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When I was at the Keystone Clash I got to meet @tolstoy21 in person. He gifted me a beautiful trio of juvenile trifasciata. They are becoming more comfortable with me and not hiding. They know to show up for feeding now. Yesterday was the first I saw behavior from them more than hunting food and hanging out. The boy is coming into his colors and one girl is developing a hint of yellow. I decided to start a journal for them so I can track their timeline easily and so folks could see the progression. The new flirty behavior may be related to the fact that I severely overfed live BBS Water change ensued yesterday afternoon. 🤣 The tank is set up backwards intentionally. This tank is floor level in my busier fishroom. I placed lots of sight blocks along the front so they were not constantly fearful of me walking past. The back is more open for them. I find them all over the place. They are not sure what to make of adult neocaridina yet. However I’ve seen no babies so I assume they figured out those are supposed to be food. I started the tank with a very healthy dose of ostracods and microfauna. It’s fun to watch them hunt.

So glad you are enjoying them! Fingers crossed for fry. One thing I have noticed about these fish is that they really color up splendidly over dark substrate. I have mine over Caribsea's Peace River substrate, and the blue in the males is somewhat subdued. However, over a black bottomed tank, their coloration really pops.

I’m enjoying Panda Garra’s so far, very active and interesting behaviour

I don't know if the camera on my phone is that smart.....I'm not a smart man Jenny.....😆

Ok so the theory in the sls camera or "structure light sensor". So the Xbox kinect camera is a structure light sensor. It senses us when we stand in front of it. So in theory it can sometimes detect the structures of a spirit human being or entity. My team has one and we use it sometimes. As with anything else it works good in some locations and not so well in others. I love the fun tech equipment It has its uses for the right time. But honestly the equipment I use the most is my own 5 senses and my twist on maglight flashlight. Just finished the first episode. I didn't realize it was loosely based on ed and Lorraine's theory of 28 days. A few of the people in the show I'm pretty familiar with. I'm enjoying it so far. Not really caring for the 2 person team at the general store. Something about those 2 I don't like.

I’m shipping out some juvenile F1 Mountain Redbelly Dace tomorrow. They don’t look like much yet — more like mini Siamese Algae Eaters at this stage — but they’re worth the wait… Setting everything out tonight, I thought I’d share a little enumerated checklist for how I ship day-of. This is not a full-scale review on exactly how I ship from top to bottom, but more of the practical process on go-day… 1. Large fine mesh net for catching the whole school in order to select the best for shipping. 2. Small fine mesh net for selecting the best fish to sell. 3. Paper towel for padding. I prefer this to newspaper. 4. Regulator for O2 tank. 5. Bernzomatic O2 tank I bought at Tractor Supply. 6. Small Lee’s specimen container. I use 1.5 of these for water volume in this particular shipment. 7. Plastic fish bags. I’m just using a double bag method with fish bags from my LFS. 8. Kordon AMQUEL. I add 3-6 drops per bag to counteract ammonia buildup in shipping. 9. Rubberbands for sealing up fish bags. 10. Skimmer net for removing duckweed before shipment. 11. Siphon hose with small pre-filter sponge fastened to the end for draining tank water into shipping bags. Avoids plants, etc. 12. Packaging tape. 13. Blank label (USPS Priority Mail) 14. USPS Priority Mail Medium sized shipping box, well insulated and taped up already. 15. Sharpie for labeling fish bags and completing shipping label. 16. Scissors 17. More packing tape. 18. ACO Specimen Container.

I have that in a few tanks and like it, but I have to admit, I like Peace River a little bit better because the pebbles are a wee bit bigger and thus easier to gravel vac. The one thing jungle river has going for it over peace river is that a 40lb bag of Jungle River is almost the same price as a 20lb bag of Peace River. Either way they are both very nice.

@Dutchaj the best part is it’s just a hair bigger than any sand I’ve encountered. It’s very easy to vacuum yet fish can still easily dig. so far it has not compacted in any of my tanks. I really like it. Here is a closer look at it in my frog tank and caucatoides tank (photos I had at hand)

Just finished the 28 days haunted show. I was pleasantly surprised and I enjoyed there take on what Ed and Lorraine believed to be true. I think as a whole they did a great job. Was well worth the watch.

Lil anole chillin with my succulent. Seems to be mid- color/pattern change

How are the new fish doing?

Sorry I didn’t see your comment before this - I incubated them in a plastic container. Then I put them in my 10 gallon quarantine tank. I see about 10 that survived, which is a good number for me. I have another clutch incubating now.

