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I have been a Track & Field mom for a number of weeks. Today found some great pictures of my sons in the online news sites. The fish have been getting fed and some have gotten water changes and no one is sick or dying.😅. Just lost most of the hornwort in my spiny eel tank. I have missed talking to everyone but my boys are seniors and they missed a season due to COVID shutdown. It has been great to watch them enjoying their sport! Can I share some proud mama pictures?

Car transportation of fish stuff today. Transitions are “funstrating” . . . part fun, part not... Moved wood out of a tank we set up in a school that is shutting down now for summer. And caught the final red zebra Mbuna that survived in our tank. Took it to the same LFS owner who took our others.

Bladder snail will clean the individual leaves of even the most delicate plants.

I love my Amanos, but they're definitely not the workers I was expecting -- not yet anyway. I think mine are still too young. 🤣 Currently they're the tank sneaky jerks, always hatching evil plots under a specific clump of java moss and stealing the corydora tablets for their very own.

My suggestion is this.... add the betta last. If you add them early on, and then others, the bettas see that (often) as invasion of their territory. If you add the others first, and then the betta last, they (often) see it as "these fish came with the territory" and it can help with them not being AS aggressive

I find that angelfish thrive best at 78 Farenheit. I would try and lower the temperture of the heater to like 74, that way the excess room heat wont overheat it. And then in the winter move the heater back to 78 Farenheit. I feel that, in April one day it was 30Celsuis (mid 90sFarneheit) next day it was snowing and below freezing tempertures!

My kribs had baby's!!!!! what should I do? I plan to order san Francisco bay brine shrimp eggs, penn plax breeder net, easy fry food. should I lower the water level? do I need to worry about the parents(fighting, eating fry, etc). can I use reef salt for hatching brine shrimp? how do I know how old they are? they are sort of swimming but they can't swim open water for very long.

Today was more of a "feed and watch" kind of day. I edited a video, which had it's own frustrations. I realized that I've had my dwarf puffer for going on 8-9 months and I've only ever done 2-3 water changes on his tank. Nitrates are always below 20, and I dose a bit of Easy Green every couple weeks. I just let the plants take care of it. I mean, with Pothos roots like these, who even needs water changes? There's a couple of Otocinclus in here that I never see - they hang out in the forest. They're fat, though! There's a couple ghost shrimp left, too. The puffer doesn't bother them.

I was looking through some old photos I had. Some of these pictures were of the plants when I first got them. I relized when looking at some of these "wow, this has really grown!" Show off some pictures of that plant the day you got it to present day. Hygrophillia Compact | March 7 2021 Present Day. Its already split into 3 different hygrophillias. Cryptacoryne Wendetii Red | May 21st | Plant right infront of the spongefilter Present Day, its probably doubled in size! It hasn't even been a month.

Guess what came in the mail today? my FLUVAL 3.0 NANO!!! So excited! It was supposed to arrive yesterday, but couldnt because they were paving my street (forgot that was happening). Luckily its not plants or live fish so a delay isn't the end of the world, only a dissapointment. I was lucky it was only delayed one day, on my tracking pin it says it "delayed, please come back later for a estimated date of arrival". I have a rimmed tank and dont have a lid so I got two pecies of wood, laid them across the tank and places the light ontop. It will do temporarily unitl I can get a glass lid. Penny was watching me the whole time when I was installing it "whatya doing hooman... do ya got fooood..." You were right @Streetwise I do love it! I am using @Bentley Pascoe settings for a low tech tank, and tuned down by 50% because its a 10 gallon.

its a coin toss with betta's getting along with others. some are fine, some aren't. you have to ask yourself, do ya feel lucky?

This… http://www.piscesusa.com/products.html?store-page=New-Zealand-River-Gravels-c23406354 Nice stuff, small grain size, rounded, snails glide over it.

If the seller provides details on how they want the fish acclimated, I follow their rules. That way if there is an issue later, I can say I did everything as they suggested. I also document it each step of the way with video. If there is no required way to acclimate, I tend to temperature acclimate then plop and drop.

