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tolstoy21

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Everything posted by tolstoy21

  1. tolstoy21
    In also use the included plastic diffuser. I find when I don't use it, my rigid tubing clogs up with salt over the course of a few days. The plastic diffuser will also clog, but they screw apart into multiple pieces and I just swirl those in a cup of warm water and put them back on. I like the plastic diffusers so much I've been trying to find some. Seems they sell them overseas but not in the states, from my hunting around. If the hatchery is above your air pump, use an check valve.
  2. tolstoy21
    @anewbie If I had to pick, like if I didn't the world would end--would be sucked into a massive whirling vortex where, at the other end, waited my upcoming RAOK mako shark hungry for Nerm blood-- then I would pick Red Fish Blue Fish because I have had nothing but positive experiences with them. But this if I was forced to pick . . . . . I would purchase abacaxis from them if their price was lower but still higher--double even--than Wet Spots'. Forthcoming. No corys yet. But I will acquire some soon through the generosity of a fellow Nerm!
  3. tolstoy21
    It's an Apistogramma Abacaxis, pronounced something like 'Ah-ba-ka-shees'. I believe it's Portuguese/Brazilian for "pineapples". It's also the name of a river in Brazil. I believe it used to go by the name 'Apistogramma Wilhelmi'.
  4. tolstoy21
    The ones at Red Fish Blue Fish are domestic raised, imported from Europe. I will RAOK the Mako in the summer. I'm waiting for it to grow to a more shippable size. Right now it's a little small, just a tad over 200lb.
  5. tolstoy21
    Well, I can't make a contest exclusive in the same way that I cannot pick and chose whom I sell fish to. I find them to not be super delicate. They do fine in 'typical' apistogramma water params. Ph in the 6's, nothing exceeding a moderate Ph, clean water and non aggressive tank mates. So I would say a 'responsible' fish keeper more than an 'experienced' one. In the end, all I can do is list the care requirements. After that, it's up to individuals entering to judge for themselves if this is a pet they want to keep and take care of. They have them for sale right now. Their asking price is pretty high, $145 a pair.
  6. tolstoy21
    Not my best photo. But, this fish has been soooooo hard to photograph. It will come up to the glass to greet me (or, actually, beg for food), but the second the phone or camera comes out, it runs for hills (or, actually, the java fern). Its tank is also dimly lit, so that's also a challenge. However, today I got off a snap! I had to 'lightroom' this a bit to fix the exposure, reduce noise etc. But as a practice, I don't modify the colors of fish, since I use these for ads. Anyway, thanks for looking! PS . . . I have a ton of juveniles, so RAOK a pair? What do you all think?
  7. tolstoy21
    I'm interested in breeding these for myself as I'd like to have a nice large school of them and would rather buy a few and breed the rest instead of dropping $$$$ on a large school of them. I've had Salt-n-Peppa (ah, push it!) corys in the past and they kind of just reproduced on their own without intervention. Are pandas similar? Or do they take a considerable effort to get to spawn like some of the other cory species? I understand I'll have to collect eggs so they don't get eaten, but I'm hoping it's not much more challenging than that. Any advice?
  8. tolstoy21
    Yeah, I think it's a "you're mileage may vary" kind of thing. I've had Cacatuoides that were great parents too, and I've also had them kill one another. I also have a pair of Agassizii that are great parents, don't eat the kids, and don't have domestic disputes.
  9. tolstoy21
    I think @anewbie hit the nail on the head with that one. I have a female agassizii that does the same. Separating the fish will obviously solve the issue, but is not the long-term solution you're probably looking for. Having ways the fish can take refuge from one another helps a lot, but that only decreases the nipping and does not stop it entirely.
  10. tolstoy21
    Yeah that's the main reason I stopped feeding them flakes.
  11. tolstoy21
    I second this. I have also noticed the following about apisto eating habits . . . I find they prefer sinking foods over flake as they tend to forage from the bottom rather than the water's surface (though they will eat flakes from the surface if they have to and the tank is shallow enough for the to see the floating items) They can be picky eaters and suddenly decide they are tired of something and will stop eating it They eat when they feel like it not necessarily when you feed them. So don't be surprised if it appears like they aren't eating. They are, just not when you are watching. They are only voracious eaters if there is a lot of competition for the available food They are easy to over feed, especially if they are in 'picky' mode I feed all my apistos twice a day, but once a day works as well, as does skipping a meal or day here and there.
