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Inspired by @gnatster 's Black Friday thread HERE. I'm curious what's on everyone's list this year. I need to come up with a list for the significant other aquarium or not. Not sure of much I want. I do want a small rectangle little tank to do a succulent garden and light like HERE, but I'm not sure which one to get. What are you asking for?

Since these are starting, here's a thread.

Starbond, the makers of Cyanocrylate Adhesives, has a few items on sale. Black Friday Starts Early 2026 | Starbond. I'm a fan of their Clog Prevention Stoppers. There are some sanding discs on sale for the woodworkers in the crowd too.

I’m fairly nEw to aquascaping, but have had planted aquariums for about 7 years. I’m moving in a few days. I have four small and one larger aquarium to move, but it’s the heavily planted 75 g that I need some quick advice about. The fluval stratum, in mesh bags and capped with sand, has been in place for about 18 months. I’m not sure what to expect, but our aquarium moving/mntnce guy said it might be a sludge now.
My question is what is the best way to rebuild, without harming my 30 ish nano fish? Do I add fluval stratum and go through all the water changes and monitoring for two weeks until the ammonia issues settle, or use seachem fluorite and add root tabs moving forward? Does fluorite absorb and hold fertilizers and have a cation exchange capacity. I’ve only come across conflicting views.
Advice would be greatly appreciated. Anyone with long term experience and comparisons on each planted tank substrates would be very helpful. We’re moving Wednesday.

Have my eye on a UNS 45SA, a shallow all-in-one, to house Mexican Orange Crayfish. I've been flipping between pictures of rocks, trying to imagine what would work well. My idea is a cascading wall of dark rock, with caves and epiphytes stuffed between the cracks. Leading to a foreground strewn with pebbles of the same rock over a base of a lighter colored sand, along with leaf litter and pods. The orange coloration of the crayfish ought to pop against the darker rock.

I've been trying to picture the layout with one of these:
Blue Rhino Stone
Manten Stone
North Black Stone

If I had my druthers, the stone is available from Buce Plant, where I'm sitting on a sizable credit.

Comments, suggestions, etc, all welcome.

This is the future home for the announcements when someone obtains an achievement badge. Let the games begin!

up until now I’ve been fastening my reactors to the aquarium stand using the screw holes provided but I believe I’ve noticed mention of folks using a hanger for support rather than screwing the reactor directly. Does anyone have a recommendation for a hanger?

Hi, not new to aquariums but I’ve been having some ideas that I’d like to discuss but I’m not sure where to put them.

I live in Barbados, which is a beautiful country built on limestone. My tap water chemistry has a high ph (8.6 - 9) and tds (300+). To get around the tds, I use collected rainwater and ac water, (tds 0 - 15). I am now wondering about reducing my ph. I wondered if I could add plain white vinegar to my stored water to bring the ph down to 7 or 7.5. I wonder if this could or would be detrimental to the livestock and how it would affect plant growth?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

I have always liked Rotala florida as plant due to its strongly colored leaves, but realized that I haven't actually aquascaped much with it - meaning to integrate it as part of a layout and not just growing a bunch of it in farm/collector style tank. Using plants in a layout in tighter bunches, and in competition with surrounding plants/hardscape is much harder than growing it farm style in a single patch - it also means be able to shape/trim the bushes to match the overall curves of the layout.

Back in 2016 or so when I first received Rotala florida samples from north america, I could only grow it in sparser bunches. It looked nice in macro photographs but I could not envision using it an bush that would show off well as part of a layout unless I can grow it much denser. In the recent years, there were two main discoveries that I found in my experimentation, the first is that it grows better in moderate GH (5 dGH+) compared to super soft water (say <3dGH), and that it grew better in certain soil mixes (I experimented with different garden soil mixes when engineering the composition of APT Feast). Eventually I integrated some of the soil data into APT Feast's composition, and paired with the higher power lights readily available today, I find that I could finally grow the plant the way I envisioned as part of overall layout. I could prune it dense, as the base stems were healthy enough to sprout dense side shoots after trimming - and the secondary/tertiary shoot tips were as fully colored and sized similar to a primary shoot tip that hasn't been subjected to topping yet.

