Leaderboard

Hello there, I'm from Ho Chi Minh city, Viet Nam and I found this lovely forum while looking for a way to quarantine plants before introducing them to a new home. Obviously "a bit" of googling showed the H2O2, KMnO4, and bleach methods, but they all have disadvantages and not really assuring results. And then I found out about the Reverse Respiration thing, was a bit skeptical at first, but after reading the longgg post that looks too similar to a submitted paper, I am convinced, and really impressed by the amount of dedication poured in. So naturally I created an account to join the fray (is this the right idiom?). I've kept fish for around 20 years at a young age, and just got into planted tank for the last 10 years, on and off. Anyway, here is my freshly-scaped tank, 95 gallons. I've just finished the hardscape (heavily inspired by greenaqua's tank), and am still in the process of selecting plants, which is getting a wee bit frustrating. So many things to choose from, not enough space haha. There we have it. Oh and to the friends from 'Straya, especially Perth. Oi, cu...tie pies (forum rules teehee). Cheers tldr; I like you guys, can I join?

One day when I don't have to deal with expensive children or if I find a really good deal, I am getting a 200 gallon tank and putting whatever my heart desires in there. For now I am planning the paludarium and I think the perfect fish to start with is going to be leopard Ctenopoma's. The sump looks to be 20 gallons but I am not 100% sure on that, could be more. Now I need to think of some land dwellers that won't be able to hurt the Ctenopoma's, won't fit in the Ctenopoma's mouth, and aren't super high maintenance and plan the landscape which is actually pretty exciting. I might skip land dwellers and just go crazy with some really cool plants. The thing about reptiles and amphibians is the bio load and maintenance. I used to rehabilitate snapping turtles and had red eared sliders as pets and they can muddy up waters really quick. I wouldn't put those examples in there anyway because they would eat the fish but I am sure you get my point LOL. Since Ctenopoma's originate in the Congo I am going to research what that landscape looks like to get a theme going.

I get to net them on the re I get net fish on the reservation during spawning because I'm 1/2 Ojibwe (I don't look like it). I would actually be embhassased of this pic because I look weird with bleached hair just cheesy smiling but it's a very happy time time of the year every year.

my guess is they were originally the exact same species, but due to separation, and time they slowly changed to meet their environment and became still the same but visibly distinctive. its kind of like comparing white tailed deer in florida to the ones in MN, the fla ones run around 100# or less, and the ones in MN can go well over 200, yet are the same animal. just my theory, and with that i have no problem crossing guppy's, and endlers.

Snoopy eating worms! (And I forgot to clean the glass)

its one way to help keep numbers in check. happens all the time in many community tanks all on its own.

The mollies probably eat some of their babies so the fry are already getting eaten, plus it’s natural for big fish to eat small fish, so I see no problem with feeding fry to big fish.

I used to feed guppies to my oscars to keep the numbers in check many years ago. I've actually thought about getting a bigger, predatory fish for just that purpose... to be able to recycle some fry or culls. But those fish come with their own issues and maintenance. It's perfectly OK to feed your extra fish to other fish. Another option would be giving them away, but that's also problematic.

If you are comfortable doing this it’s fine. It is the circle of life. Our clubs auctioneer has had a piranha for many years. He buys the unsellable fish. I take fish born with handicaps to him rather than euthanasia.

That is a ramshorn they come in all sorts of colors

I live in a very small town in MN, there are no takers. If I ask someone if they want a fish, they ask how long its been in the freezer or if its pickled LOL 😅

If I was a betting man, I’d go with genetics being the biggest factor. Your best bet for quality livebearers is dans fish. It’s not the only place, but it’s a good start.

It really comes down to what you’re personally comfortable with. Personally, I see no issue with it. One of my earliest lessons in breeding fish was just because you can produce them doesn’t mean you can sell them. Sometimes you can’t even give them away for free. Kribs were too easy, and I quickly became overran with fish and fry. The parents kept spawning while I was still trying to get rid of the first batch, so any additional spawns they made were fed to their brothers and sisters in a different tank. I did that out of necessity, and I believe that it’s a perfectly healthy food for the other fish. Fish eat fish in nature. Complete personal preference, and personally I don’t see any issue with it.

