Comradovich

I honestly think that might work our perfectly for you. Let me know how it goes.

I wanted to add an update. My phone camera is having trouble focusing on the little guys, so this will be without a pic. I have 7 fry as of last night's count. From a batch of between 40-50 eggs. Today I can count six easily, I suspect one is off in the Süßwassertang hiding, which may also hide a few more fry, as more than 7 eggs may have hatched. Turn around time from wigglers to fry is only about two or three days. The fry already have two distinct pectoral fins, and their bellies have filled with something brownish green. This tells me they've finished the yolk sac and started eating... something. While I know the usual fry requirement is "free swimming", these are pleco fry. I think I'm going to have to settle for "has distinct finnage" and "is vacuum sealed to the plastic in a completely different area than last time I looked". I say "something" in their bellies because I have two candidates for it. The tank water moving through the breeder box has added a little bit of mulm and tannins, which seems to be giving me a bit of brown diatom algae. Nothing to worry about, I just used a bit of airline hose to siphon it back into the main tank. They could be eating that algae. I also gave them a bit of Repashy "Super Green" when I fed the adults. Tried to estimate about what they could handle during the night, with a little overage. Idea here being that if they did eat it, then I wanted them to have a little bit of waste food by morning so I'd know they'd eaten all they could. I blew a bit of repashy dust into the tank area while they were still working on yolk sacs, with the idea being that I'd train them to take gel food ASAP. Take a dry pipette, dip into jar so just the tip is coated, pop into breeder box hole and pump a few times... The mixed Repashy gel looks like it's been stirred up quite a bit, but it could have just decayed from gel form. As it never lasts the full night in my tank, I have no way of knowing which. I'll use a pipette to get the leftovers out of the breeder box and give them another fresh bit of gel later on tonight. I have walter worms and banana worms arriving today, so we'll see if they like live foods. If instead they're going for Repashy though, well happy days ahead. A fry I can raise on Repashy is straight up "easy mode". If your Local Fish Store doesn't carry Repashy, you can buy some here, and there's probably an Amazon fulfillment warehouse with a few dozen jars on a shelf within 200 miles of wherever you are right now. It's a dry good, so it ships cheap and relatively fast. {Edit} okay, there's #7, and he seems to be working his way across the plastic closer to the Repashy blob. Guess I have my answer on the food. Dang, these things are easy.

Yeah, sorry about that. I got the impression from your post that you were going to ask if I could go gather some for you, and my answer for most of this year will be: "Not for all the tea in China". But then I got to thinking that maybe this answer would sound a bit mean, so I figured I'd better provide my justification. That also included the Brine Shrimp tangent and by the time I was done I'd run out of steam to answer about the jar. What I meant was that the parameters in a new jar can fluctuate rapidly. Less water means less space for bad things to start concentrating in. So you have to keep a closer eye on it than you would a 20 G. If there's a PH drop or spike, for instance, you would need to recognize that and deal with it early. Using test strips in brand new jars can lead to a lot of "oh my god" moments. Once you get that jar dialed in and the biological filter built up, it's not so bad. The second part of the jar answer about the daphnia being hardier than fish was to tell you not to go into blind panic mode if the test parameters of the jar are radically different than last time you tested. They'll live in conditions that would kill fish. You don't want to do a series of panic water changes because what you've got is fish killing water, the daphnia may be just fine in there for awhile. Overreacting can be worse for daphnia than the changes in the jar. You want to notice that something is changing, and then take a measured response to heading off that change. Huh, that reading is different than it was 6 hours ago, let's add a little of this and test again in 6 more hours. As for your first question about the black liquid... I mean it does have plenty of bio-film in it. On the other hand it also would have plenty of detritus. Maybe waiting for the 2nd or third filter squeezing is better for the jar. Kind of a "just how much snail poop are we talking about here" decision. If you wouldn't start a fish tank with the liquid, don't pop it into the jar. Again, smaller amount of water, so smaller amount of buffer room.