As a midground stem, it works very well due to its slower growth rate vs other colored stem plants.

Against the deep purple of Rotala florida, I found that Golden white clouds worked quite well. So now they are the main inhabitants of the tank.

Tank this week (25/6/2025)



Tank started out like this:

A week or 2 after initial planting (5/5/2025). I reused old aquasoil from the previous scape, so I planted all plants up front rather than waiting more time for the tank to stabilize, with the idea that I could out-grow any algae issues. Initially wanted to add H. Chai but it really didn't fit the overall color scheme, and the bushes by the side were too invasive to be compatible with having a chai patch I think.

Since it was going to contain Rotala florida, I thought I might as well throw in other high demand troublesome species such as the Red Eriocaulon quinguangulare, blood vomit. I settled on Rotala tulunadensis for the background as I wanted something dense and shapeable.

Tank specs:
60x36x36cm
Filter: Oase biomaster 250, all sponge media
CO2 injected through inline atomizer
Substrate: APT Feast
Water column: APT Sky to raise GH to 5dGH, 2ml of APTe per day.


Light distance. Interestingly, not crazy high PAR - just around 200-250 umols PAR at the substrate level.



Trimming and shaping: Most bushes were shaped by cutting individual outlier shoots one by one. Only Rotala blood red and the Rotala tulunadensis was straight trimmed across the entire top once.


This is how the Rotala tulunadensis looked like after a straight trim on 29/5/2025. About 3 weeks from when the top picture at top of this page was taken. It took the plant a whole week + to show new shoots. It seems straight trimming slows down the plant quite a bit, but allows for a very dense & neat canopy afterwards.



There are some interesting plants stuffed here and there. Some Eriocaulon caulescens? bolivia? that local hobbyists passed on to me. Carved out a patch for Syngonanthus vichada - slow grower, but the couple of babies that came have doubled in size so I think they should be alright. I think I will move them to a larger tank with more space.









Only discovered the color combination with the Golden white clouds when the tank matured, but its one of my favourite fish-plant combinations now. I think that while some of the species are a bit picky about growth conditions, one thing I really like about this tank is that most things have moderate/slow growth rates, which makes maintenance with regards to removing excess growth less tedious.
Elatine triandra is used as a low growing green filler plant - it does this role well. As it does not root very deeply, I can easily cut and pull off excess growth easily. Its the fasting growing plant in the layout that requires frequent removal of excess growth.

Some more close-ups.








I'm trying to replicate concepts of this layout (slowing growing bushes) into my 4ft tank.

There are several threads discussing the new Aquael Hypermax 4500BT. I'm sure many would like some reports on it's performance over time. We have a thread discussing nano canister filters. We're all waiting for one of @Naturescapes_Rocco in depth write-ups discussing his filtration set-up. @Pepere and @*Ci* have unique set-ups as well, @Kwyet has used a matten filter, and we have several other members running sumps. That doesn't even include all those running sponge and HOB filters.

The idea is that we can consolidate a lot of filter information in one place making it easier to find rather than searching through so many threads. Maybe this won't work but I thought it was worth giving it a try. Perhaps it may be better listed as an article at some point.

I'm going to get things started by discussing factors I feel are most important to me when choosing a filter.

1) Filtration Performance: This goes without saying. The filter’s primary job is to keep our water clean and free of anything that harms the inhabitants. Of course, there are multiple factors that play into this. Some say flow is most critical, while others claim media volume is most important. Are there other factors? I still have limited experience, but my view, having done considerable reading, is that flow tends to be a bit overblown. You’ll see recommendations of anywhere from 4 to 10 times turnover rate with most leaning toward the higher end of that. I don’t think turnover rate is really the detail to be concerned about, at least with heavily planted tanks like are the norm here. I think the focus should be simply on ensuring flow achieves the goal of effectively moving water through the system to remove toxins/waste, delivering nutrients, and aiding gas (oxygen/CO2) transfer. If a turnover rate of 3 or 4 does that without dead spots in the tank, you should be good. After all, most of us here are plant focused and therefore, the fish we generally have are smaller community species that typically don’t care for high flow (there are, of course, exceptions).

