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Staying in the Sheraton 4 points airport, luxury room for $36/night via hotels.com and some promos.

See y'all tomorrow!

What? We paid 95 for the same thing! We are in room 628.

619 for us.

Hotels.com gives you a room credit if you use them enough and I had enough for most of a room.

Staying in the Sheraton 4 points airport, luxury room for $36/night via hotels.com and some promos.

See y'all tomorrow!

One free stay in a sanitorium

I wouldn't bother bringing back livestock, in my travels I didn't see anything that couldn't be found or ordered from some of our awesome LFS in Edmonton or Calgary, compared with some of the places I've visited we really are gifted with decent LFS.

The stuff that glazed my eyes over was the ADA/Do Aqua/Mr.Aqua/acrylic tanks, the Petco 6.6 gallon long (awesome tank), the Finnex LED lights, the CO2 equipment, the filtration glassware, the ferts and substrates... a whole new world of dry goods that just doesn't exist up here or is available at much lower cost.

Solved it! Now I'm not sure what the heck happened but here's a plot synopsis.

I opened a new browser tab, came here using my favorites button and hit the new content from the main page, just like I have hundreds or thousands of times and I get a Sorry, no new content found.

I checked the option boxes on the left once more and I noticed that "just items I follow" was highlighted.

I've never selected that option, ever, so I'm not sure why it would be selected now, but I guess we can all learn something from this post.

I thought it was just my phone being weird, but the View New Content button is not working for me on my phone or desktop.

I'm logged in and all, just no new content being delivered even though there is new content if I scroll through the forums manually.

Are you driving or flying?

Will you have a vehicle at your destination? I'm sure public transit exists but with cities that huge I don't think I'd want to try exploring for aquarium shops without a car and a GPS, especially the GPS.

I can post a list of more shops but right now I'm just listing the places we actually visited with one exception.

Los Angeles Area:

The Aquarium in Culver City is pretty cool, decent dry goods stock.

Petco in Santa Monica is nice and has some pretty fun store brand items, much cleaner and better stocked than the other Petco locations we visited.

7 Seas (down by the Iowa Battleship museum) near Long Beach is ok, great stock on tanks and dry goods.

Nature Aquarium in Santa Monica gets good reviews but we didn't make it there.

San Diego:

The only place we visited in San Diego was Aquatic Warehouse and honestly, it was the star of the trip for me. It's a small warehouse stuffed full of fish stuff, how can you not like it.

They have Mr.Aqua tanks, Some ADA stuff, Finnex lights, tons of neat toys we just don't ever get up here.

Eh, paypal isn't all that bad, compared to the alternatives (from both seller and buyer sides)

In my opinion if a business is big enough to directly take a major credit card WTH would you use paypal?

But what happens to Joe Ordinary and his home business when he can't afford the monthly charges to accept major credit cards?

Well, there is paypal, which is standardized and fairly safe

There is email debit, which has ZEEEEROOH buyer protection (just ask me how I found that out)

There is money order/cheque via mail, it's slow as hell but USPS and Canada Post will typically get it there eventually AND if someone does rip you off they will go after them for mail fraud... it's a pain in the butt, but it can be done.

I've tried all of the above and I still keep my paypal account open, granted, it's linked to a bank account that never has any significant balance in it, but it works and they will at least try to get your money back in a dispute.

Once you verify your paypal account by linking it to a sacrificial bank account they remove your sending limit so you can use credit cards to your hearts desire.

I guess what I'm trying to say is get along by going along... play by the rules and guidelines and paypal is a fine service. Sure you pay for it, but name me a similar service that works and is free or cheaper??? I pretty much guarantee you won't find anything as universally accepted and as functional that costs less and operates better.

If you want to go LED the finnex Ray 2 is a good option for high-light, co2/fertilizer tanks or the Fugeray is good for low-light, regular tanks.

Yup, I'll post my list tonight.

Depends on the brightness and spectrum of the leds, but if all things are equal (intensity, spectrum, par) is go with led for the appearance and lower running costs.

Need more info to make a real recommendation though.

$24 on jl aquatics, free shipping on over $100 orders.

I believe it should be around 850 psi, regardless of size but that will fluctuate with room temperature.

Got some great deals!

Thanks for the heads up and thanks to Nature's Corner!

Guess I know where I'm going after work.

Thanks for the heads up!

I hear those hicks in Calgary have an auction. Is it all crap and blah blah or do they sell other stuff too?

Well, I'm frustrated with myself for buying a bag of galaxy rasboras that claimed to contain 6 fish but only had 5... That's auctions for you though, you gotta check carefully. Wouldn't mind buying a few more if the seller is local (#240)

I also bought a mat of glosso/hc that has a ton of snails in it too, which kinda sucks.

Picked up some microworms and daphnia cultures for a fair price, got some other plants that look great and a super cute self cloning crayfish.

I spent under budget and got most of what I was looking for so I'd say it was a good auction.

Try Linde, praxair, oxypro, advanced industrial supply for regulators and tanks.

For the needle valve, I'd look online, I haven't seen anything locally that can compete with the price/quality you can find on ebay or plantedtank.net, except one person on here had an Ideal brand needle valve that's probably pretty good.

Solenoid, probably the same thing but to be honest, I haven't looked that hard.

Looking here and on Canreef might find you some of what you want too.

Just a thought, JL Aquatics sells 5 lb aluminum tanks for $90 and they may be eligible for their free shipping on $100 promotion. It's not really much cheaper, but it gets you a nice pretty aluminum tank.

Not cories... lol

How about gold ring danios? White cloud minnows or Cardinal Minnows?

Although there shouldn't be any dispute on what a store should do, ultimately it comes down to ethics. IMO, if your fish/dogs/zebras/monkeys are sick you should not be selling them and you should pursue any available treatment as it becomes a health and welfare vs. animal cruelty thing.

I haven't really noticed the sag doing that but my swords do it all the time and yes, it's rather annoying because the spindly little roots never seem to grab no matter how well I try to replant it.

Updating again, you'd think I'm trying to be consistent.

CO2 has been running 24/7 at about 1 bubble per second and just showing green on the drop checker and I am impressed.

My dwarf sagitteria has shown visible growth and my pogostemon helferi has taken off!! A couple of sprigs have literally tripled in size. The swords and vals all look healthier and the HM turned into a huge bush which I've now chopped back to about 3" tall.

My java fern is even growing happily and looks great.

I'm kicking myself for having taken so long to get the CO2 running but now, even with my comparatively low light I can tell I'm going to have to do a lot of trimming and gardening, hooray!

The fish all seem happier with the removal of the furcata rainbows but I found an oto which had jumped. There is a 1"x1/4" gap at the back of the tank where the lid isn't quite snug and he somehow made it out of there to become fish jerky.

The new shamu log is in and still trying to float but I've got it wedged under the pump outflow tubes so hopefully it finishes waterlogging and sinks. Fingers crossed, I really don't want to have to screw it to a tile and tear the entire tank up just to get it placed.

Honestly, who ever told you assassin snails are useless gave you false information.

I started with two assassins and about way too damn many pond snails in a 12 gallon, after about 2-3 weeks the assassins had multiplied but the pond snails were gone and had never been able to regain a toe hold.

Aquarium Central and Big Al's both have the Kubotai, Al's has them as green rasbora iirc

Al's also has a bunch of Boraras, not sure which species they have and don't have but they usually have 2-3 different kinds.