tolstoy21

Does keeping a pleco in the grow out tanks of other fish species help with algea build up and uneaten food? I always find the tanks in @Dean’s Fishroom to look sparkling clean to the point of envy. Unless I imagined this, I feel like he said he accomplished with with BN plecos and some cory cats. (Yes, I know, you also have to clean your tanks and can't rely on fish to do all your work for you). But does this work or at least help? Is it advisable? Am I remembering this incorrectly? Or is this something only the master himself can pull off?

@Tinyfellows What kind of shrimp are you keeping in your nano tank? if they are breeding and you have baby shrimp growing up in there fine and healthy, then I would day, just make sure your parameters don't run away on you. I would suspect Gh is the main culprit driving your TDS up, if your Gh is rising but your Kh has remained steady, but that's just a guess. If your tap water has zero Kh, then a water change could lower your Ph a little temporarily (unless you did a single gigantic water change). Unless you keep a really fragile shrimp species, I'm sure they will be fine with partial water changes. I'd start with your tap water and see if that achieves your goals before investing in an RO setup.

I'd measure the known parameters like Ph, Kh, GH, Nitrates, etc. and not worry about the TDS numbers. i find TDS useful only in very specific circumstances, like if you're remineralizing zero TDS water with a known mineral or additive and want to see how much you've mixed in. In that scenario you have complete understanding and control of the environment. In a tank full of fish, all you know is . . . there's more 'stuff' dissolved into the water this week compared to last. I find the basic measures that most kits measure for to be adequate enough to gain a general understanding if your water is Ok, needs changing, requires amendments, etc. I find crushed coral doesn't move the Gh as much as the Kh. If your Gh is is increasing exponentially, and you don't have anything mineralizing it, this could be caused by evaporation and top off. If the Gh of your tap water is within the range you want it to be in, then just start to reset the Gh with water changes.

If you pull the cave and have success, let us know.

I typically pull the male as soon as I think fry are on the way, or if I see them. I leave the mother in the tank until the point at which the fry become independent of her. I have found that the females are very good care takers of the young fry. They follow her around the tank, and if any stray, she grabs them up in her mouth and spits them back into the school of siblings. I tend to pull the males cause the females can really put a beating on them when the fry arrive and she's in mama bear mode. I don't have any experience with pulling the eggs or fry early, so if you don't have spare tanks to re-home the male and/or female, I can't offer much advice. Glad to hear your apistos are doing well!

Yeah I really like keeping shrimp. I've had crystal reds for some time now, and just started with the orange rilis. I was trying them out in a nano-fish tank (CPD, Chili Rasporas, etc . . . things too small to eat the adults). After I saw how much I liked them, I transferred a bunch to a 10 gallon to grow the population. I figure I'll just move some full-sized adults to tanks with fish and not try to hatch shrimplets in a precarious environment.

No microscope. That's a pic of them with my iphone I put in this post. They are visible 'naked eye' as like tiny white specs fluttering around.

Low to Mid 70s.

The measure of a good seller is how they respond to a shipment gone wrong and make things right. Shipments go wrong; weather is hard to predict; shipping gets delayed, etc. etc. It's just the nature of the game. No state is too far to receive fish from in my opinion, as every state is one day shipping away from the next. Over all, I find I personally get better, healthier fish online than I do in the local aquarium stores near me. For instance, I recently bought 6 chili rasbora locally. They all died in one week. I replaced these with 20 I bought online and havent lost a single one. I think it's all about knowing who the good businesses are with healthy, well taken care of fish, whether they are online or an LFS, and giving those your business. This does take some trial and error to learn, or word-of-mouth. I'd rather pay the shipping costs and have fish that last, then not pay it, and have fish that don't.

With the paramecium cultures obtained from Carolina, I do the following: 1) Fill a jar with dechlorinated water, swirl in a decent pinch of standard, supermarket bread yeast. 2) Boil 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of wheat berries (how many depends on size of jar) for 10 minutes on the stove. 3) drop the finished, cooled wheat berries into the jar. 4) Squirt in a decent sized pipette of paramecium from an active culture. 5) Cover jar with coffee filter secured with a rubber band. 6) Let it sit 2+ weeks at room temp. That's pretty much it. It's super crazy easy and cleaner and less stinky than standard infusoria mixtures. In the end, it's all the same to the fish. But I find that using the paramecium starter + wheat berries creates a cleaner, less smelly product.

Yeah, this is a good point. Infusoria and paramecium are not like vinegar eels or microworms that you can let sit, forgotten for some months and still have a bursting culture. For paramecium, you need to rotate your batches and always be making a new one before your oldest expires. It's kind of a use-it-or-lose-it process. I'm guessing paramecium can last maybe a month. I make a new culture once a week. I have three cultures total going in 2 qt bell jars and rotate through those. But I guess the amount you culture depends on the amount you use on a regular basis. I personally don't need a ton of them.

