Leaderboard

My moneywort just started flowering after a couple months in a filterless bowl. Cute little thing. Maybe I can make a tiny bouquet for my daughter’s American girl dolls 😛

So most of you know that I’m not known to be a plant type guy. I like aquarium plants but I primarily breed fish and any plants are secondary. That said I like plants in my tanks that are almost all bare bottom or substrate free, green is always nice. A while back when I was helping out in Cory’s fishroom I see one of these that is being tested in Cory’s tanks. For me seeing something new like this required pulling it out of the tank, examining it, scrutinizing it, etc. and I’m like I’d definitely like to try that. So when the test batch came in I got my hands on a couple and you may have seen them appear in some cameo shots in my fishroom videos or on my Instagram. Of course I had to answer countless questions about what it was, but no longer because they are now available to everyone. The cool things about these planters, I can just drop in a potted aquarium plant, they look great and are easy to move, rotate, change out plants, etc. Thus the name Easy Planter I’m sure. I do add a root tab to the plant and squirt in some Easy Green when I remember to, but the Easy Planter itself looks good, functions well, protects the plant, and just makes it easy. Oh and no more do I have to harass Randy and Cory to get them in and on the co-op website, they are there now!

At the beginning of March this year, I started my first outdoor mini pond. Given what a summer its been, I found myself spending countless hours sitting next to that pond and staring into it...like I was a crystal ball or something of the like. I didn't find any answers, so to speak, but I did find some peace. So when summer ended I couldn't bear the thought of it going away, and so, I've been taking steps and making moves lol. Which is to say I moved my outdoor mini pond indoors. It's not yet finished (grow lights are on the way) but here are some pictures. I've heard that fish tanks are a thing that exist but there's just something about a pond. I'm curious as to how many like minded individuals there are out there. If you have an indoor mini pond lets see em

Good morning on this fine Meme Monday Let's keep them rolling!

I have val americana floating in a tank in my greenhouse, and it's been there for 2+ months. I threw it in there and only meant to leave it for few days, then forgot about it until seeing this post. 😬 Check on it now- It looks good. The roots are growing at a perpendicular angle to the val, downward, and have grown about 4". A few new leaves have grown as well. So, I'd say val can survive at least 2 months floating, given there is enough light and ferts.

Apple snail, in it's own tank, asking for more plants to devour.

Once upon a time I had a crazy amount of shrimp.

Neocardinas and Pond Snails

Container day and it is a good one! Easy Planters are in!

I didn't remove eggs fast enough... Leveled up to spawning winged creatures.

@CandiHow do you do it? Watching Cory's stream tonight... how do you not just lose it? It's not the questions that are asked, at least most of the time, instead it's HOW they are asked. Granted I am a grumpy old man, but I really wanted to tell so many people to just shut up and sit down. You do it pretty much every single day in so many different streams. Huge kudos to you and the other mods!

The only way to be good at what I do, is to keep a level head, and stay calm in the chaos, when modding a stream the size of Cory's, Lots of practice, I've been modding several years now, complete focus, and patience, lots of patience. I appreciate your recognition, and kindness to notice.

Damselfly Nymph?

She brings order from chaos. Ultimate hostess, and most efficient bouncer. Thank you Candi!

Because of Merch-Monday 😂

I'd do another 50% water change and gravel vac as much as possible. I'd also measure ammonia and nitrite every 12h or so, just to catch any ammonia spikes before they get bad enough to kill the fish

Feeling cute, might change my warehouse bins.

@Bill Yup! I bought it from Greg Sage of selectaquatics.com who was just letting the java fern freely float in his tanks, so when I got it, the plant was this huge mass of leaves growing out in every direction. I ended up gluing the roots to a seiryu stone and then tying the rhizome in place for more stability. It's a large and dense enough to hide the medium sponge filter behind it. 👍

Thank you for all your responses. the livebearers have a lot of plants to hide in, so the fry will probably survive. If anybody is wondering, I will dig deeper into the stocking of this tank. So I have bred 7 species of corydoras in that tank, albino corydoras, habrosus corydoras, bronze corydoras, paleatus corydoras, panda corydoras, black venezualan corydroras, and orange venezualan corydoras. I also have 6 leopard frog plecos, 2 pairs of blue eyed longfin lemon bristlenose, a couple of common bristlenose, 6 of the wormline pleco, 1 rubberlip pleco, a lot of otocincluses, 3 siamese algae eater. Swordtails, guppies, endlers, platys. Ramshorn snails, nerite snails, pond snails, and japanese trapdoor snails. That's pretty much it. Thank you for all the feedback.

