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I've had many heaters in many tanks over the years. Some very cheap, some brand name, different design types. All the ones I've had for things bigger than a small 1-2gal bowl had indicator lights somewhere to show when they were heating vs not. They all heated for a short period of time, a few...

In addition to what others have mentioned, another completely different possibility is that there are no problems with the actual heating ability or probe measurements but your built-in thermostat has a small offset (they all do really - trial and error to figure it out on setup) and the heater...

Why just eat your food when you can wear it too? ...What...you've never felt the urge to slap a sandwich on top of your head and go about your day, occasionally taking it down for a bite?

Chocolate cherry shrimp join the bowl to help pick through the moss tangle. Here is one next to a pile of at least four snails demonstrating how baby snails are made.

Daphnia are filter feeders and Stentors are also filter feeders, so the same water could grow both - althogh I'd think the daphnia would eventually eat the stentors. Maybe they're relatively safe from the daphnia if they get big and stay attached to surfaces. Wait, your shimp aren't eating...

This is Miss Chungus. She's a 2.5 year old hen who will sit on my lap for hours given the opportunity. She got her name because she rapidly grew to twice the size of all the other chicks she was raised with, so I thought she was going to be massive. Then she taught me you can't use early growth...

Just to add a bit of accuracy data on the API GH side of this discussion, I just got a fresh set of those two kits. When using RODI water + Remineralize in a bucket, the GH seems to like to go from nothing to 15 or more as I increase the hardness of the water, and I'm having a really hard time...

Stentors have always bothered me as being a single celled animal that gets enough to see with the naked eye lol. A long long time ago I was in a biology class that had mail ordered a bunch of single celled critters in jars to look at under the microscope, and I took a sample from each jar and...

Keeps getting cleaner every day! The next battle that's buliding up is cyano as the hair algae is starting to struggle. That too will be gotten under control in time. The Caulerpa prolifera is picking up a lot of the slack too as I hoped it would; I've trimmed so much of that stuff since I...

Looks like a species of Gyraulus - tiny Planorbids that often go unnoticed in systems because of how small they are. As for the source, hard to say. If all you were collecting from the creek was water though, then they more likely were on a plant.

Looks like you've got some Gyraulus or a relative (very small flat genus of Planorbid). Planorbid eggs can't sit dormant with the possible exception of being kept in cool water to slow development a bit relative to what it would be at tropical temperatures. If the eggs dry out or aren't...

The main issues of stopping or mostly stopping WCs from the snails' standpoint would be be gradual CaCO3 and other trace element depletion that would lead to erosion of the old shell and/or growing inferior quality new shell. In the past I've done smaller snail tanks with plants (albeit very...

I do love pulsing Xenia. I don't know if it's the Xenia growing or somethig else, but something is suddenly sucking the carbonates out of the coral tank - and that's even with a slow-release buffer block in the canister filter that I periodically replace (same thing in the other tank and KH is...

Well...sadly the purple urchin may not make it. It turned up with a body injury that has now rapidly turned into an infection that's spreading really fast. It's still active and eating well, so I'm spot-feeding it nori to give it a chance, but I'm not optimistic with the rate the infection is...

Reef tanks are wild - I just found some crazy bivavlves in the back of my coral tank. There's been nothing into these tanks in years that could have added these. I had no idea they were in there. Last bivalve I knew was in that tank was a mussel, and these new things certainly aren't that! Here...

Normally I would suspect the shrimp treat for having dumped a bunch of waste in the water, but you said those params checked out...so it's not that. I don't have a great handle on the size of the treats; maybe they messed with the pH? Also for situations like this where something new is added...

I also find that portions of originally flexible tubing that get even indirect sunlight or are anywhere near my light fixtures become discolored and rigid, even when dry. I can pretty much indefinitely reuse any tubing that has stayed dry, cool, and in the dark.

I’ve been wondering about getting one of those temp gun things. I’ve been ok with the variance issue for cheaper more traditional types, but am sick of my sw critters literally eating probes. Urchins are practically attracted to them as a snack. I just got a ridiculous magnet cleaner and temp...

Check ammonia too if you can. If the cycle got completely messed up, you can get an ammonia spike with zero nitrite/nitrate. Even though tank poisoning events are definitely possible, the vast majority of problems with these symptoms are from cycling problems - so the cycling issue has to be...

Ok yep found a manufacturer response elsewhere: 3 drops. Newer bottles have it fixed so mine has clearly been on the shelf for a bit (not surprising for test kits more generally). Just wasn’t searching for the right keywords previously. Well, now the info is here at least if anyone else runs...

I was hoping someone else here might have already gone through the contacting process. It’s never going to be a fast response. However, I might have found the answer after more digging. Looks like probably 3 drops but I need to go look at the stuff on my pc rather than my phone. In this case...

See attached image - instructions in booklet say to add 3 drops of reagent, bottle says 4 drops. Does anyone else with this test kit have numbers that match between booklet and bottle? One or the other has to be a misprint on mine. I realize it won’t make a huge difference to the color being 3...

Well thank goodness - false alarm on the limpets! They appear to be some kind of Crepidula. What an awful genus name really lol. Anyway that means they are quite closely related to the ones in the Long Island Sound and I'm doubtful they'll actually last that long in this tank so I will just...

So after years of not having fw snails, I have some once more. I don't think this build will warrant a full journal thread but wanted to share some details on it nonetheless since it now has an interesting feature: incorporating 3D-printed parts. Up until a couple weeks ago I had a horrible...