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“…I can bring you in cold.” My hot-water Tropicals tonight: My cold-water Temperates tonight:

Well look at this - I have a pair of discus spawning (forgive the untidy tank. I need to teach ‘em to dust and vacuum) they have many tank mates, so not much hope for fry…

Sometimes I’m so awe struck it takes my breath away. Share your breathtaking fish moments please.

Pygmy Cory juvies: Zebra Danio juvies: (Sorry about pic quality, but my camera will only focus on the background!) Bnp fry which are from a gold x normal batch: Bird fry:

What kind of snail is this? I have a ton of bladder/pond snails but I've never seen this kind of snail in my tanks before.

Another can I save it project

I think it's important to differentiate between good parenting and indifference. Although as I think about it, it's more of a gradient between extremes than specific stops along the way. I keep gold ocellatus and multifasciatus shell dwellers and they are both excellent, in slightly different ways. And I keep bn plecos too. I've raised angels in the past, but they're not for me (too finicky). I've tried with apistos, saw fry once for 1 day, but otherwise never had success. The golds are more aggressively parental, ie they guard and care for the babies until they leave the shell/territory they were born in. But they do occasionally eat the babies if there is too much going on around them. Eg another brood nearby, shells get moved around, too many juvies around, etc. The multis are pretty bombproof. Not as aggressively parental as the golds, but also I've never known them to eat a clutch. And based on the way that parents interact with nearby juvies, I don't think juvies eat fry (or maybe a bit, rarely). Multis are more likely to just turn off egg laying if the tank is too full or there aren't enough babies. Collect the extras, and you can almost set a clock on when you'll see babies again. Eg net out the extras for sale on day zero (this includes removing all the ornaments and things from the tank, which is a big disturbance), they take a week or so to reset and get eggs laid, then 7-10 days before fry appear, maybe 14 days before they appear and i notice it. So about 3 weeks after collection, I see babies again. And I'll keep seeing new clutches every so often until the tank is stuffed again and I see no more babies and that's how i know i need to collect again.

Think my male bristlenose make good parents till the baby's leave there cave then it survival of the fittest

Photo dump. Somehow my Daphnia are still alive…I think there’s about 15 small ones left in the holding tank.

Stems 'bloom' every morning and close every night. This is usually the first thing I look for. If they are not reacting to the light (opening/closing or turning towards the light) you have light issues to address. If they are responding but still melting without new growth appearing, they are usually self cannibalizing in an effort to get nutrients. Somewhere on the last page of my main journal I posted a picture of first light vs an hour later to show how they 'bloom'

This cat really is a catfish! She loves the water ¿

It looks like some type of live bearing trap door snail.

Not a great picture, glare and reflections, but didn't want to wait until the evening to take a better one. Still have the brown algae, but it is much thinner where the reoriented spray bar is flowing. I picked up a new piece of PVC last week to extend it across the tank, that may help clear up the algae. I still have plans to fill it back up with harlequins and purple harlequins, I've been thinking about a few otocinclus as well. It's about time to thin out the frogbit again too.

That's one of my favorite "novelty" country songs, along with this one:

You already alluded to it in your original post. Kribs. Kribs are almost too good at raising fry.

They’re moving up the food chain. Soon snails will be keeping us humans in glass tanks and feeding Repashy. 😂

I don't remember the details but i can try to find an old thread if you are interested - i found it by random wasn't really looking for it. My 'fish room' are 25x18 (ft) and 25x19 - both have 10 foot ceiling but the 2nd one is partially underground (basement level on a hillside; so the door side is ground level and as you move west in the room you are walking underground as the hill slopes up. Anyway it is what it is - wasn't really describing my solution just mention tidbits from something i read. For me i'm waiting to see my electric bill this winter to make decisions. My 550 and 450 in the 25x18 room both require 2000 watt (2 1000 watt heaters); the 550 is only 78 but the 450 is 81 so quite a bit - the 25x18 and 25x19 are both on the same heater which is sep from the rest of the house but each room has their own thermostat. Right now i'm keeping the 25x19 at 72 and the 25x18 at 68 but might warm it - the rest of the house is 66. On the positive my home heaters are geo-thermo 😉