Na, you’re good. My concern was she was going to do it anyway. Was just offering some constructive advice on repair. She backed out of it. Which was the correct decision. I don’t believe I said go ahead and don’t worry about it. I believe I said, if you’re going to try, put it somewhere it’s not going to cause a lot of damage if it goes. And gave some advice on reinforcing the tank. I, personally couldn’t sleep with it in a sensitive spot. It would have been in the basement next to the drain.

water changes. water changes. water changes. It all comes back to water changes. When your tank is "cycled", you will still need to do them but not as much. Until then, water changes will 100% protect your fish's health, if done the right way and in sufficient volume. With a such a small tank, you can very efficiently do modest water changes with a pitcher or large mug. I use a 1/2 gallon pitcher for this (get 2 or 3 if you want to make life really easy, yay dollar store). Fill the pitcher with water from the tap, same temp as the tank. Add 1-2 drops of prime and stir/swirls/swish (2 drops per gallon is the normal rate). Meanwhile, use an empty pitcher to remove the same amount of water from the tank. Pour it on your house plants or in your garden. Then gently add the pitcher of new water back to the tank. If the pitcher is 0.5 gallons, and the tank is 3.5, you just did a 1/7 or 15% water change. Do this every day and you have a bit under 100% water change for the week, and I promise any nitrite or ammonia will be negligible and harmless (wc% for the week is actually less bc when you change 15% on day 7, a lot of that water will be water you added over days 1-6, but for these amounts/scenario that's not really relevant). The other REALLY important thing is to not feed too heavily. Every new fish keeper does it, and it places a greater burden on the water parameters, fish, and tank. For a new fish keeper, feed a quarter of what your heart wants to. Or less even. If using betta pellets, 2-4 per day is enough. And sometimes skip a day.

It's a fish-eat-fish world out there, so there's nothing inherently wrong with it. I have a small school of Celestial Pearl Danios (four females and three males) and they spawn every morning with the females laying twelve to twenty-five eggs each. If I collected each egg and raised the fry that would be fifty to a hundred fry per day. I just let the adult CPDs and the snails eat the eggs. An occasional fry will survive and become free swimming, but then the adults hunt it down before it gets too big. We think nothing of feeding live brine shrimp by the thousands, and they're every bit as alive as your fry. Most of the fish stores of my youth kept predators (arowanas, a snakehead, or a cayman) to consume any unwanted, leftover stock or fish that died. They couldn't afford to keep a tank running for one or two leftover fish that weren't selling, so those fish would go to feed the big guys.

a fun topic. This is what i understand: There are 2 species, P. reticulata and P. wingei or guppies and endlers. However they do readily interbreed and this makes some cool color varieties, so most Guppies and Endlers available on the market these days are mutts (P. sp) owever, if you can find what is known as N-class endlers (im sure there is another name for them), they are true P. wingei and have not been crossbred with guppies.

Howdy! Remember when I said I was done tinkering and had everything I could ever want and need? Ya… we all know how that goes. The Tetra 150 I had hooked up to the grow out tank started acting a little weird. It’s a single outlet, with a T, to be able to run two lines. Out of nowhere, one side was barely pushing. So i put some control valves on there, and that worked temporarily, but I was always having to balance it. Not sure why it happened, but I got my Q1 bonus, and decided to try a new pump. Hygger 10 watt dual outlet. Someone else on the forum tried it out and was pretty impressed, so I figured why not. Especially at the price point. The thing is a beast! Absolutely cranks some air and I love it. Now, the opposite easy flow kit is “glugging”. I know why it’s doing it, but I’m having a hard time getting it to stop. The top piece of the Easy Flow kit is not quite straight up and down, so the bubbles are jamming up, and glugging out the top. Looks like I’m not quite done tinkering… Other than that today was just your standard maintenance sesh. Just water out and back in and I was done in less than 4 hours. Felt good! It’s been a while where I didn’t have to do something extra, so the speedy water changes were nice. Some pics from the week: My Pothos vine is easily over 10 feet at this point, and I had a section that lost all of its leaves. I decided to cut that out a few days ago, and today I noticed perfect water droplets coming from the stems where it hadn’t healed over yet. I thought it was pretty cool. Lots of things blooming in the aquaponics tank. From top to bottom, the start of a jalapeño, a baby strawberry, and some lavender starting to bloom. Panda pair in the community tank had their second spawn. No eggs kept from this one. Color on the 29. It has taken a lot of time, but we’re where I wanna be! My girlfriend was awesome enough to pick me up an Anbernic RG405V emulator handheld console. It arrived today, I got all the ROMs on the SD card, and I’m having SO MUCH FUN playing all these games from my childhood on a portable handheld console. Anything from NES through PS2 and GameCube. So sick! I’m loving it. Cheers, friends. I hope your tanks are well and you’re having fun!

