Recent content by ArmchairAquariest

Others above have already answered the details here, but from an evolutionary stand point, sponges, corals, etc... derive from right in the evolutionary split-point between animals and fungus on the animal side -- so corals and sponges are kind of the closest remaining animal cousins to fungus...

Congrats! Guess you should have fertilized with human excrement (I kid, please don't do that.)

The little rapidly proliferating "pest" snails actually rarely eat living plants, and can sometimes even reduce total poop load if there is lots of it around. While many people claim they have seen pest snails like bladder snails, pond snails, and Malaysian Trumpet snails eat living plants I...

First: are you talking freshwater or saltwater (...or brackish)? There are vastly different answers for each. I am only familiar with freshwater but in freshwater while larger snails can be interesting pets and there are more options that won't get out of control, they do less "heavy lifting"...

Wowwwwww. I mean I love me some planted tanks (and am probably too poor and not competent enough to run a proper marine tank), but you are right, the "everything is alive, moving, and of different colors and textures" really is an amazing effect that one just can't get in a planted tank.

Hornwort under water hyacinth is the biggest plant-based nutrient sink I can think of. Of course depending on where you want your sump and if it is also for display or not you could make a decorative display one with emergent plants. If you go that route let me recommend Cana, yellow iris, and...

That is a neat looking concept tank ! ... glad you decided not to fertilize it the traditional way :crazy:

^ I agree with Colin. Reduce the amount of CO2 you are putting in there, and add in a little calcium carbonate, that should bring the pH up a little and give you some buffering capacity. There is a bunch of ways you can do that: immediate adjustment would be various powdered thing and pills...

Oh that is interesting. I'll have to look more into that. Please et me know if you have any leads in these regards.

I am noting people in this thread are concerned about shrimp rock-piles and the like shifting and crushing shrimp -- a reasonable concern. To fix this you can treat the rock piles (with or without shrimp tubes and shrimp geometries) the way marine aquarists treat live rock and cement them...

The shrimp probably need a new tank, a 5 g will do and won't break the bank and can be found everywhere or ordered overnight from your favorite supplier. If, however, you want to try and keep them in the tank they are in currently (no promises this will work) they are going to need a spacious...

The temperature range is right, but isn't the water hardness between the Sulawesi snails and pretty much everything else especially the black ghost mismatched? The snails need hard basic water and the Black ghost knife fish are usually in soft acidic water. Besides the snails, everything you...

No problem, glad I could help. Interesting idea. I have never kept fish that large. I would almost be worried that the water meal might be so small that only tilapia fry would be interested in it. I certainly can't confirm one way or another, but I think people use full-on duckweed to feed...

Scientific Name for the genus is Wolffia which contains the duckweeds and the water meals -- I don't think there is a rigorous or scientific cuttoff point where the given species size causes it to transition from duckweed into water meal, but at some point it gets so small that it really doesn't...

Oh right, water meal is also interesting, I can just never get it established because everything in any tank I put it in seems to enjoy eating it too much. Its like the duckweed you don't have to worry about cleaning up or keeping under control.