I had the same problem with my java ferns in the past where they slowly would lose leaves over time. Then I found out from Cory that plants like java fern and anubias tend to thrive in environments with more potassium. I got a freshwater potassium kit and found out my water had nearly 0 ppm potassium (despite dosing Easy Green up to 20 pm nitrate). I think it's because I bought a huge java fern from a local hobbyist and it sucked up every trace of potassium in the water. I ended up adding some Flourish Advance to supplement my potassium up to 10-20 ppm, and now my java fern is growing tons of new leaves again and isn't making plantlets anymore. (Seachem also sells Flourish Potassium, but Flourish Advance contains some other minerals/nutrients that I'm missing so that's why I'm currently using it.)

I have a low tech 20-gallon high aquarium (16" deep) and I got tons of algae when I first started using Bentley's day sim schedule since I'm not using any CO2. Dropped it to 50% intensity and then 30% intensity, and now the algae is finally under control. Here's my tank and my very simple schedule:

I wish @Cory would stop introducing new products! It's costing me A LOT of money...lol. Seriously though, if anyone gets these and puts them in a tank with some Aragonite or crushed coral, I would love to see the pics.

I wish my Val looked like that!

I have a group of these that I am hoping to get to spawn this fall and winter, I feed mine a mix of frozen blood worms and brine shrimp, some pellets I get from ebo aquaristik that is high protein with fish and shrimp in, I will also throw in some thawed raw shrimp cut into chunks.

I have found two sprigs of what looks to be val floating in my tank. Not certain if it's a propagation of the my plant or what.

Vallisneria seems like it can go a week or two floating before it expires, but it does not like being a floating plant.

In my 10 gallon aquariums I usually put in a pair of Apistos. I have 11 discus in a 500 gallon. So that works out to something between 5 - 50 gallons per fish. Like @MickS77 and @Mr. Ed's Aquatics said, it is based on bioload and what is good for the fish. How many fish per aquarium does it take to achieve happiness? The fish are much, much happier if they are uncrowded, and in the end happy fish are what makes me happy. @Patrick M. Bodega Aquatics you mentioned having a way. What is the way you do it?

I would not be too worried about the babies and the maintenance. When I work on the fry tanks, they always hide. But as soon as I finish, they're back to business as usual. The only problem I ever had is that they're really sensitive to chlorine. As long as you treat the water 1st and keep it close to the same temperature, you could probably do less water changes and use fresh water. In my 10 gallon grow outs I do 50% water change every other week. In my 5 gallon grow out I do 50% water change once a week. I don't have a 2 1/2, but half the volume = twice the frequency. I would do 50% twice a week (or every 3 days). Overall, most African cichlid fry from Lake Malawi are easy to raise. Some species are difficult to spawn, but once they do, not too bad. Just avoid feeding all high protein foods and you should have a healthy little school in no time.

These are my two tanks that can also be called "ponds" my 300 gallon stock tank with a 150 gallon above tank planted sump. I also have my 830 gallon gar tank. In there now I have bubbles the alligator gar he is around 3 feet and a small koi that is a little under a foot.

This is a 40 gallon tuff stuff, some blue hygro and scarlet temple growing out the top. They were emmersed grown when I got them so I just planted them like that. Have white clouds in it: This is a 50 gallon rubber maid stock tank, white clouds and guppies, maybe some shrimp both of the above have dirt with a cap and I use them for storing trimmings/growing out roots this is a 100 gallon stock tank I had setup outside for the summer and brought in. Had mosquito fish in it, but took all of them out when moving it so nothing in it currently as far as I know. With moving it I’ve been holding off putting any fish in it, also not sure what fish I want to put in it, thinking about moving some gold/orange rice fish to it. when I first brought it in 9/23: 10/11: Been skimming duck weed from other tanks into it incase I pick up fry with the duck weed but now there is too much.

One of my amanos and my nerite, with a pond snail taking a piggy back ride, while stealing a red root floater.

