Recent content by kcoscia

Love the look!

Thanks everyone! 

Looks great! You don't have any live plants, as you said you are going all fake, then what's the point of a light? Is the room they're in not light enough for them to be visible? You need WAY MORE hides, especially if you keep that light. You cannot keep 2 adult axolotls in a 10g, no way. BARE...

I have no idea! Even the water content report showed very minimal additives.

I researched a bit on alternatives, and the only real option I see is Seachem Alkaline buffer, but they're all secretive about the ingredients. Apparently its "better" than food grade baking soda with other electrolytes, but they won't say what in much depth. Hmmmm Seachem.   Yes twotank, good...

I'm with you on the water changes. That's part of the reason I like EI dosing so much!    Okay so overview:   Hard water fish are fine with sodium, so platys are okay to take sodium bicarb. Bettas would prefer I don't add the sodium bicarb. That is no problem for me to cancel out at all.  ...

Here are some new pictures:      

All are in separate tanks OMG that would be an AWFUL combination. I am an experienced aquarist, although new to this particular forum. I know about the top off information from shrimp keeping. I also do 50% (or greater) water changes weekly in all tanks. Since I change such amounts of water per...

Thanks everyone!   Fish herder - earthworms are the #1 best thing you could feed an axolotl EVER in so many ways. So they are the staple for my babies, along with the occasional salmon pellet. The pellets are hard to feed though, since they will only take them out of my hand or the tweezers.

Platys, bettas, shrimp (but not anymore) and axolotls   Are you concerns stemming from the addition of sodium to the water and it's potential damaging effects? The amount I add (enough to reach kH of 3) isn't high enough to cause a problem. 

Any nitrates?

 I never even had that thought! That makes total sense though.    I keep them kH 3 GH 5-6 pH high 7's and TDS in the 300s. My water is 0/0 kH/GH out of the tap, so I add sodium bicarb. and Seachem Replenish to bring it up. I started my exploration in modifying water parameters when I got into...

Thanks!  From experience with these little guys, plates are helpful, but not necessary. When they were being fed bloodworms, I put the worms on the plate in order to decrease the amount of sand they were ingesting, but they just kicked the worms all around and didn't care at all. No problems...

Even though it may not be a requirement it can be important to more fragile fish types, since if you don't have it, pH could swing! In my platy tank, although platies are fairly hardy, I saw an improvement in their health by raising my kH from 0 to 3.

Thanks everyone! I love my axies too. They're my favorite pet (shh don't tell) by far. They're both about 6" long, 4 months old. To keep their tank cool, I have a four fan unit running on it and whole room air conditioning. This keeps it between 64-68, but i'm not happy with this since it isn't...