Bettarazzi

My current beanie box setup is much more old school. No filtration. Just manual water changes. My room is heated now so they just sit in a row on a shelf. The plan when I finally find the motivation to continue working on my fishroom is to simplify the setup. I'll provide the means for overflow drainage so I can refresh the water with a top up during the week when I'm busy and rely on doing a manual siphon on the weekend. In theory bettas prefer a still water setup however this depends a lot on how well you can maintain water quality without filtration. The benefits of still water could be outweighed by the water going foul faster. We'll see what happens. As it stands the current setup is a pain. Thank goodness I don't have that many.

Sorry to hear that Bill. You're already a member here are you not? Send me a PM if you want the two accounts consolidated.

Fantastic. Really starting to get a decent setup there. I've seen people do a helluva lot with less.

What were you using to do the test? A pH pen? I think I need to get one of those.

I own a lot more tanks than I have actually set up. So currently setup are: 1 x 2ft std (channoides colony) 1 x 2ft tall (pair of blue angels and their fry) 1 x 3ft std (3 blue angels, 4 peppermints, 1 pencilfish) 3 x 18in (suboccelatus pair in one and different varieties of guppies in each of the other two) 17 beanie boxes with male and female bettas, leftover from last year's spawns, none of them are any good.

Not sure if everyone is aware that AusAqua has been on Facebook since 2007. It doesn't replace the forum. Unfortunately Facebook groups have their drawbacks. One of the positives is that there is an immediacy to Facebook that we don't find on the forum. Feel free to post in either or both. Just be aware that Facebook is much harder to search and of course there are no subforums. It's all one big timeline. If the forum is down for any reason, the Facebook group is the place to go to find out more. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ausaqua/

My RO is similar. It has a drinking water stage which adds minerals back. I use 70% RO to 30% drinking for channoides. I've been lazy and not bothered with testing. Fish are spawning so they must be happy. For CT and HM I'd be tempted to just use the drinking water stage.

Welcome Alex. Bit more about yourself and what you've been doing in the hobby please.

I'm so slack. I'll admit it. There is seriously only about 30 minutes work left to finish screwing the next rack together. Then I guess another a couple of hours more to cut more supports for the top and cut boards for each shelf. But once I put that drill down it seems really hard to pick it up again. When I put the power saw down I never want to pick it up again.

Definitely shouldn't be drinking pure RO and aquariums will need minerals added back to buffer the pH and prevent crashes.

This is the one I bought http://bit.ly/13topAs from eBay $195. I didn't realise how slow they were and how much waste water they produce. I only use this on my channoides tank. It's got a dual output able to give you pure soft water and also drinking water with minerals added back. The channoides get a 50-50 mix. But it's slow. I've set up one of those garden tap timers so I can turn it on to fill a bucket and just walk away.

Welcome Jon. Good points about hardiness. Suggest heading over to the Guppies section to continue that discussion.

I love the pic where you're holding the spray bar and your pinky is sticking up. *lol*

I would have thought that would be okay number of feeds. Definitely no signs of disease? Not sure about this one.

Oh... Seachem Stability is what I usually use now. But have used Nutrafin Cycle in the past. You can usually add fish straight away.

I prefer to use a bacteria cycling product rather than adding ammonia.

Excellent photos! I like that slim light over the barracks.

I think a spray bar made with sprinkler system parts would be fairly cheap. Get some of those little dropper taps so you can control the flow. Is there really that much poo? Once the tank is well cycled poo should break down pretty quickly and the dissolved waste handled by the filter. Turkey basters are really good for removing poo when you're spot cleaning. But I'm wondering if you're being more fastidious than you need to be.

And what are you feeding? Crushed flakes works but bbs will really get them going.

Well I hope I'll be done soon. I have about a hundred baby angels that need more room. At least I've set up the overflow siphon for them now so I can just chuck a bucket of water in there each day and walk away. Still need to do a weekly poop siphon.

Bloody hell. I always feel guilty whenever someone bumps this thread. A lot on my mind at the moment. Both at home and at work. The home stuff is the fun stuff (okay sometimes not so fun) that I'd rather be doing. The nonsense that goes on at work is what makes me only do the things at home that ensure that fish don't die and we have a successful IBC sanctioned show in September.

One man's weed is another's salad :P

Catching up after a few days. Agree about OGO. Not sure if they've ever been in Australia.

I don't think you want to submerge the stems too much.

LOL. Are you pressing the button down partway and giving it time to focus? What's the make and model of your camera? I take most of my shots with my iPhone 4S because I always have it with me. It's only when I'm trying to get macro shots that I get the camera out. A room shot should be a snap (pun intended).