tolstoy21

1 point for each aquarium you currently have running - 43 1/2 point for each aquarium that you have empty "just in case" - 3 1 point for every 40 gallons of water currently in your tanks - 20 1 point for each variety of prepared food you regularly feed - 6 2 points for each variety of frozen food your regularly feed - 2 3 points for each variety of live food you regularly feed - 3 2 points for each variety of water you regularly use in your aquariums/fish room that require some kind of preparation other than dechlorination (e.g., RODI, brackish, salt, hard water for African cichlids) - 10 1 point for each tank with CO2 - 0 1 additional point for each tank where CO2 is regulated (i.e., not yeast-based or chemical generator) - 0 1 point for each species of fish you have raised to maturity - 20 (I think) 1 point for each "grow out tank" you keep - 20 1 point for each species-only tank you keep - 10 (estimate as this changes from week to week) 1 point for each 100 comments posted on this Aquarium Coop Forum - 13 1 point for each cycled filter you have on hand, just in case - 6 1 point for each aquarium you have built yourself - 0 1 point for each aquarium stand you have built - 6 5 points if you have a multi-tank auto-water change system - 5 5 points if you have a air supply "loop" for many tanks - 5 10 points if you have structurally modified your home to accommodate your fish tanks - 10 10 points if you been collecting in the wild - 0 1 point for each city you've been to and visited the LFS as a tourist activity - 0 1 point for each $100 you've sold of fish in the last year - Pleading the 5th (What if Uncle Sam is reading this thread!) 😛 2 points if you regularly attend a fish club auction - 0 Award yourself one point for taking this quiz - 1 Ok so 183 for me.

The Ph in a multi tank could be on the high side for a Siamese Algae Eater, but I guess that all depends on how high you're keeping it. Otherwise, SAE's seem to be pretty good at mowing down hair algae, as long as it hasn't gotten overly long (I have found they tend to ignore the really long strands and nibble away on the shorter ones).

Glad you like them! Happy to have met you in person. Next year I'm hoping to stay longer and meet more people. My kid enjoyed the Clash immensely. He now wants to go back next year, get a table and sell fish! He's so excited about the idea of that. Well that, and he wants to stay in the hotel and use the pool. (Kids always have ulterior motives!) The only thing I came home with was some tangerine tigers. Was going to buy some orange laser cories, but someone bought ALL of them right before I could get some! Very nice event. Well worth attending.

Ha! This makes me view shipping fish inside boxes in a whole new light now!

When I first started selling fish online I considered the name 'Princeton Aquatics' but then found out that was the name of the swim club on campus, so couldn't use that. I quickly grew exhausted trying to think of anything I liked that didn't have the word 'aquatics' in it, so I just used my screen name. For a club, I agree that 'Aquarium Society' is a good replacement for 'aquatics'

Yup. What @Guppysnail said.

I figured out why they are so clumped up, and it's because of my spawning mops. It would seem that when the corys lay eggs in the mops, the fibers from the mops become sort of tangle up with the eggs and combine with their natural stickiness to bind them together. I figured this out because I was looking at the egg clumps with a magnifying glass and was like "What's are these thin green threads attaching the eggs to one another?" Meanwhile, anything laid on the glass does not suffer the same problem. I have since stopped using the mops as the corys seems content laying eggs on the glass just as much as the mops.

I use ceramic bio media in a one of those mesh media bags in the bottom of my HOBs, then I fill the rest of the space with Polyfill I get from the craft store (Michaels, JoAnne fabrics, Hobby Lobby, etc). I find this set up the easiest to maintain, as I just change to the Polyfill when it gets dirty (takes a few seconds), and give the media bag of ceramic media a good shake/rinse in a bucket of tank water (also takes a few seconds). The media is my bio-filtration. The Polyfill is my mechanical filtration. I think Polyfill the hands down best (and most inexpensive) mechanical filtration there is. I'll only use a pre-filter sponge if I there are small inhabitants in the aquarium I don't want to suck up. I have nothing against them, they just seems to me an extra thing to clean. But pre-filter sponges are a nice add-on.

I like AquaClears too. That would be my vote. Seachem Tidals are another good option. Not sure which I like more. Maybe the Tidal, slightly?

Unless the pump is getting clogged, etc. I would clean the back section less. You will probably still need to take out the sponge at your regular interval and give that a rinse to get out some of the mulm. In general, filter compartments tend to do get gunky, but that's not necessarily a bad thing unless it's hitting critical mass. Can you put the aquarium on some kind of pad or mat and pull that forward with the aquarium sitting on that? Something that slides well and doesn't have a lot of friction with the counter. Aquariums are stronger than we think (but not invincible). You probably wont break it by sliding it, a long as it slides easily. If you can pull it by a mat underneath it, then you won't be putting any pressure on the sides of the aquarium when you move it.

