Cory

@Softbreeze I saw Aquanut try and tackle this subject years ago. I'll link you the playlist here in case it helps.

I wish I had the picture. One of my favorite ones that was ever built was a 2 liter bottle in a pvc tee, with the light on one end, bottle up top, and valve on the other part of the tee.

Our plan is to ship everywhere that is feasible. Only thing holding us back is a feasibility study on each country as well as tests. We are working through those as we can.

Glad to hear it arrived. It's definitely a challenge to keep shipping reasonable, but how long to deliver, especially as we go world wide over time.

My hope is that we can launch both before the end of the year. However we don't compromise quality and thus if we need to take longer we will. Simple things like packaging can set us back. We try to rule out as many bugs as we can before a launch so minimize things to fix on round 2.

I've built tops in the past. Whether you use something like chicken wire or greenhouse panels. Sometimes you can find a free window on craigslist or something that is a fit. Just depends on how good it needs to appear.

If it were me, I'd probably just do 4 tsp. Maybe a bit under as I filled the last teaspoon. There is usually some leeway in meds when it comes to aquarium, because they can't factor in all the substrate, decorations etc.

Just start with dosing once. prime will be fine.

We don't sell at shows because it would change tax status' in those states.

I'm not a big fan of using meds in foods when you have multiple fish in a tank, theres no way to make sure one doesn't eat a ton, and others eat none etc. As for it being safe with the loaches, in our experience it has been. However there is always some risk.

It is generally catfish safe yes. However flashing fish doesn't mean this would fix it. You could have low pH, another parasite it wouldn't treat, a bacterial infection etc. In general, follow the directions on the package. It wouldn't be a bad thing to let em soak for a week in prazi regardless.

nice work on the breeding and love those stands.

Whats your kh read on the liquid kit? Looks like you have very hard water as well? Is that reading the same as your tap?

Use an automatic fish feeder. it'll dispense some food each day.

Yep, fill out this form and our team will look into your store. We deep dive store reviews, facebook, other places we can see feedback. If that looks good, Randy will reach out and start the process.

The problem is, we serve many different types of customers. It sounds like you are ordering para cleanse ahead of time. You also live local. Imagine if you needed the medication asap cause the fish was already sick? They also announced a few months ago, that first class is getting slower. It's now up to a 5 day service. You stated that you're close, and so most services we use would be overnight for you. However For someone in Florida, that same service may be 5+ days. We are aware of offering options. In the past however, people make lots of mistakes. With 10,000 orders a month, most people default to whatever is pre selected. This leads to people getting angry when they chose cheaper slower shipping, and it doesn't arrive as they expect. Also we can't use the slower shipping for live plants. Do know that we take shipping very seriously and have plans in the next warehouse to try and offer more options to accommodate more of our customers needs. Most probably don't know that we have to sort packages for the carriers, so for USPS that we use right now, we'd have to separate everything going to Washington vs all the other states. We have to separate all international mail. Introducing first class, makes for 2 more separations, one for first class in Washington, separate from priority Washington, and then all other first class to the other states. The good news is, if we offer UPS ground in the USA, what 90% of businesses use, it'll be slow and cheap. But since it doesn't use airplanes, we can include more than 2 products with lithium ion batteries. Also we can ship our compressed co2 system that is in our retail store only right now. However this requires us to make it easy for a customer to know that if they ship it slow, they could have these products also, or in bigger quantities. However if you add a live plant, we can not ship it ups ground that takes 10 days to get there anymore. So a shipping matrix as it's called can be very complex and making sure users understand the limitations and intricacies is important. We hope in the future to be able to accomplish this with a larger warehouse for all the sorting options. Right now it's a traffic jam at the end of the day with semi trucks picking up packages. We need more loading docks to accommodate more carriers at the same time. Lastly, I do want to thank you for your continued support. Rest assured we will keep trying to improve our services to everyone as we can. While often not easy, we do try and work through it.

Price increases are happening for postal rates. Plus we had been shipping at a bigger loss before, so we adjusted for that when we could no longer hold down the price. The base price for us to ship anything at priority speed is essentially $8. https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail.htm This is also why at one time we had the minimum order being $14.99 and it was $5 shipping because the profit from the item sold in most cases made it so we didn't lose money. In every variation we try, it won't work out for everyone. We had people complain the minimums are too high. If we slow shipping speed down, complains we are too slow. In this specific case, my advice s to buy more than a time, because the shipping won't go up and it's better for the environment. Or as you said place the order from somewhere else. There are companies that will ship it slower and cheaper. At this moment we don't offer that service, however we may in the future.

Good to hear. I'd comment on more places, more often, just spread thin is all 😉

I don't think you'll run into many problems. Likely the only thing would be how clean it feeds out and if it leads to protein films on the top of the water. In moderation most things are fine.

I can't wait to move him to his bigger aquarium that is 5x as many gallons.

Most often people just buy different caves. maybe an apisto, a shrimp one, a pleco one, a coconut hut, then mix that with rocks and driftwood int heir aquarium and the animals can choose which they prefer.

In general most of the common apistos just want stable water parameters. Some of the rarer/wild caught ones do better in a lower ph.

I used API erythromycin for many years in the trio. I never had problems outside of the price 😜

You could get one, but could be you have enough already? Usually if you're trying to breed, you'd have a variety of spawning locations and cave sizes so that they can choose what they want. This cave might be perfect for the female to escape the males attention when she doesn't want to breed. Without knowing sizes and layout of the tank it's hard to say. They'll spawn with no caves as well.

At full grown male, he'd be too big to get in most likely. The female can still escape the male. They can lay eggs on top of it. However juvies of that species usually do fine. There are a range of sizes of apistos with macmasteri being some of the larger ones.