Yep, I treated the whole tank. Sounds like your guy may be nibbling on himself, though. Good advice above on providing stimulation and exercise. 👍

algae comes in brown too!

looks like algae, not dirt.

Does anyone here have Black & White Crested Polish chicken eggs for sale or can recommend a good breeder? Any help is appreciated we trying to up our flock.

assassin snails are pretty good at eliminating pest snails.

Oh I didn't realize they came this dark! I've only seen the pink/translucent ones. Nice. I was thinking about getting a few but I guess there's no need now!

Definitely ramshorn.

To be clear, mine spawn. I would guess the guy at the LFS has too. BUT, they are sneaky spawners, in my experience. Mine spawn, but the eggs can't hatch because *some water issue even if it's soft enough*. So now I've eliminated all caves except one that I can see into. Otherwise, you have to try to spotlight them to see in the cave.

That is what I got out of your responses and I appreciate it.

Yep, still quite closely related. Not enough time has passed for them to speciate. They do have some differences in color, with regular guppies having more red and blue, and Endlers having more yellow. There’s also an interesting behavioral difference: when displaying for females, male guppies wiggle forwards and to the side, while male Endlers wiggle forwards and backwards. I think my Endler guppy crosses can do all of the above! But again, these are small differences. I don’t think they rise to the species level. Unless you plan on conserving a line for release back into their native habitat (coastal Venezuela), I see nothing wrong crossing them, and it even adds valuable fresh blood to a dwindling gene pool. Yep, perpetuating conservation lineages is a good thing. But I see nothing wrong with outcrossing them to prevent inbreeding for aquarium populations, either.

I think this topic is important because the genetics of our pets really matters. On the one hand, inbreeding depression weakens animals. On the other hand, forced hybridization with other species is unhealthy, too. So, when I breed (or buy) pets, I want them to have a healthy level of outcrossing for genetic diversity, so they’re neither not line bred nor deformed. Which brings me to guppies. Although fancy guppies are pretty, most of us here know that by now, most lineages are inbred and sickly (sad for a fish that used to be so hardy). That’s why I like to cross them with wildtype guppies (ie - humble feeder fish!) to increase their genetic diversity. When I discovered Endlers a couple years ago - and read they were a subspecies of guppy - I thought, Great! Let’s cross em! So I did. Most of my guppies now descend from female fancies and male Endlers. And guess what? They are not only beautiful, but they are also super healthy and hardy! Chalk one up for “hybrid vigor.” I defend this practice on the grounds that these fish are not intetspecific hybrids, but merely outcrossed. It’s not like blood parrot cichlids, polar blue parrot cichlids, or other interspecific hybrids that are sterile or have birth defects. No, these fancy x Endler guppies are healthy fish.

But make very sure you want duckweed before getting some. It's much more difficult to get rid of than it is to acquire.