When I get fish in, I float the bags for about 10-15 minutes to acclimate to tank temp. Then, I open the bag, dump the fish into a net and put them into the tank. If they come in a breather bag, I let the bag sit out on the top of a tank for 15 minutes or so, then open bag, pour into net and into tank. I have found that the quicker I get the fish into my stable tank water, the better they do. When the fish have been in bags for overnight or even days, the waste builds up, lowers pH of water, as soon as the bag is opened the water becomes toxic, and I want to get them out of there ASAP. I do acclimation this same way no matter if I pick up fish at a LFS and they're only in bags for a couple of hours or if I get them imported in and have been in transit for a couple days.

I spent time with each tank today testing water parameters of everything I have including ponds. It took awhile - would this qualify as my hour?- but was worth it. Main display is in the “red” (if you own an api master kit you know what I’m talking about) so after kiddos go to bed it’ll get a water change. Was surprised to find that my Flex 15 I moved last weekend is already fully cycled despite a full rescape but I suppose all that seasoned media and hardscape helped. Ordered fish last night - guppies, Halfbeaks, blue eyed rainbow and variatus platys. Topped off all the water in my ponds, temps fell this week but the ponds have stayed in the 50s hoping to not have to throw heaters in but have them if I need them.

Flooded my dry-start yesterday. I didn't wait until everything spread extensively. I really just wanted to get the plants rooted and growing. This is going to be a betta tank. It's a Landen 7.1 gallon, seasoned filter, CO2, ADA soil, seryu stone. After one night, have no ammonia, 0.1 ppm nitrite, 10 ppm nitrate. Will change water every day for a week. Every other for a week, then weekly if all is good. The CO2 level is intentionally a little bit "too high" for a while to help the plants transition. Plants: Dwarf hair grass (Eleocharis belem) Mini Pellia / Coral moss (Riccardia chamedryfolia) Phoenix Moss (Fissidens fontanus) Alternanthera Reineckii Mini Downoi (Pogostemon Helferi) Shoreweed (Littorella Uniflora) Bucephalandra Red Mini

Hi! I’m Cherie. I’ve been in the hobby since I was 10. I have a raging case of MTS and can already see I want more. I have a 50g with Rainbows, Red Phantom Tetras, nerites, and Roseline sharks My 20 long has a female betta, lamb chop rasboras, a nerite, and panda corys My 20 tall is a new setup with bamboo and cherry shrimp, nerite and rabbit snails and soon will have P. luminatus My 12g Fluval Edge is where the lumis are getting busy My 6 gallon Fluval Edge has a few blue shrimp and I’m looking to revamp it. Planning to breed the lumis and then my Red Phantom Tetras. Looking to add a BN to the 20 tall. I’m so excited to join the forum. I’ve learned a ton from Cory 😁

Mr. Glitter defends his corner

nice, keep feedin' em!

The trimming sicssors are currently in my cart awaiting my next plant order. Its tough to raise the light due to the fact that I cant install it the "default way" because its a rimmed tank. But I'm currently brainstorming of ways I may be able to.

Once a thread begins to veer from kind and helpful over to demands for evidence I start thinking about locking the thread. I am very close to locking this one.

Congrats! I hope you ordered some trimming scissors because you’re going to need them! I find I need to have mine set quite high above my 14” cube to get a good spread of light. You might find it necessary to raise it up a bit to get good coverage to the left and right sides of the 10g.

I agree with this double duty too as it's will provide biological surface for bb

Getting close to being done painting my breeding tanks (8 20 gallons, plus I have a 10 gallon for grow out, and a 29 gallon to replace a display tank). It's a lot of work. I used rustoleum satin black gloss enamel paint instead of plasti-dip. I have wrist issues, and the spray cans get hard for me to shake. I think this was probably easier in the end, In case anyone wonders, bottoms are painted as most of these (besides 29g) will be bare bottom and this makes it easier to see fish and keep it cozy for the fish. I painted the 29g bottom just because I was at it anyway, and if I want to use it for something else it will be set. The 20s will sit with the small side facing out. There will be two stacks of 20's, 4 on each stack/row. The row ends will have two sides painted on both sides, but the middle will just have one side painted since they will be next to each other.

You can definitely have a betta in a community tank. It might eat your shrimp babies. It should go fine with the corydoras and Otos. I would add the Betta last, as then it is coming in to another fishes’ “territory” but totally doable.

