u/SamsPicturesAndWords

Hi folks! I have had a majesty palm for almost a year now, and it came with spider mites. I have tried vacuuming the leaves (I have a vacuum cleaner that is strong enough to remove mites, but gentle enough to not tear the leaves), spraying it with water, and spraying it with diluted isopropyl alcohol. These methods reduced the mites, but did not eliminate them. I left the palm outside over the summer, and the wind and rain kept the mites in check, but summer is over now - I live in Canada, and the nights are getting cold. The majesty palm has been back inside for a week or two now, and I just found more webbing and a few little bugs that looked like mites. I see online that some people recommend spraying plants with hydrogen peroxide to kill spider mites, but they disagree on doses. Some say the standard 3% peroxide solution you see in pharmacies is fine to spray directly. Others say to dilute it 1:1 with water, while some even say that 3% is too weak! Tonight, I sprayed one frond with 3% peroxide from the pharmacy, not diluted or mixed with anything. I'll see if that frond tolerates it before treating the whole plant. Have any of you sprayed hydrogen peroxide on palms? If so, what strength will kill the mites without hurting the plant? Thanks in advance for any info!

Hi all! I have been keeping cherry shrimp for years now, and my colony is doing well. I started them in a 10-gallon aquarium, upgraded to a 20-gallon, and kept some in small, open-top, quasi-Walstad setups for a while along the way. I say "quasi-Walstad" because they had no heaters or filters, and had plants in aqua soil capped with sand, but I was still doing water changes and feeding the shrimp, so the tanks weren't fully self-sustaining. Even in those small, no-tech setups, my shrimp did well (they were active and breeding). All this is to say that I understand the basics of shrimp keeping and the Walstad method. Online, I am seeing differing opinions about how cherry shrimp do in fully sealed jar ecosystems. Some say they do well as long as the jar is big enough, while others say they will struggle or die. Have any of you successfully kept cherry shrimp inside sealed, no-maintenance ecospheres? If so, how did they do? The Walmart near me has 1.7 gallon glass jars with airtight lids (I am currently using one for a terrarium). With enough plants, could cherry shrimp be healthy and happy sealed in a jar that size? Thanks in advance for any insight!

When I go from editing in the darkroom part of the program to the lighttable page to export, I often get a panel about shortcuts that pops up over my screen. It seems to appear about 30-40% of the time when I click on lighttable from within the editing view. It's easy enough to dismiss the popup, but it's a bit annoying. How can I prevent this from popping up over my screen? Is this a bug?

Hey folks. I have made open-top, aquatic jarrariums before, but I want to try a totally sealed terrestrial setup. I have a decent-sized pickle jar (2 litres). I want to focus on plants and invertebrates with very ancient lineages that still resemble their ancestors from hundreds of millions of years ago. So I was thinking of using moss as the only plant life, but then I thought that a single small fern could be a nice centerpiece. My question is, would a fern stay relatively small in a sealed jar, or would it quickly outgrow it? I keep houseplants, but I don't have experience growing ferns. Do they limit their size based on what they're growing in, or just steadily grow no matter the container? My mom has some Japanese painted ferns in her yard, and while those can get big, some of them have stayed small for a while, so I thought I might try transplanting a small one from her yard into the jar. If that species is a bad pick, what would be better? Any advice about growing a fern in a 2-litre jar would be appreciated!