tolstoy21

I have a well established red tiger lotus in one of my aquariums. It's a few years old now and seems to have actually propagated itself into 5 plants clustered together by the looks of it. If I wanted to remove and relocate one of the bulbs is it as easy as just pulling it out of the substrate? Or is there anything specific that i should know so I can successfully move one of these in a new aquarium? Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm going to put one together soon and will test out different options For those of you who DIY these, are there any recommendations for spacing out the slits (openings) in the PVC under the substrate? Do you get less draw from the part of the PVC furthest away from the uplift? Can this be accommodate for in the design in any way, for instance like with more openings, or wider opening further away from the uplift? I guess I can run a bunch of different scenarios and find out. I'll just have to find something to put in the water during testing to visually understand the draw strength from different parts of the tubing under different uplift rates, or to just verify that it doesn't matter at all. But I'm going to guess, how substrate compacts and gunks up over time will also affect this in many ways under normal operation. Anyway, always fun to tinker. Gives an aging man something to think about other than real work!

Thanks. I’m in no rush to get the tank established.

I'm looking to build a DIY undergravel filter for a 30 gallon aquarium. Do these require a specific amount of flow to operate efficiently, or can one be operated with a gentle amount of flow provided by an air stone? Would a small powerhead be a more preferable option instead of an air stone? I'm looking to set this up in a betta tank.

Thanks for that perspective. I totally get that and truly appreciate it. As with everything in work and life, the illusion is often more important than the reality.

Thanks Cory. I think i was basically wondering that people considered the cutoff for nigthtime temp. If one is shipping from cold to hot regions, is it advisable to use shorter lasting heat pack, like a 40hr? Or would you go with a 72 or 96 hr pack in most scenarios for for something like three day shipping? Yeah I plan on insulating the boxes with stryo.

For those of you with some experience shipping fish . . . In general, what nighttime/daytime temps at the origin as well as destination cause you to include a heat pack in your shipment? Are there any other things to consider . . . like UPS vs. USPS in terms of heat pack use? When to use 40hr vs 72hr? I'm guessing there are probably a lot of variables involved in the decision, but I'm really just looking for some high-level tips without going down a rabbit hole of endless nuanced circumstances and scenarios. Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can share.

I’ve noticed similar discrepancies between pretty much every test strip I’ve tried and the API liquid test kits. I tend to rely on the liquid kit for ph and the strips for things like nitrate, nitrite, etc.

Get the 190 going! Chances of you experiencing two tanks leaks are probably so astronomically low you’re guaranteed success!

@madmark285 Black substrate, medium lighting and plants is the key to getting the darker black colors out of them. I had them in a tank with crushed coral and caribsea substrate and they had much more silver/gray tones where they are matte black now. They also take a good while to mature before they get rich coloration, like maybe about 9 months.

I bypass mine as well for aquarium water, but only because I want the GH from my well, and my softener system also has resin meant to boost the Ph which is problematic for me and unpredictable in at times (in terms of my aquariums), especially after it’s been serviced by my well technicians.

This topic came up in the past. My personal take is that the sodium exchange will have no effect. I run all my tank water though a nitrate filter whose resin does a sodium ion exchange and is recharged via a brine solution. I have not experienced an issue with that in the past two years. I have crazy healthy plants and happy fish (except the dead ones!). I did do a little little thought experiment and am convinced the sodium is negligible. Pretty sure I put as much or more more sodium in my tanks when feeding baby brine daily. I’ll quote myself here from another thread. And while I’m not an expert on this subject, I just haven’t yet found compelling evidence that makes me believe otherwise.

