Leaderboard

“If you’re on the beta test of a community fish forum based on a YouTube fish channel subscription, you might be a fish nerd.” I need friends like you have!

This happens to me quite a bit and it always makes me chuckle. I just had another one and figured I'd share. "If your friends just randomly leave buckets of driftwood or rocks on your porch.... you might be a fish nerd."

I've kept most fish in the hobby at one time or another but I never had an interest in guppies until following Cory and hearing all his love for live bearers. I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of colors come from spawning.

If your Latin is better than your English, you might be a fish nerd.

If you live in a flat and uses half the porch to grow daphnia, because you want live foods and don't trust the quality of the live foods in the fish store, you might be a fish nerd

If the plumbing system for your home is designed to give your fish the high quality water and the water for you and your family is 'meh' at best, you might be a fish nerd.

I wish there was an underwater remote controlled submarine 4k camera that would swim in my aquarium and stream the results back to my phone. I could watch fish breed and check on fry from anywhere. And if I were in a boring meeting, I could get out my phone and watch my fish instead.

Let's kick off my fish room journal with an entry/update on my Blue Gularis breeding project for the Coop. What I enjoy most about operating a fish room focused on breeding is that there will be people in the store that see my fish, get excited, and want to take them home. Call it silly, but it's just something that really drives me, knowing that someone is going to enjoy my fish and bring them happiness. So, that being said, I asked @Cory what fish I should work with to make available in our retail store. His response was the Blue Gularis. I have kept Gardneri in the past and had great success breeding them, but the Blue Gularis is known to be more difficult. Well, I am up for the challenge. I started off by sourcing 30 eggs from Aquabid for the Blue Gularis "Loe" variety. The eggs arrived with instructions to sit on them for 7-8 weeks from the date of collection, which was about 1 week prior if I recall collectly. True to my self, I let my impatience win out and tried to hatch 10 eggs about 3 weeks in. Let's just say you should follow the seller's advice. 😆 From that botched attempt I wanted the remaining 4 weeks to hatch the rest. After putting the eggs in a shallow tupperware it took about 48 hours for the first fry to hatch. I think I got maybe 2 more natural hatches. I then used the vial pressurization method to force hatch the remaining eggs - picked this up from Gary Lange. The remaining eggs went in a vial with a little bit of water. Put the vial in the bottom of a 40 gallon breeder and loosened the lid to allow water pressure to enter the vial. From that, I had one more egg hatch. With several more eggs unhatched I decided to try the other method Gary talked about and that is to leave thee vial in your pocket and simply walk around. Sure enough this did the trick and all remaining eggs hatched. I raised the fry on BBS (via Ziss Brine Shrimp Hatcher) for the next several months. Currently the Blue Gularis are spread across several tanks in the fish room with only one tank having multiple occupants, 1 male and 3 females. I will probably spread these out too. The attached image is a shot from today (7/22/2020) of one of my males. Even if I don't have success breeding on my own I feel accomplished getting them to this point. Their looks certainly are worth it alone.

I am thinking about keeping records for my aquariums. I think I would like to track water parameters, foods fed, tank events. Maybe even miscellaneous stuff like water changes. I am leaning towards an old fashioned notebook, sort of a daily diary. But the techie in me is saying, no…not paper, go electronic like Word or Excel. I want some easy otherwise I am concerned I will not keep up with it in the long run.

And yes! He loved it, as well!!! 💖💖💖🤗🤗🤗

I really enjoying my freshwater archerfish. I have a lot of projects planned for him. There does not seem to be very much information available online about these fish and I have not come across many people that keep them. I know you are out there somewhere. Would love to find people to share information with.

Is that the original silicone? The old silicone "should" be removed anyway. I believe that approximately every 10 years a glass aquarium "should" be resealed. Some have gone longer of course. It's a messy & smelly job, but is doable. Just scrape the silicone you can see. Don't dig the razor blade in between the panels, unless you want a complete rebuild. It's up to you. From all the videos I have seen, it's quite a project, but can be fun. P.S. Remove the cat, first. 😅 Nice cat. 🐱

This forum is clearly being funded by 'Big Guppy'. Apparently guppies are the opiate of the masses. After not having any for years, I too got guppies this week! Two weeks ago you could have knocked me over with a feather if you told me I would start jonesing for guppies again.

