Leaderboard

I want to share a story about a 14 year old girls nerm success. She inspires me. I see our younger nerms and nerms of all ages asking how to succeed and make money in the hobby with limited space and resources. This girl does this expertly. Last year at Keystone Clash I got to meet the girl I buy my live food starters from on Band app in person. I was shocked. She was 14 years old. This year her stand at Keystone Clash was one of the largest and non-stop busiest stands. Last year she had a limited number of types of foods. This year she had so many types it was crazy. She even branched out to include Herp feeder cultures. She sell chlorella vulgaris starters, cultures, fertilizer. Differs substrate mixes of her own blending for tons of different cultures including isopods. She had lots of corydora and other nano fish she bred from feeding so much live food. The club powers that be were talking and are now asking her to be one of the speakers at the Clash next year. So a young 15-16 year old girl will hopefully be sharing the stage with all the greats speaking next year. She found a niche for herself and really dove in to learn all she could. She doesn’t just sell cultures she learned enough to teach others. I hope someone else finds her story inspiring. What stories do you have to help inspire?

I have been rinsing biomedia in tap water for literally decades with no issues. I don’t rinse ALL of the biomedia in the tank at once if it’s well stocked, but a lightly stocked tank, . . . . rinse away. I do tend to run loads of filtration but haven’t always in the past and not once have I had an issue. I often rinse filters/biomedia very well when resetting tanks and may, or may not, test the water before the next inhabitants go in it as long as it was a well seasoned filter and restocking is light. If nobody got sick in quarantine, I do nothing with the tank besides a water change before the next fish go in it. I neglect my filters horribly. The HOB’s tend to get a full cleaning only when I reset tanks, or it gets noisy, or there’s a rare unfortunate incident. I really need to make progress on my fishroom and some easier water changes so I don’t feel the need for anything but sponges in my small tanks. I rinse prefilters only when the water flow is impeded (not really what I recommend at all) but I run loads of plants, redundant filters, generally light stocking, etc. I don’t have a pharmacy of meds. I do have dewormers because of pea puffers, but don’t routinely use them. I also keep Kanaplex on hand, but no others. I’m sure there’s other things but can’t think of any right now.

Had Albino Corydoras unexpectedly breed in my 29g tank. I am totally unprepared and lost 50 or so eggs trying to clumsily scrape them from the glass. managed to save 7 eggs. they are now floating in the tank in a disposable storage cup. Will they survive? I highly doubt it, but it was worth a try. Time to buy a breeder box and be a little more prepared for next time.

Yup. God I swallowed the biggest mouthful of mulm this way. Was like inhaling mud pudding! I've also started a siphon like this that had a small amount of water still in the hose, in a bend, near the end I was sucking on. Sucked that water straight into my lungs. Thought, 'great I'm going to be the idiot who drowns on dry land!'

I use Windex. Never dechlorinate afterwards. I don't even own dechlorinator! My method is as follows . . . see a rock I like in the woods, pick it up, take it home, drop it in tank. If I clean it, it's only to remove debris. Me neither. If the fish are still alive, then there isn't enough current in the water to kill me. 🙂 Yup. Yup. And Yup. I do so many things 'wrong' I don't even know where to start! I did this once (ok more than once). One started melting its way through a plastic folding table. The other started to burn the plywood it was laying on. I tend to remember I've left them out, plugged in, when I smell smoke.

Everyone has great respect for Brianne. Whenever I’m learning about a live food I may want to try she is who I go to for my opening learning lesson.

There is clear mesh you can buy on bulk reef supply. It has 96% light transmittance or something and is very useful on my tank as I have an entire island of emergent plants so a regular lid doesn’t work. I keep fish that jump when happy and it has been very nice to not wake up to dead fish.

Hey, I have been breeding panda loaches in CO and finally found some newly hatched fry. They look like little white worms/submarines with no fins and tiny little eyes, but they move really quickly. And they are upside down with their long egg sac/belly point up. I was really shocked when I found them, wasn't sure what they were until I used a magnifying glass. Here are some pics. I have had 2 broods so far, 33+ in the first one and another 20+ in the second. Based on finding these fry I guess I have a third brood.