  12. tolstoy21
    112 liters = 29 gallons? Yeah I would think so. I keep apisto pairs in 20 gallons with endlers and it works fine.
  13. tolstoy21
    Been trying to get a decent shot of this fish forever!
  14. tolstoy21
    Yup
  15. tolstoy21
    What's ORD? Sorry, I'm getting to that age where web/text acronyms go right over my head!
  16. tolstoy21
    Tetras will definitely eat baby brine, in my experience. Not sure about the others. The only fish I've seen ignore BBS are Oscars (for obvious reasons) and Zebra Acara (not sure why, but I have never seen them take any). Every other fish I keep will eat BBS. I feed a little bit of it to all my tanks on a daily basis.
  17. tolstoy21
    I use me and my Python gravel vac! I specifically love leftover, day-old Repashy!
  18. tolstoy21
    @Abeb123You might want to remove your email from this public thread and send it to the poster in a private message. A lot of spammers will use bots/spiders to scrape publicly accessible pages for email addresses and then add them to their spam lists. Not sure how this forum deals with spiders, but I find it best to try to keep my email off of the web to the best of my ability.
  19. tolstoy21
    Apisto fry can take food larger than infusoria right away. I would go a local fish store or petco/petsmart and get some frozen baby brine shrimp. Thaw a cube out in some water and shoot a bit in the direction of the fry with a pipette. That's probably the easiest solution. Infusoria will work, but the fry will want something more substantial soon. And congrats on the fry!
  20. tolstoy21
    The terracotta watering spikes work well. My plecos use them and spawn in them. If there is any bamboo growing near you, just cut some of that down. Each segment of bamboo is naturally closed off and forms the cave back, you just find some that is the appropriate diameter, harvest and cut it to size, then let it dry out. I have a TON of bamboo growing invasively in the lot next to my house. Each shoot is almost as tall as my house and some are as fat around as baseball bats. A heck of a lot of free pleco caves can be made out of that!
  21. tolstoy21
    I kind of feel like that was part of my problem, that it was throughly dissolved enough to be suspended uniformly in the liquid. The goal was for it to stay powder enough so that it would drift into all the crack and crevices that the newborn hide in. But I guess I missed the mark on that one!
  22. tolstoy21
    @Minanora I just use the plain old fine sponge filter you find in most fish stores or online. They don't allow the addition of an airstone, but I have never found this to be an issue. I adjust the rate of flow with a Ziss valve. While the tank was clearing the sponge filter clogged fast. I cleaned it daily for about a week and the resulting waste water was as black as coffee every time. By the end of the week, the tank went back to being crystal clear. To be honest I like the using plain old inexpensive sponge filters in my shrimp tanks. I tend to oversize them to provide more grazing area for the shrimp. I've tried a number of different options for filtration with shrimp over the years -- matten filters, HOBs, under-gravel filter boxes, the coop filter, those dual sponge filters with the ceramic bio media from hygger. But in the end, I come back to the plain old fine sponge filters for shrimp.
  23. tolstoy21
    My food with bee pollen was bee pollen! Well I had added it to spirulina flake I had and ran it through a spice mill to make it a consistent, fine powder and was experimenting with feeding that. Only one of my shrimp tanks started clouding up and then I realized it was the only one without a fine sponge filter, so I added one and the water cleared up right away. I think I was probably also over feeding it, not knowing how much to use. Or it was something else entirely that was causing the water to cloud that the fine sponge filter removed. I guess that's all I can say for sure, that my cloudiness was particulate and not bacterial. Maybe it was the food, maybe not. 🤷‍♂️
  24. tolstoy21
    The foods I have the most success with are Vibra Bites (as perviously stated), Northfin Bug Pro and Xtreme Nano Pellets. My fish reluctantly eat Repashy (except the plecos, they love it). All my other fish will eat Resphy, but they never seem thrilled about it. I feed a lot of Igapo Explorer and Bottom Scratcher (plecos get Morning Wood and Soilent Green). Most of the other foods I've tried, the fish don't even touch. However, like I said, every single fish I keep loves Vibra Bites and they gobble it down with much more gusto! Of course, I'm just listing 'commercial' foods here, not live or frozen or veggies. I used to feed Xtreme Krill flakes and my Odessa Barbs went NUTZ for that. However, most of the fish I keep prefer sinking foods, and with a lot of floating plants in my tanks flake foods get stuck in the plants and make a mess.
  25. tolstoy21
    Vibra bites? Sometimes I think it's the only food my fish will eat! However, I have a 2lb bag of it now that I'm still going through.
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