Hi from NC North Dakota

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BigNorsk

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Nov 16, 2019
Messages
21
Location
North Dakota
I have 19 tanks set up.

Mostly guppies, bristlenose catfish, bloddy mary and blue dream neocardinia shrimp, and a small tank that is hard to get at of Hawaiian red shrimp.

Major project is working on coloring up female guppies, want to make a full red of both sexes. Dragons too.

Have a bunch of new L144 bristlenoses and a couple more females are plumping.

Plants are mostly vallersnaria which is for the bristlenoses to clean, java moss and subwassertang.

Culture nematodes and a few brine shrimp for live foods.

Work as an agricultural consultant so I bring a soils background into my aquariums.

My water is hard and a bit unusual because it has phosphates added to make sure people with old pipes don’t drink lead.

I must rely on snails and bristlenoses or else the java moss get covered with algae. Ramshorn snails everywhere.

As a breeder, my filters are undergravel and sponge.
 
I can’t afford their prices for ash from a power plant. Have volcanic ash I could go and just dig out of the hillside that would strip out phosphates and nitrates. Thought about it, even thought about selling it. We have used it on a couple lakes.

Also have power plants happy to getrid of ash butthey probably want to deal in semiloads. Could just go to my local redi-mix plant and get however much I want.

You would think I would be scraping algae all the time. In actual practice, I’ve learned to manage things so that is actually extremely rare. I get one flush after first cycle and that is pretty much that though I can induce with antibiotics.

My tanks aren’t pretty.
 
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