Grace the shark being her feisty self. She's got some scuffs in this photo around her eye and by her dorsal, but it's normal. She's fine! She gets those abrasions from rubbing into things and has a lot more room these days. 🙂 But, Love the photo because she's so hard to get a good sharp focus on! Most of the time this is what you get. She is definitely reminiscent of her name and such a graceful moving fish... every morning I just sit and watch her do her thing. She is a bit magical. Fist survivor.... Second survivor (almost to the day, year later. My pandas, Mom and her kid First time I raised the fry by myself... 3 generations. The middle or right one is the first survivor above. Loving the moss and it was nearly looking perfect for me! I really just enjoy watching the shrimp do their thing in a wall or carpet of moss. It's one of the most calming and relaxing moments for me. Finally getting one of my favorite plants to grow after months of trying.

Val. grows well for me in a tank with lighting that is somewhere around the 30 par (based on what data I could find online). 6 hours of light a day. I keep my nitrates at 40ish ppm. Weekly water changes at around 40-50 percent (I eyeball it). Temperature is kept at around 70. More like 69-71. 7.8 ph, 300+ppm gh, 180ppm kh. I pump of easy green per 10 gallons per week. Loads of snail waste (mystery, ramshorns and mts). The tank is a dirt tank capped with sand and gravel. About 1 inch of homemade potting soil with worm castings, coco peat, sphagnum and sand. An inch and a half of sand on top and a very thin layer of pea gravel. What grows in the same tank? Salvina and java moss. What doesn't like to grow? Anubias and Java fern. I think this, for me, is a lighting issue as these plants do fine in my tanks that don't use dedicated planted lights, but the val does less well in those tanks. I will say it took about a month for my val to establish and another month to start throwing runners and now it won't stop. Other things to mention. My water is super high in iron. Like fill up a cup and the whole bottom is full of it. My water is also high in calcium. Makes tons of scale quickly. But I have no idea what else is in my water fwiw. Fwiw, my val seems to do better with less frequent water changes. I have no idea why. Maybe it likes stability more than fresh water. So, no real advice as I am new to plants, but I can at least share with you what is going on in my tank with the same plant. I hope someone has something more substantial to add. I have a thread about val too and it seems like some people can grow val really well and some people can't grow it well at all.

The Cameroon Biotope tank is basically finished now and I'm starting to put fish in: I got this guy at an auction last week: He's an Aphyosemion Ocellatum. I fed them the first white worms I've been able to collect. They devoured them! I'm going to get them conditioned for breeding. They're a trickier killifish to breed

Busted !!!!!

New Journal time! As some may have read, I needed a new tank stand. My really cheap one needed to be replaced. Then I was distracted by shiny rimless tanks. What does one do? Buy a shiny UNS 60s and a new stand. Today, I spent the day putting my slightly more expensive but still sort of cheap stand together. Bought a Topfin stand. The stand itself is manufactured by Sauder. How hard could it be? Not too bad until two of the screw holes for the feet were stripped. One trip to Menards later, I had screws that would work. The cabinet doors vexed me all afternoon but they are mostly straight now. Top picture is the finished product. There is an adjustable foot underneath the stand in the middle which is a nice feature. The feet themselves are heavy duty plastic wrapped in decorative pieces. The screws in the picture are what I replaced two of the factory provided screws with. I'm waiting for the new tank lid to arrive. Should be here in a few days.

Who doesn’t love fry. Show us your fry! I LOVE BABY WET PETS! pygmy Cory Melini cory Lemon bn pleco Aspidora spilotus I found like 5 survived the parents Apisto caucatoides triple reds African dwarf frogs more left than I thought 🤣 Celestial pearl danios

