Leaderboard

I thought myself peeveless, but it turns out I do have one and it is forum related and it makes me sad. About a month ago a topic was created and the poster asked for advice on something (fertilization recommendations, I don't remember), and ended the post with 'any and all advice would be appreciated'. @Sleepy gave a thoughtful answer and I am not sure what the original poster thought was bad in @Sleepy's response, but let's just that the part 'any and all advice would be appreciated' turned out not to be true. I haven't seen @Sleepy as much since then and that makes me sad as he was a valuable contributor. One of the best things about this forum is how nice people are in general and I know that with a little kindness and keeping an eye on being helpful we can maintain that high standard.

It is a geographically oddity, but in fact, no matter where you live the best fish store is always an hour away.

Caught my Otocats in "flight show formation" this morning!

I have been trying to film an Oryzias Latipes egg hatching for about a week or so now. I removed the eggs from some moss in my tank with a pipette and placed them in a deli cup with tap water and whatever water was in the pipette. The first few days I only saw a few things darting around in the drop of water on the slide with the egg. After a week I noticed all sorts of things alive and moving, some even attached themselves to the egg. I'm no expert on what any of these things are, but I imagine that the small things are paramecium. I can recognize that there are vorticella and a nematode, but I have no idea what the grabby big mouth worm thing is. Any insights? I have been unsuccessful so far in filming the moment of hatching. I found myself watching all the little things that I never knew were there more intently and with more curiosity than watching the egg itself. Just thought I would share.

Hello -- My name is Larry Little; I'm a 65-year-old "Old-School" aquarium keeper. My mom was in the hobby from her childhood and I don't remember a time without at least one tank going. In 1980, I wrote my Master's Paper on maintenance and display techniques for both public and private aquariums. Looking back at it, I think it's "antiquated" (ahem). I currently have three tanks in operation. My 60-gallon is my tetra tank decorated with Arkansas hard limestone and driftwood. It contains 6 Colombian bue and red tetras plus small schools of orange flame tetras, serpae tetras, and Bloodfinsi. I also have 2 different Plecostomus, 2 Otocinclus, and 2 Sterbae cories. I have it planted with Vallisneria spiralis and several Crypt. species. The tank has been operating for 2+ years. My 40-gallon tank is somewhat similarly decorated except for replacing the limestone with large (potatoto butternut squash sized) river rocks. I have one gorgeous (but lonely) blue ram, 4 small angelfish (just added), a school of glowlight tetras, 2 Otocinclus, and one clown plecostomus. I redid this tank about 6 months ago after repairing a leak. The same vallisneria and crypts are joined by Java ferns. My last tank is my desk tank decorated similarly to my 40. It's my "odd" tank I built in College; its dimensions are 48"L x 6"W x 12"H., containing roughly 15 gallons. It contains sparkling gouramis, pygmy cories, and two species of shrimp. This tank is pretty much all vallisneria. Two of my tanks have developed growths of filamentous algae which I control by manually removing every couple of weeks, As long as I keep it controlled, I really don't mind it too much as it's a good oxygenator. Oh, I almost forgot: I also have a pair of Amazon redfoot tortoises. I've had my male for about 35 years since about a week after he hatched. My female came to me as an adult about 10 years ago. Rounding things out are 2 cats, two dogs, and best of all, one very patient wife. I'll wait until later to get on other forums to ask questions (just typing this has taken me about 45 minutes). Bye for now, Larry

THIS. I HEAR THIS ALL THE TIME, regardless of tank size. And I think it's something those of us fishkeepers who care about building something lush and colorful are likely to hear more often. The last 20 years have really brought some amazingly colorful fish into the freshwater hobby (I worked my first LFS in 1990). People just don't realize how much life and natural color a freshwater tank can bring to those who invest some effort. 🙂

