Very Strong Wood Aquarium Stand for Two Aquariums

Front vew of the Aquarium Stand

This design does not depend on the screws to hold it together. No butt joins are used, and all the weight rests on the wood. The stand does not rack, and the aquariums can be removed from the front. I would not be surprised if it would hold 1,000 pounds.

 

Gulf Coast pygmy sunfish (Elassoma gilberti) 20230129

 

One of my Gulf Coast pygmy sunfish (Elassoma gilberti) It's not a very good photo but he is very camera shy and I consider myself lucky to get a shot.

 

He is eating newly hatched brine shrimp. They will eat the shrimp until their belly bulges and you can see the pink shrimp showing 

 

The Gulf Coast pygmy sunfish, Elassoma gilberti, is a species of pygmy sunfish endemic to Florida, United States. This species can reach 2.5 centimetres (0.98 in) in standard length.

 

 

Old Schooll Aquarium Filters

 

I had Dynaflow filters, and I loved them. I always found the siphons easy to start. Mine came with a gadget that slipped over the end of the intake tube, and you squeezed the bulb a few times, and it pumped the tube full of water.

But the big thing I liked about these filters was that the pump pumped filtered water. Modern filters pump unfiltered water, and you get jammed and broken impellers. If a fry or other small critter gets sucked into a modern filter, it gets chewed up by the impeller, and if it lives through that, it could get pinned to the bottom of the filter material and die there. With the Dynaflow filter, a fry getting sucked in will for a little ride and live in the filter until he is discovered.

There were no seals at the bottom of the filter. Dynaflow filters had a magnetic drive that worked through the bottom of the filter box.

Dynaflows worked great as a filter, and you could use just about anything you wanted for filter media. I used filter floss and sponges in mime. Looking at the outflow, I could quickly tell when the filter needed cleaning. They didn't flood the floor if they got clogged. They just stopped.

There were also a good number of air-driven HOBs back then. I wish these were still available.

Male Pygmy Sunfish in a Heavily Planted 10 Gallon Aquarium

Male Pygmy Sunfish in a Heavily Planted 10 Gallon Aquarium

A Pygmy Sunfish in a well-established 10-gallon aquarium heavily planted with Anubis and hornwort. An under-gravel filter and a small sponge filter provide biological filtration.

The plants are hornwort and anbius.+

I want a modern-day version of the Metaframe Dynaflow HOB.

The Metaframe Dynaflow filters were the best filters ever made for aquariums. Here is why/

They never leak because there is no hole in the bottom. A magnet drove the impeller.

They pump filtered water. The filter is fed by a siphon that puts the water on top of the filter media. The pump pumped the filtered water from the bottom of the media back into the aquarium. I never had an impeller jam or get clogged up with gunk.

They did not kill fry. If fry got sucked into the filter, they would hang out in the water on top of the filter media until you scooped them out. While they were in the filter, they were the best-fed fish in the aquarium.

Unless the siphons were broken when you had a power failure, they would always restart when the power came back on.

Dynaflow filters don't run over. Because it is fed by a siphon, the water level in the filter can never be higher than the water in the aquarium.

You can always tell when the media needs changing. There was no bypass so the flow would get slower the more the media clogged. When it got too slow, you changed or cleaned the media.

You could use any media you like. I use sponges and filter floss in mine. I used sponges well before there were sponge filters in the aquarium trade. A 1/2-inch layer of foam on top to catch the course stuff and filter floss on the bottom to get the rest.

The tubing on the Dynaflow filters was bent tubing for the returns and the siphons. It was a standard-size tubing that you could buy and make siphon tubes. Combine this with the adjustable returns, and you could almost eliminate refiltering the water that just came out of the filter. I don't know of any modern filter that can do this.  

Curved/bent tubing is much easier to clean.

Removing Amazon Frog Bit From My 300 Gallon Stock Tank

 

Three Gallon Bucket Packed Full Of Amazon Frog Bit

I have had Amazon frogbit in my stock tanks before. That variety was great. The frogbit grew like crazy and lived through the Florida Panhandle winters. Then one day, a local insect (moth) decided that they were good to eat and started laying eggs on the plants. Every day I had a new batch of caterpillars. My fish loved them but could not get at the worms unless they fell or got knocked into the water. Eventually, the caterpillars won. No more frogbit.

This year I tried again. I bought some plants and put a few in every aquarium and stock tank I have. It died in most locations or was very sickly looking. Then one day, the frogbit started to grow and spread in my 300-gallon stock tank. The plants got larger and grew faster until they covered most of the tank. The plants looked terrible, with dead leaves everywhere and roots that went to the bottom of the tank, causing problems for the fish. Finally, it got so bad that I could not see the fish and was interfering with the feeding. It was time to thin the plants.
 

The bucket pictured is 3-gallons and is packed tight with Amazon frogbit. I cleared less than 1/4 of the surface. A week later, it was closing in again. I'm going to pull it all out.

#aquarium #tubbing #stocktanks #rubbermaid #fish #aquaticplants #amazonfrogbit #floridapanhandle

Albino Corydoras Spawning

 

Lots and lots of eggs. There were probably 200 eggs in the aquarium when I took the picture, and the spawning was ongoing. On top of the powerhead, eggs are piled three to four deep.  There are eggs scattered around other locations in the aquarium as well.

There was heavy rain the day before. They seem to like to spawn after heavy rain. The only thing I have to do to get them to spawn is feeding them as much food as they can eat. Fish foods High in fat and protein will produce large spawns like this one. I am currently feeding them exclusively on Pruina AquaMax. Freeze-dried tubifex worms work as well, but I have not found an easy way to feed them.

#aquarium #corydoras #albino #spawn #eggs #fishfood #tubifex #AquaMax