tolstoy21

I have heard that people have successfully kept Apistogramma Cacatuoides (domestic bred strains, not wild caught) in hard water. Those might be worth a shot.

Water temps apply to some documented species. It definitely applies to many apisto species. I'd also like to play with this and Odessa Barbs, as I'd like to get mostly males from a spawn. I was exchanging emails with Greg Sage a while back and he mentioned someone he knew who was breeding his line of barbs and was having very consistent male-heavy spawns. Greg didn't know what the contributing factor was, but it seems to me that something environmental must have been influencing things for that person (temp/ph/hardness?). For many apisto species temp has the largest influence on sex determination. Lower temps = more females. Higher temps = more males. Ph is also a factor, but not as influential as temp. Lower ph tips the scales towards males, higher ph towards females. Each species of apistogramma is affected to this in different degrees, but the trend appears the same across species. The influence happens in the first month or so of life, not at birth, and it diminishes as time goes by. Not sure how much a fan blowing on the top of a tank will lower the water temp, but I just liked the idea of being able to dial in temps (both highs and lows). And I also like making and tinkering with things as a way of learning new concepts, hence the project. Also, right now, my apisto spawns either come out almost all male or almost all female, and it's driving me nuts. So I'm looking to do some experiments and see if I can even out the ratio, or guarantee all males vs all females (mostly) in a given spawn.

That fish looks AWESOME! Ok so -- CHALLANGE ACCEPTED! I'll keep tinkering with this and will let you know what I come up with. I doubt one peltier will get this 10F down in a 20G, but I'm curious to see how this scales, so I might tinker with running a larger water block/heat sink in the coming week or two. Scaling this up in size will prevent me from using an easy CPU heatsink/fan kit. But putting fans on a larger heatsink should not pose problems. I'll also look to keep this build as inexpensive as possible. You can get a very nice chiller from Bulk Reef Supply, but those are $$$$$$$$. I guess people in the reef world run chillers as a normal practice? That's what got me going the DIY route, I didn't want to spend $$$$$$$$ just to experiment with temps and fry.

@Fish Folk Oh I meant to mention, if you need to drop the temp lower, I think you can use a larger water block with multiple peltiers (enough to match the size of the block). But this would also require a large heatsink. Right now it seems mine has bottomed out at 59F, chilling a 5 gallon bucket of water in a 70F room. This week I'm going to run a test on a 20g aquarium. I doubt I'll ever need to go more than 3F below room temp in a real use case, but I can't say for sure yet that this current setup will work the same given a 4x larger water volume in a room running at 80F (tank water in the room normally sits at 78F).

@Fish Folk Ok, I'll try to break it down a little better. This is the water chilling block. It's quite small, 40mm x 40mm, but they come in other sizes. This is what you cycle the water through using a small pump or power head. Water goes in one side and out the other. The thing that cools the water is the peltier module/chip (shown below). When fed power (12v dc) the bottom side of it gets very hot and has the effect of drawing heat from the top side. Since the chiller is sitting right on top of that (connected by a thin layer of conductive grease), the module also pulls heat from the water cycling through it. If I run the chiller without cycling any water through, the chiller actually will form a layer of ice crystals on top of it. Those two components sit atop a CPU heat sink to dissipate the heat coming from the peltier module. You can get heat sinks in all sizes, with or without fans. I chose one that already had fans with it, for simplicity sake. The peltier has a thin layer of heat conducting grease between it and the copper seat of the heat sink. In my setup I modified the CPU bracket that came with the heatsink kit so it would hold the chiller/peltier in place. I don't love that, but it's what I have for now. I'm thinking of reseating things by using conductive tape and ditching the bracket (I don't trust it's stability). Inkbird! Requires no introduction. If you don't like tinkering or wiring things, you can get the more traditional-looking one that has outlets, but just be sure it can both heat and cool. Those are about 2x as much as the one below and would have me plugging more things into things. I prefer to directly wire the components. AC to DC converter / power supply. The inkbird takes 110v AC and the fans, powerhead/pump, peltier module all take 12v DC. So you use one of these converting power supplies to connect everything (mostly following the inkbird wiring diagram). 110v AC is fed into this from the inkbird, which is plugged into a regular outlet. The inkbird is what feeds or cuts power to the power supply. I won't go into how to wire that because it's in the ink bird manual. That's the best run down I can do of the parts and their purpose. Below is a video showing a build that hopefully gives you an idea of how the parts fit together. Or if you want to cheat and take the easy path, you can buy a pre-assembled one on amazon that's pretty identical to mine--> Chiller on amazon <-- I like to tinker and learn how things fit together so I opted to make one from scratch. Hope this kind of explains things a little bit better.