Hi there, community! I'm a newbie in aquarium keeping. Did quite a bit of research before starting, and can say Cory had a big impact on my decision in finally taking part in this hobby. I love nature and specially water nature. I'm from Lithuania so we don't have that many different fish and they are not as flashy - since we have all 4 seasons of the year and our winters tend to be quite chilly. Me and my wife found a second hand aquarium of 240 liters, with some plants and few left over fishes, since the original owners knew they are going to sell the aquarium so they stopped caring for it as much. Aquarium had everything it needs to be in operation. The trip and setting up was and interesting jurney that took almost all of my satuday, but was very worth it! Sadly one of the tetras (there were 3 originally) did not survive, but 4 plecos, 2 tetras, 2 siamise algea eaters and 2 amano shrimps had survived this jurney and a overnight wait in a heated bucket with plants and aeration. I've planted the aquarium, got a few more plants, few more driftwoods and this is how it looks a month in, with addition of 20 danios, 20 green neon tetras, 20 panda corries, 5 kuhlies, 3 more amano shrimps and recently got 2 puffers. So far had few interesting almost mishaps, but nothing that good searching could not solve. It seems my danios are getting plump and readying themselves for breeding, so I'm on a fence what should I do. Don't have that much space, but would love to try to breed them if the universe is giving me this new challenge. I would love to start growing brine shrimp hatchlings to feed my fish, since I wish them the best. But I'm located in EU and can't get any products from aquarium co-op. So maybe some of europeans could lend me any tips on shrimp eggs that worked for you, maybe you have some hatchery recommendations too? This hobby needs a huge warning sign, getting really addicted to fishies! Best wishes, Vilius.

The most common question I get when new visitors see the big aquarium in my living room is 'is that saltwater'?

I have two: The people who believe that saltwater is superior to freshwater because... The people who can't understand why you don't want their Little Mermaid figures and pink gravel in your adopted tank.

I am thinking of adding the baby sparkling gouramis to the 1930s aquarium. It's legal as they (or at least croaking gouramis) are in the 1936 Innes book: Didn't see them on the 1936 Beldt's Aquarium pricelist though that @Aubrey posted earlier in the files section.

Red Rehli in the guppy tank mowing the hair algae.

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but it’s a waterfall to me.

I guess (s)he was telling me something...

Platies. Got myself a tank full of algae-pecking pieces of sunshine :)

After receiving the care package I'm left wondering if the Co-op can read my mind lol. The coffee mug, towel, and stickers are all things I genuinely wanted but never have treated myself too. And the fry food was very well timed, I was on the verge of running out of my Northfin fry food and I really was considering giving the Co-op fry food a try. My test for the new food... would my small fish eat it out of my hand... Yes, they did :) Ty Co-op!

Got a new 55g last night! Currently having my trusty HOB filter clean out all the crud. After that, just gonna use a sponge filter. I will be moving my stock in the 20g long below into the 55g when it's ready. I'm gonna test the TopFin stock lights to see if it will grow Water Wisteria and some other easier plants though I don't have high hopes. Stocking will be 6 Neon Swordtails 1 Gold Gourami 8 Tiger Barbs Possibly 1 Golden Wonder Killifish And likely more down the road! The substrate and plants will also be moved as well though most plants will likely spread to other tanks, not the new 55g. The main focus for this 55g is for my Crinum Calamistratum and I highly doubt these lights will do well for it. I plan on getting Finnex Stingray when I can and because of that, the Crinum will stay in a tank with proper lighting until then, not risking my favorite! I'll be putting Black Sand in the 20g long and going for a neocardinia shrimp colony, specifically blue coloration. I have now beaten my record for a maximum of 5 tanks 10 years ago, 6 tanks now!

A female will dump a load of stored sperm if she mates with a new male, BUT only if that new mating happens within several hours of her giving birth. That's important. If you want to use a certain female to make a certain cross with a certain male, then of course it's best if she is a virgin. That's not always possible, though, so the next best thing to do is to wait for her to drop her next batch of fry and put her with your chosen male about 4 to 8 hours later. If she mates with your preferred male before giving birth, his sperm won't get stored and she'll use previously stored stuff for her next batch. SOME of the new sperm might get used by pure luck, but not enough to be useful. If you wait too long, the same thing happens. There is only a limited window of opportunity available for getting her to make a full switch. The process of birthing/recovering opens up some valves and closes some others. Anyway, that's a trick the pro breeders use.

Dwarf rasbora (boraras masculatus). I love a big school of them except it takes forever to get shots of them all alone.

