Leaderboard

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.

Not doing much today - these 4 pictures are from the same aquarium; they really don't do it justice and i have to work on better technique for taking pictures of larger aquariums. This one is a 4ftx4ft box but it is doing quite well. - From the front: - Hopefully eventually the plants will fill in to cover up the overflow box in the back but it has only been setup 45 days or so. This is a closer up of the red flame near the front. The place where i purchased plants actually sent some rather high quality plants with regards to root stock and this one is taking off - it is too early to say how it will play out over time - if it can keep up the growth or if it will die back a little. This stringy Echinodorus I think came from one of my old aquariums; the name will come to me eventually - one of the many melon like echinodorus or maybe it is a melon doesn't really look like a melon and it certainly doesn't have any obvious seeds but whatever: The reason for the picture of it - being next to the red flame is usually a red flame will stay fairly small and is fine near the front - the melon sword can at time get quite large and if this realizes full potential i'll have to move it to the back - perhaps in front of the overflow box but only time will tell if it takes off. This is a picture from the back and you can see how clear the water is because you can see the 29 on the right and the 10x4 on the left - oddly the distortion makes the 29 look almost as large as the 10x4 where in reality i could put almost 16 29 in the 10x4. Anyway the picture was a poor attempt to show off of my favorite plants - Aponogeton Boivinianus - which has done quite well - not sure if this is the one i ordered or one i transplanted from my 29 - didn't really keep notes - this one is already quite large but you can't tell because of the size of the aquarium - you would not want this in a 10 for sure: I just love the rich colour and texture of this plant but you might not. Definitely provides good contrast to lighter green plants or more olive like wenditti.

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea Yay snails! 😃 Thanks for looking at the shrimp! I’m encouraged - they all still look the same to me. 🤪I’m watching them everyday and as they get closer to mature size, I’m sure I’ll be able to tell after a while. I feed them algae wafers, shrimp food pellets, green beans and blanched zucchini. They have cuttlebone in with them right now, but I’d like to experiment with Repashy when able to and include supplements in it.

I have this king koopa nerite snail that hibernate for weeks! Then one day it will go on an eating binge. Then back to hibernating for another few weeks. It is the most boring snail I've ever had. 🤣 It believes in "energy conservation" and always stays near filter intakes and just allows food to be delivered via Grub Hub. (Then again it could be nocturnal, but I don't stay up to see what happens at night. It's always in the same spot though when I look for it. Next to sponge filter, or next to PFS on the HOB)

How you feed helps a lot. Not saying to starve your fish. But if you don't feed them as often they will look to the fry as a good source....sometimes lol

Stingy clear or white mucus is poop without food in it produced when fish haven't been eating or from an intestinal infection most of the time it's nothing to worry about if there eating ok active I would worry if they stop eating lose weight any rapid breathing hanging out near the surface lethargy than I would treat I would just focus on stable water parameters good quality foods

I broke up with the pumps awhile ago. I just tilt the bottle, insert a pipette, and pull out my dose. The issue with EG is that it crystallizes. Nobody (theoretically) is going to take the time to clean the pump head every time they dose and so buildups and clogs are the norm with this product.

Snapshots from the boxing up process… Catch large school with large net… Move to large specimen container, remove duckweed, cover, and examine… Prepare precise water volume for shipping and treat with Amquel… Count out precise numbers of fish, move to shipping bag, add O2… Close up box with Acclimation Guide and Shipping Notice, label filled out and covered with tape to protect from rain… Now to the P.O…

My gouramis had a baby!!! Look at his little tentacles!! I'm in love 😍 Here's pictures of the parents. I'm trying to slowly wind down my fish hobby sadly because I'm hopefully going have a human baby in the next few years, and I know I'm not the best at managing a million things at once. So, I've made a rule for myself - no more buying fish! But apparently my fish have other plans... oh well!

I caught some footage of sparring behavior today. They are pretty fun to watch.

