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A charming visit from a tiny bird.

Happy October everyone! For my selection, I wanted to delve a little into some spooky territory (if you can call it that), and I found a film that I found to be pretty interesting. "Giant Sea Serpent, Meet the Myth" is a documentary about recent research on the monster Oarfish, a creature that has rarely been seen in the wild yet we know exist when their corpses wash up on beaches. It is available on Tubi and I believe Amazon Prime for free. If that's not an option, it has been uploaded onto Youtube, which can be found here: The director of the film has also left comments on Youtube answering some questions and explaining the filming process. Sadly, there's no extensive info on IMDB for a true parental guide, but there are shots of Oarfish corpses. It's nothing bloody disgusting or anything, just be mindful of fish heads. Hope you guys enjoy!

Update on Tank #1 via video...added Kerri Blue Emperors, Red Whiptails and Amanos...cannot see the Whiptails and Amanos in video, but they are all alive & well. Well at least the Whiptails are... only seen about 3 of the Amanos since putting them in. Both blend perfectly with the coarse sand bottom. 😅 @Lennie @nabokovfan87 @Chick-In-Of-TheSea @Guppysnail @Fish Folk 😉

I get to travel to Africa for my job occasionally and I’m an animal nerd. This has resulted in a lot of pics. Here are a few.

I wish the best of luck to any person wanting to decode fish dreams….😂 Would probably be quite interesting tho.

The sort of copper color of the silver tips would make the fish itself kinda hard to see in the black water, but the fins would probably be incredible!

Beautiful! Slowly backs away from conversation! 🤣

Heres mine, compared to Mmiller2001 tank I think it looks like a pile of puke. But still a lot better than the average tank.

The dream be like: veggie heaven

Most typically when we see this discoloration in either the front or rear of the body it's due to nerve damage. Unfortunately, there's usually means that the rainbow isn't too long for this world, but that is not always the case. I would start with a light dose of salt, especially if you have a reef salt for the extra mineral content. Then you can do a very light medicinal treatment such as the med trio just in case it happens to be something else.

Chronically elevated nitrates can cause a variety of symptoms and diseases. I would for sure work on this by doing more g]frequent water changes or using a different source water if your tap water is the issue. There are any number of potential issues but like @Colu, I’d start there.

Nitrate 50ppm is this before or after a water change as high levels of nitrates can affect the swim bladder if it's after a water change its possible you had a spike and that what affecting your angel fish @Tanked

I thought it would be interesting to start a topic of things that you are "not supposed" to do, but that you've been doing for years and have never had an issue with it. I'll start. I've been cleaning my aquarium top with dual action clorox wipes for years to scrub off all of the aglee, scale, and other nasties on both sides of the glass. I just make sure it's good and dry before I put it back on. When I'm cleaning the top, I'm also doing a water change, so declorinator goes in, I've never measured any chlorine afterwards, and my fish have always done just fine. 2nd one, large rocks or ceramic decorations or anything that is too big to clean well by boiling before using.... clorox anywhere spray.. which is now a home made version since you can't find it pre-made anymore. For my Texas Holey Stone, and some other large decorations, I've prepped them for use in the aquarium by scrubbing them with a brush and the garden hose, then letting them dry before I sprayed them down with clorox anywhere spray, let it sit a while to kill anything off it could. Then hosed it down again with the garden hose to rinse off the left over spray. Put it in the aquarium, used declorinator the same way I do for water changes, and have never had any measurable chlorine and all of the fish have been fine.

So in one of my tanks, I have Black rose shrimps. Some pics: We've all seen this popular neocaridina chart by now: you see where the black rose is? On right top I have never culled the shrimp in that tank. I also dont have any red colored shrimps in any tanks, and my orange sakuras are in the basement. So nothing similar to this color ended up in here %100. Well, I found this guy in the blackrose tank this morning: Well, how exactly?? I have another black rose tank. Ive seen multiple wild colors yet nothing like this. Was there sneaky chocos so this is the possible end result? How did a baby ended up like this?

