tolstoy21

I actually just started. Right now I am just taking down the basic environmental parameters -- GH, KH, PH, TDS, Temp, date etc. I'm also tracking parentage/lineage. I plan on getting a breakdown of sex ratios to the best of my ability when they are of an age to be sexed. I'm sure there are other data points to be considered, but this will be my starting point I guess. So far I have recorded information for Abacaxis and Benaschi, one spawn of each. I keep everything in Excel, because this is the tool I'm familiar with and have used for graphing datasets for day-job-related kindof stuff. I'm slowly tuning into an 'old guy' but I've never been a pencil-and-paper ledger kind of person.

@nabokovfan87 Yeah I believe it's primarily temperature as the main factor, then Ph as a secondary factor. However, I have read that the high/low threshold for male/female ratios may differ depending on specific species. The only thing I can say anecdotally is that all the male-heavy spawns I've had recently all have been at or close to 78-79F. And that I've had female heavy Cacatuodies spawns at lower temps, but what temp exactly I cannot remember. This is why I'd like to get much better as note taking notes as I go through successive spawns. I would like to get the ratios dialed in better is I can, with it being 40/60 male/female as I find it a lot harder to find homes for individual males than it is for individual females, in my experience thus far.

@newbie You know, I'm not sure what the TDS was at this time, below. hundred. If I were to guess, probably in the 45 to 60 range. I need to get better to tacking that as a measure of water quality. The water in the aquarium was 100% RO with oak leaf litter and Fluval peat pellets in a box filter, so the Ph stayed pretty consistently at 4.5. I have been gradually acclimating the fry and parents to harder water and a higher Ph, so I can't get a good measure of it at this moment in time because it would not represent the breeding conditions. I am ready to start round 2 with this pair and will get a measure of TDS if they spawn again. My last few spawns of apisto species have been very male heavy -- Abacaxis, Baenschi, Agassizii. Trying now to determine what factor exactly is influencing that the most, as I hate to see a batch of 30+ males and only 2 or 3 females. Cacatuodies is the only species giving me more or less even sex ratios. I guess I just need to take more and more notes and give this time, as collecting data over a number of successive generations doesn't happen overnight.

Unless you completely enclose the space and insulate it correctly, it's probably going to be hard to hold the heat without running some kind of heater full blast 24x7. I made a 10x12 room in my basement over the last year+ and insulated both it's exterior walls and interior walls. I used 2" foam insulation panels on the concrete walls and filled all the gaps and cracks with spray foam. The interior walls have standard fiberglass insulation. The whole thing is finished with dry wall. My basement doesn't drop below 55F (12C) in the winter. On those days my space heater runs most of the day to keep the room at 76F. Without taking the time to build out the space properly I think you are going to have problems holding heat. I don't think a polycarbonate sheet is going to do much if it's as cold as you suggest.

Alas, don't have any more cories. I re-homed them to someone locally. One of these days I would like some panda cories. My only display tank at the moment has 2 Oscars in it, so . . . . . . . no tank mates.

@anewbie Funny, my adult L397s seem to prefer zucchini and cucumber flesh over the skin. I usually keep Igapo Explorer on hand (have some in the mail coming to me as we speak), but never thought of mixing it with Soilent Green nor feeding it to plecos. Might have to try that.

I think you just need to give them time to adjust to their new aquarium.

What's the torpedo position look like? As for eating, I find a lot of the time, especially if they are alone in an aquarium with no real competition for food, they will eat when they are ready, according to their schedule, not necessarily when food is dropped in unless its something alive and wiggling that suddenly attracts their attention. This is especially true if they are timid. They will wait till the coast is clear and kind of hunt and peck the substrate for morsels of food. My personal feeling (just a guess really, without actually having really observed them in nature) is that this is their mode of feeding, scavenging bugs and bits of stuff from the bottom while only darting out if they see something wiggly in the water column. They certainly don't feed like other fish species -- like Odessas Barbs for instance, which form a crazy, ravenous school of frenzied feeding, churning up the water's surface, the moment food hits the tank. Or my Oscars, which perk up and wait near the surface the moment I walk into the room (they beg for food worse than my dog!).

300 ppm is about 16 - 17 dGh, if I'm doing my math correctly. That's a tad on hard side of things. I've kept them fine in around 9 dGh (and lower). I can't really speak towards anything above that.