Ooof, I haven’t updated this thread in a while. For a bit, work and life got really busy, but I’ve made more progress the past two weeks. I attached the middle shelf, trying to make sure the legs stayed square as I did so. Keeping the frame clamped in place helped with that, though it did get in the way. Then I glued+screwed the small inner legs in place above the shelf. Progress... Next I took the top frame out and sanded one side to be very flat. The super-flat side will be the side the top shelf rests on. Looking for the light and sanding down the high points... (note the new orbital sander 😊) The next step was moving the entire thing inside. We decided bringing it inside and doing the final assembly where it’s actually going to go. We took off the diagonal braces!! 😃 Unfortunately we realized it rocked. 😩 What @Nephro’s said about working with construction lumber and everything changing overnight (or when you move it from one environment to another) is true and annoying. I think if we do this again we’ll be buying nicer wood that’s not pine! We flipped the stand on its side and found the high points in the base. Then my husband kindly took it out to the front porch and sanded the base flat for me. Two nights ago we put the stand in its final location to attach the frame. This way we could get it super level. Well, it turns out the inner legs ended up being very different heights. They were definitely NOT this different when I cut them!! But tolerances stack and things change. Talking it over, I got the impression that sanding the tall inner legs would be really tough, so we should shim the shorter legs instead. When my husband saw how big some of the shims needed to be though, he thought we should have tried sanding the inner legs after all. 😄 We ended up needing shims on some of the outer legs too. Oh well! The wood glue made the shims curl, so we ended up with a lot of clamps to make sure everything stayed flat and in place. We glued the frame in while we were at it. We’re getting there! Oh and I also found baskets. 😀 More than can fit on that shelf but... 😄

The only chicken song I know is the sizzling for the deep fryer!!!🤪

Hahaha unfortunately no, we still have to hard boil them ourselves! Chickens’ brains are very, very small. They short-circuit very easily. I imagine their thought process goes like this: Must lay egg! Should go to nest box. It’s hot in here. Must leave coop. Must lay egg! Should go to nest box. It’s hot in here. Must leave coop. etc And yes, there’s definitely a “must lay egg!” squawk and a “I just laid an EGG!!” song. The smartest chicken also has a “I would like to register a complaint” sound that she makes when they’re out of food or she wants me to change the weather. 😆

😂 Don't forget where you pahked, sometimes it's wicked hahd to remembah, and make sure you don't put your cah keys in your khakis.

Wait...this is a real thing?!?!? Do the eggs come out hard boiled?!!🤣🤣

I’m in Maryland too and it’s so hot the chickens don’t want to sit to lay their eggs. They were walking around the yard screaming, they had to lay so bad. So I put a box fan and a wet towel in the window of the coop and locked them in there! Ope, there’s the egg song! I guess I can go let one of them out. 😄

I live in South Florida...mid 90's is a daily occurrence here for months on end with a humidity of 60-70 percent. We developed gills long ago...LOL

Looks great! You could try a circulation pump with a coarse sponge attached to the intake. I saw this setup recently on a display tank at the Aquarium Coop retail store and it looks like it works great.

Hi @Sal, I'm in Vermont and experiencing the same temps you're describing. We've got no AC in the house but I use little fans on my 2 tanks and am able to keep the temp below 80. As you say, it doesn't seem worth it to invest in an additional AC unit given that these high temps are rare. The fans I use are very small usb fans designed to plug into the usb port of a laptop to keep you cool while you work. I just use a suction cup airline tube holder and a piece of tape to attach the fan to the side of the tank and let it blow over the surface. It's quite effective, I usually have to top up the tank at least once a day to account for the evaporative cooling. I don't actually know the answer to your question regarding how hot is too hot but, like you, I was worried about it and the fans were an easy and inexpensive solution. Good luck!

What size is the tank? What about taking one of those mini bottles of water and freezing it and letting it float in the tank. I do something like this for my hydroponics because the plants will not uptake the nutrients in really high temp water. So i float a frozen water bottle in it to cool it down a bit. Since its in the bottle it doesnt mess with the water parms.

Look ok there only cos I have just cleaned them all 🤣

You can try feeding Crab Cuisine, which is a pellet food supplemented with calcium, available in many box stores. You can also mix powdered Tums tablets in with Repashy food. To raise your Kh, try putting crushed coral into your tank. If you have a HOB filter, simply place a pouch of it inside; I use panty hose, cut and tied off. If not, you can sprinkle it on top of your substrate, or dig a hole into the gravel and bury some if you don't like the white color. Over time, the coral will erode from water flow, and add minerals into your tank.

