venzi

Ic. So how long does it take to get to juvenile? 6 months?

So I had some platy fry a few months ago and they're all growing up fine, but I just happen to notice that I think all of them are female. I have 14 platy fry and I think all 14 of them are female b/c I notice the triangle/fan shaped anal fins on all them. This seems unlikely that all the surviving fry are female and I was wondering if eventually the shape of the anal fin changes as they continue to grow?

oh shoe shelf. that's a good idea too. thanks.

Quick update: So it's been about a month of owning these otos and no deaths. I've seen the otos nibble at cucumbers now. I leave them for like 3-4 days and suction it out w/ a turkey baster. Interestingly enough, my female bettas are eating the cucumber as well. I've been sprinkling the nano fish food every few days and leaving a wafer in the area they hang out, but I have yet to see them go after the wafer (typically the baby platies and bettas devour it before the otos get to it). There's still a ton of algae in my tank so I'm guessing there's still plenty of other stuff to graze on. Fingers crossed. 🙂

Hi. I have a TitanEze fish stand and was wondering if there's suggestions on how to utilize the bottom space of the stand. I could put like container boxes there but it'd just look cluttered. Maybe I could hang some fabric (like curtains) held on by some strong magnets to hide the container boxes? I'm open to any suggestions. Photos of your setup would be appreciated if you've been able to utilize that space below.

What would be some examples of powered foods to sprinkle into the tank? I heard of pure spirulina powder.

Thank you all for the feedback. Love this community. Cool. Good to know you have had this experience. I'm a little hesitant in using gel foods as a staple due to potential issues w/ clouding the water, but yeah, soilent green will be on my list to try. I guess I'd only feed them soilent green like once or twice a week so it wouldn't be that bad? My otos so far have not been too shy fortunately. I have 5 total and typically a group of 2-3 of them are on my front glass or side glass moving about. I have yet to see all 5 moving together, but I'm sure I"ll catch a glimpse of this as the weeks progress. These fish are total clowns (in the best way possible) and I love their movement patterns. yea that's a great insight.

Hi. I was curious on people's experiences in getting otocinclus to eat prepared foods (veggies, pellets, gels, wafers/pies etc). I got a few otos recently and they don't seem interested in blanched zucchinnis, veggies wafers, pellets or gel food made from pellets (albeit medicated food). I gave them a few days in a breeder box to see if they'd eat any of that stuff and the closest I was able to witness was a few otos sitting ontop of the zucchini (I never observed them eating it but maybe they did while I wasn't looking). So I just gave up and let them loose in my tank which has tons of algae and biofilm everywhere b/c I didn't want to potentially starve them too long. They took for the algae and still have plump bellies so they seem fine at the moment. I heard that sometimes I need to leave the veggie in there for a few days b/c otos like a certain texture (the longest I left a piece of zucchini was like 2 days - other days I just swapped them out in 1 day). Anyways, just curious if anyone has tips on getting them to eat something other than the stuff they graze on the surfaces.

wow. yea that totally makes sense. love how simple the concept is.

So when bubbles pop, they spray bits of water. Anyone have tricks/hacks/DIY mods to contain the bubbles or the splash that bubbles from air stones create so that it doesn't get all over the lid or even outside the tank? I'm thinking there has to be a way to do something w/ like PVC pipes or something. The bubble pop spray is one of the reasons I use a pump to create choppy waters instead of air stones in my main tank, but I do want try to use air stones if I can get around this problem.

Yea I think my problem was that initial female platy I had just wasn't healthy at all to give birth. These latest female platies I added a few months ago seem to be healthy and giving birth no problem. As a quick update. I released the half inch fry into the community tank last night without issues so far. I was pretty convinced that if these other smaller fry were doing just fine then it would be fine as well. Seems like the bigger fish think it's food until it gets closer and realizes it's a bit too big and then just stops. So that's good. It's pretty cool to see these small fry scavenging around the gravel. Definitely brings more life to my tank. Thanks for all your feedback.

So regarding that rule of thumb of "fitting inside the mouth", would a bigger fish try to "chew" or bite off like half the fish? Or would they pretty much want to swallow them whole? So like the head of the fry is the widest part, but the tail is skinnier. So if a bigger fish were chasing the fry around, they could theoretically easily stick up to half of the fish up to the head perhaps, but then realize "oh the heads too big for me to swallow". Would they at this point just release the fish or try to bite off half the fish? My intuition is that they'd spit the fish out (with perhaps some damage to the fry) b/c that's the typical behavior I see when fish try to swallow a food pellet too big. I was also thinking some of these fry now have that orangish color kicking in (since they're red wag tail platies). So if that coloration is a sign of maturity, then at that point, would the adult platies realize they're the same species and not want to eat their own kind?