First and foremost, look up your county / state / country's common aquatic plants and aquatic noxious weeds. Then simply compare and contrast between common species! Otherwise, these look like various species of hygrophila and ludwigia. You may also want to compare & contrast these between Elatine americana (and other waterworts), Persicaria hydropiper (water pepper), mentha aquatica (water mint), and various watercress species. Overall, quarantining is the best practice even if you do identify these! Do this whenever getting plants from the wild. 🙂

I did EXACTLY the same thing when I got my first five gallon aquarium. Jumped right in, and soooo many of us who are just starting out do it! So I know what you're dealing with! I completely agree with what everyone has said here regarding water changes. Another reason to keep up with your water changes is that bacterial bloom. While it's unsightly it also sucks up a lot of oxygen. By doing those regular incremental water changes you'll help re-oxygenate your water.

Ok, one more thought on this. The question I have, how deep does the water have to be for an arowana? I believe your tank is ~72"x18"x21".Would a water depth of 10-12" be enough for an arowana? This is well below the chipped area. These guys are a surface dwelling fish who hunt in flooded areas of the Amazon, I am not sure if they live in the deep open waters of the river. , What I think would be a amazing tank, a paludarium with an arowana. Your could put a land section in the back corners and 2 islands in the middle of the tank. The arowana would still have enough area to swim around. On the back wall above the water, glue cork to the tank and grow plants off it (this comes from vivariums). You could also put cork on the side walls, this could partially hide any repairs you make to the chipped area. You have two overflow boxes in your tank. Those could be removed and cut down. Install them in the corner land sections of the tank and drill new holes for the thru hull fittings. Now you can use the sump for filtration which also gives you alot more water volume for the system. You could set this up to create river water flow. How big is the sump? This could be a spectacular showcase Amazon river tank! Don't give up yet! Edit: Reading up on Arowana, you may need a upgrade path if you go with this fish after a couple years ie: a bigger tank. It looks like you could get ~80" wide x 30" deep tank in that space. But what I read, you need a minimum of 8' long tank.

Tank update: not going well at all. At this rate, no AGA this year. It’s obviously early, but hashing out a layout isn’t going well. Recent changes in dosing: Moved GH to about 6 degrees, Ca to 35ppm and lowered Mg to 5ppm. Reduced water changes to 50% while double dosing after water change and then 2 more doses over the week. Micros dosed 3 times a week. Trip wall is going well and only the left side needs to be added. I’m trying to use 2 Dutch streets but I’m not liking it so far. I do have a few plants just in the tank for future use making it look chaotic but some are in place. 5 more plants ordered and all green. Decisions will be made shortly whether to use 3 or 4 reds.

Just redid my aquascape! Both my sparkling gourami and dwarf crayfish seem to like it.

Im going to do it. Re-seal, windshield repair, silicone, glass panes, and a dream. Don't hold your breath for a post of how it goes, because I have to do everything little by little since I work full time and take care of kids. Also don't want to rush it. Plus, I am going to have to move it to my basement for the testing phase and that thing is heavy and BIG!! I might even have to do it on my back deck to avoid the basement stairs.

I honestly think that's not the case at all. I think everybody's heart just breaks for her. we all know how much it would mean to us. @NikkiRae if you can find a glass shop nearby, and after the auto window treatment. get a 3-inch wide, possibly an inch thick piece of glass running from top frame to bottom frame. and use aquarium sealing silicon and place it over the crack as a bolster. probably gives you the best shot to use it. really, good luck! I hope it works out and for that arowana, you're going to want a beefed-up lid anyway. so, glass shop could be good. They pack enough punch they can go through a regular lid

livebearer fry can usually eat BBS right after birth. should be fine

I just had to google what a paludarium is LOL. They look pretty cool. I got a windshield repair kit so I am starting there. I still don't know if I will trust filling it up after that I will keep brain storming. I am using it for something cool no matter what. There is just to much potential. Maybe a paludarium is the way to go. Or just not filling it to the top so I can still get the arowana that I wanna.

Keeping the fry in the tank runs the risk of 2 things: 1) The mother killing other fish in your aquarium while protecting the fry 2) The fry being eaten by other fish I use a turkey baster on fry all the time. If you're gentle with the fry, they'll be fine.