scarlet badis ...interesting. I'm not a professional or anything but this is how i would approach this. Set large goal to hit yearly or very few years and set mini goals to hit very few months. • yearly/multi years goals.. what i would work on is strengthening what the fish already have. If the fish is red make your family more red..bring the max out of your fish. I would raise the highest number of fish you can so you can select future breeder from. • mini goals ... what I would work on everyday/weekly/monthly? I would keep the feeding/maintenance the same in every aquarium. Every set of fry will be kept separate with their birthdate so every fry gets judged the same. For example, it's not fair to cull a younger fish at 4 months vs. a more mature fish at 7 months. make sure you can house all the growing fry and the all the breeder and future breeders. As for scarlet badis I'm not 100% how well they can handle inbreeding. For example Xiphophorus can handle inbreeding for multiple generation without and issue. White cloud can handle inbreeding for 4-5 generation before they need to be crossed out, and 8-10 generation on linebreeding if you know how to do it. Inbreeding isn't the same as linebreeding, inbreeding could be siblings or another random relative fish without reason. Linebreeding is very controlled. You'll have to name breeders and keep record. Linebreeding is where you hug one side of the family either sire or dam. if you have plenty of space I would recommend starting 2 family at the same time, itll give you something to cross to. Chances are you wouldn't want to cross you family back into a normal badis. I recommend you cull hard and always keep the most healthy fish over the most colorful fish, itll be worth it in the long run. Making your family of fish more colorful is easy, making your family of fish healthier is way harder. Consistency in size, healthy, color, and temperament is what I look for. last and not least enjoying the results, i love going back to old photos and seeing my family changes over time.

"Shouldn't do" is probably going to be debatable on some of these... but I'll play. Here's a few... I allow a massive colony of Malaysian Trumpet snails to infest my Discus Tank. I just allow Duckweed to grow everywhere. If it gets too thick, I net it off with an aquascaping skimmer net. I occasionally feed my fish small earthworms from under outside rocks and wood.

I agree with @Galabar that it would help if you clarify what you mean by "changing the filter sponges". If you are changing them every month PLUS doing a complete water change, this could very well be the issue. How long has the tank been set up? 1) Filter sponges are housing a lot of your beneficial bacteria and in changing them so often, your basically throwing them out. 2) in a 5 gallon tank (of which I have several), I find I need a weekly water change of 25% - 30%. And you shouldn't need to remove your Betta to do this. Example - I change 25% of my Bettas tank water every week just using a small cup and a pitcher. Then replace it with fresh dechlorinated water. I vacuum the substrate every other week. At no time do I ever need to remove him while this is done. I am hoping that you don't mean that you are also rinsing the substrate. If so, then you are basically crashing your cycle and restarting every month. If you take away a large population of beneficial bacteria, then change 90%-100% of your water at the same time, your basically crashing, if not near crashing your cycle causing a bacterial bloom in the tank much like we experience when first cycling a tank. You shouldn't be changing your sponges out every month. Instead, rinsing them in a some dirty tank water when you've done a small water change should be enough to clear the sponge of debris, but keep your beneficial bacteria intact. Also, think about doing smaller water changes more often. Your parameters will remain more stable that way vs. letting waste and detritus build up in the tank causing ammonia and nitrite spikes from decaying plant debris, fish waste and fish food over a month, then doing a large water change.

Thank you very much! This is excellent. Exactly what I was looking for.

that's perfect. 🙂 There was a new one I saw on a primetime video but I can't find good information. "Emerald eye rasbora," they were essentially a rasbora version with a nice green color. Very unique. https://www.fishkeepingworld.com/emerald-eye-rasbora/

I have a shadow-gene blue shrimp with red rili pattern from a bloody mary cross. It happens. That is likely a drop from a Kanoko shrimp somewhere down the line. Keep in mind, every single color started from red. So everything can pop red eventually. It went from wilds ---> red ---> everything.

Very interesting! I personally don’t know a ton about shrimp genetics, but my guess is that in a prior generation, one of the black roses were bred with an orange or yellow shrimp, and it’s descendants were bred to appear as black roses. This way, they still look like black roses, but they still have yellow genetics.

Usually with bows they go darting everywhere and don't pay the best attention to their surroundings and end up hitting something hard. I've had a few boys do this courting females. I always feel a little embarrassed for my dumb, but very handsome boys

@Fish Folk has a really cool discus tank. I think Val and Amazon Swords are the usual go-to, along with Java Fern.

