AllFishNoBrakes

Panda Angels spawned. Again. These will probably become a midnight snack for the Pleco’s. Not expecting any eggs still here when I get home from work tomorrow. Totally fine by me! I need to focus on moving the fish I already have. Speaking of, taking ~15 Panda’s to the LFS on Thursday. Gonna feel good to once again have my stock available to other hobbyists and continue to stack the credit. Still really diggin’ this blackwater tank. Can’t wait to get some fish in here! I’ve contemplated opening up some of my stock to the other LFS that I frequent often that typically has the fish I’m looking for. The problem is, when I’ve inquired about bringing them fish for store credit they’ve said, “Ya, for sure! Hit us up on Facebook or just bring them in”. I just simply can’t bring myself to use Facebook, and I also don’t want to spend the time to bag the fish and bring them in without negotiating prices and walking in blind on both sides. Decisions, decisions… Life is all about decisions. I’ve thought about bringing them a “sample”, to get the relationship going, but then I just have to circle back and do it all again the following week. Maybe that’s worth it, though… I guess it couldn’t hurt. Maybe I’ll hit them up again when I need some Hikari mini bloodworms and am forced to go into the shop. What would you do if you were in my shoes? Continue to work with the shop that’s pretty much guaranteed to take my stock whenever I have it at my convenience, and stack the credit and wait until they have what I’m looking for? Or do double the work and start to build a new relationship? I’m curious what you would do. Hope you’ve all had a great week!

This might be a controversial statement, but do you have a TDS meter? I know TDS isn’t an “accurate measurement” because it doesn’t explain what the TDS is comprised of, but it might be able to back up what you’re seeing. I know that my TDS out of the tap is 20-40, and my most “hard” tank comes in at about 80-100 TDS, and the ACO test strip also reads pretty soft. I might be crazy, but I feel like my test strip looks about like yours when it comes to GH. I could be wrong, but it definitely doesn’t look like the test strip @Ninjoma shared with off the chart readings. If I was a betting man, I would place my money on your water being on the softer side, and not the off the charts hard side.

Fritz Complete. Because it’s cheaper than Prime.

Definitely bladder snails. Nothing to fear in my opinion; I welcome them and can’t imagine running my tanks without snails. Agreed with the others that they will reproduce to the amount of food available. Lots of food = lots of snails. Again, nothing to fear in my opinion.

Found a couple nice Anubius today so I planted them up: 2 Nana and 1 Congenesis. One of the Nana tubes actually had 2 rhizomes so another Anubius is cool with me. The only thing this tank is missing is some fish!

Don’t overthink it. Bloodworms with snails when you can pull some should be just fine, at least in my experience with my 6.

Hey @GCH. Getting a male and female betta to cohabitate, especially in that small of a space will likely be a big challenge. I’ve only ever seen people have them together to breed them, and even then the female is removed once breeding has stopped. Best of luck to you!

@FLFishChik I’ve had my peas for about a year and a half now. I have 6 in a 29 gallon. Sounds like we do something similar as far as feeding. Mine get bloodworms and then live snails a couple times per week. Based on my personal experience, you’re probably a couple of months out until having the snail population you’ll want/need to feed snails 3 or 4 times per week. These little murder beans can eat a lot! Even if I feed bloodworms, and then drop in 10 snails in a jungle of PSO there’s 10 snail shells on the substrate before the next nights bloodworms. I would put the snails in different tanks and just feed them well and let them multiply. It’s gonna take some time, but when you have “too many” then pull some out with a little bit of tank water in a Tupperware and feed them out. When I do maintenance I’ll just take snails out of my tanks as they’re on the glass or whatever and then that’s my snails for the week. Definitely takes time to build those snail colonies to do that all the time though. I’ve found my Peas to be probably my favorite fish I’ve kept and they’ve been easy, for me at least. Holler if I can be of assistance!

@nabokovfan87 Appreciate the kind words!