Also, looking at your videos, they don't appear to me to be unhealthy. They appear to be hiding. The breathing of the male in the last video appears normal, and it also appears alert. Fins extended. Pectoral fins moving at a normal pace. Given they are huddled in the corned near a cave, I would suggest they are just a bit nervous about their new environment. Sometimes when I move an apisto to a new aquarium by itself, it will do the same thing and just sit in the corner behind a sponge filter for days (sometimes they stay there as they feel safe under the shelter of it). I too get nervous and think 'God, is he (or she) Ok back there? Did I just kill them?' The answer to this is always 'No'. They are just scared and feel safe hunkered in somewhere that feels safe for the time being. Here's to hoping I'm correct and that your fish are actually in good health and continue to bring you joy!

I can think of two scenarios that could impact your fish -- There is something to the water quality that they are reacting to -- different Ph perhaps, but they should have acclimated to that by now -- or something else you didn't measure for. Stress -- Perhaps they are just stressed because they aren't familiar with the new environment. I have moved fish and seen them go into hiding for a while because they were not yet comfortable in the new space. I think they have to check it out and start to feel like they are not in jeopardy of being eaten, etc. I don't think it has any anything to your tank being cycled or 'seeding'. If you move over established media, you should be fine. In general seeding a tank with bacteria gets it prepped to handle the bioload. But, let's say you didn't do that, it would take a few days for the bioload to accumulate to a point where it would start impacting your fish's health. This is not something that they would react to the moment they are introduced (unless of course there was a build up of ammonia in the aquarium from decaying matter, if the aquarium was running for a while and had not yet fully cycled). But this would be measurable in the water. I move fish around quite a bit, from old seeded tank to another old seeded tank, from old tank to new tank, etc. I move seeded filters with them when needed and provide ample hiding places to ease their transition. I make sure the water is similar in terms of parameters, etc. The only think I have observed from this that is detrimental is the stress of the move. Now, I will admit that I have moved some fish and almost killed (and, alas, have killed). But this was due drastically differing params. I once instantly killed a bag of plecos once because I made the mistake or assuming they were raised on soft water (I found out they were bred in something close to a Ph of 8.0) and plopped them into a tank running 6.4. Four of the six died instantly. The other two had to be nursed back to health. But the Ph of your water isn't that drastically different, and if the fish are still alive, they would have acclimated by now. And they aren't in a Ph that is not native to their biology and they cannot adapt to. So unless you suspect there is something in your water they are reacting to, I would focus on trying to avoid introducing any more stress (not saying you aren't already doing that), but I would think stability and some seclusion might benefit them if they appear in distress. In the meantime, continue to run some tests for things like Ph, ammonia, nitrite, etc. If your water is from the same source, it should be fundamentally the same unless you are on city water and your municipality did something to change it. But that should be testable. And to be safe, you could probably run carbon in your filter for a short while if you have an HOB where you can place. Anyway, those are just some thoughts. Keep us posted

I've kept apistos on this gravel and they did fine. I would say something is off in your water parameters, or they are just stressed from the move and need a little time to recuperate. Water doesn't get seeded. The beneficial bacteria exists on surfaces, gravel, hardscape, in filters/media/sponges/etc. For that to affect the fish, the fish would have to create waste first for that waste to turn to enough ammonia to affect their health. What is this a measure of ? Kh? This could be a possibility. You could move them, but if stress is what's causing their issues, that will just exacerbate things,

I have endlers that somehow, sometimes jump into their neighboring tanks. I swear, relatively speaking, this feat seems equivalent to me jumping over my house. I have no idea how they manage it. Would be awesome to get on film. Good luck!

Yea that's the way to go. Or you can get neoprene (the material wetsuits that divers and surfers wear are made out of) as a any craft store that also sells fabrics. This works as well for padding and helps level the aquarium base. Well, never mind then! Good job. I think I remember seeing a King of DIY video where he had the same thing happen, and many months into having the aquarium full (it was a large one) the glass broke. In his case, he had set the aquarium down before putting it on the stand and a small piece of gravel was stuck to the base. Over time this caused enough torsion and stress to pop the glass. And it wasn't a small aquarium! I believe torsion stress for corner to corner is the worst kind a tank can have, much more so that being a little un-level side to side, or front to back.