I'll be buying off of one of those locations I told you about above for live adults. Haven't picked which yet as my temps are not ideal for shipping over the Rockies. If I could find a location in say LA or San Diego, then I'd pick that right away. That's straight up the I-15 corridor to Salt Lake City, so the only cold they'd be exposed to is the warehouse here while they wait to get on the delivery truck. So far, I'm not seeing an inexpensive So Cal option, though. Brine Shrimp: This fall the Great Salt Lake was at historic lows, (as in never in recorded history has it gotten that low). We were on track to be the most polluted city in the US, because all that exposed lake bed is subject to a lot of winds coming off the West Desert and the Salt Flats. That salt has some selenium and other heavy metals. We then got hit by the tail end of those Atmospheric Rivers hitting California and causing floods. So, we were in Severe Drought, and then all this water showed up to fill soil that was not prepared to hold any of it. So the lake refilled a bit, and got a bunch of soil from upstream. Problem is that while all of those minerals are back in solution, the solution doesn't have the same concentration as before. A lot of bacteria, archaea and protozoa that might ordinarily fix some of those heavy metals went dormant or died. Wind removed some lighter elements, and we've got new materials from upstream. Before you go thinking I'm overreacting, I did an internship for my law degree at a firm here trying to argue that the lake was basically three separate entities. This is because the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Point is supported by two trestles that cross the lake, which makes three separate salinity zones out of the three bays in the lake. You can catch Cutthroat Trout in Bear River Bay at the Wildlife Refuge normally, for instance. Gilbert Bay in the center is where Morton Salt operates, and also where your brine shrimping industry sits. Gunnison Bay that terminates in the Salt Flats is so salty that nothing lives in it. We have one of the largest white pelican nesting grounds on Gunnison Island there, because there's a natural toxic moat around the place so the coyotes and feral cat colonies can't get in. Only real use for Gunnison Bay is mineral harvesting by evaporating the lake water. Now, since the water was basically gone, the wind was picking up all those minerals from Gunnison Bay and depositing them in the other two zones. Bottom line: I don't trust the wild brine shrimp this year until I've seen some test data. I don't recommend live BBS from here until I've seen that data. Daphnia: I'm not going to wild gather this spring because of the aforementioned Atmospheric Rivers. We're getting houses sliding into canyons in Draper. Landslide risk is high. I don't trust the land, and I don't trust the pools on the land. Nearest two canyons are both under a few feet of snow, too. One of those canyon creeks passes my block, and we now have sandbagging stations set up. Shipping is the reliable option right now. I'm poo-pooing green water farms because their winter shipments tend not to have a great hatch rate. If it was summer, I'd give it a go. Yours sound like they've been inside awhile, so it's worth a shot. To season a jar, take a filter media from the tank and squeeze. If you have a small sponge filter, you can add it to the jar provided it makes large bubbles. If not and you can't adjust the airline to it, maybe disconnect the airline and leave both in the jar. Filter probably still has some bacterial growth area, and the bare airline should make large enough bubbles to not inflate or agitate daphnia. In a tank, we shoot for small bubbles to maximize gas exchange. In a jar, large bubbles have some gas exchange, but also keep the surface rolling enough that mosquito larvae don't set up shop. A little used aquarium substrate can also go a long way. Ideally you'd want this system running awhile before trying to add stuff, but since we're in a hurry, go with the usual quick start methods you'd use to set up a new tank. Jars are basically nano-aquariums on a smaller scale. You gotta be a little more vigilant on your water parameters, but daphnia aren't fish. They'll survive quite a lot of parameters that would kill fish. Main idea is to set up somewhere relatively stable and quiet for them to hatch out. Once they get going, then you can move them over.

Okay, remember that every 50% water change is going to drop your nitrites reading by half. You will get diminishing returns by doing more water changes, because half of half of half again is much less than half of the whole. You're going to have some nitrites. Since this is a newly started vase, I wouldn't expect it to hit 0 all at once. I would also caution you that the ACO test strip only goes up to 10, so you might be higher than this. If you take half of that away, you might still be closer to 10 than 5. The test strip is also calibrated for fish, some inverts may be much more nitrite tolerant than this. I would do a 50% change now, wait an hour or so, then retest. If you're still near 10, see if the crays are showing any signs of distress and only really worry if they are. Crays are a bit tougher than fish are. They might not expire on you as fast as you're worrying they will. If they're actively trying to get to the surface and out of the vase, then it's time for another change. The pic makes it look more like they're just checking the plant for food. If you're going to aim for a goal, look for getting near 1, but doing so over several hours to several days. Slowly take things down so you don't shock them all at once. You need the 2nd stage of the nitrogen cycle to kick in and it's a bit slower going than the first. Have you got any seasoned tank water to do a water change with? This might be better than straight tap water, as it'll contain a few of the organisms you're trying to get started in the vase. While old tank water isn't the magic bullet we used to think it was, it isn't bad for starting a jar.

