tolstoy21

Yeah I was considering that. My water quality should be high. I've just had this mother Zebra Acara eat the last 6 batches of eggs she's laid. I'm trying to determine if she eats them cause they fungus over, if they are unfertilized, or just because she doesn't know any better. I'd like to spend the next few days observing what happens to the eggs outside of her care. And, of course, get some fry in the process.

Thanks! I was wondering if it was ok to leave them in up till hatching.

This is my first attempt at hatching eggs outside of a mother's care so I need some guidance,. How long does one typically let the eggs sit in methylene blue before clearing that from the water?

@Jazz Pizza One of these days I'm going to make my dream tank and its going to have Kessils!

10 UGF hands down. I'd not go with anything smaller. More water the better as you'll have more stability. If you don't do a UGF, then do a simple sponge filter. Sponge filters are nice as they give more grazing area. As for shrimp color, I'm partial to red, blue or orange.

Cory's suggestion is the correct one. Just run a valve full open with an airline attached, then stuff the end of that airline down somewhere that it can't be heard. The towel and air stone will further muffle the sound. As for the fishy smell . . . . where is the air pump located? If the smell is concentrated in a certain part of the room and that's where the pump is, perhaps it's pulling that in and spreading it throughout the room in a way that you now notice it, whereas before the smell was just in that specific spot so you didn't notice it as much? Just a thought.

Unlimited budget you say? I would get a couple Kessil Tuna Suns!

The answer is 'it depends'. For caridina shrimp I remineralize RO water to their specifications. For a few other species I do use straight RO water (with leaves and peat added) because they are true blackwater diehards and will only spawn in a Ph down in the 4's in water with very little mineral content. I have well water with 0Kh (my Gh is about 9), so my Ph naturally sits in the low 6's. This is fine for the majority of the fish I breed, and one of the reasons I try to stick with fish that appreciate acidic water. However, if I had a different water supply to work with that had a higher Ph, then I would go the RO + re-mineralizers route (or RO cut with tap water). So whether or not to use RO, and whether not to re-mineralize is situational.

When I had what one considers a 'planted tank', meaning thoughtful placement of specific plants in order to create a beautiful aquascape (instead of just plants in tanks -- which is what I mostly have now) -- I had many frustrations with algae. A combination of fish I found VERY helpful were true Siamese algae eaters (they tend to pick at and keep the stringy green algae at bay) and a school of otocinclus (they tend to scour the leaves surfaces for biofilm, diatoms and other algae that tend to coat surfaces. If your light is adjustable, try cutting back the intensity. I start with my lights at about 50% and then increase them as the plants fill. If you can't adjust it, then see if you can raise it a bit. You want a nitrate level somewhere closer to 20ppm, give or take. Nitrates are essential to plant health and growth.,

Equilibrium will only contribute to GH and do nothing to the KH that I have ever experienced during use. It's very good for plant heath, especially if you have no mineral hardness in your water at all. However, be forewarned, it will make your water cloudy for a day or two, but that cloudiness will go away. Personally love Equilibrium and have used it a lot. Tannis are good and beneficial and will tend to acidify the water a bit (but probably not enough to put a dent in your Kh). So, yeah, hold onto to those! I would skip using Purigen unless you were using it to specifically remove something from the water that you knew you did not want in there. I think people tend to use it to create crystal clear water and remove any tea-colored tint from the water that might be caused by tannins leaching from new driftwood (if they find that unappealing for the aesthetic they are going for). I know Purigen will remove more than just tannins from the water column, but I'm not sure what else to be honest. I've used it a few times and it does produce some pretty crystal clear water. EDIT: Here is the description of it at the Seachem site: So it doesn't not appear to be an ion-selective resin like one would find in a water softener or other type of DI resin. Instead it seems to target larger compounds and wastes.

I have buckets and bins full of Java Fern. So much I don't even know what to do with it all (hence the buckets and bins). I barely feed it and it gets pretty mediocre light and still grows more prolific than I know what to do with it. I don't have any substrate and often just let it free float in tanks. So, I am going to second what others have said about it perhaps transitioning from emerged to submerged form. I don't know that this is in fact what's going on with yours, but I keep java fern because it's the one plant that I find fool proof even when neglected (aside from some anubias and a few potted crypts, it's the only plant I keep). As for the 'plantlets' forming on leaves. I keep hearing that they form when the plant is stressed, but I find very healthy-looking plants with tons of little (and big) plants on them. You don't have to clip the plantlets off if you don't want to. I often leave them attached to leaves floating around in the water and they grow fine. If left attached to the 'mother plant' they will grow large and eventually break off on their own. I am guessing this is how the plant propagates -- by sending its progeny downstream where they catch onto wood or settle in a snag in the rocks and start the next generation anew. Below is a fraction of what I have accumulated. I'm starting to run of of room for it! (I hate to admit that I composted a whole 5 gallon bucket of it last year). All of these started as wee little plantlets, so save every plantlet if you can and eventually you'll have a java fern forest. Keep in mind that Java Fern is pretty slow growing (my accumulation of it has happened over a few years). But it does creep up on you if you let it. One day you have a few little plants; a year or so later you look into your tank and think: 'Wow look at all that. When did that happen. I'm going to have to thin it out!" I also store some of it in the waste-water bin of my auto-water change setup.

