Stormvisions

I have had aquariums of one sort or another most of my life. There is something about that encapsulated ecosystem with plants, fish, shrimp and other critters swimming, tunneling or crawling about that captivates me.

I currently have a 75 gallon aquarium with a variety of critters and figured I’d share some of my favorite fish foods. This post includes Amazon affiliate links.

Repashy

I have some fish that are grazers, biofilm eaters and bottom feeders that often get neglected in the aquarium. These include Otocinclus, Pygmy Corydoras, and Stiphodon Gobies like the beautiful Blue Neon Goby. I decided to try Repashy Gel Foods to supplement these fishes diets and find them to be exceptional. I keep mine in the refrigerator and when needed mix a little powder with hot water in a small heat proof dish. Once it is form I cut a suitable sized chunk and drop it in. The food can also be poured on a piece of driftwood or other aquarium safe surface and once dry put it in the aquarium. The fish love it and all my picky eaters are plump and healthy.

Tip: For firmer gel use less water. If the gel is a little softer than I like I can firm it up two ways. I put it in a sandwich bag in the refrigerator, on a paper towel. This wicks off some of the water and firms it up in a few hours. I have also put my heat proof dish in the oven on the lowest setting and set a timer. After an hour or so I end up with an extra firm disk (round dish) that the fish can pick at for a day or so.

Here are a few of my favorite Repashy items:

Freeze-Dried Foods

Freeze-dried foods can fit a niche when you don’t have access to live foods, or frozen. I generally alternate them with flake, tablet, gel and frozen foods to offer some balance and avoid bloat. Which types of dry critters you use will vary by the type of fish you have but here are a few currently on my shelf.

 

 

Tip: I sometimes soak freeze-dried foods in a container first and then pour them in to make sure the guys on the bottom get some. You can add vitamins like Vitachem to the water you are going to soak them in. When I have had sick fish and didn’t want to dose the whole tank I have soaked them in ‘garlic water’ – water I let sit in the refrigerator with a smashed clove of garlic. You can use Garlic Guard instead. The food is essentially a sponge so you can experiment with adding other things to the soak water like spirulina algae and color enhancers and then feed these powered-up foods to your fish.

The Fluval 07 Series canister filters are arguably some of the best filters of their type on the market.

My Setup
I have two Fluval 307’s on my 75 gallon tank. Why? Well, for starters I like redundancy. I also wanted to experiment with different filter media – one of the filters uses mostly chemical and mechanical media with foam pads and activated charcoal plus resin mixes i.e. Chemi-Pure, Fluval Clearmax Phosphate Remover and Purigen. The other filter also has foam pads, but I put in more biological filter media like Seachem Matrix and Marineland Ceramic Filter Rings. As you can see I like to use a mix of products. 🙂

As far as the filters go they are very well designed. I hadn’t had a canister in several years and this one is definitely a step up. Once it is set up the media is easily replaced without having to disconnect the hoses. The units have 3 trays to allow use of various filtering media as well as internal sponge filters to reduce particulate accumulation on the tray media. The canister’s head and seal are all easily opened and closed. The unit is quiet and uses very little electricity (about 15 watts for the 307) which meant I was able to use hook each one up to some old UPS battery backup units I had and have the filters keep running when we had a power outage.

The hoses are not the typical ones. These are ‘ribbed’ and accordion-like is the best way to describe it. They work well and the only gripes I’ve heard are from people trying to connect them to other items like inline heaters and UV sterilizers that have standard tubing. It can be done, you just have to sort out the measurements. Fluval has a new inline UVC clarifier of their own now but I haven’t tried it yet.

I set the filters up in an overlapping pattern and adjusted the nozzle directions to try to get the water flowing all over the tank and avoid dead spots.

The final result is a healthy tank that is forgiving of my occasional overly generous feedings.

I am very pleased with how well the Fluval 307 filters perform and the design excellence. If I ever manage to get some additional aquariums I plan to try out their other models and series.

As a final note let me say I am not independently wealthy. This equipment was purchased in stages over a year and I used some gift cards and reward points I’d accumulated. I also was fortunate enough to trade some tools I wasn’t using with a guy I met at a SCAPE club meeting which meant I didn’t have to pay for the aquarium, stand or gravel.

Since I am on the subject a quick plug for the SCAPE (Southern California Aquatic Plant Enthusiast) club. If you are in the area they have regular meets with auctions and trading. If you attend a meeting you can request a membership card as they have negotiated discounts with some local fish stores. The online forum has a Tradewinds subforum where people will seek to buy, sell, trade and even give away items; members will sometimes team up to negotiate group buys. The members actively trade and breed a wide variety of fish, plants and live foods. You can find them on the SCAPE Forum and their Facebook Group page. There is an unofficial Discord channel created by some members though it isn’t as active as the other two options.