Oh I’m aware, LOL - I haven’t done exact counts but my girl is producing around 100-150 eggs every few days for a week or so, then a gap of about a week with no eggs, then off she goes again. I’m not trying to maximize number of eggs - no problem there! - I’m trying to keep the number of fertilized eggs that get brooded to a number I could potentially handle if by some miracle they *all* survive (that number is not 300-450). I would rather limit the number of eggs that get picked up at spawning time than have to cull fry later. I’m willing to cull for deformities that would impact quality of life, but doing it just to reduce numbers would bother me. EDIT: I should clarify - I want to keep the betta splendens fry to reasonable numbers, not whatever wild type I decide to try.

Tried to get some pics of the blue galaxy guppys. But you all know how well they like to have there pictures taken. 😆

What he said. 😂 Survival rate tend to depend on the breathing organ development (and other things). Make sure that you have a lid on the tank so that the fry can breathe warm air instead of cold air that kills them. Hence @Fish Folks “mysterious crash”.

Congrats! I had to look them up to see how they looked 🙃:

Depends on my goal. If I’m conditioning to breed or growing out young the frozen would be in addition to normal feeding. If I’m just sustaining a colony it would replace a regular meal.

A bristlenose with Apisto I do not recommend. It put the bn eyes at risk once the girls have babies. My girls even killed Spixii snails. Nothing is allowed near their babies and the babies spread out a bit to feed on the floor. My one mom since I’ve switched to sand digs a hole and at night gathers her babies in it to sleep. Have a bn clumsily searching for food in the dark scattering babies adds stress to mom. I would not do any lower level or micro predator fish with Apisto. Folks I’ve heard have success with small mid to upper level schooling fish. Pencil fish I’ve heard work. My Apisto have so much personality I would not want to miss the natural behavior by adding other fish and possibly causing the Apisto to be more reclusive or hidden.

Thank you @Colu I will pass that info on, that was my speculation I just wanted the professional opinion

Looks like a tumor they are really common in Bettas due to low genetic diversity treatment wise there's not a lot a could suggest or than keep stable water parameters and add some Indian almond leaves were it's located it will start to effect his Gills and breathing I would monitor if you think he no longer has a good quality of life or he's suffering than I would humanely euthanize him with clove sorry I don't have better news

I do not see anything around the face. However this appears somewhat green in the photo and located near and on the abdomen. I would look into Ellobiopsidae as a possibility. My eyes are not great so I’m including this handy article. It will allow you to compare what you see in person with your shrimp. It also gives treatments. https://aquariumbreeder.com/understanding-dwarf-shrimp-diseases-and-parasites/ Edit duplicate article already provided

So, I want to let you know why I haven't posted about my full tank RR experiment. Long story short, I did do it, but then I had a health crash and wasn't able to keep up with setting the tank back up. Since it's been sitting dry for this long, that just negates the entire thing. Also, the plants have been sitting in a bucket so all but the moss is dead now. I'm sorry. I tried. I should have known I wouldn't be able to complete it correctly. My health has just been too bad lately. For fun though, here's a pic of all the empty seltzer bottles after I filled it.

If limpets are back you should be fine with any snails by now. If you have any pest snails, you can test with one. If it’s alive after a week, you should be fine for any snails in there. If MTS are n]back and growing, you really should be fine for any snails in that tank now.

I never put snails back after No Planaria because of this. I have been afraid to because you never really know. However, the tanks I treated now have bunch of limpets that have appeared and seem to be doing well. I assume they may have come from the bacter ae I add to these tanks. Or from playing musical plants. Not sure. During treatment some MTS emerged from substrate. I removed them ASAP and they were ok. And every now and then I will still see one in that tank. Idk how. I did run the carbon for at least a week, I think. And siphoned the sand once or twice. Hard to do because of shrimplets.

Make very certain that you do multiple water changes before you put snails back in and be prepared to do a potentially sacrificial snail to see if the No Planaria is cleared enough to put multiple snails back in. I’ve read that nerites are particularly sensitive to it. I’ve also read that the effects can linger for weeks. So when you think the med is clear, do a couple more water changes, then try a single snail of each species. If all is OK, try a few more snails. I can tell you with certainty that it kills bladders, ramshorns, nerites (I missed one in a tank), and MTS. So presumably also chopstick snails or any others in that family. I’ve read it kills mysteries so I would remove any apple snail species just to be safe. Quite frankly, since it kills MTS, I would assume it can kill any species of snail. It does do a good job killing planaria and likely most any other flatworm species. Just be very cautious before you add a bunch of snails back into that system.