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

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 I guess I can't stop looking and sharing, I am so surprised everyone tells me that a female barb is always going to be pale but what do you think about mine she has been with me for more then two years, I guess it maybe the food I got from aquarium co-op. O look at my otocinculs and my dwarf briselnose pleco. O and I got two new babies they are white balloon mollies gifted to me as fry and they are biggggg.

Murphy gets a huge demonic snail for a tank mate. I swear I hear Latin chanting whenever it is visible.

Fed the aquahuna purchased algae shrimp ....some extreme algae flake I got from the coop. As suggested on the forum this is an attempt at a polyculture with neocaradina in the floating german breeding ring abive. The spotted congo fry. The intent to have shrimplets for baby puffers when the sizes work out One of the F1 spotted congo fry. Still growing just the 4. Post puffer room reset the adult spotted congo group hasnt yet thrown eggs into my collector. Big fan of sitting on the leaves next to a shrimp that left the breeding ring Another of the four f1 fry. They like tiny snails and whiteworms currently And the four cross rivers got a billiondy'ish 🙂 earthworms tonight

@Guppysnail @nabokovfan87

This is awesome. Really helps out guys. I get off work and it’s like a story book to read. It’s respectful, knowledgeable, and funny. Can’t ask for better help.

Go to a car store. Ask for vacuum hose clamps. Unfortunately they are the annoying ones that need pliers or really strong fingers, but they are rated for high pressure oil hosing for car, bit overkill for aquarium use, but they’ll do

It's a super minor thing, but slightly fun and exciting. A. New suction cups. B. New design (better flow?) And I can now just swap diffusers when need be back and forth to keep them clean. I really like the "low profile" of the new one and that it doesn't hold a bunch of air. It was nice when it worked as a sort of bubble counter, but this one was the 2-3 I purchased and it doesn't really do that as well on this newer order of the old one.

It speaks to why so many people have their own experiences that shape what they prefer. It goes all the way down the line to something as simple as a new hobbyist with a single fish in the take and they ask, "what should I do?" and they are left with 50 different setups and 20 different filters to go look at. Ironically I had the same type of experience this week with a sponge filter and a pretty big shrimp that decided it wanted to live deep inside the foam and scare the daylight out of me. As always, keep the eye on the tank and randomly you'll see something that you'd never expected, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

@Mr. Buzard and students, When you catch the fish, use a cotton tipped swab and roll it gently against the large spot. Use that swab to roll against at least 2 different microscope slides, and then swirl it around in a drop of water on a third slide. Place a cover slip on the third slide right away and lay the other slides to dry flat. You could probably do some extra slides as back ups. Gently heat fix the 2 dry slides, then stain them using Gram’s Stain and some version of a Giemsa stain - DiffQuik is one that’s easy to get. Look at them under the microscope going all the way up to oil immersion (1000X magnification). You can take pictures using your phone (you may need to use a short “stand off” tube (shooting through the center of a narrow [about 1/2” wide] roll of tape usually works well) to be best able to center and focus on the image. If you can attach the images here, we may be able to help you identify what you have and how best to treat it. If you have extra slides and other types of stains available, then methylene blue would be a good option. Anything that stains fungal hyphae would be good. Even the purple counterstain works OK to use wet under a coverslip as the last slide you make after the water only slide. If you can take a video of anything that’s moving in the wet mount slide (the one with the cover slip on the water drop), that can be very helpful. Use the newest phone available for the video since many older phones don’t capture movement as well. If you have a special camera for the microscope, that would be even better. I would definitely start salt in the water in the quarantine tank at 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons and consider starting the Kanamycin (Kanaplex is one brand) or Minocycline (Maracyn-2) so you can start to reduce any bacterial component that might be part of this infection. I’m working today until 10 pm and may not be able to,eat back online after this, but I’m off the rest of this week and will be able to check back frequently to see if you’ve been able to send any pictures. If you don’t have all the equipment and materials needed to do the slides and stains, that’s OK, don’t feel bad! Most people don’t have those things and we can still figure out a treatment that should work for your lovely pleco!