I am the lone go for it person on this thread but I freely admit that a crack forming down the road is a major issue. Just curious if a Windshield Crack Repair Kit could be used. Another option if you are a I like to fix/build things kind of person. Since you want a arowana, a low boy style tank would work just fine. You could breakdown this tank and cut off the damaged glass, the bad section is near the top. So now you have a ~72" x 18" x 18" tank instead of 21" tall. For this project, removing the frame would be the first and possible the hardest part of the job. So the good news, if you can't do this then just trash the tank. What you need is a thin razor knife which can hold 4" razor blades. You have to cut the silicone inside the frame. I have never cut glass but a local glass shop may cut if for a reasonable price. Or cut it yourself. The overflow boxes would have to be cut down, I assume they are acrylic and can be easily cut with the right tools. Where are the holes for the thru hole fittings? Resealing a tank is not that difficult. The hard part is removing all the old silicone. A DIY job may be better than the factory sealing Aqueon does on their tanks.

I agree. After I lined up my accumulated API and other test vials, I found that there seems to be some disagreement as to where 5ml. is. Over the years, the fill line has moved on some of the vials. I used two different pipettes to measure 5ml. of water to be tested. If the pipette is accurate, than the line on the API vial is much to low. If the line on the API vial is accurate, than you must be sure that the bottom of the U shaped meniscus is on top of the line. I don't have any sensitive animals so, considering all of the other "ifs" I prefer the test strips and completing all of my testing in under ten minutes.

Send him to the "doghouse", which may happen to now be transparent, and sized at 72x18x23,

I forgot to mention that Bashful, my dwarf clown pleco, is about 2 1/2 inches long. Told you he is tiny ... 😊

Here’s a Snoopy pout! The tank is shady now with all the plant growth. Large leaves are growing across the top of the water, so algae isn’t an issue. My favorite is this sword (sorry for glare)

I raised the light so now it’s here And here are some photos of Spike. He has a favorite “hut” or “lean-to” consisting of a single catappa leaf.

@Biotope Biologist Reliving my childhood! When you see the box the kit comes in, you can understand why I've been told, "Those are obviously marketed for kids" ...What? It says for years 8+ . I'm way + 8.....

Made the choice of 'sand', I think of it more of a tiny gravel....When does it start to be considered sand? . Rinsed it, not bad, just a little dust and some organic material. Put some in the 3.7 and my Triops pool. Looks good to me in the 3.7 and the Triops love it! Dig Dig Dig. Weird little vernal pool critters. 😎 I'm already looking forward to trying the other, 'sand'. Slow down man! 🤣

First topic is Aquarium Masters: I called probably more than 20 times and finally I called 11pm my time got a very nice gentleman. Truthfully I was in shock someone answered. Person informed me that they build and ship tanks all over the USA and over seas . A Lot of what they build is smaller tanks under 40 gallons. Target is one companies they ship to as well as Walmart. I asked if they ship to small retailers. He stated that mostly it is to large retail stores that he knows of. Does not mean that some tanks could be theirs with different labels. Deep Blue is closed. I spoke to the owner of Marks Ark and not his employee's this time and the owner of another pet shop near me that sold deep blue tanks as well. Both owners told me that supposedly they sold all their supplies and tank manufacturing to Seapora. Their tanks are pretty much deep blue tanks with a new label. The tank build quality is nearly identical. Needless to say my 120 is going to be Seapora. Also when I spoke with Aquarium Masters. I asked him if he heard of deep blue tanks. He said yes and said they built a very top rated tank for their time. He also stated that it was one products that was looked at when they started producing their tanks if his memory served him right. That was interesting in itself to hear. Took quite sometime to gather that knowledge. Hope this helps someone. What I learned is if you are buying a tank from general retail store in 2021. Seapora is the way to go for name brand tank anyway.

I could be wrong, but they looked identical except for the printing on the cardboard packaging, but even that was fairly similar. They seemed to have the same low-iron glass, black silicone, and identical size offerings. I have an idea. Maybe Aquarium Masters makes the tanks, and Deep Blue packaged, marketed, and distributed them in the USA. Seapora showed an address in Canada when I was searching. Perhaps Seapora was playing the same role as Deep Blue, but in Canada, but now also distributes in the US, when some sort of exclusivity contract expired.