A recently-trimmed crinum offers a yummy snack for ram's horn snails, while an assassin snail keeps an eye on his dinner. 🐌🐌🐌

I have kept a setup similar to what you are describing and everyone lived to together just fine. The angelfish and the endler populations both increased exponentially, and my Bolivian rams and Corydoras were breeding also. The key was the heavy planting.

I’ve only had success by manually removing them.

I love all your animals! Your pigs are adorable 🥰 I had chickens too, until fairly recently.. this is Pecker, Johnson & Bluebell.

That was the coolest thing ever I just got to watch her give birth and I only just got her yesterday from petsmart and was super surprised.

I have a pair of Dorks, too! Mr. Darcy's favorite treat is carrots, whereas Miss Lizzie's favorite is parsley. Your guys are so cute! 😍 Miss Lizzie and Mr. Darcy: My other pets include our pound puppy, Mr. Knightly: Buddy, a Bantam Brahma Rooster and Solo, a feral kitty I found at the base of an oak tree at 2 weeks of age (she's a big girl, now): Joey, a 9 year old Holland Lop, who requires at LEAST 5 minutes of petting daily: And "The Girls", my small flock of hens who happily provide us breakfast (2 Cream Legbars, 3 Barred Plymouth Rocks, a Barnvelder, and a New Hampshire Red):

I ended up losing all of the larvae. I think the oldest ones were probably 5 weeks, so they were getting close to morphing to actual freshwater shrimp. I was trying to raise them in a 2.5 gallon tank with just an air stone and ~20% water changes every 2 days. When I try again in the future, I'll probably either use a 5 or 10 gallon or change water daily along with a few other changes mentioned below. For anybody who is interested, here are a few observations from my several failed attempts. I totally think this is doable if you set it up correctly, it just takes some trial and error! I fed small amounts of Seachem's Phytoplankton daily, tiny amounts of Sera micron, and kept a strong light on the tank for ~16 hours/day to encourage diatom algae growth. I never saw them eat the micron, I was just feeding it because I had seen similar foods recommended. I will do without this next time since I think it contributed to water quality issues. I think the phytoplankton and diatom algae were the best foods. Some people recommend feeding plain dry yeast. I tried this a few times, but I never saw the shrimp gravitate towards it, and it just sat at the bottom of the tank. I kept my salinity at 34 ppt using Instant Ocean sea salt. I noticed significant die-off if it fluctuated much (not surprising). Toward the end I noticed them eating on the diatom algae quite a lot. Next time I try this, I'll set up the tank ahead of time so that the algae is established. They did best with a low amount of bubbles from an air stone. Too much flow caused them to blow around too much and not be able to settle anywhere. Part way through I added some caulerpa macroalgae to help control water quality since that's what I could get for free. I think it helped a little. Most people recommend chaetomorpha, so I'll probably try that next time. I found this detailed post to be the most helpful and consistent with my experience: https://gabhar.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/breeding-amano/. The video that Brandy posted above was also very informative when I watched it at the beginning of my Amano journey, and I would definitely recommend it as well. I'm not a super experienced breeder, so I think there are a lot of people here who could do a much better job than I did. I would encourage people to take a crack at breeding them! I think they have gotten a reputation for being impossible, and while they are pretty difficult and very specialized, I think it's totally doable if you dedicate yourself to the effort. I don't think they're feasible on a large scale, but if several people started trying it and sharing their experience we could learn a lot as breeders! Again, I haven't breed them successfully so I'm far from an expert, but I'm happy to share other details of my experience if anybody has questions. Happy shrimping!

Thanks Daniel. They do seem happy a little skittish when you get close to the tank but that is to be expected. I have a photo you can see some in the front.

I wanted to introduce my guinea pigs, Mason & Dixon. They're a pair of dorks, but I love them!

Joe, is my lap cat. He runs the house and is the main watcher of the fish. Alice is our giant gecko. She was 7g when we got her. She is almost 100g now and 8.5 inches long. Everyone will need to turn the last two sideways to see Honey my tuxedo seal point. I still have to request permission to pet her. Such a queen. Lastly is Fiest my Mack Snow special needs leopard gecko. She was in an accident as a yougster and is a below knee amputee. She needs a quick bath every 2 days to stay healthy.

Becky, the Cavalier King Charles. 🥰