tolstoy21

I don't know that i have a 'favorite', but i really like this apisto.

I like box filters, but not in ‘display tanks’ in the regular living space in my house (because they’re not attractive). One of the things I like about them is being able to use polyfill in them as this helps pull the baby brine out of the water that the fish don’t get to eating if I’ve put too much in. I like them better than hang on the backs because they are used with an air stone. In a lot of tanks I’ll run a box filter for mechanical filtration and a coop sponge filter for bio filtration. Using two filters also gives me the advantage of being able to move one into a new tank I’m setting up so I don’t have to cycle it. What I don’t like about box filters, so far all the ones I’ve tried all cheaply made and easy to break. I’d love to find one with some decent, more durable plastic, and not thin brittle plastic. I’d pay 2x for one that isn’t easy for me to crack in one way or another. So negatives? They look very ‘industrial’ and not attractive. Most of them are made of cheap brittle plastic. Positives? They do their job well and are simple to use, service and not expensive.

End of week 2-ish. I have a better indication of how many fry spawned and survived thus far. I'll say the total number is somewhere between some and more-than-some. This pic shows maybe an estimated 2/3 the total number of fry present. Once they start taking brine shrimp they put on size fast. So far, I've had to deviate from Select Aquatics instructions a tad, but not in significant ways. I didn't have enough vinegar eels ready, so I used microworms instead (and some pinches of Sera Micron). The fry consumed this happily. I say 'happily' because they were smiling and sent their compliments to the chef. (Ok maybe I'm exaggerating a tad). Also, I didn't have enough 'seasoned' tank water from the adult tanks to keep up with the recommended water change schedule. But I do have a 40 gallon brute can where I aerate, heat and age my well water (this has a large media bag of crushed coral in the bottom of it). I performed the vast majority of my water changes from this, changing anywhere from 50% - 75% at a time, and so far so good.

I have reactions to Tetra Color Flakes, but only if I forget to wash my hand and later rub my eyes. Then, ugh . . . . . It's probably the 'fish meal' and 'dried fish protein' they list as ingredients. I've switched Extreme Krill flakes and no allergic reaction. Probably because I do't have a shell fish allergy. Hard to say.

I get those from time to time -- very small, glass-hugging, white worms -- usually in tanks that are cycling, that don't have big enough fish to eat them, or in shrimp tanks. I had got a bunch slithering on the glass in a tank I spawned barbs in. Two weeks later, the barb fry are bigger, hungrier and no more worms. I have yet to experience an issue because of these.

I have the same allergy (and other fish allergies to things like tuna and salmon - can’t eat em without severely puking for hours on end). Luckily none of these allergies cause me distress breathing. That sounds worse and more frightening. Right now my hands are chapped from the cold weather in the north east and the act of washing my hands after touching bloodworms actually gets the teeny tiny bit of bloodworm residue on my fingertips into my chapped skin and my hands itch like mad and turn red. We had a thread on fish allergies a while back and quite a few people on this forum have severe to mild reactions to blood worms. So I feel your pain, quite literally.

At some point in the near future, I'd like to start moving any new, additional neolamprologus multifasciatus to a grow out tank for selling. I've seen people set these up with simple PVC elbows instead of shells to make it easy to net out fish as needed. To that end, quick question -- does one need shells (or the PVC version of shells) in a multi grown out tank? Will the absence of them cause undo stress and harm the fish? (I'm guessing yes?) Does anyone have first-hand experience with this that can shed some light?

I know they are just color variants of the same species, but does this affect their schooling behavior?

Albino anything.

I’ve used Python in my work for a few years now, but nothing hardcore. I mostly use it for infrastructure automation scripts (along Powershell, BASH, etc). I like Python a lot. I have a little experience with C#, ASP, PHP, etc, but I’m not really much of web or application developer. I do more DevOps automation/workflow kind of things. I prefer python when I have to interact with APIs or am putting something together for a Linux-based environment. It’s a great language to learn. Much easier then when I was young trying to pick up C++ !! Good luck with it!

