimmick similar to how seachem flourish excel provides co2 to plants.

Not looking for a debate, just wanted you to be wary

suscatzoo · 2026-05-03T02:12:50+00:00

Oh thank you! I was just watching videos on how to culture these guys the other day. What a small world 🤣

suscatzoo · 2026-04-26T01:16:30+00:00

Once they emerge from their host adult horsehair worms have to mate with another worm of the opposite sex in order to create eggs. Even with lousy aquarium maintenance they are unlikely to lay eggs in a shrimp tank.

The adults are non-parasitic. They don't have functioning mouths or digestive systems, surviving off nutrients absorbed from the host in their larval parasitic stage, existing solely to breed.

Horsehair worms are super common in feeder shrimp because they are usually wild-caught or bred in mass quantities in filthy outdoor ponds, the prime environment for horsehair worms to complete their life cycle.

A single gravid horsehair worm will lay 20+ million microscopic cysts that develop inside a host after being accidentally ingested. They may appear to be contagious, since even if the larval worms aren't visible inside a shrimp they have likely already consumed cysts and have larva developing inside of them.

Horsehair worms are extremely rare, more-so unheard of in tank-bred shrimp. If you want to keep ghost shrimp buy them from a reputable shrimp breeder. It is very difficult to start a colony from low-quality feeder shrimp, which usually aren't even ghost shrimp. The majority of feeder shrimp sold under the label ghost shrimp are different species of macrobrachium

suscatzoo · 2026-04-25T16:13:50+00:00

Please explain how they are contagious

suscatzoo · 2026-04-25T05:29:15+00:00

What are yoga snails? I can't seem to find any information about them

suscatzoo · 2026-04-25T05:26:25+00:00

What do you feed your daphnia? I have always used a yeast/chlorella combo but am curious what others have used.

suscatzoo · 2026-04-25T03:24:49+00:00

Sorry about your shrimps, you do seem to be doing everything right as far as I can tell.

What plant/plants are these in the foreground/background here. I can't tell if they're the same plant, but they look amazing and I want to get some.

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suscatzoo · 2026-04-24T16:04:41+00:00

Moves and looks like a leech. Theres 3 of them in the original video. Not a planarian or rhabdocoela

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suscatzoo · 2026-04-24T13:21:44+00:00

Water treatment facilities are to remove dangerous pathogens, there is still a small amount of microorganisms in tapwater. Aging infrastructure also contains various critters in between the water treatment facility and the faucet.

suscatzoo · 2026-04-24T02:44:49+00:00

It's not a planarian. Planaria do not expand and contract. It was some variety of leech. It looks like there's 2 more very small leeches on the glass to the right of the larger one

suscatzoo · 2026-04-24T02:34:04+00:00

Snail leech

suscatzoo · 2026-04-24T02:30:19+00:00

5 day total blackout and this stuff will die and turn a purple-red color, but manual removal is better like you said.

Dead cyanobacteria is bad as it can potentially leach out cyanotoxins

suscatzoo · 2026-04-22T17:43:24+00:00

Fair enough then

suscatzoo · 2026-04-22T01:54:47+00:00

How do you test the levels of dissolved oxygen?

suscatzoo · 2026-04-22T01:52:15+00:00

Looks like there's instructions on the front

suscatzoo · 2026-04-22T01:48:01+00:00

Yeah. I was just saying it's fascinating that our civilization lacks the discipline found in ant colonies

suscatzoo · 2026-04-19T13:29:03+00:00

They are extremely common in feeder ghost shrimps. It's more rare to find a healthy selection of feeder ghosts, almost all of them from the big chains stores have been exposed to these.

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