I purchased paramecium caudatum, item #131554. To be honest, I just picked one, not really knowing which to get either. I'm not sure the fish have a preference. Just read the descriptions of the products and make sure they can be cultured with wheat berries. But maybe that's all paramecium? I'm certainly not an expert. I just know how to get them to multiply.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I need to net her out and move her to my shrimp only tank, cause there are a lot of hungry fish in the aquarium she's in right now. I just started with the orange rillis and don't have many, so every baby is precious!

I never had luck with infusoria either, so I went the Carolina paramecium route. I find it waaaaaaaaay easier to work with. Super easy to culture and very easy to start a new culture from an old culture. Here's a batch that's a little over 2 weeks old. Some of the murkiness in there is sediment I just disturbed to take this shot, but you get the picture (pun intended). It's teaming with paramecium.

Just thought I'd share cause why not? I think this is the most berried shrimp I've seen in any of my tanks yet.

I start selling them once they are roughly 1 1/4" - 1 1/2". This is around three to four month timeframe, depending on how many fish are in the grow out tank competing for food and how many times a day they are fed.

Breeding these is pretty easy in my experience. Put a male and female in a tank with an Apisto cave, a nice amount of plants and driftwood and some Indian Almond leaves. The water should be on the softer side, but I believe others have bred them in hard water. Water temps in the upper 70s. Rotate some frozen foods into the weekly feeding and add a small amount of baby brine or vinegar eels each day so the parents know there is live food available. Or, sometimes you don't need to do anything and they just breed anyway. Things to know: The female can get quite nasty once the fry are free swimming, even to her own mate. And, sometimes, you put a pair together and they decide to never start a family for their own personal reasons they haven't yet shared with me. 😉 Good luck on any future breeding attempts!

My original Odessa breeding thread I still have quite a few of these guys left. Going to do another round of breeding soon. Love these fish.

I've bred Greg's Odessas. I have a thread about it here somewhere. I followed Gregs methods closely and had a large spawn, but lost 1/2 of that about 3 months in due to poor water quality issues. So high level take aways: Odessas are fast and rambunctious and eat voraciously. They will no doubt gobble up all their eggs and fry if given the chance. They are egg scatterers, so the eggs need something to fall into like rocks or marbles, or through a grate, so the adults cannot get at them The newly hatched fry are TINY. By TINY I mean like detritus worm TINY. So, you need tiny food like infusoria or paramecium in the very first few days. The fry wont make it without being fed at least three times a day. The fry, up till about 3 1/2 months, are susceptible to poor water quality. Here I don't mean high nitrates or ammonia or anything we measure for (though having low levels of those helps). What I mean by this is bacterial blooms indicated by cloudy water. Greg talks about this in his videos, and it's true. I lost probably close to 200 fish in a few days. The tank will just nosedive and there is no pulling up from the eventual crash. WATER CHANGES .. LOTS OF THEM. . LARGE ONES. .. see above. How you breed them is probably an individual choice, but all those factors above are the ones I'd imagine any breeding attempt/setup will need to deal with. Hope this helps.

I’ve also seen that but never really had problems with the otos getting food as well. I tend to drop food in numerous spots to make sure everyone has access to some.

A school of otos plus a Siamese algae eater is a good combination. I have these in a 125 and they do a great job. The SAE is really good at gobbling up things like hair algae. One SAE is plenty in my experience. My tank is almost all barbs but none of them are tiger barbs. But they are a rowdy bunch still and my SAE is fine. It’s a few years old at this point. Make sure you have food for the otos and SAE to supplement them once they clean thing up. I feed mine Repashy soilent green a few times a week in addition to whatever food they scavenge during normal tank feeding.

Second that.

If you're not dealing with a basement and concrete walls, I would take Cory's advice and just frame and insulate it how one would normally frame and insulate a regular room. I'd go with faced insulation in the walls and ceiling because its much easier to install. Then sheetrock, tape, spackle, etc. as you normally would. Maybe go with a moisture resistant sheetrock like one would use in a bathroom. Maybe, if you want overkill, put a moisture barrier between the sheetrock and insulation, but you probably don't even need that. In the end, I'd not over think it cause in my experience building stuff, overthinking leads to overspending and complications during the build that you probably don't need the hassle of dealing with. The amount of extra effort and work doesn't always pay the same dividends in the efficiency you might later realize.

I'm all for option #2 as well, but mostly because if you have plumbing behind the tanks for water and drainage, you'll see all that as you open the door to the room. So from an aesthetic standpoint, I'd choose #2. But also, from a function purpose, #2 seems like it would be easier to get things in and out of the room without needing to navigate past a rack against the left wall.

Totally fine, in my experience. I keep my breeding tanks around this temp.