Quick (ok long) update to this thread for those interested . . . TLDR version -- fish died, fish lived, water changes!!!! adults are amazing looking! Ok now for the longer version . . . . Like I mentioned in the last post, after splitting the Odessa's into two grow out tanks, one of my two tanks began to crash. I exchanged emails with Greg Sage (an absolutely stellar individual who loves sharing knowledge!) and he mentioned that this is the challenge with breeding them, and what his first experiences with the species were like when he began trying to dial in his breeding methods. It would seem that as they start to take on size, their density can cause water issues, and in that 1 - 3 month range, they are still susceptible to bacterial outbreaks in the water. Once a population stars to nose dive, it's hard to get that under control before the whole tank crashes. In one tank, I was losing 3 - 6 fish a day at its worse. And of course, the healthier fish in that tank quickly gobble up the sick ones, which I'm guessing just exacerbates the issue. I still never got a good count of how may fry I originally had, but to take a wild stab to at it, I'd say the tank had at least 100-125 fry, if not more. Now I'm down to maybe 30-40 fish at best. I think I was able to stabilize things with a week's course of salt and sulfaplex. Why sulfaplex? Cause it's what I had on hand. Many of the fish in the tank appear more healthy and active and are more vigorously eating than before, but there are still many fish that are most likely too far gone to recuperate, as I'm still losing some, but not at the same rate I had been. Honestly, its probably still too early to say for sure that I've stopped the carnage! I'm guessing . . . hmmm ... dunno yet. So good news, I still have the second half of the batch in the other tank which appears very active and vigorous and eats ravenously. Hard to tell from my pics, but they've put on a lot of size since last post. Still too early to sex them, as they have none of the magnificent color of the adults. They're currently eating a rotation of Extreme krill and spirulina flake (they go berserk for this food) , frozen daphnia and Fluval bug bites. Meanwhile, the adult males have really colored up magnificently in my tank thanks to the influence of the black substrate. I can't wait to fill my tank with a large school of these! I'm guessing (hoping) that I'll have no trouble finding homes for the remainder. In the end, I'm finding the biggest challenge to breeding these so far has been water changes. Not that the water changes are hard, I just need to find a way to automate much larger daily changes for these grow out tanks than I currently have the setup to accomplish. For the time being, I do changes with a brute can of water and a utility pump connected to a python hook. This hasn't been difficult, but if I were back in the office full time, I'd need a much more automated approach to this. Either way, I look forward to breeding a second generation when the time comes. I'll just have to make sure to be as discerning in picking my breeders as Greg Sage so as to no diminish the beauty of this line. Thanks for following this thread if you've stuck with me and read this far!

The BirdForum.net forum (with is an international forum), has a section in it called "Your Local Patch" which has areas for forum members (birders) to post items of interest geared toward other people in their specific region. So if you navigate into the US section of that forum area, there are subsections for each state. I always liked this concept, because it allows people on what is otherwise a worldwide forum the opportunity to connect and share information with people more local to them. It also allows people coming in from out of the area the ability to connect with locals to ask questions and get information about birding in that specific region of the world.

I would imagine anything would work that doesn't also bug it. I find that the sole apisto in my community tank is fine with just about all my fish (corys, cherry barbs, danios) except my Odessa barbs which are hell bent on swimming around it in circles to force it to 'play'. The Odessas also like to steal whatever he is about to eat the moment he tries to eat it. And this make him extra cranky.

I like and trust the API liquid test kits to a degree, but I have this same difficulty with the colors of the Nitrate and with the high Ph colors. For me, personally, if a test gets me in the ballpark, I'm happy with it. What I look for in a test is that it's consistent between readings in a water sample that hasn't changed. This way when I take two readings I can be like OMG that was light orange yesterday and now it's deep red, something is up! I use test strips more often than liquid kits, and with these, I'm just looking at trends -- how much has the color changed for any given thing since last reading, and in which direction is it headed -- up or down. I stopped trying to differentiate between the shades of color for something like 10ppm vs 20ppm nitrate, or 6.6ph vs 6.8ph. However, if Ph was lightish green and now it's a deeper blue, that's meaningful enough for me. I am eager to try the Coop strips, as the price is good deal for the quantity of strips.

I do drip changes from well water. I have no problems at all with the water changes, but I do make sure to drip in slowly and intermittently during the course of the day because my well water mid-winter is ice cold, and, all year long, has around a 5 Ph straight out of the ground. As an an example of my water change rate, I'll change 1 - 2 gallons in a 20 tall over the course of an hour, have the system stop, then change the same amount a few hours later, in an on going fashion. This generally comes out to 10% - 20% water change over 24 hours depending on tank size. (In a 150 gallon system, I just drip 1/2 gallon per hour all day long). I have both air stones and crushed coral in all my tanks. I have been doing this for over a year with no adverse effects (yet!). However, I do also stage water in a 40 gallon brute trash can, aerate it and heat it for a day so I have water on hand if I suddenly need to do a 50%+ water change, which for some of my grow out tanks I do need to perform. I find having that staged water on hand to be very beneficial because you can't swap out a large volume of water, if you need to, (at least in my scenario) with a drip system. All in all, I would do a quick water param test on your well water moments after it comes out of the ground, as well as after being aerated for a day. This way you know what it looks like the moment it drips into your tank as well as what its values are when aged and stabilized a day. For me, the Ph swings from around 5 to 7 over the course of 24 hours, due to very low Kh. Your situation might be different, but you'll know after doing some simple, quick tests.