I've been looking for something near Marysville and everything I liked had a big separate garage or workshop. The wife every time "how many tanks would fit in that?" She's a keeper lol

Saw this and figured it could help out some people!

They are quite spoiled...especially the oldest one, my 14 year old Catahoula (brown spotted one on the right), she's my very sweet diva. I've had her longer than the other two, We just hit 11 years together this July, officially longer than my marriage was. I couldn't imagine life without my fur & fin babies.

An expandable tank! You could start small and just upgrade over time by buying another section of tank, sliding a new section on to one side, remove a divider and viola bigger tank! Also you could divide the sections and create smaller tanks if you liked.

I always wanted a tank but for my college years i moved living situations at least once a year so i felt like it would have been too much trouble to keep hauling around. I got a house 2 years ago and then last year i remembered i wanted to try fishkeeping. Sold some magic cards and jumped into the deep end with a 75 gallon and have loved it ever since.

I think I would pick Bettas and go overboard with Betta racks, I kind of want to do that anyway. If I can get away with saying the general gourami family of fish then even better. I haven't gotten enough of them in about a decade now and I don't think I could ever get tired of them.

Captain Henry Morgan ignoring the camera.

I dosed a little less than it suggested and it worked out fine. No damage to the plants.

Oh yeah, my first proper fish tank, a 10 gallon aquarium with a box filter and a heater was also a disaster! I stocked it with half a dozen neon tetras. Later when fishing with my dad, I netted a baby sunfish. I asked dad if I could take it home and put it in my new aquarium. He said he didn't think it was a good idea and predicted the little sunfish would eat my neon tetras. I wasn't deterred and blurted "Don't worry dad! Neon tetras are the fastest fish in the world!" He shrugged and we took the sunfish home and put it in my aquarium and all seemed well. The next morning when I turned on the lights the only fish I could find in the tank was that baby sunfish. The neons had all disappeared. At that point I realized where the neons might be and burst into tears. Dad helped me take the sunfish back to the lake, and after I had saved up my allowance again, I re-stocked the aquarium. My dad has been gone now for 14 years, but I choked up remembering this. I just wanted to talk to him and say, "hey dad, remember that time when I said 'Neon tetras are the fastest fish in the world'". We would have both laughed. I miss him.

I think Zebra Danios are very underrated. A lot of the time, they are labeled a " beginner fish ". Truthfully, they are extremely active and for sure great fun to watch. Mine are always zipping around the aquarium, chasing each other. 🐟

I wish ADA products were more readily available in the US

I have something like that. This was designed to put fertilizer tabs in the substrate. I like the name 'Bottom Release'. ☺️ You push the plunger and it pushed the pellet out the bottom.

Anyone else have love/hate feels about Java moss? I let it build up in some tanks, it grows, it looks amazing, I get tired of it and yank it all out. 1 piece gets left behind and it grows again. I let it until I get tired of it and yank it out again. Here is my Java moss jungle from just a few straggler stands after my last java moss tantrum.

Green Velcro here 🙂 plus some basil.

I just love nature in general. I grow a lot of plants outdoors and have always wanted to try water plants. It was a natural progression for me. Started with a 5 gallon planted tank and a betta, and a wildlife pond. It grew quickly from there. Pics from 2017 Mr Fishy Face and the 1st yr.of the pond.

could it be columnaris? my betta looked exactly like this when it first started... and I have yet to completely get rid of it!

I love my java moss and my shrimps seem to like it too. I never throw it away and having several jars full only of java moss and shrimps. The best part is when the jar is so full of moss that it start growing emersed: those moss spikes popping out of the surface. Very beautiful.