Ok rather than pollute the today thread with more pictures of my water changes i decided to make a thread to talk about my various aquariums. I currently have the follow aquariums: 10ftx4ftx23 (approx 550 gallons) (for loaches, festum and angels) 8ftx4ftx23 (approx 450 gallons) (for geo) 4ftx4ftx16 (approx 160 gallon) for (a. pucallpaensis b. cupido and c. hastatus) (oddly this tank has no schoolers) 4ftx30inchx16 (approx 120 gallon) for a. Bitaeniata n. morthenthale and some hatchet fishes. 72x30x16 (approx 180) bed room (for keyholes !!!) 72x24x24 (wild discus and blue rams) 4ftx2ftx2ft (whatever happens to land in there) 29 gallon 1 (pangio myersi !!!) 29 gallon 2 (c. equeus) 40B guppies !!!! 10 gallon (a. pucallpaensis and shrimp) --- Today we will post a couple of pictures from my bed room aquarium; why because today is sunday and i did a water change on it: But before we get started this is my favorite aquarium: It has everything - and probably too much hornworth; i did throw away about 70% of it yesterday but alas it still has too much... how hum i guess next week i'll reduce it a bit more. The plant on the right to the left of the golden anubia is an interesting plant i picked up in may called a red lip crypt pontederiifolia; it is less green than your typical pontederifolia and with strong light and a touch of co2 is quite purple - but this aquarium has neither super strong light nor co2 and it still grows fine just a touch more green. I think after 7 months we can say it is safely settled in and growing. -- Now for the 72x30 - we start with some very very naughty fish that could use a good spanking 'cept i dont' care too much: What happened is moved some dwarf sag that had sent runners the wrong way and left some exposed roots. Guess who loves to eat plant roots.... and and he didn't eat just one he ate all of the 'xposed ones and then dug up some more! Now on to some more interesting pictures: This is a pink nurri rosen (I think); it is like your typical nurri rosen but more pink and no it doesn't require any co2: This is a very large pink jacobii - i swear it is a wenditti that someone painted pink; it also doesn't require co2 and my red lizards love to hide under it (I have 4) they also show you just how colourful this plant is and that it isn't an optical illusion . This is your more typical nurii rosen - really a nice plant without all that ugly pink in the pink nurii and jacobi - a welcome constrast - don't you disagree ? This is an expensive plant i really abused when it is was in the 40B; luckily it is growing just fine in the new aquarium now that i got rid of that pesty co2 that was killing everything. It is called crypt cordata var siamensis; probably should have gotten 2 of them but they were a bit expensive and i didn't know if they would grow in my aquarium. Hopefully this one will send out a runner or something - it has put out 2 new leaves in the past 8 weeks (i'm talking about the plant that is green with white lines in the middle). Last boring picture; this is my e. kleiner prinz plant. You can compare it to this picture and see it has sent out new leaves; they were a tad greener than they should be so i relocated it directly under the light. I know with co2 and strong light it will turn a brilliant wine colour but we shall see what it does without co2. (older picture below from what you are doing thread; the one above has 2 new leaves and they are a little taller)

One more question: feeding and how much. I am struggling to not overfeed in almost all of my tanks: all four of my small tanks(under 60 liters) have low number of inhabitants, so feeding is always a hassle. both of my large tanks have bottom feeders that I aim to feed, but due t the ravenousness of the upper part inhabitants, I have to overfeed for the bottom dwellers to get any fill and the upper level fish are fat. For example, this picture is a swab from one of my microworms culture next to it is the pipette I feed with. I will not even use full pipette for any of my small tanks, there will be a cloud of worms. Is that enough? too much? should I feed another dose in the evening? How do you do it in small tanks with low numbers

Hello Guys, Today, Ive come to an end of "successfully" raising GBR fry with their parents. It took around 7-8 egg clutches to reach this point, and I thought Im finally there. This morning, after feeding the parents white worms, I saw the female ate the 23 day old fry out of nowhere. Checking the back corner, they have laid another batch of eggs. The fry is black/grayish, so not really mistaken for worms, or spit out later on. It was not even leaving group. Although not guarding the eggs at all, I think we came to another attempt of keeping ram fry with their parents. Ended up seperating them from their parents 😭 I wonder what causes this horrible parenting skills. GBRs have a bad reputation in this regard, but they are def not the only ones I see/hear bad parenting of fish. Why do you think fish's parenting skills are this bad? Is it them not being raised by their parents as fry or so? I keep hearing bad parenting experiences more than I hear good. However, seeing fish raising their own fry is just awesome to watch. So.... What are the best best fish parents you ever had? Let's share experience to find the best parent(s)!

The HOB was very small too. I've used the Aquatop Forza 5-15 filters before. They are perfect for 3-5 gallon tanks. Only piece of equipment in the tank will be a heater, which I use to keep the tank temperature stable.