When I quarintine I dont quarintine with any meds. I just put the fish in my quarintine tank, and keep them there for 4 weeks. Yes this takes a while, but I wanna be 100% sure they dont have any illness. I would suggest to do the same. Then when my quarintine is done I dry out my sponge filter, once its dried out I put it in my community tank to get some more bacteria on it for my next batch of quarintine.

Thanks for your replies and for all the pics of your honey gouramis, they are the absolute cutest. It's so nice to meet some of the other honey gourami people on here! @Hobbit Literally everything you described your fish doing, down to the female being the one who's aggressive over food, is the same as my fish. MAJOR UPDATE. I think you were correct, that she possibly ate the nest. Because today: He built a new bubble nest!!! This was not here yesterday when I fed dinner. He's trying to coax her towards it right now, but she's very cautious to follow him into his side of the tank and keeps turning back. Thanks for your recommendation, I'll follow your advice and do a bit of rescapement before the next spawn 😎 I also will ask my sister to come every day next time I'm away so the fish don't get so hungry. 55 gal is my dream set up, I'd have all the same tiny fish as now but just with so much more room. And I agree 100% that honey gouramis are insanely smart. That's actually why I chose them. In videos, you can see them inspecting things and thinking. Plus where my other fish are skittish around me, the gouramis learned super quickly that I feed them and I'm no harm. They're not scared at all, even when I'm gravel vaccing they chase the bits of debris going up the vac tube. I adore them. Here they are back in the day when they *mostly* got along:

if you have lighter colored gravel or dont mind the white coral on top, just add it in. you could also mix it in, or make a hole in your gravel, put in the coral, and then cover it back up. if the coral is in the water, it will do its thing, so the asthetics are your main concern.

if it is something that only gets to that point for a few days, a couple times a year, id not worry about it. fish in the wild go through temp swings too, they dont stay at a perfect 76.

plants, and fritzyme7 or fluval cycle do a very good job of kick starting an aquarium. this whole messing around adding ammonia and waiting weeks and months for a tank to "cycle" is to me silly.

For the breeder NERMs among us . . . BAP Spawning Report: Xenotoca doadrioi (Redtail Goodeids) Recently, a fellow PVAS Club member began inviting those of us who were regular breeders to followup with him about the possibility of moving along stock to the pet store he worked at in VA. We reached out, and brought a few fish along on trips to the area. We also expressed an interest in some of his Goodeids. Xenotoca doadrioi have always been a fascinating, colorful species. He was happy to move along a starter breeding group of these from his collection. Being a C.A.R.E.S. species added interst to us. The information he shared about their origin is this: His line were part of a group of Goodeids imported by the North American Goodeid Working Group for the 2014 American Livebearer Association Convention. He obtained his original stock at the convention in 2014. Their geographical source is near the town of Etzatlan, Mexico in the Ameca / Magdelana basin. The town is just west of Guadalajara, but not quite as far west as the better known collecting site San Marcos. https://goo.gl/maps/7vYTgUFhr2vfjP5A7 We got 8x Xentoca Doadrioi on December 12, 2020. They were of varying ages / sizes. Two males were brightly colored up, and at least two of the females were of matching size. They went into a 20 gal. long with black diamond blasting sand substrate, some shells from NC coast we’ve used for a few years now in aquariums, several cups of crushed coral in a mesh bio bag hidden inside a shell, and an odd assortment of plants, cuttings, and java moss. Two sponge filters run in the back corners. Lighting is just a cheap shop LED (5,000 K) that throws a reasonably balanced white light - usually muted by use of a cupboard liner to diffuse and limit lighting. Additional air comes by way of several air stones hanging in the back center. Throughout the six months since first recieving them, I have continued to add plant cuttings. I keep these Goodeids at room temperature with no heater in our basement fishrom, which dips down barely below 70-degrees Farenheit in the winter, and lifts just above the same mark during the summer. I water change the tank each week, and always add a broad spectrum liquid plant fertilizer (e.g. Aquarium Co-Op Easy Green). The Amazon Sword gets root tabs in the substrate now and then. These Goodeids do well on a veggie diet. We ground their diet on Omega One Kelp Flakes, Bug Bites Spirulina Flakes, crushed Omega One Veggie Pellets, and broken up Algae Wafers. There is always duckweed in the tank as well, so if they want that, it's a free snack. Once fry appear, baby brine shrimp is added as well. Every other day, one of their feedings includes some added protein as well. They will try to eat just about anything. The first spawn was discovered on January 7, 2021. Unfortunately, it was a light dropping, falling short of BAP by just a few fry. Still, it was so curious to observe their trophotaenia — umbilical cord-like appendiges that remian visible on fry for a few days after they are born. Goodeids are livebearers, though not nearly as prolific as the better known livebearers — Guppies, Platys, Mollys, or Swordtails. Xenotoca doadrioi drop fry every few months, with reports of seasonal changes sometimes yielding higher fry production. It was not until April 27, 2021 that we returned from vacation to find that the Goodeids had dropped fry while we were away at the beach. This time, more than 10x new fry were counted. As long as things remain steady, with minor water changes, Goodeids are a very easy fish to keep. We have not observed them predating on their fry. They tend to be born larger than baby guppies or platys. Another fry drop was made (likely a different female) - evidenced by smaller fry with trophotaenia for a few days - but I did not try to make a firm count. At the present moment, a proper colony is developed with multiple breeding adults and many young. It is about time to split the colony out, and allow a new one to develop in another tank. Eventually, we hope another aquarist interested in this C.A.R.E.S. species will show up to continue the process of “making more!” Basic Water parameters were measured at the end of the BAP project: 20 gal. 68-72 degrees Farenheit 2x medium sponge filters 3-4x shells Wisteria Anacharis Amazon Sword Java moss Java fern Duckweed Water lettuce Valisneria pH - 7.8-8.0 Ammonia - 0 ppm Nitrite - 0 ppm Nitrate - 10 ppm

