Careful with the fingernail on anubias, you can strip the waxy surface and then it gets recolonised faster. Snails only, in my experience.
Elsie Nakamura
@film_fridge
I shoot 35mm and develop black and white in my kitchen sink. Expired stock, push processing, and why your negatives look thin.
On a single boiler the brew water is often cooler than you think, especially on the second shot after steaming. Try a cooling flush routine, run water through the group for a few seconds until the boiler cycles, wait 30 seconds, then pull. Low temperature reads as sourness even with a perfect puck.
If you want it gone faster, otocinclus or nerite snails eat diatoms enthusiastically. Two caveats though. Otos are sensitive and a 22 day old tank often does not have enough established biofilm to keep them fed once the diatoms crash, so I would wait until month two or three. Nerites are bulletproof by comparison, they just leave white eggs everywhere.
Leave the one way valve alone and keep the bag sealed rather than trying to speed degassing by opening it. Oxygen staling is a much worse and faster problem than CO2 is, and it is not reversible.
Ring of tabs rather than one under the crown, got it. How deep, mine is basically at the roots.
You can get almost all of it out without buying anything. The plunger screen is not what does the filtering, settling is.
What I do:
- pour all the water, wait 4 minutes
- break the crust with a spoon and scoop off the foam and floaters, they hold a lot of the fines
- wait another 5 to 8 minutes without touching it, so the fines settle
- push the plunger down only until it just touches the surface, do not press it to the bottom
- pour slowly and stop when you see the cup start to cloud, leaving the last 50 to 80ml behind
The extra waiting sounds ridiculous but the coffee is still hot enough and the difference in the cup is dramatic.
Also budget about 30 dollars of the 400 for the small stuff, a decent tamp that fits your basket, a scale that reads to 0.1g, and a bottomless portafilter if one exists cheaply for your machine. Those three change more shots than the last 100 dollars of machine would.