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tolstoy21

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Everything posted by tolstoy21

  1. Sawbwa Resplendens (a.k.a Rummy-nose Rasbora, Sawbwa Barb. etc.) are a fantastic, hardy nano fish that does well, and actually prefers, water temps down into the low 70's (they are fine up to 78F) and tolerate a wide range of water parameters. Ph 6.0 - 8.0, Gh from something like 3 - 20+. I keep and breed them at 9 dGh / 6.5 Ph, and hatch and raise the fry in 22-25 dGh. Super great, small, peaceful and awesome looking fish .
  2. Here it my setup, which I posted to the forum a while back. As you can see, they cohabitate well with tetra species. Although every now and then the tetras have been known to get a bit 'dorsal nippy'. They should be AOk with white clouds, but your mileage may vary.
  3. Personally, I'd stock it with a Mako Shark or two. You can occasionally find them in the Buy/Sell/Trade section of this forum. I think some crazy person even gave one away last year! 🤪 😉
  4. If you already have some sponge filters in the tank. I would empty that box filter out, put just enough ceramic media in to keep it keep it from floating, and then fill the rest of the space loosely with Poly-fil (was actually just recommending Poly-fil in another post). The other sponge filters in the aquarium will handle the bio-filtration and the box filter will handle the mechanical via the Poly-fil. In my opinion, and this is just an opinion, if you have a well-cycled tank and keep up with water changes and routine cleaning, that's all one needs in a box filter--something to keep it from floating and some floss filling. It's a tried and true K.I.S.S. methodology that aquarists have been doing forever and that absolutely works. And it's less expensive than special things like ammonia pads or carbon, which really is not required at all unless you are aiming to use them temporarily to fix a known problem.
  5. I agree that the best solution is to pack the HOB with course sponge blocks. This will probably cost similar to buying a single sponge filter. But it will keep the filtration out of the tank itself, which looks somewhat nicer, and is easier to maintain, so you don't need to worry about lifting the sponge out of the tank and spewing gunk everywhere. If you want to do some water polishing, go to a craft store and get a big bag of Poly-fil. Leave room in top of the HOB compartment and stuff that with a loose clump of Polyfil It really does help keep the water clear, is easy to change, and very inexpensive. All my HOBs have a bag of inexpensive ceramic media in the bottom, the rest is packed to a medium density with Poly-fil (you don't want to over stuff it or it clogs up quickly). This has worked for me for quite some time. Course sponge on the bottom, rather then ceramic media, also works well for bio filtration, if not better. But it can clog up quicker than ceramic media and slow the flow rate. For one or two aquariums, no big deal; you'll probably have to rinse the sponge out infrequently. But if you have a lot of HOBs, it's a bit easier to maintain. I cannot sing the praises of Poly-fil enough. And this is where I think HOBs shine. You can have more than just sponge in them.
  6. This song . . . ? Good song. Better video!
  7. In my experience, not all fry make it for one reason or another. In nature, predators and competition would quickly remove these from the gene pool. However, it is always prudent to take precautions. As @Colu suggested, I would isolate this one out to another tank or container, if you have one available, observe it for a bit and try treatment. However, more than save this one fry (which is a noble goal), you don't want to risk spreading whatever is going on to the others, if it is something infectious. Additionally, you might want to make sure that that one fry isn't the proverbial 'canary in a coal mine', indicating water conditions that would eventually cause the other fry to start manifesting problems as well. On the other hand, this cold just be an injury. I personally find it hard to diagnose fish (I'm sure I'm not alone in this one). Sometimes the issue is just an isolated incident manifesting in a weaker specimen; other times, it starts with one fry and, soon afterwards, you start seeing die off. Anyway, these are the things that go through my mind whenever I start seeing sick fry. Hoping the best for this little one.
  8. Any plant will work. I use exclusively java fern in my fish room, but only because it grows like mad for me, is easy to move to a new tank when I need to, and kind of takes care of itself.
  9. These are pretty bad shots, and as you can see, I don't really scape my breeding tanks. So, they aren't the most attractive setups. But these setups -- to me at least -- balance sparseness (to keep them clean and make them easy to service) and have enough structures to make the fish feel safe and secure. My display tank in my home office is much nicer, but I don't have any apistos in it.
