Thanks for checking out Otter Creek Aquatics on RU-vid!
My name is Kendall Otter, I am a planted tank enthusiast that has been heavily invested in the aquarium hobby for about 3 years.
On this channel you will find weekly videos and live streams on the planted tank hobby, tips about fish and shrimp breeding, and many more!
I believe that aquariums don't only ease stress, and can be a great hobby to step outside of the real world for a bit, but they also bring friends and family closer together to bond over something that is MUCH deeper than fish in a glass box!!!
Are you ready to grow your aquarium keeping skills with me? Make sure to subscribe and leave a comment on a video saying hello!
Keep following your dreams and keep inspiring! I hope to talk soon!!!
-Kendall Otter
P.S Looking for guppies, endlers, plecos, shrimp or plants? Go check out the Otter Creek Aquatics FaceBook page for my current stock list!!!
Greetings from a fellow Ky native! I stumbled across your videos and a few seconds in I thought, "Where is this guy from? 'Cause he sounds like a Kentuckian lol". Enjoying your videos!
I thought you were about to tell us what we can do if we can’t get a used sponge, not tell us where to get them 😅 was kind of hoping to get help with that situation. Maybe it’s just not possible or a good idea to quick start a cycle without a used sponge?
I have a tetra whisper 20 hang on the back filter. I just put floss in and got rid of my bio bag that came with it that has the charcoal in it. I did cut the front floss material off and kept that in my filter so as to not lose some good bacteria. My question is, I have a fine mesh bag of Purigen next to the floss. I bought a bag of ceramic rings but they are really big. Wondering where you got yours? Can I put that in there along with the bag of purigen or do they both do the same thing? If I can't, can I put the bag of ceramic rings just in the bottom of my aquarium or hang it on the side?
did anyone try, i got a new tank i alr added some things to help w the nitrate but i’m so terrified ppl mislead me so i bought a tester fish to make sure, someone pls tell me if it works 😭
Bro is speaking facts. I have used aquaclear and tidal HOBs. Problem I have with aquaclears is they don't self prime like tidals do. When you have alot of tanks, it becomes a big pain when you live in the country where power is intermittent at times. I only run HOBs in the tanks i have in the bedroom now. Sponge filters in the fish room. I like HOBs because they don't take up alot of real estate in your tank so planted tanks are real nice looking with one. The other drawback to the tidal 35 is it doesn't have a down tube which prevents the ability to put a pre-filter on to protect small fry and shrimp. I don't use that HOB anymore.
Indeed a cautionary tale! Good content, nice stands! I'd add that most wood has the possibility to expand or contract when it experiences moisture changes; pressure treated or not. Hard or soft wood. Just like with installing wood floors you should acclimatize the wood you're using in the area it's going to reside. Depending on the difference of the moisture of the wood and the environment it could be several days or weeks to avoid such problems. I'd also add that when using pressure treated wood for outdoor projects it should also be acclimatized too. Where I am it's also stored outdoors at the big box hardware stores, so if it's been raining recently it's really going to benefit from some acclimatization time.
Wait a month, when the cycle is almost done, when grey cloudy water is finally crystal clear. This video kinda shows you what can you do if you start a 2nd aquarium, instead of waiting that much you can do it almost instant using your already cycled filters ornaments plants etc..
I just started without a used sponge. I got no other viable responses. I allowed my tank to run with treated water for 3 weeks before adding a bit of leaf zone. I let that run one more week before adding plants. 2 more weeks and I added my fish. They seem to be thriving and my guppies are breeding.
I just did the same thing. My sand has added bacteria and I put it on top of the existing gravel and yep, after a day or two, it looked awful! I just mixed it all together.
If the lady was paying that much attention to you while. While your fumbling through basically manure, I would assume that she’s more worried of the possibility of a fertilizer boom.
Can you please get up with me when you have the opportunity I am wanting to set up a aquarium with organic soil like yours but I have a few questions about how everything went and how did you put your soil in wet or dry
I garden. Jiffy seed starting mix basically has nothing in it. No nutrients. It's mostly peat moss. It's for starting seeds which come with their own nutrients. It's not for growing plants. Miracle grow makes an oraganic potting soil and garden soil in black bags. I'd probably go with garden soil. Potting soil has perlite in it (the white balls). If you use soil, you'll need to completely soak it in water and pull off everything that floats and repeat that process a few times.
It's not difficult! Mine are breeding in a tank full of tetras, amanos and cpds. The fry are doing well hanging out with all the other fish, no additional input from me! Yay
You need to be extremely careful when mixing substrates of different sizes and coarseness. While it may look good today - those rocks & gravel pieces will slowly sink into the sand and the substrate overall will be *incredibly* compacted. This leads to some serious anaerobic conditions that will completely wreck your tank before you ever know what happened. Your best choice is just to take out the sand and start over, especially when you dont even have anything in the tank to begin with. It is literally just sand...and a single lonely bladder snail on the side glass. 😅
Respectfully, you're blatantly incorrect here on a few faults. 1. Just because the fish breed means nothing. Panda corydoras can breed in a quarantine tote if they wanted to and "were happy", but this doesn't mean they live in the wild and are content in the tote life. You should never base your care arguments on what decor is right based on a fish that breeds extremely easily and requires nothing more than food and water changes to lay eggs. 2. As you mentioned, you've lost fish. So something isn't "perfect". 3. It's extremely tough to have an actual conversation about the topic via comments, but let's give it a whirl. Mark's Shrimp tank's has a feeding dish video that shows food falling deep below the top surface of the gravel. The food just "melts" and falls down below. It's pretty much inaccessible by the fish after that point. If you have hard/heavy gravel that leads to damage on the barbels, cuts, and that would lead to something like malnutrition, bacterial infections, and other risk factors. 4. You want to actually research how the fish interact with the substrate and encourage natural behavior. In the wild, as others will comment, there are videos of "sharp rocks" in the substrate. They also have a ton of sand in that substrate. They learn to avoid sharp things and it's their own survival instincts keeping them doing that. Check out Chris Lukhaup's short that he just put out this week showing corydoras species diving into the sand looking for food. That's natural behavior and you're taking away that ability with certain substrate types. 5. Corydoras are specifically not encouraged to keep in bare bottom tanks due to the issues of barbel erosion, bacterial infection, etc. from rubbing on the glass. It's just an issue long term, and not best suited for long term care. You're giving an opinion, presented as fact, and claiming at the end to "do your research and don't believe everything on the internet." I really don't intend to beat you up, but this is a seriously troubling video and is going to setup fish in future for issues, as well as hobbyists to fail. This is right alongside the arguments of "I do this, so I'm right" or better.... "I saw someone did this and the fish seemed fine, so I'm ok to do that is safe to do in my tank." Everyone has different circumstances that change what could be best, and the goal is to give the animal the best care that you can. The other side of that is to not sign yourself for something that you cannot provide adequate care for. The "best thing" you could do for corydoras on gravel like this is to have a sand section for feeding or to use something like a terracotta plant saucer as a feeding dish. Best of luck in future.
does this apply to freshwater tanks too? also, is there a way to test the ammonium/ good bacteria ratio? i’m a new aquarium keeper and was just about to buy a replacement for my tetra filter but now will checkout aqua clear and maybe keep that one in there during the transition? lastly, -curious to know the reasons you don’t like that filter too you mentioned lol. thank you!