Yeah, just as Fish Folk said. . . Cryopacks are very good at stabilizing temps inside a box. The turn liquid at temps above 72F and solid below that. The idea is that they absorb heat when the temps go north of 72F and will then release that heat back out into the box as the temps dip below 72F. I believe they cab be used in conjunction with heat or cold packs. I experimented with them a bit and cold packs, hoping I could make an ice pack last longer inside a box on a hot day (ice packs run out too fast to be of any use). I didn't have much luck achieving my objective, but I'm going to try again at some point. A while back I also once called the company to inquire about buying in bulk to lower the per-unit price, but their minimum order, if I remember correctly, was a case of something like 1500.

Hi everyone! So as I am new to the hobby and do not want to do too much too fast with my tank, I have a couple of questions. My ammonia levels and nitrite levels are 0 but my nitrates were not climbing so I followed a post from aquarium co op to get nitrates up to 50ppm, see if it climbs after 3-4 days and then complete a water change. Currently we are somewhere between 25-40ppm. After doing so we got some algae growth but I am wondering when to complete a water change. Everyone is saying something different and we are in our first week of set up. levels are: ammonia: 0ppm nitrites: 0ppm Nitrates: 25-50ppm chlorine: 0ppm ph: 8.0 gh: 16 degrees kh: 8 degrees 20g aquarium planted with about 12ish plants anything helps thank you!

His igloo is so much more comfy rolled in it’s side 🤣

@TheSwissAquarist they’re doing good. I’m going to do a water change and get some pics. The same club member just had me over and gave me more fish, plants and a filter! I’ll work on an update!

Thank you so much @Odd Duck for all your help and for also being here for me in this difficult moment. I know people might say its just a fish but to us fishkeepers, they are more than that. I'm going to go purchase the clove oil so that the poor little guy no longer suffers, again, thank you and really appreciate all your help @Odd Duck, @Colu, and @nabokovfan87. It really means a lot

I of course can't give you an ironclad guarantee, but it's doubtful. Honey gouramis (and pearl gouramis) are generally much more peaceful than other gourami species.

Also the little spikes on its shell have collected mulm. I'm always tempted to take a toothbrush to the dude, but eh- I just let him be. He doesn't like being messed with. If I nudge him by accident during tank maintenance, he will travel a little bit to look for a safe area to continue to be lazy in. Crayfish Empire is a fun site if you haven't been to it yet - you can load up your cart w/ free samples for snails and shrimp and just pay shipping. Their samples of snail foods actually go a long way, because when you put ONE pellet in the tank (and I stress this - start with ONE), it gets fluffy and spreads out and feeds a bunch of snails. You can also get a nice size bag of calcium carbonate for $0 and mix that into foods you make, if you are ever inclined to do so.

I’m sorry you’re faced with such a difficult decision. Mixing the clove oil into a small amount of alcohol lets it mix into the water more effectively. Here is my recommendation with doses. Euthanasia solution with clove oil: For 100 mg/mL stock solution mix 1 part clove oil with 9 parts of 95% ethanol (Everclear, 190 proof), (in the USA, over-the-counter clove oil is ~1 g eugenol/ml clove oil). Then mix to 40-120 mg/L bath - around 1 ml/L to make it simple. You can add the clove oil solution gradually to transition the fish into sleep more gently. Example: 0.1 mls clove oil into 0.9 mls Everclear (190 proof ethyl alcohol) = 1 ml stock solution to add to 1 liter of tank water (per quart is close enough). For larger fish, 1 mls of clove oil into 9 mls alcohol for 10 liters of tank water (2.6 gallons). For a 10 gallon tank, you will need 4 mls clove oil into 36 mls alcohol. The alcohol is what lets the eugenol (the active ingredient) dissolve into the water. Otherwise the clove oil just floats on the water surface and may not be effective. Keep the fish in the clove oil mixture until at least 20 minutes past any gill movement, then remove the fish from the water, place in a plastic bag with as minimal air as possible, then freeze as quickly as possible for a full 24 hours or more before disposal.

Feel better soon! And don’t feel bad about not being able to complete it. We can’t prevent all health problems. Sometimes you have to just focus on taking care of yourself. YOU are more important than any aquarium project! Plants are replaceable, you are irreplaceable. First and foremost, take care of YOU!

