tolstoy21

Put a 9v battery in your front, left pants pocket, suck the end of the siphon tube with your mouth to get the water flowing, place other end inside a bucket. I joke, but I'm also serious! Sometimes the high-tech stuff can be more of a hassle than it's worth, and the tried and true, simple methods that people have been doing for decades are the most reliable. Have you looked into the Python water changing stuff? A lot of people here use it and swear by it. No power required.

Are you sure the female didn't kill him? It's not uncommon for a female herding fry to do this. If your Ph swing didn't wipe out the female and fry, my guess is it's Matricide. Sorry for the loss. Congrats on the fry!

Equilibrium is a Gh booster only. I have used it for many years and it does not add Kh at all. Seems that your starting (out of the tap) Kh is about 4dKh (degrees carbonate hardness -- aka 80ppm). As other have mentioned, an active substrate will strip Kh out of the water, so it makes sense that it keeps going to 0. Kh is what buffers the water to keep it from getting too acidic, so if you have no Kh, you have no buffering capacity, and the Ph is free to swing downward. But the Ph wont drop forever. It should stay at 6.4-ish if you keep the tank clean. But in the presence of a LOT of decomposing organics, it could go down into the upper-mid 5s. Sooner or later, your active substrate will exhaust its ability to eat up Kh and you should no longer have a issue with disappearing Kh. A lot of fish that do well in a Ph of 6.8 will also do fine in a Ph of 6.4. I would not overly worry about the issue unless you are keeping fish that require a basic Ph, like African cichlids. Your endlers should be fine. I've kept and bred those in a Ph of 6.4 - 6.8. Ramshorn and bladder snails do fine in a Ph of 6.4 (as well as Malaysian Trumpet snails). The only inhabitant that will have an issue is Mystery Snails. I can never ever keep them alive in an acidic environment. I run about 20-30 aquariums, all without any Kh. They all hang around 6.4 - 6.6 Kh. But I also make sure the tanks/water are very clean.

I really like the looks of the Negodagua. I've had those on my short list of tetras to try breeding.

No worries. Nature happens. It's a heavily planted tank with lots of driftwood branches. Netting out 60+ tetras in that would have been a nightmare. I don't really want to breed discus other than get one spawn to adulthood so I can have more for my own aquarium without incurring the cost of buying more discus. Plus my hope is that the next generation will be much more hardy in my specific conditions. Anything that I raise up over the number I am looking to keep I will RAOK here.

Thanks for the response, but too late. They have all become snacks for other fish at this point. Man what brutal world! I might move these two discus out of the community tank and see if I can get them to breed again separate from all the hungry mouths.

The fry are hanging around with the parents at the current moment, but I doubt they will last more than a few days at best given the other fish in the aquarium. Can I net them out and raise them separate from the parents at this point in time, or is that doomed to failure? Can I remove the adults and the fry and relocate them safely? Any help would be appreciated.

I have a setup for changing one tank at a time from a 55 gallon brute can with a pump just like you do. It's a super simplified setup and not on a timer. I can take a pic of it later and post it here with an explanation. I use that for larger, ad-hoc water changes and filling tanks. The drip system is what I run on a timer (the pump setup I have to flip a switch to trigger). For the drip system, I use a Kasa timer that opens and closes a solenoid value at multiple intervals during the day, every day. That is super simplified as well, compared to a Rainbird setup.

I raise a lot of South American fish on my water with a TDS of 300+. My Ph is consistently 6.6 and has no seasonal variability. However, for certain fish, I do need to move them into a 'breeding tank' and drop the mineral content of the water by mixing in RODI water. But once they have spawned, everyone lives find in my TDS. My Gh is about a 9. I would worry more about your variable PH than the variable TDS.

What do you mean by the above? What were the conditions when you filled the tank, and how do they differ from the existing setup? I was thinking the same.

I run a drip system on, I think, 15 or 20 PSI. Water flow is 2 GPM. This is not hooked up to a pump, but is plumbed into my home's water system. The pressure of that is 40 - 60 PSI, but, like I said, I do have to reduce the flow and pressure so as to not blow off my drip heads. What kind/size of hose/pipe leads into the tanks to feed them water? Do you use drip emitters at all?

I use a lot 20 highs. Honestly though, I don't love them. They fit my rack density well as they are a good trade off in being big enough to breed in, but not overly large so as to waste space. Personal favorite size tank in my basement fishroom -- 40g and 60gs. If I had nothing but unlimited space, I would do all 40g and 60gs. For display tanks in my living area, I prefer 125g and up. I only have one tank in the living area or my house, which is a 125. But one of these days I would like to go larger!

Totally 10000% agree.