Yes to being too broke to buy things. I really enjoy the scaping aspect and I have a stash of tanks I got for free from friends or off the side of the road. A thrift store even gave me 2 30g for free once. I keep a container of substrate mix I use in my tanks which is gravel, aragonite, BDBS, all purpose sand, and sand from my yard. You can buy an 8’ x 4’ pink 2” styrofoam insulation board at the hardware store for about $20 and a gallon of drylok for $15 and be able to make 3D backgrounds for a ton of tanks. Collecting from nature is free. I have gone to my local river and got a 5 gallon bucket of muck to use as substrate, which came with lots of little critters, local plants and fish can be fun to keep, decor like drift wood (I’ve had a lot of success getting cool pieces by digging up the rootball of dead bushes, which is what spider wood is) and rocks are easy to find. If you have a LFS that will buy fish from you you can start an easy breeding project and trade fish for store credit/$ for your hobby. My best advice is to stay off Aquabid or you’ll wind up having to explain to your wife how you accidentally bought more fish…

My 20g long has had planaria for quite some time without them becoming a problem. Every couple of months if I'm there when the tank lights first come on in the morning I will see one or maybe two, but even at that time of day, 99% of the time I see none. A couple of times I began scoping out the tank before the lights came on to see if there were bunches, and I still saw none. So I wasn't caring about them. Yesterday afternoon I treated the tank with Expel-P for an unrelated reason. This morning I woke up late and the tank lights were already on and had been for at least half an hour when I went in there. There were probably about 15 visible planaria on the glass. I just got home from work, there are still several visible. I'm not worrying about them becoming too numerous, I'm just curious about the connection between the Expel-P and this behavior. Has anyone else noticed a correlation between this medication and a sudden change in whether planaria stay exposed?

What is the best HOB filter placement??? Where should i put it? Should i put it on the back or in the right?

Check this out!

Good thought @Guppysnail. Here’s a photo of that one.

I just have one tank going currently with seven CPDs, ten cherry shrimp, and five mystery snails. With CPDs being small fish, they get frozen baby brine a couple of times a day, then some micro-pellets or finely crushed flake food in between. I just cut off a chunk of the small frozen baby brine cubes, thaw it out in some warm water for a few minutes, and dump it in. Overfeeding isn't really an issue with ten shrimp and five rapidly growing mystery snails. CPDs are browsers so you want to feed them small amounts fairly often. I try to do four to five feedings a day with at least two of those frozen baby brine shrimp. The frozen baby brine I'm using at the San Francisco Bay mini ones in the 36 pack. I use about a quarter of a cube per feeding and that's enough to feed the seven CPDs with plenty left over. One cube lasts two days that way and the fish seem happy and healthy with that schedule.

@nabokovfan87 's advice is very good. I'd like to add input from a struggling fish mom. One fish keeping bad habit I've had to confront is overfeeding. Honestly its fun to feed them, and they're always hungry (or so they say). I think overfeeding has contributed to the a terrible time I've had with with algae. So I've gotten more disciplined (not my strong suit) about scheduling in no feed days and feeding smaller amounts. I do feed Repashy foods to make sure the bottom fishes aren't solely dependent on pellets or flakes sinking to the bottom. So far everyone seems healthy. Sadly algae issues continue but are somewhat better.

Sympathies from someone whose unflagging love of all things sweet has made her familiar with dental procedures. One good thing is implants are fine things..no problems at all. But do take care of yourself and rest if needed. That's a lot to go through.

It is sort of funny how this question made me realize for me normal food is frozen food and i sometimes supplement my fish with dry :)) I Feed almost exclusively frozen and sometimes live, if the fish are lucky. i bought every frozen food there is ( and you would be surprised how much there is ) and feed something different every day.. except tubifex (once a month) and bloodworms (once a week tops). I won't feed whole cube most of the time, just a third here a third there and mix and match.

So I woke up to this awesome surprise my favorite fish in the world had babies but Im wondering what am I gonna feed them once they start free swimming I bought first bites does anyone know if that’ll work? I didn’t make infusoria 😔

I believe the recommended treatment is salt, which is something I've done pretty recently with my shrimp colony. I'll double check the articles linked above (great source of information). I can't really tell, so more photos and maybe even a video may help! I don't think those are eggs though. Vorticella seems most likely from what we can see! https://aquariumbreeder.com/shrimp-infection-vorticella-treatment/

I wanted to share this for the sake of future enjoyment in your tanks. Filipe is/was an amazing person and this was one of the final tanks he got to enjoy. He has 3-4 videos on this set-up in particular that he put in the kitchen for his wife. Very fun to follow along and see the progression. Tribute video, highly recommended.