Ok, so this is still in the experimental stage, so it's still a gangly bit of wires. But the below is what I have so far in terms of putting together a DIY aquarium chiller (many thanks to the internet/youtube for help!) I have been wanting to experiment with dropping temps a tad after some of my fish spawn in order to influence sex rations. I heat my fish room, so, while can drop a heater into a tank to boost temps, I cannot do the same to lower temps a few degrees. This is where the chiller comes in. The setup uses a water chiller (basically a small copper block water cycles through) stacked on top of a peltier module. Functionally, the peltier module gets very hot on its bottom side and, in affect, pulls heat from it's top side. This heat is dissipated via the module sitting atop a CPU heatsink with CPU fans running. The whole apparatus is wired to an AC to DC converting power supply, and this is wired into an inkbird. When the temperatures rise above the desired target temp, the inkbird powers on the peltiier module, the cooling fans kick in, and the water pump starts cycling water through the chiller. So far, I have just been testing with a 5 gallon bucket. I can drop and hold that fifteen degrees lower that room temp (going to try to go lower soon), but in reality all I need to do is drop a 20 gallon tank by 2 - 5 degrees Fahrenheit. There are a few walk throughs on how to build these on YouTube, if anyone is interested. For now, here is my monstrosity! My next task is to make a small enclosure for it (most likely from a small tote) and tidy up the wires and conceal them in a small gang box. Anyway, thanks for reading / looking!

Ph and Gh are unrelated. Ph is influenced by the presence (or lack of) Kh. Ph is a measure of a water's alkalinity. Kh influences whether your water is acidic or alkaline. Gh is a measure of mineral hardness, mostly magnesium and calcium. Kh is mostly calcium carbonate. You can have both a low Kh and high Gh at the same time, as some of us do.

Not sure if this has been asked before. Simple question: What is the most annoying thing your fish do? Ok, I'll start. The most annoying thing my fish do is scramble to hide under the filter as I put it back into the tank after rinsing it out. I have to try to place it back into the tank multiple times so I don't crush any of the silly fishies. But, inevitably, every now than then, when I go to rinse the filter again, I find someone completely pancaked dead underneath! This happens the most in my grow out tanks. Sooooo annoying!

You can borrow mine!

Duly noted. Edited my post!

Well, let me take care of that for you. Hi everyone, have you met Odd Duck? If not, please give her a big welcome!

Well, truth be told, my kid is at band rehearsal and I'm sitting around waiting for him, so i figured I'd kill time on the CARES forum. But yeah, never introduced myself. Hello, my name is @tolstoy21 and I am a fish addict.

I wonder if squirrels could saddle and ride chihuahuas like furry little jockeys.

Would a three way T valve work? Just curious and looking for an expert's opinion. Setup like this --

Ok I have been here a while. But, I just remembered I never actually said 'hello'!! So hello everyone from the state of mind known as New Jersey!

When they are full! I try not to keep fry that are more than a few days apart in age in the same grow out. When hatching Odessa Barbs, the first fish to hatch can actually be large enough to eat the last ones to hatch.

Also called asian rummy nose tetra, Burmese rammy nose, sawbwa barb, etc. etc. I think it's actually not a rasbora, tetra or barb and is just kind of its own thing within the Cyprinid family. I have a bunch of these, they are great fish, and easy to keep. They are fine in a wide array of params and will tolerate water up to 78F (but no higher, as they prefer lower temps).

API drop test. Absolute worst water test to have to perform, but most accurate in my experience if you do all the shakey-shaking correctly, meaning if you follow the directions and don't try any short cuts. And I agree, the colors can be hard to read, but I have yet to find anything I like better and trust more.

Stocking stuffers (and I'm truly thinking of things that will fit in a stocking and not take up the whole thing): Coop fish stickers Sera Micron Root tabs Apisto cave Small pleco cave from Pleco Ceramics (love pleco ceramics!) Ziss never clog air stones Fluval Bug bites Ziss Premium air valves Water test strips TDS pen If want to spend a tad more, a Ph pen from Milwaukee Instruments Guess that's about all I can think of that I would be elated to find in my stocking!

I find these "shrimp nets" to never be of great quality. I get a bunch so I always have a backup. They only last so long. I like the ones that are stiff, since the better ones can hold a box shape while in the water. Great for catching shrimp! Also very useful for catching fish out of a catch cup and putting them in bags. But for netting fish out of a tank -- TERRIBLE!

I use 4 Tbsp of rock salt (natural solar salt I get from Home Depot) and 1 tsp of baking soda per 2 liters. That's been working for me. But honestly, if you ask ten different people, you'll get ten different answers as to what the best ratios are. But, the take away is, if your hatch percentage is less than you want/expect, experiment with modifying the amounts of salt, etc.

If I remember correctly, I ran it somewhere between 81 and 83F and would have a decent hatch rate after about 24 hours. Right now, I use a rotation of three hatcheries so there is always one ready every day.

Yeah I was looking at that thinking that it looked perfect for the vertical walls. Me likes! You could use the matter filter for the wall side in the fry area, just to give you more filter surface for beneficial bacteria and mechanical filtration. The PVC sheet in the front will ensure the flow goes in a single direction, towards the fry chamber.

@TheSwissAquarist You can probably wedge matten filter foam in for the walls and floor of the inner chamber. If you cut it slightly oversized, it should stay in place snuggly. I can't 100% recall what I did. But I think (maybe) it was that, just wedged the filter foam in.

Soak the Purigen in Prime after the regeneration. This should neutralize the bleach. You may also be able to regenerate these in a brine solution, but I'm not 100% sure. When I used Purigen, the bleach soak + Prime rinse worked.