This is probably the hardest route to take because you have to factor in various fees for hosting and then have to figure out how to get traffic to that store. I have been trying out Shopify lately, but I am using it as a sort of 'aggregator' so that I can link people back to it so all my sales come through one channel. This is my most recent Aquabid listing as an example --> https://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?fwapisto&1725156019

Let me know when you know! Selling online has been slow for me in 2024 (not really sure why this is different than previous years). I still get the most sales on Ebay, and yeah, they do take their pound of flesh before paying you out but you just have to factor that into your asking price. GetGills is the next site that does well for me. Two years ago Aquabid was a pretty hot marketplace, but right now you're right to describe it as dormant. Vivvy was a good marketplace last year, but they closed up shop pretty fast. I've been trying out BAND recently, but the different rules of how to conduct sales differ in confusing ways to me from one Band group to another. I really had high hopes for Vivvy, but . . . they crashed and burned. Good luck! Hadn't thought of reddit. I'll also have to look into that.

100% Agree. I typically do 1:3. But it's not an exact science in any way. I measure it out with a tablespoon (just took a scoop, didn't like level it or worry if it was a heavy scoop or a scant scoop). Haven't made repashy in a while, but I think I did approximately 1/2 cup boiling water per 3 heaping tablespoons of food.

Nope. Not for guppies. Ha, I'd not consider myself an expert by any means! So please don't interpret anything below as legal or financial advice in terms of taxation. But, the below is my experience . . . Ebay collects and remits sales tax on the seller's behalf. The $600 reporting threshold is for reporting business income and is reported on a federal-level, and does not concern collecting and reporting sales tax to states. In general, each state that one sells to has its own rules for when an out-of-state online seller must collect and remit sales tax to that state, but trust me, none of us will ever hit those minimum thresholds. For instance, most states have adopted a $100,000 annual minimum in sales (or 200 transactions that year in that state) before needing to remit taxes to that state. States rules do vary, but they more or less fall into that range. For more information, do a google search for the term 'Tax Nexus'. All the info one would need exists inside that rabbit hole! If you only sell on Ebay, this is all moot, because Ebay does this for you. My guess is that Ebay, as a large platform/marketplace, probably has requirements to collect and remit sales tax for sales made from its platform. But this is complete speculation on my part. Either way, Ebay does this automatically so there is nothing one needs to think about. However, at the end of they year, Ebay will furnish each seller with a 1099 for filing federal business income. If that total amount surpasses $600 (or a minimum transaction level), then you need to include that in your year-end tax filings. The one caveat to the above is that for sales within your own state, you do have to report sales tax. But . . . . in my own experience, this is nothing to really worry about for us mere mortals. When I registered in my own state and told the woman on the phone the amount of annual in-state sales I conduct, she laughed and said -- Ok, we'll put you down as 'non-reporting'. In the end, I'd advocate that anyone selling online more than occasionally should probably register as running a ''Sole Proprietorship' with both the federal government and their local state. Additionally, well check with the state to see if your 'business' is required to collect and report sales tax for in-state sales. All of this may sound daunting, but once you understand exactly what your responsibilities as a seller are, it doesn't take much to set up.

100% agree. Unfortunately, I can't find a single LFS in my area that buys from hobbyists other than to do trades for store credit. I could be wrong, but I think this all depends on how you register as an entity for taxation purposes in the US -- Sole Proprietor vs. LLC. Minimally, any money I move from my business account to my personal account needs to be reported as income, if it's not a reimbursement for a legit expense. I spend every dime I make on the hobby, so I usually have nothing to report.

Sweet! I've been wanting experiment with summer-tubbing but have yet to actually get around to it.

@Fish Folk Those rainbow shiners look absolutely wonderful!

Pretty much what @Fish Folk said. I will add this from my personal experience: try to find that one species that is always in demand, isn't typically available in local fish stores, and returns a decent profit margin. Breed the heck out of those (if you can find a market to sell them in) and then use the money they generate to subsidize the rest of the fish you want to breed. Your 'hot ticket' item might not be something you want to breed, but it's the bread-n-butter fish. Keep your eyes on the horizon for the next species like this just in case your original species isn't the 'fish of the moment' anymore. Depends on what the laws in the UK are, and if you're selling in a marketplace that reports your sales at the end of the year. In the US, you didn't have to file taxes until you went over $20k in gross, annual sales. Recently they reduced that to $600 !! 🤯 You can write off a lot of what your pay for your hobby-side-hustle as 'business expenses', but you still, technically, have to file. On the other hand, if you're collecting cash at a swap meet or something like that, then --'wink wink' -- no you don't have to track taxes for filing. If you're invoicing an LFS, then you should probably consider tracking all this for reporting purposes

I use these as fell. I stick the end of the hook into a filter sock to diffuse the water going into the tank so as to minimize substrate disturbance.

Yup. I do this quite a lot. You should have no problems. If you are moving plants over from the 20g, those will also bring over beneficial bacteria.

Should be. I don't know the diameter of the ones I use. But really, that doesn't matter. Just experiment a bit with water strength when filling the tank and you'll be set. I started using these when I bred Odessa Barbs. I was doing 2 - 3x water changes a day and those were handy to not suck out teeny-tiny fry, nor blast them with a firehose of water when re-filling. Since then, they are all I use for water changes..

You can also DIY a UGF. I ran a DIY one for a few years and it did me well. My design (a common one found on the interwebs) didn't use plates, so no fry issues (but this wasn't a breeding tank). Vacuuming was also quite easy with this design. This was air driven. Cost very little to make. PVC was just dry fit, so no gluing required.