Thanks for sharing your experience. These guys are already on my list of one day fish. I can imagine their aggression as parents bcoz when I was searching for their care back in the days, I came across a video where they try to clean the glass and the fish bite the owner so hard she asks her partner to keep doing the cleaning. 😄 Please let me know more about them whenever you have time whether here or in dms. Yellow color (my fav on fish!) combined with me never experiencing a shell dweller make me keep them a lot. I saw some at my LFS around two weeks ago, but I was like, Lennie, No! 😄 😝 Besides aggression, not being a community fish also played a role on me quitting the idea of keeping them. Not everyone would be willing to spare a species only tank when you want to rehome, right? This was the video I watched:

My male is also great in that regard. That being said, in our fish group, Ive seen many people mentioning having issues with dads pushing the eggs out of the cave and they look healthy, not bad at all. Not sure if that's accidental or not. The sad part is the parenting of a BN dad is quite short termed, and you cant even enjoy seeing it properly. I guess I enjoy it more when fry swim around with their parents hunting bbs together. Also many fish sadly fail the part of resisting to snack on their own babies when they start free swimming too, if the eggs hatch successfully 🫠😭

Have you seen the spawning ‘ring’ that @Lowells Fish Lab uses for his Aphosemions?

I have a light cycle about the same as that, 6am - 8:30pm. Like @jwcarlson, I run this schedule mostly because it works for the hours I'm typically free to care for and enjoy my fish -- I have free time at 6am, and then again after 7pm. I don't set my the light go off mid-day as that feels like an unnatural light cycle to me. But I have no evidence to back up that feeling. I run very subdued lighting on a number of my tanks, mostly apistos and tetras. The ambient light from the room and other tanks does little to impact the dimness of these aquariums. Other tanks, shrimp and plecos, get much higher lighting, but they manage to keep algae at bay.

I don't know if this one of 3 is a ricefish or pygmy cory fry. Both types, plus 1 female platy, were in the quarantine tank. I discovered the babies after moving all the adults out.

A month later and both are going strong. I fed the female to see if I could get her back up to size. She's filling back out. Or at least her stomach is:

Two of my previous Bettas.

There is a fish and pond rescue about 365 miles away from me in Boise. I will contact them and see what they think. I really am not ready to get rid of them yet as I am fond of the "little" big guys. Some Plecos can get mean when they get this big but these two have stayed pretty mellow. If that changes, I would have to do something and your suggestion of a fish rescue was a great one so thank you so much for that.

Because is was a soak and not per the directions on the box, yeah.... I would do a full treatment and this would be your first one. Prazipro being similar to paracleanse. The good thing is it will be in his zone of feeding and he can eat it when whenever he feels comfortable to. It'll stay in the water for 48ish hours sometimes.

Oh yea i forgot to mention why so many aquariums - well they aren't really aquariums they are just glass cages for my plants. Some folks like the misery of working out doors in their garden but i prefer to garden indoors !

Clear! 😎

Alright, you get the campfire going, I'll go find a few hundred feet of christmas lights. 🙂 Reminds me of a road that Jimmy drove by on one of his streams up in Washington. Definitely a place you go for sunrise/sunset walks.

Buddies up near the surface during maintenance, just cleaning some leaves and driftwood for me. 💛💜 IDK why Romeo has so many [obvious] growth lines and Woodstock does not (?)

That was when they would pump my gas, check my fluids and wash my windows without being asked.

I pulled about 10 Badis badis babies out of the parent tank today. Found a lot more but chasing very fast little ones in a 29 when you are only 5 ft tall is comical at best 🤪

Endler fry

This morning I took some pictures to try and submit for the aquarium club's monthly photo contest.

I have fry currently but none are as unique as my axolotl fry I have right now! He is a wild morph.

This could be fun. Let’s see what I can find: Panda Angel wigglers Panda Angels barely free swimming Panda Angels starting to look like tiny Angels Baby Panda Angels! Bristlenose Pleco’s yolk sac almost gone Baby Bristlenose Pleco’s! Julii Cory’s Albino Cory’s just hatched Baby Albino Cory’s! Whole gang of Krib fry. Pygmy Cory Man, I used to take soooooo many pictures of fry. Had to scroll way back on the camera roll to find a lot of these. Need to get back to taking more pictures.