Congratulations! If these are genetics from the ones you got from me there will be a mix. Long fin trait does not breed true. My mom and dads offspring as well as offspring from their kids usually run: 50% long fin, 35% extra long fin (hyper, exaggerated, veil choose your adjective) and 15% short fin. A few in that mix will have long pectorals with extra long tails. Congratulations again 🎉

I finally hot glued this mesh to the lid (snail safety measure). I’ve been dealing with the annoyance of the mesh pieces falling in the tank every time I open the lid far enough for it to stay open. This requires shifting the lid forward, due to the light position, and where the fold is, etc. There needs to be more decent glass lids on the market than what there are (hint hint @Cory). This lid used to have a vinyl strip but that was equally annoying, hard to cut, and never laid flat. Also once you cut it, you cannot really reconfigure your setup.

@Guppysnail has some breeding in her tanks. I expect the eggs are probably tiny,seeing as the fish itself is pretty small. This chap explains it pretty well:

Here’s the best pic I have of his topside from June last year. I have newer pics but none show his pattern better. See all the texture on his back half? Makes me think of the surface of a cat’s tongue. That’s supposed to indicate male.

They have gone senile? anything that might spook them, like a cat, sometimes my cat can jump scare the fish.

Well if it fails or the water level goes lower or anything happens it will electrocute you. So it would be safer if unplugged 🙂 i just never do as it is too hard and i always have wet hands. Also i plug stuff in with wet hands :)) i Wish to be electrocuted i think :))

are you supposed to do that? never knew until now lol. I have learned my lesson about being careless with heaters though. once I took a fully heated plugged in heater out of the water and only noticed when it started smoking. so in a panic I unplugged it and put it outside. in the morning i came back and the plastic was a bit melted. (I still use it now, I guess thats something I shouldent do haha.)

"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 started with 150 eggs. I lost about 30 eggs due to fungus. The rest did hatch but at free swimming stage I already noticed some had trouble swimming. I suspect these are the ones that never developed a proper swim bladder. Today I did some culling and removed about 20 belly sliders. I can see why these are still rare in the hobby. I don't know if the air bladder issue will develop with the normal ones but I want to start with all perfect ones to see if any will develop the issue later. As for now I still have about 80 healthy fry.

There's something on my nose again!!

Wonder shells actually seem to work great for adding calcium and minerals for shrimp, snails and guppies. I use them all the time. . And crushed coral in all my tanks, from Aquarium Co-Op. Seems to keep the GH and water hardness where they like it.

Nearly all the aquatic soils leach ammonia. That’s what makes them a “soil” vs just gravel. Do you have a test kit? Of test strips? Drop test kits are considered more accurate but I’ve not found big differences between the strips and drop kits. Mostly I don’t need an exact number, just trends or presence/absence depending on the parameters I’m concerned about testing in any given situation. I don’t know your fishkeeping experience, but are you aware that a 3.5 gallon is extremely small for fish? Nearly all fish need a bigger tank than that plus the smaller the tank the more difficult it can be to keep the parameters steady. I generally recommend shrimp only, maybe a small snail or 2 in a tank that size. It can be done with a couple very small fish, but it takes significant dedication and usually more frequent maintenance to keep fish happy and healthy in such a small tank. Plus extremely careful selection of fish. Most small fish are shoaling fish and like to be in a group. A group of 6 or more is too big for a 3.5 G in nearly any species bigger than microrasbora and they are borderline for comfort in such a small tank. Did you have a species in mind for your micro tank?

I’m 99% certain it’s a male because if the denticles along the back half of the body. It’s big enough I’m slightly concerned about it, but everything I can find on sexing says male from the denticles. I’ve tried a couple times to get him a friend but they’ve not done well and ended up passing with no visible issues - not skinny, not bloated, not an empty belly, seen to be eating, no skin lesions, nothing. Just found dead with no apparent cause. I’ve not heard of them being a particularly sensitive species, but I haven’t been successful with any except him. 🤷🏻‍♀️ 😞

Look at those big orange bellies! Have you thought about trying daphnia??

