Scotts Guppy Haven

Keeping up on the maintenance isn't the issue, it is how long does it take you to do the maintenance is the problem. If it takes 2 or 3 hours just to clean the tanks and do a water change then that may be too long. With the 14 tanks I have going right now and I do not have an automatic water change system, I still do the 5 gallon bucket to get rid of the water because my hatchery is in my spare bedroom (photo's in this post) it only takes 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to clean the bottoms and do a water change. All the tanks have a box filters that I clean every 2 weeks and those only take me about 1 hour so mine is at the size that I like right now.

I totally agree with this statement.

I use to have sword tails a long time ago and loved them, if I was to get back into them again I would get the wild type.

That is a very nice betta, I love the blue in the tail

Here is my rack system, it is an L shape with 8 feet on each end. I have it setup as a small operation right now but big enough to expand more tanks in the future if I need to.

I agree with what everyone has said about this topic, it can be very tough with a full time job, or school or anything life has to offer. Impulse buying is a very bad habit to break, trust me we have all done it. This can lead us into diving in head first into this hobby and getting into trouble with too many tanks for sure. Come on lets hear from as many people as possible on this, I know there are a lot of stories out there about this.

I am very curious on how many people this affected and what you did to enjoy the hobby again. In my opinion there is a problem with too many fish tanks, it takes the hobby from enjoyable to a lot of work and less enjoyable. When I was heavily into breeding in the early 90's I had over 85 tanks ranging from 10 gallons all the way to 125 gallons. After I would get home from my full time job I would spend up to another 6 hours a day just taking care of all my tanks. This caused me to get burned out of the hobby and definitely not enjoyable anymore. I quit breeding for a long time but always kept a tank or two as community tanks. Just 2 years ago I decided to get back into breeding again and went with IFGA fancy guppies since I have always liked them. Before setting my racks up for this I made myself a promise that this will be a small hatchery setup so this won't be considered work again like the past. My current setup will hold a total of 8 2-1/2 gallon tanks, 16 5.5 gallon tanks and 20 10 gallon tanks. I know that would be a total of 44 tanks if my stands were fully filled. I only have a total of 16 tanks set up on my stands, the rest would be for future expansion if I wanted to or needed to. With only 16 tanks being only 5.5 gallon and 10 gallon tanks right now makes everything easy and doesn't take long at all to clean them and do water changes. I wanted to keep this fun for me and not feel like a second job. Just wanted to know if other people temporarily got out of the hobby because they had too many tanks and it was too much work and when you decided to get back seriously into the hobby again how many tanks did you down size to?

Welcome to the forum, you definitely have a good variety of fish for sure.

You may have 2 females, look at the breeding tubes when they come out and if they are both blunt at the bottom you have 2 females. If one is blunt and one is pointed then you have a male and female. If you have a male and female sometimes it takes 3 or 4 tries to get it right if this is a brand new breeding pair.

From all the video's that I have watched for this and cardinal tetra's it seems like the water chemistry is the vital part of having success.

Yes you should be hatching brine shrimp.

Depending on how old the eggs were when you took the picture will tell the story. If it has been 24 hours when you took the picture then yes the eggs were fertilized. But with the other eggs already showing fungus it may affect the fertilized eggs if you don't remove then and put them into a container of some sort with an air stone and a anti fungal of some sort in it.

I only strain I never rinse, by not rinsing it will not hurt anything.

What you are saying that you have in the tank sounds like it is definitely not overstocked. Always remember if you think your tank is close to being overstocked frequent water changes will help with that.

I would try to either give them to a pet store or sell them to a pet store.