I was sick. The school nurse had a 20g tank in the resting room (nap cots) FILLED with randomly breeding guppies, and a billion little dark rams horn snails. She saw I was fascinated and explained that they kept having babies and that was why there were so many. She said, "I should take some of the plain ones out so that I would get more of the bright ones but I am too busy" and in that moment I was hooked on fish, genetics, and selective breeding in the same lightning bolt. My parents were not at all excited about any of this. It took me a long time to get my random guppies. Along the way I bred a lot of mammals, and kept a many fish. But I never put the two together until now.

Jason, Very nice aquariums\tubs. Many interesting styles. 👍

Combine java moss and duckweed for green Velcro.

Do you use any gadgets for your aquarium? Something unconventional but that you've found makes a job easier or quicker? I originally got this magnetic stirrer for mixing up Seachem Equilibrium so it dissipates quicker when poured into the tank. I also found it makes checking some water parameters easier too. Instead of opening, closing, shaking a test tube for measuring Gh, I simply set it at slow spin and add drops until the color changes.

My 3d printer. IMO it's a great companion hobby for other hobbies. I've beed able to make a brine shrimp hatchery, air stone, easy feeder adapter, pea puffer house, light housings, and some other stuff. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3891884 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3774602 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3456731 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3375040 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1282574

This would be awesome for the API Nitrate test that you have to shake for like 3 hours for it to be accurate haha.

An AI algorithm monitoring my tank via a video camera, classifing all species (animal and plants) and monitor them in time for changes. The AI will warn me of changes in color, pattern, size, behavior so I can early detect problems. It does not need to be very complicated, similar to what we have today on phones for face unlock combine with Google Lens. This could be an app on your phone but better if in a dedicated device attached to the tank or inside Daniel's submarine (which I like that too!).

I want a heater / HOB filter combo. It makes sense to me. Both are items you size to the tank volume, so why not combine them? It'd be sweet to come up with an aftermarket impeller / heater insert that would work in an Aquaclear so you only have one plug to plug in.

No, no, no on tracking prices for stuff! I have agreed with my wife to only spend $150 a month on aquarium stuff and at this point I think I have spent every months budget out to November.

We found a couple in ours the other day also. Looks like I don’t need to buy any now 👍🏻

I'm using aquarimate....You can pay for more monthly from it but it is pretty good. I wonder how it compares to Aquarium note. Exit31, I have the same journal and was thinking of putting the stickers on it.

One of my all time favorites is the the 1936 version of the "The Complete Aquarium Book The Care and Breeding of Goldfish and Tropical Fishes" by William T. Innes. I think I picked up my copy from ABE books for $20. (Just now checked ABE and this book runs from $19.96 - $50 depending condition). It is amazing how little has changed in the last 86 years! The illustrations are gorgeous! The section on fish food is still up to date in the summer of 2020. Pretty much every section in this book is still up to date. Don't let @Cory see this but he has a rant called "A Word for the Pet Store Man" "Let us regard the pet store man 'more in sorrow than in anger.'" LMAO From the inner cover, who wouldn't want this tank? Angelfish, goldfish, killifish, zebra danios, Harlequin Rasboras, blackbanded sunfish, Jungle Val, Cambomba, and Anacharis. Nothing really ever changes. Just think, no heater, no cannister filter, no LED lights, and no internet to tell you that you are doing it wrong! All in the deep dark part of the Depression. Maybe especially because it was the deep dark part of the Great Depression. Like now when the world seems chaotic and stressed, your little aquatic world was/is a refuge from the outside unpleasant realities. It is not just nostalgia though, if you can get your hands on one, the information in the book holds up very nicely because the plants and the animals haven't changed.

Today, and yesterday, I painted one of my walls black, got new dressers for the aquariums, and got a new desk. First, I had to get rid of the old cabinets and move the tanks somewhere else temporarily. After that I painted the wall, put the new dressers and desk together, and put the tanks on the new dressers. And lastly, I put all my stuff in the drawers.

She looks crispy