Not too sure on the top fish, but the second photo is a ripsaw catfish also known as a Niger cat, and the last appears to be a six banded distichodus. Beautiful fish, be very careful when having your hand/arm near the ripsaw. Their sides will slice you open and they get laaaaarge, approx 36”-39”.

If it were me, I’d either do a planted angelfish community tank or do a saulosi cichlid tank. A pearl gourami tank would be an easier route - I really like those fish too.

It depends on how low the water level will be, and how the heater is positioned in the tank.

I've resisted the urge to build one, but I have seen them in action. The fun began when the group of guys I was watching switched to apples. When it began to rain applesaue, the noise didn't stop the deer from comng out of the woods at the far end of the field .

I've washed my large one exactly once. The discharge hose was full of mildew, but after I used it to drain a tank that I'd set outside, filled 3/4 of the way with water, and then added bleach to kill the algae there was no more mildew.

I clean the outside of my tank with Windex, have never washed out the gravel syphon, I boil rocks, and am still waiting for a first person account of making one explode! I don't turn off pumps or heaters when doing water changes. I only feed once a day, don't quarantine, or have a pharmacy on standby. In the past, I have kept a common pleco and 3 Red Tailed Tinfoil Barbs in the same 29 gallon tank. They lived long healthy lives and new fish did not grow as large when placed in the 75. I'm a terrible person.

it works for soft alages like brown and green diatoms, not too effective against green spot algae though.

LOL, dying to know how you know they are not pleasant to eat. 🙂

I like this list. Just goes to show there are many ways to do things. There's no right or wrong.

Both of my 5.5 gallon tanks, and the four tubs outside, have a good amount of live plants, but no mechanical filtration or water movement. When I add rocks or wood to my tanks, that I've collected, I rinse it and put it straight into the tank. No boiling, no Clorox, no nothing. I usually pick up leaves and drop them straight into the tanks without rinsing. I can't remember the last time I vacuumed the substrate in any of my tanks.

Cleaning new tanks or reused tanks with Dawn dishsoap. I've not had an issue, just make sure it's really well rinsed Boiling rocks. If gradually heated and gradually cooled, it shouldn't be an issue. I've never had one. Rinsing intake sponges in tap water. I probably do loads of other things I'm not "supposed" to do, but can't think of them off the top of my head at the moment.

Suck to start the siphon! Not cleaning siphons! (Water is just going out, not in, so… idc) Also water changes used to be weekly, but now I just read the water tests weekly and change it if a parameter is not in range. Overfeed. 🥲 Who else is guilty of this? Fess up! 😭💔 Keeping shrimp in tap water (But like, LFS said they were tap water raised, so it’s fine I guess. The shrimps seem happy; have built up a nice colony) Not clean the filter mechanisms. Unless it sounds funny. Siphon into the sand. Some say don’t disturb it because of the anerobic bacteria. But things looks better overall when I siphon it. I don’t completely clean things I take out of a tank. Quick rinse in tap water. That’s it. (Unless it’s coming from a quarantine tank, then full disinfect) Use garlic and higher temp to cure ich.

I wonder if the curving uplift tube might still be attached to the older nanos even if the air collar doesn’t fit? I have some sponges that I’d use the air collar but don’t necessarily need the curve. I could maybe use the curve on one and air collar on a different one? 2 in 1 upgrades? I only have 4 tanks with nanos and I have 4 x 5 G culture tanks with bigger sponges where I could use the air collar. They have enough circulation I wouldn’t need the curved bit.

The current (soon to be previous) nanos have a smaller diameter uplift tube compared to all the others. Thanks for posting this. I had noticed what looked like an attachment on one of the new videos and on a new graphic on something and went to the website but didn’t find it anywhere. Going there now to get notified when available. Bubbles moving across the surface will tend to increase turnover of the whole water column a bit but mostly keep the surface water moving more for better gas exchange.

Crushed coral in a media bag if you have a power filter, or put a handful behind some decor if you don't want to see it. You can mix it in the substrate if you want as well. Aragonite sand that is marketed for the saltwater side of the hobby will help as well. I have also heard of people using crushed eggs shells sprinkles in the tank. Wash and dry them well and crush them up. But, with your water, I would just keep up with regular water changes and you should be good to go.