I picked a local fish store to sell to based on my experience in the stores talking to the owners (before Covid). One owner seemed friendlier than the other and it was clear his customers were loyal to him. Unfortunately that’s the store that’s 1.25 hours away across two state lines. But he’s having trouble sourcing good fish right now because of the pandemic and the wholesalers running out of their best fish. I’m planning on dropping off my first fish to him in the next few weeks. He says he’ll give me a few bucks for them.

Got a second dose in the tank this evening and spent better than an hour pulling algae off of stuff. Don’t know if it’s the carbon or not, but the algae was kinda crisp this time around. It was very slimy the last time I tried to pull it off of stuff. before and after

Ingrid my Nerite snail.

The hardest part is making sure the fry gets enough food when they hatch out. I normally use a 10gallon, with 2 pair, with a slow flowing filter for 1-2 week. My adult dont get any live food, so they aren't aggressive for live food (fry)lol. They spawn everyday so you'll get fry hatching everyday. They normally don't eat their eggs or bother their fry..just keep them full

Well, there is about a 90% chance they are pond or bladder snails. You should consider whether you want those in your tank, and act accordingly. You COULD take them out, put them in a jar of water with a little lettuce, and let them hatch. Then you can decide if you like them as they get big enough to identify. However, one warning--if you hope to raise an egg scattering fish, they may eat the eggs.

First water change of my new tank (my first tank ever) and identified some snail eggs (with the help of this forum) that apparently came with some of the lilaeopsis mauritiana I planted.

I have a 40 gal breeder that I fought black beard algae for a couple years, ugh! I tried everything I could find on the internet. Nothing seemed to work, it just kept coming back. It got really bad. I finally decided to just embrace it and quit stressing about it. I made sure I had separate nets and equipment for that tank so I wouldn't bring it to my other tanks. I swear black beard algae can fly! Sure enough it got into my 29 gal next, LOL. (I wasn't laughing then) That stuff was growing everywhere. It was even on the glass and substrate. Every time I walked by my tank it just waved at me, so frustrating. The last thing I did was to drain my tanks half way and remove all the plants. I cut off the leaves that were really bad. I did a quick peroxide spray or dip for the rest of the plants. It was summer, so I put some of them outside in a bucket (an experiment). It disappeared on the outdoor plants! I scraped off everything else I could see from the glass, heater, intake/output tubes and filled the tank back up. I gave the plants some root tabs and used easy green. I lost a couple plants, they didn't like the peroxide. But.... Hallelujah! It's gone! My tanks are really full of plants, including floating plants. No more black beard algae. Since I've kept the tanks plant dense it hasn't returned.

Specs on the reserve capacity of that model seems to say 9Ah, or 9,000 mAh, which is very close to my test model. So you should get close to two days as well, I would think.

Crypt spiralis spreading around. The on in the back on the left is the original, the right is it's first offspring and now there's one in the front.

Hello. I started keeping goldfish in March. My daughter 10 wanted a goldfish for a long time. After schools closed I told her I would buy her what she needed to get her goldfish if she wrote a proposal on goldfish keeping and pricing on everything we need to buy. It took her a few weeks but she completed the research. I ordered everything we needed and she decided she wanted a butterfly telescope. We ordered online and asked for one that is white as possible and “with a big personality”. Few weeks later a box labeled “live fish” arrived. It contained a plakat betta and four ottos! (Of course I didn’t know what they were and I had frantically work to identify them). I called the online company and they agreed to send us the goldfish. We put the betta in the 10 gallon we had prepared for the goldfish. Now I had to figure out where to put the goldfish that will arrive. After much discussion and advice from a goldfish group I decided that since we already had a betta fish, I will get a divider for the 10 gallon and put the two bettas in there. I worked on getting a new tank off of FB and located a 29 gallon with all accessories. Next day we spent the day setting up the new tank. At the end of the day we noticed a box in front of our back door! Life Fish! Our goldfish arrived! The company had said it would probably be next week before they ship, but never mind! We welcomed our new telescope. A week passed and the new fish settled in nicely and betta fish had their divider. Then another fish arrived! Another telescope! So order for one telescope resulted in three fish plus 4 ottos! Over the next few months my daughter and I loved our goldfish and betta friends and learned about fish keeping. We added a little ranchu to the family in July. Then much to our surprise a new box with “Live Fish” arrived in our mailbox! Inside was a bronze telescope with a delta tail! Apparently the company’s order system has a glitch and reprocessed our order. By this time I was fully engrossed in goldfish keeping. They are so adorable and they have such silly personalities! My daughter and I just ordered four new fish (different company this time) and got a 55 gallon yesterday! Our fishy journey continues!

