A fishtastic blog!
The U.P. Aqua CO2 atomizer is a tiny gizmo to inject CO2 into your planted tank. It works with a canister filter and pressurized CO2. I recently purchased the U.P. Aqua CO2 Atomizer to replace my no-name internal CO2 diffuser. I chose the UP because it had good reviews on Amazon, and I wanted something … Continue reading Hands-on with the UP Aqua Inline CO2 Atomizer
Setting up an aquarium on an impulse is not a smart idea. Generally speaking, anyway. I had a bit of an odd situation where I realized I needed to rehome some new aquatic inhabitants quickly. This is the story of my on-the cheap one day build of a 29 gallon tank. The backstory: There's a … Continue reading Impulse Build: 29 Gallon Creek Tank
If you regularly add anything to your aquarium like fertilizer for planted tanks, you know what a pain doing it every day can be. There are sweet precision dosing pumps available online, but they are expensive. There is a cheap pump out there called the Aqualifter. It's less than 20 bucks, but the problem is … Continue reading Use Inexpensive Equipment for Automatic Aquarium Dosing
If you have live aquarium plants in your tank, you are probably familiar with Seachem Flourish Excel (or just Excel). It's a liquid-based carbon source that helps boost plant growth and can help reduce algae. I swear by the stuff, but it can be seriously expensive. It turns out it's the same chemical as found … Continue reading Cheaper Flourish Excel: Generic at a Fraction of the Price
I'm a big fan of the API master test kit for testing the basic water conditions of my fish tank. You test the water in your aquarium too, right? If you don't you should start, I highly recommend the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. The problem is, my nitrates always read 0ppm. For an established … Continue reading Your Test Kit May be Lying to You: Fix Nitrate Readings
Just in case you're wondering, I frequently partake in the deals I post on this site. I picked up the Aquarium DIY CO2 Generator from BangGood a while back. The interesting thing about this setup is that it uses citric acid and baking soda in two bottles to generate CO2 for the aquarium. Now that … Continue reading Hands On: DIY CO2 Generator
A while back I posted a nifty trick to combine an RSS feed for a Craigslist aquarium search with Google alerts to get notified when a new deal showed up. If you're not sure why you'd want to, read that article to find out why that's a good idea. It seemed like a good idea, … Continue reading Find Craigslist Aquarium Deals Faster with This Improved Trick
I think one of the hardest things about doing a nice aquarium is what to do about the background. I'm frugal, so I've used black plastic trash bags taped outside and then plants and decorations to take emphasis away from the fact I'm using a trash bag. Perhaps you want something a little more... professional. … Continue reading Beautiful 3D Backdrops to Dress Up Aquariums
I recently completed a fun project. I took my old, unused 10 gallon aquarium and built a volcano themed aquascape using about seven dollars worth of materials from Home Depot. Here's how I did it. I had an existing empty 10 gallon Marineland aquarium setup from Petsmart that I tore down after establishing my main … Continue reading 10 Gallon Aquascape Build With $7 Worth of Home Depot Material
If you have a planted tank, or any live aquarium plants, you probably also have aquarium snails. A couple are no big deal, but a couple snails will quickly grow to way too many in your fish tank. They always seem to be a pain to get rid of too. There's chemical treatments that contain … Continue reading Get Rid of Aquarium Snails with a Trap