Nevermind. Found the answer. Seems like a universal rocks slim background will work out. Thanks for the response! @tolstoy21, you are THE BEST EVAH!!!!

Hey all, Are there any 3d backgrounds that one can install without emptying a tank and taking the fish out? If so, any recommendations?

Well I'm in luck then because right next to their tank is a tank full of neocaridina shrimp!

Watch Greg Sage's videos on this topic on YouTube. If you follow those, you'll be successful. https://www.youtube.com/@selectaquaticsoferie

The problem arises when your spawn's gender ratio isn't 50/50. Odessas have pretty large spawns, so if you had a spawn of 300, you could end up with 100 males and 200 females, as an example. I spawned maybe 6 or so batches of these, and in my specific setup, the numbers always favored females over males. The females aren't bad looking at all, its just that the male's coloration outshines that of the females. Females from my fish when I kept them:

Ok, so my Sterbai tend to lay eggs in clusters. When this happens, what does one do? What I'm noticing is that viable are eggs stuck in a mass of non-viable eggs and this is becoming a bit of a problem if any of those eggs begins to fungus. Is this normal with this species? Is there an easy fix for this? Alder cones? Meth blue? Separation? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I used to breed Odessa's from Greg Sage's line. Yes they are pricey, but they are big and healthy and produce vibrantly colored offspring. I would say you could only justify the costs of acquiring them from him if you planned on breeding them. Odessas also color-up differently depending on environment. Subdued lighting, dark substrate and plants is a must to get them to show their best colors. However, Greg has been selectively breeding for more than a decade to produce fish with matte blacks, vibrant reds, and bright greenish yellow on the fins. If you have light substrate and background and a sparse amount of plants, the Odessas will stay drab. My guess would be that the Odessas you find in most chain pet stores and LFS's are farm bred and no one is selectively breeding them, thus they turn out inferior to Sage's line. Every now and then I see Odessas from the "Greg Sage Line" being sold either by Dan's fish or on GetGills. These tend to be a tad more reasonable in price but are of great quality. Kind of why I stopped breeding them. Broke my heart to have to cull a tank full of females. Odessas are probably the fastest, most active fish on the market. Watching a large school of them feeding is a sight to see! Here is a pic of one my fish when I had Odessas a few years back. Their colors really are that nice!

If you do skittles, your best bet is to attempt to have only male shrimp in the 'skittles' tank, otherwise the you could wind up with a lot of brownish shrimp. You should be also able to do both neocaridina and a pleco colony in the same tank. In my experience, plecos don't "taste the rainbow!". At least my L183's, 397's and 134's haven't had any impact on the shrimp I have kept in their tanks. If carnivorous species--like the L134's--eat shrimp, I would guess they don't do so ravenously in a way that would dent the population. I used to throw all my culls into the my pleco tanks and they were overflowing with shrimp in no time.

If you get a pleco, go for an L134. Ok so not an algea eater, but I find these don't hide as much as other plecos (but maybe that's just mine). If you want bristlenose, my vote is for an L183 white-seam starlight. Very nice looking fish.

Hamsters. However, you'll need more pine shavings and maybe a wheel. 🤪

Ah, you know I didn't even notice that. It is interesting and I do like the idea of Koi Neo!

Yeah, I've seen these listed a few times. I don't think the genes are that stable yet to make it worthwhile to spend the money. Also, I think the coloration changes, or becomes more subtle or more vibrant (or goes away), depending on environment (substrate, light, water params) etc. But I'm sure this is the same with all new variants and it's just a waiting game. Found a picture of where I saw them . . .

Whether or not you cull it is totally up to you. You could use it and its genetics to refine that pattern in a separate line of your shrimp, or cull it. Reminds me of a rili. Many of my rili culls look like that. This is not a cull, but you can see the similarity. (My culls don't have a nicely refined clear band like this and can have more of a partial mottled look like yours).

What I am appreciating about them is their simplicity and understated elegance compared to the domestic strains with their garish orange fins (which I also really like). Those subtle red tips on the dorsal are what I really like.

With all the triple and super red cacatuoides around, I sometimes forget how awesome a wild caught cacatuoides can look. Here is my current WC male showing off his stuff. As always, thanks for looking!