I have gotten quite a bit done last night and I'll provide pics of the changes when the lights come on in a few hours I have a terrible camera on my phone so I apologize, I'll try to get a decent, recent pic with my webcam later today. This pic is from yesterday shortly before I moved them so I could move the substrate of the 20g over to the new 55g I only have female Neon Swordtails. (My male jumped out back in May) 4 adults and 2 juveniles, they are fiesty girls and I've found them to be just as aggressive as the males if not more honestly. They'll fight eachother often but I don't think they really understand what they are fighting for. Usually fish fight for a certain territory or food but these girls seem to have spats for no real reason. This behavior started shortly after being housed with Dwarf Gouramis and they've fought with the Dwarf Gouramis and other fish as well. Sometimes I wonder if this is a behavior they've picked up from the Dwarf Gouramis because how they fight is very similar, lining up with fins flared and circling eachother. The only difference is that they don't descend to the bottom while circling eachother and they very rarely bite. Though this could just be their natural behavior and not learned behavior but I have not found any articles referencing this for females. I am calling them aggressive and that might be an alarm bell for you but their behavior is quite harmless. It's just fin flaring and disrespecting personal space with a very rare bite here and there. They are very interesting to watch, get larger than you think and are the only fish I've found to eat staghorn algae! I'll provide more pics later today.

Hmm...who would know the answer to this? I am thinking.... @WhitecloudDynasty!

I tried plants in my aquariums from age 5 through 35 when I took a break from the hobby. No love. Back then it was so hard to get good information, other than what I could glean from LFS folks and dusty old books in the library. Huge failure. I'm in my mid-60's now, almost approaching that desirable Granny demographic. About a month ago I fell asleep watching YouTube, and woke in the middle of the night to a video of some guy talking about planted aquariums. I blame it on subliminal marketing, but three weeks ago I decided to revisit the hobby . I purchased around 18 (and more on the way) plants from Aquarium Coop for my 4 low and medium light tanks that are brand new and doing fishless cycles. For the first time in my life, I think I have a chance for success with aquatic plants! My Vals arrived slightly melted, but immediately perked up and have both thrown off runners. The Cryps did not melt at all! The Java fern looked a little stressed, but it's throwing off plantlets from the leaf tips. Anubias are thriving and making new leaves. Everything else looks good, too. I'm leaving them in the pots until the hardscaping is done being shuffled around , and I have a better idea of the final positions of the filters, heaters etc. I'm so grateful for not only the good plant stock, but the loads on information that has given me the confidence to start again. I'm also confident that I can come here and get help when I need it. And I adore the bladder snails.

I'm gonna have nightmares...😳

What have the 3 aquariums looked like so far? Are there any visual differences? Here is 1 Nov 2020. All aquariums have similar layout, plants, lights etc. Same tanks on 5 Nov 2020. 10 Nov 2020 15 Nov 2020 21 Nov 2020 Eco-Complete has been consistently the clearest so far, but that may be related to cycling. Eco cycled first, with the other 2 not far behind. Both Nerm and Dirt are getting clearer each day. Note: I have intentionally not cleaned the glass on any tank yet. All 3 tanks were developing algae on the front panel when I was running 3 lights on each tank (too much light). Once I cut back on the lighting, the algae began to disappear. On Eco it is almost totally gone at this point. I will clean the glass on all in the next day or two.

I think it must be Assassin Snail Valentines Day.😊

I recently sold fish to the one of the higher quality local fish stores. I didn't have any prior relationship with the manager or employees as they are an hour away and I rarely go there. My initial contact was through email, then telephone as a result of the email. The key was I had something that would sell quickly and was not available from their normal suppliers. And that is basically the key to the whole thing, that is having something their customers want, but they have a hard time getting. In my case I had 4 dozen adult Leopoldi angelfish, and they thought these would sell quickly (and they did).

