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Received this email this morning, 9/2/2026

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Dear Customer,

After several years of serving aquarium hobbyists around the world, ChihirosAquaticStudio.com will officially close on September 6, 2026.

Before we close, we’re offering one final storewide promotion.

FINAL CLOSING SALE — 30% OFF

Use code:

FINAL30

at checkout to receive 30% off your order.

This is the final opportunity to shop at ChihirosAquaticStudio.com before the store closes. Stock is limited, and some products may sell out before the final day.

Store closes September 6, 2026.

Thank you for your support over the years and for being part of our journey.

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This brings up a lot of questions.

Is it just the site ChihirosAquaticStudio.com that's closing?

What about Chihiros.com? Is that going away as well?

What about support, warranty, ongoing app updates, etc?

Ive reorganized the order of my tanks so I can better keep track of them ie. Tank 2 moss tank is now tank 3. This helps in any confusion I had when tracking tanks they are in a sort of order now. Rather than taking time editing my old journal id rather create a new thread. Pics will be current (for the most part) as they are posted. I am not aquascaping. I am just farming.

How long does it take for this plant to convert from emersed to submerged? I've had these for a month and this is what it looks like. A bit of new growth, but I don't know if it's normal to wait that long or if it's stunting. The emersed stems were tiny also.

Another general query is what is your general experience with the plant?

After receiving my new Aqua Rock Colorado backlight and spending a short time setting it up, I thought it might be useful to have a thread to share info with those that already have one, and those considering purchasing one.

Let's get this out of the way first, and this is really why I'm posting this. The light screen did not come with any documentation.....none. There is no remote, just a bar code on the controller, that sends you to its app. The app won't even start up if it can't find a device, so you have to figure out what plug goes where and power it on. once the app finds and connects to the device, you'll see there is a forum and some videos. Both are basically worthless since this app is apparently used for controlling all this company's LED devices, so finding info specific to this device is a challenge.

Bottom line: This is probably the least intuitive app I've ever seen.

I should first mention, I have the RGB version which allows for color gradients without the use of special filters. I sat fiddling with buttons, sliders, modes, and settings for quite awhile trying to figure out the most basic thing I wanted the light for...displaying a blue/white color gradient (white on top and blue on bottom ). I finally went to ARC's website to send them a message asking for help, and I realized the video clip showing the light's capabilities, did in fact demonstrate what I was trying to do. So I sat for awhile watching the clip over and over, carefully focused on the person's button presses as they switched through solid and gradient background colors. After some time I was finally able to replicate the series of button presses to get what I wanted, but geeeeez!, this is a very raw development app and the buttons are not labeled in any way that would explain their function to the average person. After I finally got this figured out, it was time to turn it off and move to other tasks for the day, but wait.....now I can't even turn the light off . Hitting the power button at this point only turns off one LED strip, so now I have an all blue screen LOL! It seems you have to now backtrack a bit from the steps you took to get a gradient, in order to turn the entire screen off.

It's obviously going to take some time to get a good grasp of how to control the light. Fortunately, after tomorrow, I have a full week of time off to work on it in between other aquarium projects.

So, if you have either the RGB or non-RGB version of this light, please share any thing you've learned that can help others that might be considering it. I'll be putting together a set of instructions as I go along that will hopefully save a few from the headaches I've had today.

Mini Lowes bucket for focus.

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

I want to thank @Unexpected for introducing me to this new forum, but most importantly for him being the first ever to build the Horizontal CO2 Reactor. I feel honored that "Yugang Reactor" as he calls it (Yugang 鱼缸 means fish tank) is introduced in @Unexpected journal, but it would be a pity if that journal gets cluttered with too much reactor talk. So let me open a dedicated thread for discussions, questions and help on this Horizontal Reactor.

I have been experimenting for years with CO2, and at some time I took videos of my (modified) Aquamedic reactor to watch the bubbles in slow motion. To my surprise I found that the combined surface area of the bubbles was not very high for achieving a 1.5 pH drop in my 250 liter tank, and that CO2 absorbs so fast in water that the lifetime of bubbles is quite short. So .... we don't need to juggle bubbles at all, we can just create a very simple absorption interface between flowing water and a pocket of CO2 above it. The Horizontal reactor is surprisingly simple, and has some benefits that we won't find in diffusers or conventional Cerges / Griggs bubble reactors:

• Simple rules to find the correct dimensions for any tank, a small nano tank or a huge tank the size of a swimming pool.
• Very easy and cheap to build with plumbing materials. No fragile parts, low risk of leakage or malfunction.
• 100% CO2 absorption efficiency
• No need to experiment with vortices, venturis, diffusers, needles wheels, impellers / rotors, multi stage reactors - it is just a pipe with a gentle flow of water.
• No noise
• No mist in the tank
• No maintenance, and stable performance over time
• Virtually no reduction of flow from pump
• A purging valve is optional, as the reactor will purge itself from excessive trapped air.
• The reactor can be configured so that in the event of a failure, CO2 injection will not exceed a limit and fish cannot be gassed. Inherently safe.
• The reactor can be configured so that we do not need a precision regulator, because the reactor controls the CO2 injection rate

Or a multi stage version ...


A detailed thread can be found on UKAPS, linked with the kind permission from Scapecrunch forum moderators #1

I am happy to help new users to verify the calculations on reactor dimensions for their tank, please send me a PM.

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @beerings!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

THE official "what did you do to your tank(s) today" thread!​

Let's keep it real by sharing our daily routine. Post daily if you want. It's nice to check in with fellow aquatic gardeners.