You can do a weak bleach dip of the anubias to kill it on those plants. Plenty of tutorials online on how to do this. I’ve done it a few times and works well. But whatever is currently causing it will also need to be figured out or it might reestablish itself. I’m not a guru on the topic of algae, but that stuff plagued my anubias when my tank was settling in.

I find every test kit I use reads different from their competitors’ kits to varying degrees.

hahah, wow, lookit that big mama! I even had one or two old matriarchs like that among my pygmies. Alright, you may have sold me 🙂 Think they'll like a Black Diamond substrate? I find that my apisto cacs show much better color against black substrate vs natural-colored pebble substrate. When I move them from a tank with caribsea pebbles to a tank with black fluorite sand, their dark barring becomes much more pronounced. So if you go with cacs, def do the black sand.

Holding the adults for a month or so in a 5.5 seems doable to me, even if not ideal. However, it you’re moving a spawn in there, or planning on breeding in there, that tank will be very crowded within 2 months, especially with the amount of food going in to feed the new fry and the adults. I would imagine it will be very hard to keep your water params in check. I raise apistos in 20 gallon talls and they can get a bit crowded within 2 months if I have a large spawn. Go with a tote, but maybe choose a lighter colored one or the fry will be harder to see. I know Cory breeds in black ones, but if this your first time spawning them, it might be nice to be able to see them and get used to watching them and knowing their habits and whatnot as they grow. When the fry are first free swimming they are like little poppyseeds, sometimes hard to notice (to my aging eyes) even in regular substrate. As an example for reference in terms of size and quantity of fry-- here is a spawn at 1.5 moths age in a 20 gallon tall. The fry are maybe 3/4 inch each (though I am terrible with estimates).

Absolutely. In fact, I still do this, even though I do have an auto-water change system setup. Some limitations of my current water change system force me to do the rolling Brute can method for a couple of tanks. Unless you have a billion tanks, it's not hard at all to do changes with this method. In doing this however, I would recommend a utility pump to get water in and out of the barrel fast and easy, something like the Sicce ultra zero.

Agree with the air loop. When I started a small breeding setup in my basement, I didn't want to set up an air solution because I didn't' know how committed I was to the whole thing and didn't want to outlay that expense of the pump. However, I found I quickly spent maybe half the price of a the centralized air pump in individual tetra Whisper pumps before upgrading the setup. So in the end, I wound up spending more by equivocating and using individual pumps as an interim solution. I guess I can sell the pump used if I decide to break down the whole setup. On the other hand, heating the space for me would cause the expense of partitioning off and insulating that corner of my basement. I'm fine with the construction aspect of that, but before I put time and money into modifying my basement, I'm hoping to get a longer-term analysis of both my long-term interest and the cost/effort of fish breeding as a hobby. The basement modifications aren't something I can sell used on Craigs List! In any event, every step of my process is building towards the final project so I don't waste more effort and money in things I'll tear down or replace. As with many endeavors like this, infrastructure costs seems to be that first initial "gulp" one has to take the plunge into, or you risk winding up wasting money on interim stuff.

Man, my kid whacked an acrylic tank once and put a crack it in, but it never broke or leaked! He currently likes to spin like as mad man in my office chair about a foot away from the front of my 125. Now talk about anxiety!

Hey man, thanks for the compliment. However, silly typos do still plague the hell out of me (why almost all my posts are marked as 'edited'). 🙂 Just know, your aquarium isn't going to break. And if it does, unless it drowns you or your loved ones in the process, all's good. Whenever I think about it, I'm less worried that my tank will break (knock on wood), and am more worried about the look on my wife's face if it did!