Im really into Acantopsis loaches right now! In the US we call them horse-face loaches. Pretty bizarre, but cute! our LFS has the bigger ones in with their puffers and severums so they definitely seem to be able to hang with a rougher bunch

wood eating catfish such as clown plecos and royal plecos need the lignin in the wood so I would always have some wood in the tank for them I have kept a variety of plecos over the last 20 plus year and I always put wood in there tanks it grows biofilm on the wood for them to gaze on it's very beneficial to there fry as a Frist source of food

Here is what goes _in_ the box apart from fish… A. Acclimation instructions. This is crucial info. B. Shipping Notice / species care guide. C. CryoPak — maintains ca. 72°-F in box. D. Custom cut styro lining. E. Paper towel lining, and corner protection.

I have. I had 2 in my 10 gallon. It is nice that the shrimplettes can use the area to hide but tbh, I replaced them. The sponges are TOO coarse and don't pick up fine material and detris. I got to the point where I had to do a ton of vaccing to clean which means more water changes which is never good for shrimp. I replaced 1 of the 2 filters with a fine sponge and within a day alllllll of the detris that I was battling cleared up. I still put the coarse sponge in there for them to hide in but it's not hooked up to a filter so not functioning as such. I love the filter for other reasons and I love ACO but I have learned I do not like how coarse the sponge filter is. It just doesn't filter very well.

I found a bonus red wiggler earth worm in my potting soil. I fed it to the GBR. I was not sure they would take it because it was a bit big. I thought for sure my boy would be the first to try. I didn’t have the camera but my girl snatched it from my fingers and ran all over the tank with it. By the time I grabbed my phone the boy had it. The hillstreams are getting bigger.

Moved my Danio fry to my shrimp tank to grow out. My first non-live bearing fry in a long time!

Yup... those! I had the option to choose between either 1 L236 super white or a pair of L136 - and since I don't like the super whites I went with these. I will share pics once they arrive, somewhere by end of the week I think.

I love the journal so far @Pokey! It has snails so of course I’m following along. 🙂 I do think some of your shrimps are females. Females are bigger and have a more rounded/fuller abdomen. The males have an inward curved abdomen. Shrimps love boiled veggies like green beans or spinach. Be sure to have a calcium food source to help them out with shell growth.

He had 4 large night crawlers this morning and he still acts like he has never ate! 😂 this guy is going to be expensive to feed I can tell

So I bought a blue stiphoden goby. I don't usually buy a fish unplanned, but I just had to have him! ❤ I have a tank that's all set up, cycled, growing out baby mystery snails. Watching a video on them I see they need more flow. I have a sponge filter and a bubble up corner filter, but I ordered a filter from Amazon that'll be here in a couple days. I was wondering if anyone has gobies and which way I should set the water flow. I haven't used this type of filter flow except for in a turtle tank. I added a picture of the 2 choices.

Hello all, New to the forum and looking forward to learning alot! I brought home three sunburst platys yesterday and they seem to be doing OK so far but one of them has this long white stringy thing coming out of him (see photo). He's had for about 12 hours now ... looks like it's been getting longer but still attached. Is he constipated or something else? Please let me know what you think and what the next steps should be. Thanks!

Thanks! I just got them from the store yesterday and haven't fed them yet. He was hanging around the surface a bit but not exclusively. Any specific suggestions re. feeding? All I have at home is Bug Bites pellets. Are those OK?

This is a fun watch. Essentially, it's about why and how they are designed. I would always have wood in there.

Yes, exactly! My friend has them. Start with 2, end up with 1,000,000... She, however, has an endless supply of "food" and "enrichment" for her axolotl. He's about 9" now. Also some of the guppies are housed with a bubblebee catfish which helps with the situation. She has offered me some guppies many times. I always run away in fear. I read something that guppies will start to control their own population (eat their young) but I don't know how true that is.

How are the Microctenopoma doing? I saw that Practical Fishkeeping magazine ran a feature on them last month.

Twards the end they started to grow on me a little bit. But I also think they way embellished what was going on at that location. Yes demons are real but its few and far between coming into contact which them on these shows. It made for great TV tho lol. To me the real things are what matters. I have been to places where nothing happened all night long. Then others that were active the whole night. There spirits. There not there to entertain us. If they want to communicate they will. If not they won't.