@starsman20 If your tank has been running for a while now and has rocks and substrate and plants, etc., you don’t need a filter, except in terms of mechanical filtration to pull particulate out of the water. But you might not even need that. I have found with my caridina shrimp I got rid of my hob for the same reason, too much flow in one side of the tank. That and it battered my floating plants. After that I ran only an air stone to give the tank some circulation. I found that the shrimp were pretty good at keeping the tanks free of debris in their own and everything my hob was doing wasn’t even needed. The shrimp seemed to appreciate the air stone and went for rides in the upstream of bubbles. It’s hard to imagine they weren’t experiencing ‘fun’. Any time I thought the water looked a tad cloudy, I’d just do a 25-30% water change. That being said, a sponge filter will work great as a replacement for a hob in a shrimp tank as the shrimp will graze on anything that the sponge filter collects on its surface. This is what I currently run for filtration. But I did run in just an air stone for half a year without issue.

The parents were colorless and undifferentiated when I received them over the summer. They were maybe 2 or 3 months old. In the meantime, both males and females exhibit that great classic Odessa coloration. I’ll see if I can snap some pics of those. However, they are very skittish and stay hidden when I’m around. Dithers work with them, but right now, they’re in tanks without dithers and they reverted back to being secretive. My guess is part of them being timid is because their numbers are low currently.

I would try with a true aquarium salt like instant ocean. That’s my plan at least

Well I haven’t tested this out myself yet. So I can’t validate these instructions work and are complete. Actually been planning to take this on in the next months. If anyone else is successful with these instructions in the meantime, please let us know.

@Oded AquaticsI am very interested in taking a crack at breeding these as well. I researched this a while ago and found a single post online that I can no longer find. Luckily I saved that to a txt file and still have it as a reference, so I am going to repost it here. I wish I could find the original author, so whoever you are, thanks for this. (Mods if you feel this is unethical plagiarizing, please feel free to take this reply down, but I cannot find this post anywhere, otherwise I'd just link it). Anyway, this is what i saved for myself for the day I want to take a crack at this . . . (Again, original mystery author, much thanks for the knowledge).

I guess this is about day 7. Just started introducing some BBS today. But there are still a ton of teen-tiny fry hugging the bottom near in and around the mulm. The group shown in the GIF represents the largest free-swimmers who have schooled up above the cover of a small clump of java moss. I raised the water level in the tank to about 5 - 6 inches today (started at 4). I'll slowly increment that to 7 or 8 inches over the course of the week. Still doing water changes three times a day, an hour after feedings. I have those pretty down pat at this point so they don't take much time at all. I use a filter sock over the end of a python so as to not suck up fry, and so far, none have been sucked up that I have found. I discharge waste water into a white bucket and then inspect that with a light to double check that I'm not inadvertently sucking in fry. None so far so I'm going to assume the filter sock works. I usually leave the end of the sock in the tank a for few minutes afterward, and give it a shake in the water, just in case any fry are clinging to the sides. No idea how many fry are in the tank at the moment. 50? 100? The majority of them are teeny-tiny still and masters at hiding.

@Ryan S. I'd love to hear how this works out, if you try it. I also wonder how water resistant these things are, as I tend to splish and splash stuff all over. Please start a tread or post back here if you give them a try, and let us know your experiences positive or negative.

I think Jehmco has a lot of pre-filter sponges available of different coarseness. Just look under their 'sponge filter' section. As other have stated, be mindful to clean the sponge so that your flow rate back into the tank doesn't get slowly out of whack so that you end up with a low sump and a gurgling pump, and possibly an overflowing tank. It's sometimes best to have a secondary emergency overflow in the tank for this eventuality. Place that one higher than the other so it only drains when the water level is at critical overflow level. For that overflow, you'd want no intake filter. In the event of an overflow situation where the emergency overflow takes over, you may have to pick some shrimp out of your sump.