I think there’s a simpler answer regarding media volume; more is better. Obviously, there must be a balance between internal volume and overall size of the filter. Real estate in and around our aquarium stands is precious. Filters like the Fluval FX6 and the newest Aquael Hypermax are huge. If you’re going for one of those, you’re likely putting it on a large tank with plenty of space underneath but again, it’s a matter of finding the right balance that provides the performance you need in a manageable size.

2) Reliability/Durability: This is where solid reviews come in handy and why getting feedback from users here is invaluable. Filtration performance becomes moot if the filter isn’t running, or worse yet, just flooded your house. Being able to easily source spare parts is also valuable, which is why sticking to the top well-known brands is often a safe route. It’s also why many aquarists place canister filters in protective containers, something else to consider when taking into account, size of filter. (this is something I should really do as I’ve had to clean up a few significant spills after filter maintenance and not getting the top secured in place properly )

3) Tie – Maintenance/Noise Level: These two factors are equally important to me. If the filter is a pain to maintain, I’m going to put it off, and that’s bad. It affects the performance. But equally important to me is how noisy it is. I tend to be sensitive to annoying little sounds regardless of where I am; at home, in the car, at work, you name it. If the aquarium is in a part of the house I spend a lot of time in, well then, it’s even more important.
I don’t know if Oase was first to do it, but the idea of the prefilter was, I think, a game changer for many. I imagine it was derived from people installing foam filters on the intake pipes. Having an easily removable section with foam filters that catch a lot of large particles before entering the primary filter chamber is a great idea, resulting in expanded intervals between main filter head removals for cleaning.
Another aspect of maintenance is ease of priming. This could also be an aspect of performance but I don’t think it is quite as important. I’m not sure there is a canister filter that is truly or consistently easy to prime. Some may start out that way, but over time, become less and less so. This is an area I’d really like to see product designers put more serious thought. My experience so far is with Oase and the Fluval 07 series. Hated the Fuval priming and I’m just so-so with the Oase. Let me know your experience with priming other brands.

As for noise, I don’t mind the slight hum of an impeller as long as it’s steady and consistent, much the same way some people, including myself when I was younger, like the smooth steady sound of a fan at night to help them sleep. It’s when the sound becomes inconsistent, I’m bothered. I also don’t care for the sound of splashing/trickling water while I’m focused on other things. Only when I’m camping near the banks of a creek or other body of water is this OK . This is one of the main reasons I’m not a fan of HOB filters. I’m also tweaking my CO2 reactor designs to minimize the bubble sounds of CO2 entering the reactor.

4) Cost: Let’s be clear, the cost doesn’t stop when you pay the retail price for the filter. There’s the cost of media and spare parts plus the cost of electricity. What’s the rated wattage of the filter. I see the Aquael filters claim to consume lower power and are therefore cheaper to run. What about special filter cartridges or foam. Is it easy to cut foam filters from inexpensive bulk material? How often are gasket replacements necessary, or are there common issues with parts failing over time. Of two Fluval 07 filters I’ve used, both needed replacement impeller shafts. Oase Biomaster filters seem to have an issue with the input/output head often needing replaced.
I admit cost isn’t a critical factor for me, but I know it is for many others, so this is another instance where finding the right balance is key, in this case, the balance between price and performance.

Share your thoughts. Do these factors seem to align with yours or do you think I’m way off base. Tell us what types and brands of filters you prefer and why.

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Hi all,

I'm looking for the largest stem plants in the hobby.

We're talking Limnophila aquatica:


We're talking Ammania gracilis:


See what I mean?

Others I can think of are Hygrophila siamensis/corymbosa...

I'm curious if anyone has information or experience with BIG plants, both wide and tall.

Pogostemon kimberly? Pogostemon stellatus? Limnophila hippurpoides? Anyone use these or know of any other large stems?