What up Nerms? Been a rough couple of weeks over here in this neck of the woods. I found out my cat that I’ve had for 12 years and my whole adult life had 2 types of cancer. A couple of days after confirming and finding out, things took a turn for the worse and I had to make the incredibly difficult decision to put him down. Still doesn’t feel real, yet is incredibly tough daily at this point. I’m glad he didn’t suffer for long, but I miss my little buddy. Last week I skipped maintenance cuz honestly I just wasn’t feeling it. I needed a break and knew the tanks would be fine skipping a week. I tested water for the first time in a long time and sure enough the tanks were exactly where I expected them to be. Jumped back on the maintenance game today and water changed everything. Really need to trim out some PSO from a tank, but that can wait until next week. Gonna place an ACO order when the dual outlet air pump goes live. Gonna order 2 of those and make the final adjustments and organizational tasks that I started 4-6 weeks ago at this point. Need to pick up those pumps and a few foods and I’ll be set for a hot minute again. Blackwater tank still crushing it: Need to hit up the LFS with some of the Panda Angels I have ready to go so I can move the next batch over and free up a tank to finally quarantine some fish for this bad boy. Cheers, Nerms. Hope your last couple of weeks have been better than mine!

I’m gonna switch up the gears here. The iconic Blink-182 trio reunited at Coachella for the first time since 2014 on Friday night. My favorite band of all time, and here’s my favorite song(s) by them: I have tickets to see them on their North American tour this summer and I’m STOKED. Got seats on the floor, and simply can’t wait to see the trio back on the stage. Travis survived a plane crash, Mark beat cancer during a global pandemic, and Tom is back in the band after quitting twice. This band/show/tour/new album shouldn’t be happening, and I’m soaking it all in. Cheers to pop punk vibes from the late 90’s and early 00’s 🤘.

For years I meticulously tested every tank, every week, using the API Master test kit. For a super long time, my results were always the same, so these days I dip an ACO test strip every 6-8 weeks and confirm that everything is still the same. I made the decision early on to not alter my water and work with fish that do well in my water. I also made the decision early on to be as consistent as possible to give my fish a stable environment. Considering I try to do the same thing every single week my parameters have been stable for years and I test with strips every once in a while to confirm what I already know.

Me personally, I would rinse the rocks off as much as I could to get all the dirt and debris off. Then, I would spray hydrogen peroxide and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. Then, rinse it off again and you should be good.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear. No need for dechlorinator after hydrogen peroxide. If you bleach the rocks you would want to follow up with a couple soaks in heavy dechlorinated water.

Hydrogen peroxide or bleach (and then a bunch of dechlorinator after the bleach) are probably the safest methods. Hydrogen Peroxide is safe and I believe any residue just breaks down into water and oxygen. I’ve bleached some things in the past so I feel comfortable with that too. Some people will say to boil rocks, but other people have reported that boiling rocks has made them explode. Definitely don’t wanna play with that for me personally!

I personally think the Blue Tiger Orange Eyes are dooooope.

Personally, I would add ferts for the plants. Will also help grow algae, which is what you want. All my tanks get 10 hours of light. Snails: Do you have an air stone going? What kind of snails? If I was going to put snails in a tank that’s not cycled and no filtration I would only use “pest snails” and would want oxygen going. Best case scenario they help season your tank and bring it alive. Worst case scenario they die from starvation or poor water quality and if that happens I’d rather lose a couple pest snails than say Nerite or Mystery Snails.

Here’s what I did with my shrimp tank, what I’m currently doing with my girlfriends shrimp tank, and what I would personally recommend from my experience with shrimp: -Leave the filters/sponges/whatever to season/seed where they already are. Shrimp have a very minimal bio load, so throwing the sponge(s) in when you put the shrimp in would be recommended. Then, you don’t risk the bacteria dying off with nothing to eat. -Set the tank up as you want it, including hardscape and plants, and then wait like 6-8 weeks before adding shrimp. You WANT algae, you WANT biofilms, you WANT life in the tank to help sustain the shrimp. Let the tank come alive and get “dirty” before adding shrimp, and the shrimp will thank you for it. Over time, your shrimp will clean up that tank, but you want all that stuff mentioned above for an alive/seasoned tank to sustain the shrimp.