@Fish Folkhave you seen this?

I'm messaging right now with a guy at CF in Knoxville, TN. Pearl Dace are only a rarity up there in New Jersey. "Extirpated" is a local issue in NJ. They are propagating elsewhere in the wild successfully. iNaturaliat has observation listings here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=map&taxon_id=105208

@Colu

It definitely depends! Sometimes you might be feeding frozen to a section of the tank and feeding another food to the other space on the tank. Some frozen foods float, some sink, and some like to sort of drift around the water column. Yes. This is my normal method. I don't feed 2+ times a day. I will feed once a day, maybe even every other day sometimes... If they aren't showing real interest in food. Sometimes I can feed morning and night and I will use that to condition the fish for breeding in particular. There's a few ways to view it. Something like bloodworms I've had issues feeding too often and causing some internal bloating and issues in the fish that way. Brine shrimp I think you can probably feed it as often as you wish. When I was trying to feed frozen very often I would do something like 40-60% of the meals from the week with frozen. The big thing is to make sure it's being eaten and that the fish are getting healthy, nutritionally balanced food. I think the more we learn, the real advice has became to choose a handful of good foods and to rotate. So, let's look at a typical week and I'll give you an idea of two methods for feeding that might work for what you're trying to do. Method 1: light-normal feeding supplemented with frozen Day 1: normal dry food (AM+PM) Day 2: frozen food day. One food AM, one food PM or a blend once a day. (It's ok if not all the fish eat during both meals due to preference) Day 3: normal dry food Day 4: normal dry food Day 5: frozen food day Day 6: normal dry food Day 7: normal dry food Method 2: "power feeding" for breeding Day 1-7 (AM): Frozen food mix or feeding in a rhythm. Supplement with any Targeted foods like algae wafers if need be. (Rhythm being, 2 days of brine, then 1-2 days of worms, etc.) Day 1-7 (PM): Dry food or gel food overnight You can add a rest day every 3-4 days here too. The main thing is to make sure the fish are really eating the frozen food and to avoid overfeeding/excess rotten food in the tank. It'll be interesting to hear everyone else's schedules and methods, please share if you have one!

Even working at a state agency salmon have a ton of federal protections. But even if you were to attempt such a thing you will not have success unfortunately. Salmon eggs need to be kept in a flat tray with a false bottom having about 5 gallons per minute flowing both overtop and underneath the eggs. Otherwise they will fungus over and die. If you do that and manage to successfully hatch them you will have yolks for about 2 weeks. Then you need to start feeding them live foods from the river/stream. Lamprey larvae, dragonfly nymphs, amphipods, and other crustaceans can be found by flipping rocks. Make sure to put them back exactly as you found them. It will take 6 months for them to become 6” to which it’s safe enough to release them to their natal stream. I am not sure which salmon species, but if you are west coast DO NOT release Atlantic salmon, we already had one environmental disaster with them. I have worked with state fisheries numerous times. Rearing salmon is very expensive and takes the constant attention of state, federal, and tribal biologists. I am not trying to come down like a hammer, but just know the reality of this fish.

I haven't noticed much of difference in behavior when using Expel p on planaria and it also doesn't seem to kill them in my experience.

If salmon are native to your area then there's likely a Salmon in the classroom type program. I know here in Washington the local club (GSAS) has people who volunteer to help. I think your best bet would be to reach out to your local club and see if there is a similar program in your area which has people who do that. They would definitely know the process. It may involve slowly increasing salinity

I have used No Planaria on shrimp successfully to rid them of flatworms. It is absolutely not snail safe so be sure to remove your snail friends. Run carbon after treatment. (Note: prior to that I used PraziPro which did NOT work)

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea has used no planaria. I would suggest that for your case.

This makes sense because they were all on the back glass mostly around the airstone.

Just going start by saying that's most likely illegal without permits from Department of Fish and Wildlife. Do they know if the eggs are fertilized? Do they know the exact spot they collected them? In Washington State there is a salmon in the schools program where they'll raise a batch of salmon up until they are smelt. When they do that it's normally a 55 gallon bare bottom tank. They probably also need to be kept pretty cool and well aerated

I wonder if they're being having a reaction to the expel p that's just making them come out of their hiding. Maybe they're seeking more oxygenated water (like vinegar eels when the culture starts to crash)

This has been discussed several times. The pressure is too much when sealed. It crushes the leaves. Some folks have done ok sealing moss. There is simply no need to seal it and risk your plants.