Molts look like a shrimp’s ghost. Dead shrimp look more like shrimp cocktail!

What if you exchange all the water with 100% de-chlorinator? 😛

I haven't read what other have posted yet, but I'm firmly in the camp that as long as the water is similar in parameters and temperature, water changes should have little effect on the fish. I move fish around my fish room a decent amount of time and I routinely move fish from an established tank to a new tank. By this, I mean tanks I set up that day and haven't cycled or anything. Now, I do put in pre-seeded sponger filters and plants and driftwood that already is seasoned and have beneficial bacteria, but the water itself is hours old. I have yet to see a fish, or even shrimp, die in this scenario. This would be the equivalent to a 100% water change from the fish's perspective. I do a lot of auto-water changes and some of my tanks get maybe 50% every day. But the changes are gradual and periodic (on a schedule). I think I remember seeing saw a video where in Dan's Fish's new setup, all his fish are living in a scenario where their water is constantly being exchanged, like they are living in a river. When I change water manually, I just use a Python and pump it into the the aquarium, maybe doing 5 to 10 gallons in a few minutes.I try to keep the flow rate slow enough to not kick up all the mulm and annoy the inhabitants. Sometimes I'll siphon water out first, other times I let the water flow out bulkheads at the back. Either way, there is little disruption to the fish other than fresh water. As for vacuuming. I'm in tanks all the time, sucking stuff out. They really get used to me doing this and it doesn't bother them. Now, where I do see fish die is when I'm in the tank, moving filters, moving driftwood, chasing fish with a net, putting them into a catch cup. Every now and then, the stress of this all is too much for some poor fish and later that day, or the next, I'll find that one died of stress. In fact, I see a greater correlation between me disrupting a tank and deaths than I do from water changes where all I do is pump new water in and take old water out. I will fully admit, this applies to fish and I have no experience on how this effects plants.

It's a reticulated sucker-ony-thingy-ma-jig.

I've only kept Salt-and-Pepper Corys. Those were in a large planted aquarium and they bred on their own (started with 2, ended with2 dozen or so). I won't claim to have bred them, since they did everything and I wasn't trying to breed them. @TheSwissAquarist Well it will be a few months yet before they are a shippable age.

I could use a raise at work, but other then that everything's going fine. Thanks for asking. Oh, did you mean with the L397s?? They are doing good as well (or to be grammatically correct, doing well as well, but that sound more redundant). I have approximately 50 of them now! Do I smell a future RAOK brewing?

I just turn the gate valve on mine till it's as quiet as I can get it and don't worry abut how much goes down the secondary drain. The noise in mine is mostly from the water going into the overflow itself from the tank. With a minor amount of noise from the drain. I don't care what anything/anyone says, you're not going to be able to get it dead silent. But you should be able to get it to a point where its just the relaxing sound of water splashing, like that of a gentle brook. I find that if you let all the water go down the primary drain, then the overflow box itself gets too loud. So, you have to let some go down the secondary to keep the level up in the overflow box to muffle the noise there a little. However, too much down the secondary leads to that one sucking in air and taking over the role of noise maker. And, if it's going down the emergency, then yeah, it's all out of balance. You can also adjust how much your pump is putting out and that balances things as well. Tuning it all is really that -- tweaking the flow rate into the tank and out of the tank. You'll get it. It will never be silent. But adjusted correctly, it's the most silent form of overflow filtering. PS . . . sitting here typing this and listening to mine, it could use a little tweaking!

No problem. Took me a little bit to learn how to tune mine when I set it up for the first time. This might also be helpful. https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/content/post/md-2017-08-durso-herbie-bean-animal-overflow

You will never be able to get it dead silent, but it should sound more like a pleasant trickling stream, and not gurgling loudly. The only loud gurgling should come from the emergency overflow, if that ever needs to be used should either the primary or secondary get plugged up. Here is my setup. Sorry it's shot from the top, but I can get in the back of my tank to get a better angle. As you can see, both the primary and secondary on my setup are U's, except the secondary has a small stack with a hole in the top to allow air to draw in. The basic setup looks like this (not my aquarium, but more or less identical to how I've set mine up). The setup below has the emergency in the middle, primary on the right, secondary on the left.

Yeah a rounder belly and a red adipose fin, instead of blue, tells the sexes apart. Male Female