Thanks! I wish I could get a good picture showing how dark the tank looks in person. Especially next to all my bright, planted tanks. Idk where you’re located, but I got bulk IAL’s on Amazon for what I felt was a fair price, and a box of like 139 botanical pieces off Etsy. Together they were ~$50, but that box of botanicals will last for a looooong time. Blackwater is definitely different than all my other 13 planted tanks, but I’m digging it. Some wood, some tannins, boom bam you have a great looking tank.

Here’s my blackwater tank. It started as a shrimp only tank about 3 years ago. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been loading it up with botanicals and tannins: In person it looks much darker. I’m really diggin’ this tank and trying something new has been really fun. Here’s my dirted tank. It’s about a year and a half old: The Pearl Weed has taken over, but I love it. Agreed with this! For this reason, I personally wouldn’t combine both styles of tanks. For my blackwater setup I’m gonna go with a couple Anubius and call it a day. For now, I’m just digging the tannins and seeing how the shrimp and snails react to the new environment. When I find some nice Anubius locally I’ll snatch them up and add them in. When it comes to your tank, do whatever you want! That’s the beauty of keeping an aquarium; you can do exactly what you want with it. I also think that if you’re going for a light tint in your water, that won’t block out as much light and then maybe the aquasoil/dirt makes more sense. I’m personally going for a dark tint to the water.

I have 6 Pea Puffers in a 29 gallon tank. I’ve had them for about a year and a half. I believe that the snails will sustain them for a certain amount of time, but eventually they’ll hunt down all the snails and will need supplemental feeding like bloodworms. Mine get bloodworms daily, and then snails on top of that 3-4 days per week. One cube of mini Hikari bloodworms gets split between 6 tanks daily, and then I’ll drop in 7-10 Ramshorn snails 3 or 4 times per week and the snails are gone by the following feeding of bloodworms the next day. Pea Puffers may be small, but don’t underestimate the amount they can eat on a daily basis if you let them.

Agreed that a 10 gallon would be much better. Substrate should come in today for my girlfriends 10 gallon shrimp tank. Cheers to new 10 gallon shrimp tanks!

Yo yo, Back to work this week. Gotta love it. Tanks are crushing though. Water changed everything and it definitely feels nice not having the (2) 2.5 gallon tanks lingering over my head for the first time in a long time. Also, reset all the air stones on all sponge filters. Boiled some more Indian Almond Leaves and a couple other botanicals I had my girlfriend pick out this time Cooled them down and then threw them in the tank. Really diggin this tank, and the Pothos from the tank above it can finally be laid across the top! Once it reaches the end I’ll probably take another cutting or 2 and try it in a couple other tanks. Dirted tank got another massive trim. Also gonna start putting a few drops of Easy Green in here for the Red Root Floaters. They’re not doing so hot and I believe it’s because there’s 0 nitrates in this tank. The whole time, up until today, it has been a “no ferts” tank. However, I want those red root floaters to keep crushing cuz I wanna see them flower! I’ve seen what dirt and a year and a half can do, so now I wanna see if a few drops of fertilizer can make those red roots flower. Also added a floating right in the center of the tank to keep the rrf pushed to the sides to not just get straight blasted with the light. We’ll see how it goes. Also need to scrub the glass again after the trim as it’s a little hazy. Panda Angel male and the all black female spawned. Being total jerks to everyone in the tank so I pulled the spawn as soon as I could. At least they used an old leaf that needed to be pulled anyways for once. Until next time, Nerms!

Black poster board and scotch tape. Seriously. That’s what I did.

The one thing I’ll add is that I wish I put plywood UNDER the rack to spread out the weight more evenly than just on the feet of the rack