The mixup has not slowed flower production. These plants have more buds - again! 💜

Just to follow up on my earlier post. What I've heard with Fed-Ex is that if a hub gets overworked, and can't process all of the incoming packages, they'll just park the excess trucks out of the way and hold them there until they have a slow day to process them. The theory is that this keeps the majority of packages moving in a timely fashion and only disrupts a relative handful. If a facility can handle ten truckloads of packages, but twelve show up, the last two trucks to show up get parked until there's a day when they have spare capacity, say a day when only nine trucks show up. That's why my snails spent four days on the ground in Colorado and then another three days on the ground in Memphis. They arrived after both hubs had reached their capacity for the day, so the trucks got parked until they had a slower period. You would tend to think that if your package was delayed it would move to the head of the line the next day, but that's not how Fed-Ex does it. The delayed package gets set off to the side until there's a day with lower demand, and only then does it get moved. This is designed to alienate the fewest customers, but it really alienates those customers when a two-day package takes eleven days to reach its destination as it did in my case.

I've been in the hobby for fifty-plus years, and I've never heard of anyone having an issue with a captive puffer. Lots of people have gotten poked by a lionfish and lived to tell the tale. Lots more have been jabbed by the occasional cory catfish or clown loach. I wouldn't recommend getting overly affectionate with a puffer, as in kissing it or spending hours holding one, but in "normal" tank use, I don't think there's an issue. I definitely wouldn't recommend eating one, but as a tank inhabitant, it should be fine.

It takes me four to five weeks of heavy feeding to get the fry to this size to be able to add them to the parent tank after that i have to feed way less cause the parents are fat and the fry grows way way slower. Do you have the same experience ? I also grow them out at 25 degrees while parents are at 21 🙂

I was able to net her out and put her back in the quarantine tank. I'm just really hoping none of the other fish show symptoms. The electric blue acara in that display tank is really special to me...

It looks a bit different than columnaris from what I have seen. @Chick-In-Of-TheSea has had pretty detailed battles with that disease in some black neons. When I look at the fish I see a sunken head and I see the yellowish discoloration on the head of the fish. Either that's something cause an actual deficiency in that region of the fish or it's something that targets that area of the fish I would think. I can't say "hole in the head" disease, but that's what I equate what I'm seeing to the most. I'll let other chime in that would be more in the know, but I just wanted to say "yep, please QT if you can!"

Well, I sold off a whole bunch of adolescent platys for a pittance of store credit at my LFS and picked up some San Francisco Bay Brand brine shrimp eggs. I bought the 6gram vial for $10 -- so $1.60/gram -- which is bonkers (fortunately, the vial is nice...). They also sell an 80g jar for $24.99 -- $0.30/gram. For comparison, my BSD eggs are $0.10/gram (for 8oz), and COOP eggs are $0.22/g (for 100g). Just looking at them, the eggs look very similar to the Brine Shrimp Direct eggs. I set the new eggs up with my normal recipe, and after 24 hours the results were deeply disappointing -- very low hatch rate so far and it seems like 90% of the eggs sink. I won't write them off just yet -- I put them back in the hatchery for another 12 hours to see what develops. Some hatched, though, so I can compare sizes. They are very similar to the BSD: BTW, if anyone has some of BSD's San Francisco Strain (https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/brine-shrimp-eggs/san-francisco-strain-brine-shrimp-eggs/), and wanted to ship me a tablespoon of them (I imagine normal USPS would be fine), I'm happy to do those too. Right now, however, I have far more brine shrimp eggs than I can reasonably use.

I'm worried it's columnaris...

Yes, before anything pull that fish to a QT setup if possible. I would think that this fish has something that isn't easily recoverable. @Bentley Pascoe have you ever seen anything like this before?

Found my short fin girl that way in the 75 G yesterday. That isn’t what I’m would call a peaceful tank but she was tucked in between a couple pots and looked like she had fallen off the side of one. I was trying to look at the female Jack Dempsey and in doing so I found her laying there. The flashlight I was using woke her up and she righted immediately. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤷🏻‍♀️ Deep fishy dreams, for sure.