@nic yea i hear you. I've been meaning to setup another 5g or 10g quarantine/isolation tank, but still haven't gotten around to it yet. Owning a betta sorority has been extra work in terms of isolating certain bettas at times. And their dominance heirarchy seems to change over time as well as certain fish at the top may get unhealthy and such. It's a dynamic structure for sure and I'm at the point now that I don't think I want to maintain a sorority going forward. I'll prob just keep the ones I have and not actively try to expand them. I want to try raising some other fish. I'm currently considering adding some neon tetras when I can and maybe a few otos. I think the advantage of picking a betta from a sorority tank is that you can pick the strongest/healthiest of the bunch whereas w/ cups it's harder to tell. But I think if you plan on keeping just the 1 fish, then it doesn't really need to be that strong anyways, since it wont be stressed from other bettas chasing it around. Anyways good luck to you. If you do decide to get multiple female bettas and you need to separate them, I've had luck w/ keeping them in jars temporarily with a daily water change. I guess the challenge w/ going into winter season is the cooler temps tho.

20g and yes planted. I have a few fake plants in there as well that give pretty good hiding spots.

So after a year of struggling, my platies finally gave birth about 2 months ago. I've managed to save a a dozen (surprisingly over the course of several weeks) and they're doing well in a breeder box so far. I know that I should be giving them a bigger tank to really grow, but I don't really care to grow them that fast nor that big. I'd actually prefer to breed smaller sized platies if I could. Anwyays, so the biggest fry is about 0.5 inch. I'm pretty confident it wont fit inside any of the other fish in my community tank (they're just platies and female bettas), but can anyone give some advice if its still too early to release the 0.5inch fry into community tank? For some reference, the 0.5 inch fry still can't swallow 0.5mm pellets. Also, I noticed today at least 4 other smaller fry (less than 0.5inch) surviving in the community tank somehow. I'm pretty amazed there's still survivors after all this time.

Hi @nic. I've owned a betta sorority in a community tank for about a year now and on ocassion I've moved one of them into a smaller 1g tank for isolation. They have no issues being alone. I've heard that if you do have a betta sorority that having a lot of smaller peaceful community fish can be a calming effect (e.g. when the bigger fish notice the smaller fish as calm, then the bigger are calm as well), but since you're talking about a single betta, I don't think it really matters either way (as far as curbing aggression b/t bettas). So it's pretty much preference at that point.

So I woke up this morning to find that my small female betta died b/c it couldn't get out of a tiny space that's created b/t the plastic breeder box and the aquarium glass. The breeder box is adhered to the aquarium glass with suction cups and creates a gap of a few millimeters. I've known for a while that my fish sometimes gets b/t that space, but they all manage to slither out of there, but i guess this time this betta just really jammed herself into the crevice. I say jammed, b/c the breeder box wall is slightly angled (which is part of the problem i suppose) so fish can get in from the bottom where the crevice is the widest then it continues to narrow as you go up. Anyways, just wanted to share my experience to inform others. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Anyone have recommendations on a different plastic breeder box with a solid bottom (no holes). I think ziss breeder boxes are highly rated, but I wonder if they would have this same problem of creating this small crevice that fish can't escape from? The pic below is my current breeder box

I'm trying to understand if there's a nuance here b/t "seeding a filter" vs "seeded filter". So there's the idea of "seeding a filter" with some existing bacteria colonies from an established tank (through gravel, filter media etc). I'm familiar with this idea of seeding a filter. But what exactly does it mean for a filter to be seeded? My best guess is that the filter has enough variety of bacteria established in it to support the entire nitrogen cycle? It's kind of hard to believe that what takes typically weeks to accomplish when cycling a new filter from scratch to be done in 3-5 days. Am I missing something?

Sweet thanks all for your replies. I guess I'll experiment in a few weeks to see how well it does 🙂

Hi. I have a nearly 1 year old established tank that uses a UGF. I've been wanting to cycle a new filter to use as a backup in a quarantine tank and I finally purchased a new pump/sponge filter combo. Now, if I just leave it running in my established tank, then how long do you think it'll take to get it ready to biofilter 1 or 2 fish? Or will it like never cycle b/c there's just not enough ammonia in the water of an established tank? Thanks.

Anyone know what kind of behavior this is? The red wag tail male platy is chasing the red wag tail female (more like orange color). The male doesn't do this to any other female bettas or platies in the tank. It doesn't seem like a mating behavior. More like territorial.

quick update: i've been having success with using a feeding ring. the platies generally roam around frantically but the bettas stay in a particular area waiting. So when I put the pellets down for the bettas, the feeding ring "hides/breaks the line of sight" for the platies and the pellets. So the bettas can easily have their share. It's pretty cool to see the different feeding habits.

Hi. I own a 20g tank with a few 4 female bettas and 6platies (10 fish total). I was seeking advice on how to feed the fish so that there's an even distribution of food for the fish. I've noticed the platies have quick reaction times (and even amongst the platies there's one or two that are able to get a disproportionate amount of the food). I can drop pellets right next to the bettas and a platy will quickly grab the food even though it was several inches away.

So I wanted to post an update. I've been so busy with life and my family being sick that I haven't had time to do the cleaning recommended by others in this thread. I did try something low effort on my part though. I switched from nano pellets to 1.5mm pellets and cut down on how much I was feeding the fish and within days my tank cleared up to have crystal clear water again. I'm guessing the nano pellets had an effect similar to gel foods or flake foods "muddying" up the water too much. I was able to target feed the betta fish far more easily with the bigger 1.5mm pellets (only giving them like 4 pellets or so) and I could have more control how much I feed the fish. So I'm glad things are in order again. Hope this helps someone else down the line.

Here you go.