So it looks like I have solved the problem. Out of shear desperation I decided to see if there would be any difference if I changed the tubes, so I changed the inlet tube for a new piece and voila... it runs much better! Too bad I don't have enough spare tubing lying around to change the outlet as well, just to be sure, but happier with the result so far. I have foam pre-filter on its way to me which will help this from happening again. And I ordered an Aquaclear hang on basket filter that I am going to put on it as a backup just to be sure. Meanwhile the fish are eating and looking healthy so far. I am hoping me dicking around with the filter and adding water and stuff hasn't stressed them out too much on their moving day. Thanks for all the help and suggestions from everybody that replied or reached out, much appreciated! Un saludo desde España Ruud

Currently experiencing the selling of my tiger oscars fry. I found a lot of customers online social media platforms etc. most pet stores around me have private wholesalers they go through but there is one in Dayton willing to give store credit so it’s my last option. I did not intentionally breed these it just happened if I was to intentionally breed a fish it be a smaller one. @Cory has videos on the best fish to breed for profit on YouTube not sure if you checked them out. https://youtu.be/NpW8tHGy6T4 But as you asked in our experience I found it so rewarding just being able to say hey I done that I took care of them properly enough to be able to sale them cause oscars have to be 1-2inches At least for my lfs to consider them.

Apple snails posing

I got it all down to four organized bins, plus one box for donation. The big bin is empty, and I freed up a drawer too.

I added my Fire Red Cherry Shrimp this afternoon! Got them from my local fish store AND they were on SALE. I paid $50ish for 10 +1 free shrimp and a package of shrimp king complete. They were $3.99ea. They were $5.99ea last time I looked back in the beginning of October. Definitely working on that algae problem but I think the shrimp will be well fed for quite a while on it. I cut back lights to 6 hours a day and fertilizer once a week. Maybe less if it gets worse. I drip acclimated them after I added shrimp salts to get the TDS, pH, GH and KH as close to the water they came in. It worked out very well. They're all eating and looking happy. Creme Brulee and the guppy are back in their 20 gallon and the betta is being a bit reclusive but that's about normal for him anyway. I'll be keeping a close eye on them the next several days just to be sure they're adjusting back to their tank well.

@Teakae, I am working on similar project over here: Today, I am working on organizing all of my spare parts and gear. I'm going to try to fill another box for donation.

Think my extroverted friends will get mad if I refer to them as my dither friends? 🤓

I got four new plants in the mail yesterday and today I planted them! It was an involved process because one of my goals was to get Java moss to grow over the spot on my driftwood that’s been covered in hair algae. So I had to wrangle the very long log out of the tank, scrape the hair algae off with a razor, treat with hydrogen peroxide, rinse, and glue all the moss on. Then somehow get it back in the tank. I put some buce on the other end of the log—the super glue looks super ugly so I didn’t take a picture. I also tried to glue some moss to a rock under water because I read you can use superglue that way. It was much harder than I thought it would be! I had a scare because my male honey gourami ate a “skin” that floated off of the glue and it was stuck at the front of his mouth for a while. I tried to catch him with the intent of using tweezers to get the glue out, but before I could get him he spit it out himself. Phew!!

My salt and peppers spawn regularly too, but I’m not sure how long between spawns. I’d say I see them laying eggs at least once or twice a month, but I’m not really paying attention 100%, so it’s probably more regularly than that. I don’t do anything to trigger them, they just do their thing. This is in a community tank. I’m not intentionally trying to breed them. Occasionally some survive to adulthood by hunkering down in the java moss or between rocks. I started with 2 and in two years about two dozen have made it to adulthood. I found I had the best survival rates when my dwarf sag had filled in real thick. When I removed all that one day I was like - wow look at all these corys I had no idea we’re in here!

So many cool things that don't deserve a thread lol. I would like to share the... Raspberry Pi Foundation https://www.raspberrypi.org/ I love "making things" and have always felt limited by not knowing how to code. Many years ago I bought a Raspberry Pi 2 and played with it a bit but it wasn't unitl a few months ago that I decided to seriously learn to code and I am currently in the process of learning Python. So I purchased a few Raspberry Pi 4's which are awesome, it's a great learning/prototyping tool, affordable, and it is powerful enough to be used as a desktop computer. I'm using it right now 🙂