Like others have said, glue it to something -- rock or driftwood -- or use a stainless steel mat, and keep it trimmed to shape. It will groom and grow nicely. I find growing it free-floating, it is unmanageable and grows like what you have in your pic. But fish do love it in that form and its great for fry! The attached pic is an older iteration of my 125 from a few years ago (moss circled in white). That moss patch started from a small scrap that attached itself to the driftwood. I was able to keep it in a nice shaggy mat via routine trimming, when it looked like it needed a hair cut. It starts as a few straggly scraps, but trimming it encourages it to grow more laterally across the surface and fill in. (If you're familiar with boxwood hedges, it's the same principal. The constant pruning encourages them to become thick and form a hedge, and not grow upright and straggly). Added note: This tank was high-tech, meaning c02 and ferts on an autodoser. I did find that moss does grow thicker, easier under those conditions. But I don't suspect high-tech is necessary, and would guess that it just accelerates its growth more than informs its shape. My personal speculative belief is that pruning and available light play a more primary role in informing the ultimate shape of a plant, more than food (though yes, food does play a part. Hungry plants tend to underperform).

Something like the Sicce ADV 10 or a higher priced Iwaki external pump will work. Most likely a basement sump setup will require a more expensive pump solution. I would avoid utility sump pumps as they can leak oil and aren’t meant for potable water. I used one for a water reservoir once and after sitting in the water for a day the water took on a faint fuel or machine oil smell. The only utility pump I trust for aquarium water use (and not waste water use) is the sicce ultra zero, but it doesn’t have super strong head pressure.

At maximum head height you're not going to get anywhere near the stated flow rate, which is typically measured at 0 feet. A lot of pump manufacturers will usually have charts available that will show you the flow rate drop off as you reach maximum head pressure height. For instance, here are the specs for the Syncra Silent pumps (sorry it's in litres and meters, not gallons and feet) but you get the point . In my experience pumping water up from my basement, just to do water changes, it's better to buy more pump than you think you need.

I'd second this as a possible cause. I've had this happen in my tank when the params suddenly changed, like when I ran out of CO2 for a few days. All my crypts melted back to nothing. I've had them melt away to nothing twice (once from sudden param changes) and another time due to a plant unfriendly med. The good news is they do come back, in my experience, if you stabilize the environment. I went from melted mush to having so many that I actually had to throw some in the compost pile when I thinned them out the other week (I know, shameful). People claim that crypts hate having their roots disturbed, and melt in response to that. But I have uprooted mine many, many times and re-scaped, or potted them and moved them to other tanks, and they never melt (all my tanks have approx. the same water params). Maybe they lose a few leaves, but not melt. For me they melt when their environment drastically shifts. Also, as someone else said -- root tabs. They love root tabs.

I bought a cheap plug-in usage monitor to calculate my costs, as seen in pics. This is my usage over 57 days running a 150w Eheim Jager in a 29 Gallon at 78 F, where the current average temp in my basement is about 60 F. After 1382 hours (about 57.5 days) I've consumed approx. 102 kwh. I pay $0.14 per kwh, with an average delivery charge of $0.04 per kwh, roughly. So my usage comes out to about 1.8 kwh a day, and if round my electricity charges to $0.18 per kwh, that comes out to about $0.32 a day to run on 29 gallon mid winter, which is around $9.60 a month, so let's just round up and call it an even $10. Summer will be cheaper because my average basement temp is 10 F higher, but I cant really say the average cost per month spread over 12 months as i haven't measured that (yet!). Also, my math could be off, so someone help me out if I'm flunking math in this post! Most of my tanks are 20 - 29g, with a single 40 breeder. So . . . .doesn't scale well in terms of cost. Obviously your mileage may vary. But if you're in an unheated basement in the North East or Mid Atlantic, you're probably looking at something similar for a similar sized tank. Building that wall to close in and insulate an area of the basement sounds good right about now, no?

I've just been sucking out the 'fresh' water with the worms in it with a pipette and feeding from that. (Well, first I dilute that by squirting it into a cup of tank water). This way, I'm approximately taking out the volume of water I've added, give or take.

Thanks! That's what I've been doing, but then i wondered is vinegar eels have a limited life span in the fresh water over night, or if they go back down in the vinegar solution as needed, or if it just didn't matter.