  10. I'll take a quick snap when I'm in the fish room later this evening.
  11. Care is pretty simple. Water temps mid to upper 70s. Not overly hard water (I keep mine about 9dGH because this is my tap water's hardness water). Ph mid-6's to mid 7's. 6.5 - 7.0 is the best Ph range, but it's ok to keep the Ph a tad higher if that's the water you have. My personal feeling is anything over 7.6 is pushing it, but honestly, they are probably fine up to 8ph, but I have no real experience with water that alkaline. Apistos like to hang out near the bottom of an aquarium. So, as long as you don't have other overly territorial fish at the bottom, you'll be fine. Keep some plants for shelter. Too many plants and you'll never see the fish, too few and it's stressful for the fish. I tend to keep my breeding pairs in 20g tanks with a piece of driftwood propped up so they can hang out underneath it, but still be seen by me, and one or two decently bushy java ferns. An 'apisto hut' isn't necessary for a single male, but they do like something to go under. As for food, mine never like flakes, and prefer small sinking pellets. Hikari vibra bites are my personal go-to food for apistos, but it's not all that I feed them. I typically use a mixture of vibra bites, Fluval bug bites, Xtreme nano pellets, small blackwork pellets, ground up freeze dried white works and tubifex worms (I use a spice mill to break these up into bite sized pieces). You don't need to go to such an extreme as to make a mixture, but that is the staple mix for the majority of the fish in my fish room as it's easy,. varied and quick to feed. The basic gist is small, slowly sinking pellet foods. An apisto's preference is to pick stuff from the bottom at their own leisure. They won't rush out for food like some other greedy eaters unless there is a ton of competition for food. If there is competition, they will come to the top to snag a morsel, but that's not their preferred way of eating. Hope this helps. Again, these fish are on the easy end of the care spectrum.
  12. I agree with the below. However, if you were to use a product, I would have to vote for Salty Shrimp, as its the easiest to use. But, if you do have buffering substrate, yeah you'll be fighting a losing battle. Most of my plants grow pretty well in a Ph between 6 and 6.5 and a dKh of 0. My hardness is on the high side, 9gGH, and I think this is what keeps mine thriving.
  13. A drop of 8.2 to the low 7s is a pretty big shift to accomplish. However, believe it or not, muriatic acid (which is a weaker form of hydrochloric acid) can be very effective in dropping ph, but you have to do it a few drops at a time (depending on tank volume) and then wait a day or two and measure your Ph. Then add more drops if needed, measure again -- rinse, repeat -- until you know how much acid it take to lower your Ph to tyour desired target. I know people will gasp at this concept, but it's pretty safe so long as you do the work to figure the proper amount needed to swing your water to the Ph you's like before doing this with fish in the tank. However, this could get tedious as you'll need to measure PH on a periodic basis and re-dose to lower it again. My guess is that this is more or less similar to using something like API's Ph down, whose main ingredient is sulfuric acid.
  14. @jo1414 I sell fire red males whenever I have more males than females. I'm in the process of trying to spawn more now. If you don't find one in the next few months, PM me and I'll send one your way.
  15. I would just let it change naturally after adjusting your heater. That will be gradual enough in my experience.
  16. Typically the shrimp just pop out of their shells when molting in the way @xXInkedPhoenixX described. I have never noticed it being a gradual thing, nor have I ever seen a shell partially detached in any way.
  17. I move my cory eggs into a 2 gallon with an air stone. I don't use tank water, but the water I put into that small 'hatchery' comes from the same source as the breeder's tank, so the basic params are the same. I put a few elder cones in the tank with the eggs as an anti-fungal agent. I don't put any plants or anything at all in there so as to not create or gather detritus or mulm. As soon as the eggs hatch, I wait until their yolk sacks are absorbed then siphon the young out and put them into a hang-on-the-sided breeder box hanging on the side of the grow-out (a 40 breeder). I put a few neocaridina shrimp in that breeder box to keep it clean and eat any uneaten food or gunk. Once the fry are big enough to not get eaten by the other cories, I dump them unto the 40g. Rinse, repeat. Other fish species, I spawn/hatch differently and don't use breeder boxes.
  18. @Fish Folk Here's a panoramic of the whole scape. It's the same 125g I've had for years. But it has a recent-ish make over. Still a few more plants and fish to add. But taking my time. Needs a bunch more small clusters of anubias petite and small java ferns. I'd like to have a giant school of cardinal tetras in here, but have to get some and breed them first. I had about 10 discus in here originally, but let's just say "I'm not so good at the discus thing" and leave it at that!
  19. Been absent from the forum for a little bit cause, well, life can get busy. A half a year or so back, I acquired half a dozen sterbai and they have been breeding like mad for me since. This video is of my personal tank where I probably have about 30 or so Sterbs. I maybe have another 50 in my fish room. First time I've had a large number of corydoras. Man, love these little guys!
  20. In my experience, this is typical behavior in some, but not all, apisto couples. Some are just more aggressive than others and will the chase females, etc. I've had both quarrelsome pairs, as well as peaceful ones. It is possible the behavior will subside, but then again, I can also go in the other direction.
  21. Neocaridina shrimp (aka Cherry Shrimp) should be a good choice. However, your mileage may vary. Cherry shrimp are also much prettier than amanos. I currently have neos (orange rilis) in a discus tank and believe it or not, both them and the tetras ignore the shrimp. In other instances, I've seen nano fish pick at shrimp and kill them with a death by a thousand cuts. If you have some kind of moss in the tank or something like a rock pile, this will give the newborn shrimplets a fighting chance to not get gobbled up by your fish.
  22. Back in the 70s my dad operated a small-time shrimp boat to catch live bait for my grandfather's bait shop. We used to catch pipefish by the ga-jillions in the shrimp nets (which we would promptly put back into the water). No idea what species they were (they were in the eel grass flats of a saltwater bay in NJ -- northern pipefish maybe?). Either way, long story short, the pictures of these fish bring me waaaaaay back on the nostalgia train. Thanks for sharing! Good luck breeding them. Looking forward to more posts!
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