I'm in agreement with @Cinnebuns. Love ACO, love new products that are CLEARLY designed with user experience in mind, love the forum/environment/hobby/care etc, but the sponge is too coarse for my use. I find uses for it, but it's not my go-to for filtration. Personally, I like the Hydro Pro sponges. My user experience with the ACO sponge filters is that if you clean them after a few weeks of use, or even a few months, even in a mulmy tank, you don't get a lot of debris out of the sponge, meaning it's passing right through. Chemical filtration is still happening, and is good, but mechanical is not awesome. I recently had one ACO sponge that I pulled after like 6 months in a tank, and it did include a lot of mulm. I think that the mulm itself, once a little bit starts to get trapped, starts to narrow or constrain the effective pore size so the dirtier it gets the more it traps. But I don't like keeping that much detritus in a sponge (at least not on purpose). All that being said, making decisions is all about being informed. If you're informed about the risks (or my/others' opinions about them) concerning large pore size, and you still go with the ACO sponge in your shrimp tank, I don't think there are any hidden downsides. These sponges DO make great habitat for baby and small shrimps, and they DO work great/fine as biological filters, and they DO provide all the other benefits of sponge filters including aeration/movement.

I also think thats small. 50 cm adult size. seriouslyfish says 60″ x 24″ x 24″ (150x60x60cm) – 540 litres. Our local forum here suggests 600 liters. 45g/170 liters is tiny for them I think. Im in a group where people keep so many different channas but all species tank. Never knew of them and so many varities before. But I havent seen any member try to introduce them to any sort of community tank. I believe they are best kept as themselves as species only tank.

It is not so different since the last picture I posted above but here you go, I snapped a new picture. You can notice the garra at their favorite spot. I feed from the right corner 🙂 Sorry about the glare, during the day most of my tanks are not picture ready. The tank is not suited for corydoras. If I wanted something that requires sand, I would reduce the stones and go with kuhli loaches or some other type of small loach. Alas I dont think it is a good idea now with the garras and I am not getting rid of them, I bought more recently. They are the best fish ever. I have a group of other corydoras, sterbai, in my other tank, and compared to garra they are boring. Sitting whole day and hiding whenever I am around. Garras are like 'yay, human', 'yay humans hand, lets all sit on it'. I like the design so far, but the stones decrease the water volume and if noone is going to be using them, it is almost worth remaking the whole layout and leaving just the stones o the left and maybe something smaller in the middle, but the the whole right side would be empty...

I really need to get myself some GBR. Those colors are amazing!

Yeah I had a feeling it might not be. More of a goofball than an oddball 😄

Do you also do a little care sheet to go with the fish?

I am back with this tank and another advice request. The tank is still simply missing something. It has so many hidey holes, all the back is covered with the moss, the caves, the nooks, the crannies and noone uses them. Sure the panda garra will flow out of the rocks sometimes, but they hang out on the glass or around, looking for food. On friday I lost my mystery snail, not sure why, either it didnt like the temp drop or it was not having fun in all the rocks. I dont think I have capacity for another fish, I have 30 adult minnows, 4 fry from previous rearing and now will be moving 9 fry from recent hatch. I have also 7 panda garra and the last sewellia. I dont know what this tank needs, maybe some crayfish, some shrimp, something. Any recommendation? Maybe I am not seeing something The tank is at 21 degrees now

Honey gouramis are a good idea, as they tend to be pretty gentle. Maybe try Apistogramma ?

Hillstream loaches maybe?

I think that's not enough oddball fish for me if you know what I mean ( :

Thanks. My treatment was in late July/early August so it has been a minute. 🙂

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.

I need to get at his level lol he has 4 of them

Looks as good as @mountaintoppufferkeepers!

This is one of my new tanks (550 - as mentioned above 4 feet front to back and 10 feet long; (the angel you see is from the 120 pictured in my earlier post this thread). And these are two pictures from the 4 feet wide 4 feet long aquarium: Taking decent pictures of larger aquarium is definitely more challenging. I think there are a few major factors to consider - glass or not (i'm a glass person) but there are disadvantages esp if the aquarium is much longer than 10 feet; sump or not (I'm mixing on custom aquarium sump solution and would probably re-think things if i were to do it over); height of the stand (esp if you have a sump); do you want to climb a ladder to feed your fishes; height of tank; if planted do you want to go scuba diving to plant the plants; ...