Put this together today, I'm very happy with it

This seems to be the weekly totals. Daily it breaks down to: Kno3 ~ 1.08ppm Kh2p04 ~ 0.42ppm K2so4 ~ 1.43ppm Mgso4 ~ 0.24ppm

Would that also work for other barbs?? P.S. Some of your advice led to me being able to breed my Zebra Danios; thanks so so much!

I had other plans for today which may not all get done since the lights came on to this. The tank is a hot mess of black beard algae right now (slowly getting under control) but not normally a big cloudy mess. I could see it was already clearing but I couldn’t figure out why it was cloudy until I saw a poof of red clay down low. Apparently the cories have inspired my big boy blue eyed lemons to do some sparring and the center back of the substrate is all wallowed out all the way down to the thin clay layer in the bottom. Today, I regret my choice of substrate layers. 😆 😂 🤣 I was already planning a big water change in this tank today. Let’s see if I can inspire the trilineatus cories since I’m pretty sure this was all, or at least mostly bronzes. My very chunky bronze girls are almost all looking tired and much slimmer. There’s nowhere near enough eggs to account for all the breeding that went on (from the looks of the deflated girls) so I suspect there has been a big protein boost for the bristlenoses making them all aggro. Maybe even the gold nugget. He likes cory eggs, too. Shenanigans have happened.

If those were my options, I’d go sponge filter, simply for the fairly cheap price tag even with an air pump.

The two clubs I belong to Cichlid Club of York and Aquarium Club of Lancaster County host the Keystone Clash so that makes it all the more fun. If you got to attend share your fun please! I went with @Elodie Rose 🤗 @tolstoy21 brought me a stunning trio of Apistogramma Trifasciata. Amazingly healthy and well conditioned. Packed expertly in the box! Thank you 🙏 Some great folks were there. I started bagging everything right after my shower at 4AM 😲 Long day. BE KIND It was a hectic morning and I did not realize I never even brushed my hair after my shower 🤣 Father fish was there. Super nice guy! He bought some of my grindal worms off Jen at Smallworld Aquatics who I wholesale all my critters to. Jason from Prime Time Aquatics was there. One of the nicest people I ever met. Very down to earth. Dan from Dans fish was there. We talked about pricing and shipping some of my critters wholesale to him. @Elodie Rose got to chat with him about some fish she had previously purchased from him. Outstanding guy. Really lives up to his reputation of promoting small hobbyists. Got to say hi to @Bentley Pascoe Super nice as always So many great YouTube folks and awesome vendors! @Odd Duck I thought of you the entire time I shopped Jens massive selection of stunning moss. Picked up a few plants from Silvermoon Aquatics Some interesting wood from Jesse at Just One More Fish m. A few other plants from some vendors I did not know I took a bunch of photos of the aquascaping competition. Very interesting ideas. There was also I stand with fantastic terrarium stuff with water falls. For some reason I can’t upload those photos. I’ll work on it.

I had some friends attend and they really had a ton of fun!

This was my first Keystone Clash. I have to say, this event was a TON of fun. Lots of wonderful folks made it out, tons of small creators (myself included!) got to spend time meeting people, meeting each other, checking out some amazing vendors and wonderful talks. I love the social side of conventions, getting to meet people, learn what fish they love, just babble a bit and nerd out was wonderful. I'm pretty sure I helped sell fish for a couple people because I wouldn't stop talking about "Did you see those Bulgarian Green Angels?!" or "Did you see the person with the Red Empresses? They have better color stressed than any other Red Empress I've seen!" or "Go see the buce booth! His prices are the best deal I've ever seen!" Events like this are what make my entire year. Seeing people I only met previously at Triple Crown, catching up since then, meeting other new people. Aquarium Domain was there, sitting with him and Jason from Prime Time to just babble fish late Friday night was perfect. I could gush more and more about this, but I suppose that would ruin a video 🤣

