You so mean! Share! Please?
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Stoopid auto correct. I dunno what I was saying. It is cuz I was picking on you so much.Sorry Vic- typo?
Of course, I put my ATO container a bit more ‘out of sight’, totally not amenable to mixing kalk, but I’ll figure it out.
Stoopid auto correct. I dunno what I was saying. It is cuz I was picking on you so much.Sorry Vic- typo?
Of course, I put my ATO container a bit more ‘out of sight’, totally not amenable to mixing kalk, but I’ll figure it out.
You so mean! Share! Please?
So, today, I found myself with a few free hours, with no yard or house chores to do. I finalized a couple things for my girls birthday party on June 29th, then tackled a few projects in the fishroom.
1) Did you know that if you upcycle your old pantry door and use it in your fishroom, and that door used to have stupid screw in spice racks on it, and you *neglect* to fill in the screw holes and seal it, mold will start to use the glue in the MDF as a food source? Now, I’m a microbiology guy, and while the fractal patterns of hyphae growth coming out of the holes and spreading over the door *are really cool*, it’s not the look I’m going for.
Door replaced. With the one from my walk in closet. I own 4 pairs of jeans and 7 tee-shirts- we use it for luggage storage. All I had to do was flip the hinges and, presto!- new fish room door, sans the lung disease.
2) rehung the leds over the DT. They were a little too far back and it left the living room side at a lux disadvantage. I used superstrut as a hanger and pushed them 4 inches back. Looks way better.
3) I like this one. @Victoria M and @Dubs83 might too. Ive had this one on the to-do list since February- all the pieces were around, I just needed the time and activation energy.
Going from this-
To this-
Lol[emoji51][emoji51][emoji51][emoji51][emoji51]
I eventually want to have a number of dragonets- a green spotted (or two) a ruby red, abd a scooter blenny. Of course- they are going to need a healthy pod population to sustain them.
I originally planned to use 5 gallon tanks, but couldn’t get over the fact they were the same price as a 10g... especially when I happened to walk past these square 5 gallon containers, made out of food grade PP, at target for $3 each. So I snagged a couple and a couple extra lids.
https://www.ezystorage.com/product/storage/karton/16l-karton-storage-container/
Pods need hiding spaces. Here’s some synthetic chaetomorpha I picked up at the dollar store.
Some work on the lids. This makes each pod ball individually removeable. Idea is to grab one of these and shake it out into the DT once a week. Two week period for each scrubber gives time for repopulation.
I also added a rigid airline connected to an air pump to add some small amount of circulation. I’ve read that this is t needed for the pods, but the algae I’m using to feed them- Nannochloropsis- is a non-motile single cell that is like to keep in suspension, rather than have it all clump at the bottom.
Then I filled it with 3.5g of NSW at 1.023, and greened up the water with a big dose of algae culture. I used about 750ml.
Now the pods! I bought a bottle of Tigger Pods from the LFS in January- due to an employee at a different store gifting my 2 year old a scooter blenny that wouldn’t take any food- I ended up using 90% in a failed attempt to get it through QT.
The last 10% of the bottle, I filled up with algae culture and have been growing this bottle since mid feb. I’d add half to DT, then top up with algae culture once every 6 weeks.
I dumped 2/3rds of this- including the ‘mulm’ in the bottom which contains microscopic pod larvae- into the big vessel, then added the last 1/3rd to a larger jar with algae culture. Kind of a safeguard against the big culture crashing. I’ll have a backup.
And that’s where we are at. T. californicus has a fairly quick maturation rate, around 30 days, and each female carries a large number of eggs. Once established, I should be able to harvest on the order of 10-15k pods every 3-4 weeks... given that the original bottle cost me $24 for 3850 pods, that’s pretty cool for about $50 of starter culture and equipment.
I have plans to grow a second species of copepod, but I’ll be trialing this for 4-6 weeks to iron out any kinks.
Dude! That’s brilliant! Thanks for sharing man
Holy moly...just read through this build thread. Makes my 40-gallon AIO look a little unambitious. Might have to buy a house instead of rent so I can have a fish room. Alas, California housing prices...
Really nice build. I'm impressed.
Thanks man, appreciate it.
Here’s the secret to living in California.
You ready?
Move somewhere else and vacation there.
Seriously. I lived in Bay Area for 6 years, and LOVE IT, but there is just no way to buy property and raise kids. We are both academic scientists and we were barely keeping it in the black and that was before the family came along.
Miss it every day, sure, but poverty line living is just no way to raise kids.
Saying that- I’d move back in a minute if we got a windfall
I hear ya. Where in the Bay Area? I live in the North Bay and can't imagine living anywhere else (even after living in other parts of the world that I loved). That being said, once my son graduates high school - in four years... - and is off to college, I may be looking elsewhere. Of course, journalists don't make much money anywhere these days. Maybe a change in career is in order. I think I'll open a LFS so I can finally build a reef system of epic proportions.