@PerceptivePesce I probably do a 3-to-1 ratio, but honestly at this point I kind of just guesstimate it and go by consistency. I feel like the 3-to-1 ratio make the resulting food more gelatinous and hold together longer under water than 2-to-1, but I could be VERY WRONG there, and I find that different Repashy types gel up differently. Some, like Community+ and Igapo Explorer, seem looser and more crumbly to me, while Soylent Green and Bottom Scratcher seems more thick and hold together longer/better under water. But maybe I'm mixing them wrong or mis-remembering my experience of the different products? I'll fully admit that could be the case.

I make mine one empty jelly jar (a pint-sized jar) at a time. That lasts me about 2 weeks.

Nevermind. Found it out on my owns! 2 years (about). There is a expiration date on the canister.

Does anyone know what the shelf life is of Repashy while stored in its powder form?

The male has a twinge of yellow on his underside it looks like to me. It's more like a faint wash. More often, I find that she's the boss, in apistos as well as other things in life!

Sounds like mating behavior. They are flirting. Are the female's yellow tones more vibrant now? Does the male exhibit some yellowish tones on his underside? Two fish of the same gender will not engage in this type of activity, meaning if you had two males, you would probably not see this type of posturing.

I often rubber band them to lava rock. Looks not so great, but I find it easier than thread, and once the anubias grabs hold you just snip off the rubber band. I hate using super glue, but that works decently as well.

If you put egg scatterers in there, put a decent layer of java moss on the bottom so the eggs are a little more hidden and less likely to get eaten by the parents.

I've had good experiences with purchase from this site -- https://manzanita-driftwood.com/

You can double stack the RO filters in what's called a 'water saver' configuration. The waste water from the first membrane discharges into the second RO membrane housing and gets a second pass at being cleaned and turned into RO. This will double your RO output and cut your waste water output by 50%. Another benefit of this is that it cuts the time to create RO water in half. The only drawback is that it will increase the TDS coming out of the unit, exhausting your DI resin a little quicker. So if your post membrane water has a TDS of 10, it will now have a TDS of 20 (as an approximation) before being fed into any DI canisters, if you have them.

@Craig Halstead Ok, so I have no definitive, scientific answers to this question other than to say, in my experience, oak leaves will lower the Ph. By how much, hmmmmm . . . . didn't take notes. I would say I was around a Ph in the low 5's and then added oak leaves and brought my Ph down into the low 4's. The environment is 100% RO water with a large box filter filled with Fluval peat pellets. I added the oak leaves after running with peat and RO for a few weeks. So altogether, I think I lowered it by 1Ph. I'm guessing how much impact the leaves will have depends on how much buffer is present in the water. In my case there was zero Kh/Gh to start with. How many leaves did I put in? Um . . . . I just threw a couple handfuls in, didn't count or measure. I'd say more than a dozen, but less than two dozen? How did I prepare them? What's 'prepare'? I literally went out in my yard, grabbed a bunch of clean looking, dry oak leaves, took them inside and then dropped them into the tanks. They definitely stained the water with that tea-colored blackwater after a week or so of steeping. But, this was what I was after, in addition to tanking my Ph. After all that was done, one of my pairs of Apistogramma Abacaxis spawned so I guess it did the trick. So I would say, based on my very empirical and non-scientific observations, oak leaves work, but won't work alone depending on your existing water source and how far you wish to drop the Ph.

That's where my apisto nerdery ends! Dunno offhand. But I was able to find this old breeding report on them -- https://cichlidae.com/article.php?id=266

Ha, I'd hardly consider myself an apisto nerd. I just tend to like them and have quite a few different species of them. But, I'll take that as a compliment. @Stephen Zawacki Did you search for them under the name 'Rotpunkt'. I think they more commonly go by that name.

For those interested, thought I'd post the progress I've made in building out my fishroom. I guess this project has been going on for maybe 2 or so years now. But I finally feel like I am in the final stretch! My finally (required) tasks are as follows: Run plumbing/drain for new wall Install a few GFI outlets (well one GFI and then some normal outlets upstream of that) Run dedicated circuit for heater build racks WAIT FOR NEXT PETCO SALE AND GET SOME TANKS! Anyway, this is what I've gotten done over the course of the last handful of weekends. Thanks for looking! Just a refresher on what the completed half of the room looks like . . .