The Keystone Clash with @Guppysnail was tons of fun! Really had a fantastic time. I’d been nervous about it, but all the vendors, guests, and really just everyone, was super kind, friendly, and approachable. @GuppySnail found me a lovely little baby GBR, Simon the Second, so that River doesn’t get lonely. He’s in a 5 gal QT tank for a bit, but to say that I am thrilled (and also somewhat terrified) to have him is an understatement! Least Killis! That was one of the fish I was specifically looking for, they’re the smallest livebearer, AND they’re native, AND I found out that @Guppysnail had had a colony and that Jen of Small Aquatics had the remainder! Six teeeeeny little least killis came home with me! Jen is such a sweetheart, and wow, did she work the heck out of that booth. I was able to help a tiny bit, and actually got to wait on Father Fish and sold him some grindal worms! Along with micro worms and banana worms. What a sweet guy! He’s lovely in person, and it was great to buy some of his supplement without paying the shipping for it. I joined the Maryland Aquatic Club!!! Suuuper happy about that! And I got some peanut beetles from them, to try out and see what I think. The neighboring booth had an aquarist from Tennessee who’d caught some critters, which of course came home with me, to get a pickle jar of their own to see just what they are and how they grow. Dan from Dansfish, who I am a huuuge fan of, was super nice and fun to talk to! I mentioned the goodeids I had, and it turns out the redtails aren’t eiseni, they’re doadroi! (Sp - I’ll check on that) So I need to correct my logs with that name, they were identified by Gary Lang. Dan is just the sweetest guy! His commitment to shipping healthy fish is fantastic, and while some heroes don’t hold up when meeting them, Dan from Dansfish really did. Delighted to have met him! (Thank you @Guppysnail, lol, I was too star-struck to approach him on my own!) Jason from Prime Time Aquatics was one of the judges for the fish show, and he was super nice as well! Didn’t see him until we were on the way out, but it was cool to meet him just the same! (But by that point it had been many hours, and I was pretty tired/overheated.) Okay the heat. Was nearly unbearable. Since it was chilly and rainy outside, I wore jeans. BIG MISTAKE. Don’t do it. Wear shorts. And sandals. So hot, omg. But that’s what the fish needed, so the people just got to sweat! Heh. It was tough to handle, but I wouldn’t have changed it. Those fish in bags needed all the help they could get! Jen from Small World Aquatics sold me a 2nd pair of the gorgeous violet mosaics she has. Violetta is growing, and becoming one of the most beautiful guppies I’ve ever seen. Victor and Victoria joined them yesterday! Ten or so blue dream shrimp joined the growing colony that I am attempting to build, from two different vendors. I didn’t know that I was joining one of the clubs that hosts the Keystone Clash!! Next year I really want to be more involved and help out more. Jen was very kind and let me keep all my stuff at her booth, and I retreated to the chair beside her booth a LOT when I was tired and overheated. She works HARD, I was glad to help out a tiny bit. Hopefully I can learn enough by next year to be a bit more useful while I enjoy the Clash! Because that was incredible, and I’m DEFINITELY going next year. Also came home with tons of plants and mosses, which I’ll have to take pictures of later. Fantastic experience. The fish community is so welcoming and wonderful! ❤️

What a beautiful little fish! Congratulations!

All the ones in the photos are the ones I brought home. So one of ALL of them. 🤣

In my Bolivian ram journal (link below), and it’s pretty far into it, there is a discussion about rams bullying each other. Seems a lot of people have had bad luck with TWO rams, @xXInkedPhoenixX being the only exception I know. Maybe got lucky with sexing but then again, every tank is different in size and scape so there are more variables at play and it’s hard to understand. I don’t have a good answer for you about the sick one, but it does sound like there could have been bullying at one point that drove the fish into a stress response. Prime Time has a species profile video showing “sparring” of rams and I believe he mentioned it gets worse when they are breeding or protecting eggs. I will tag some folks to see if they can contribute anything based on their personal experience with Bolivian Rams. @redfish @flyingcow @knee @The endler guy

I’ve read up on the subject, and it seems that Endler fanatics call them ‘blondies’, and that breeding blondies to get her only brings out stablndard fry; along with the fact that blondie males are quite rare.

I'd have to agree here. We live in a very old house with "needs to be replaced asap" pipes. It's something where I know we have copper pipes. That being said, I use tap water. I don't have issues. I would argue poor oxygenation is a bigger concern than something like copper pipes. Shrimp DO NEED some copper to function. Metals in the water, use good dechlorinator. Beyond that, I haven't had issues.

As a licensed plumber and passionate aquarist, if your copper pipes in your house are leaching enough copper into your water supply to effect inverts, it would be bad for you too. Just let your water run for a minute before use if you are concerned