I just make sure the temp of the bag water is within a few degrees of the tank water so they don't get temperature shock then I put them in right away.

Ah! The honey gourami aggression question! Hopefully my experience can be helpful here. I’m intrigued by your theory about gold female honeys vs the wild type, but I can’t speak to it since I also only have a very gold female. Here’s my pair resting in the middle of flirting time: I have my gouramis in a 55 gallon community tank. My male (Dad Fish) is only super aggressive to the female (Mom Fish) when he’s guarding eggs or very young fry. When he has eggs to guard, he’ll see her from one side of the tank and cross the entire tank to chase after her. He basically chases her behind the driftwood into a corner, and when she’s out of his sight line, he lets her be. Otherwise, the two of them are buddies. They flirt, they poke each other, and Mom Fish chases Dad Fish away at feeding time. But everything changes when there’s a nest to guard. My guess is that your male did indeed have eggs he was guarding. Either you missed the nest among the floating plants, or someone in the tank ate the eggs. It’s possible the female was really hungry and decided to eat the eggs even though the male was trying to defend them. Maybe that’s why she got so beat up—I’ve never seen my female get injuries, though she can give Dad Fish a lot of space since the tank’s so big. My recommendation would be to wait and see what happens at the next spawn. If everyone’s getting enough to eat, maybe everything will be fine. If you’re still having aggression issues, try adding tall plants or rocks/wood in the tank’s center so she can get out of his line of sight. I control my gouramis’ spawns by adding or removing floating plants, and increasing or decreasing the flow. With increased flow and no floaters, there’s nowhere for Dad Fish to build a nest and he goes out of breeding mode. I’m not sure that’s an option for you though since you have a lot of floaters. At this point I would not get another female. In livebearers, adding another female gives the male someone else to flirt with. In the case of nest guarding though, I think you’d need a lot more than two gouramis to have any effect on the male’s aggression. The good news is fish tend to heal from injuries pretty well. As long as she’s not still getting attacked, she’ll probably be just fine. I also love animal behavior. I’m convinced gouramis are smarter than other similar fish since their brains have evolved to use and process info from their feelers. But maybe I just like gouramis. 😄 You have a beautiful pair, by the way!

You can add a mirror to his to tank distract him or add some small tetra or endlers to tank so he doesn't focus on his fins as much

Start of a big project... moved all African Cichlids out of 55 gal. to get ready to transition it to become and electric blue Acara grow-out tank.

Pooka's bumpily skin texture.