I have had better luck hatching eggs/cysts in another container, then moving over the adults. They do not like a lot of surface agitation, and I've heard that small bubbles from like an airstone can mess with their shells. I'm going to be restarting a colony myself once temps heat up enough that someone can ship me live specimens. SLC keeps dipping down into the low 30s at night, so I'm waiting a bit longer 'til I'm sure even a delayed package won't result in DOAs. I've tried the greenwater farms cysts, but they never seem to do as well for me as the live ones. Bottom line: Start with a well-seasoned jar or 5 gallon bucket, then move into the tank... preferably when there's enough of them that the fish can't make too big of a dent before the Daphnia get established. Daphnia breed fairly prolifically once you start a culture. They seem to do okay with a sponge filter once they're established.

Ebay, Aquabid, Amazon, or FlipAquatics.com are all places I've seen some for sale. Assuming the weather near you is amenable, you could also scout the nearest ditch or pond. It's about the season for the spring hatch from overwintering cysts. I forget how high temps have to be before daphnia start to appear.

Start a daphnia culture in the tank. Now you're converting mess into something useful for the fish room. The betta and corys will enjoy hunting them down.

I'm just going to apologize to the mods in advance for continually bumping my own thread. Info on this species is hard to come by online, so I'm planning on adding my own updates as I go. Maybe this will all be helpful to someone else giving this experiment a try. Attached is my first pic of wigglers. Eggs first laid to hatch time is just barely under 1 week. I see online that the only source I could find on eggs was pegging them in the 3-4 days range. Clearly, I had a slightly different experience. They hatched at night, which I suspect is a survival adaptation, so you don't need to keep checking the eggs during the day. Wigglers are around a quarter inch long, (that line on the right is the plastic divider of a Marina/Fluval breeder box). Wigglers seem to be top oriented, (meaning they prefer near the water line). A good 60% of the spawn fungused up. So if you are doing daily checks be sure remove all the white fuzzy eggs. Wigglers are transparent to slightly whitish, so a viable egg will either looks clear or have a slight brownish tint to it. Bottom line: if it looks unfertilized, it's probably viable anyway. Again, this is an unheated tank, and daytime Temps in SLC dipped again. So I shut the windows and left the heat on to the mid-70s. My attempt at culturing infusoria was a bust. I regret doing it in my bedroom. Where I sleep now has the distinctive odor of broccoli fart. Which means we're onto my fall-back attempt at culturing. You can see the mass of Süßwassertang in the center of the breeder box pic at the start of this thread. That was reverse respired, so it started out completely clean of aerobic life. I left it in the breeder box flow so that it was exposed to tank water where infusoria from the main 20G could occasionally settle. They should have made a small colony in the week since the eggs were laid. This colony will not be large enough to support the fry much past a week or so, but by then they ought to be big enough for me to introduce unmixed Repashy dust, hikari first bites, and the like. I'm going to lift the grate and give the wigglers access to the clump later today. The wigglers do not appear to be small enough to slip through the grate on their own. I have cut a piece of filter floss for the outflow of the breeder box, just in case. Age of adults at first breeding... not entirely sure, but it's mid April now, and I acquired these from Dan's Fish back in November. They were clearly juveniles then, (~1.5" long), just bigger than a full grown white cloud. Since then, the largest has gotten close to 2.25 inches. Thus, they breed pretty young and are probably ready much sooner than you expect. Only one of these six is what I would call fully grown for this species. They top out at around ~2.5 inches. Most of my adults are nearing the 2" range, they seem to be the same size as a mid-sized otocinclus. Remember that you want 4-6 adults if you're going to try for breeding, as they look like a pleco, but behave much more like a corydoras or otocinclus.

Got my first LDA 25 (Parotocinclus Jumbo) wigglers! Pic is below. Their parents are back on page 3 of this thread. For size comparison, that line you see on the right of the pic is one of the plastic dividers in a marina breeder box hanging off my tank. So they're about a quarter inch long. Just hatched last night. Parents' first ever spawn, kind of surprised they were successful.

Yeah, it's definitely the pitbull plecos. I'm watching the big female, (well, big as in close to 2"), leave me another clutch on the back wall of the aquarium. I'm watching her deposit, but what I'm not seeing her do is T-pose. There are definitely males nearby, I'm just not sure if she's quite worked out the mechanics yet. She might be placing duds. For the last spawn I chased off a male I thought was spawn robbing but he might've just been frustrated enough to try "finishing the job" without her. It'll be their very first spawn. For anyone using the search command later, here's how I spawned Pitbull Plecos: 1. I removed and reverse respired my plants. Meaning the 20G was essentially sand and a few stones while the plants all got an overnight bath in another room. While they were out, I did two big water changes of 60-70%. First one was right after I removed the plants, to keep any extra nutrients leaching out of exposed root tabs from fouling my water. Second one was within 24 hrs of the first, as a way to compensate for any ammonia or nitrate spikes caused by sudden plant removal from a pretty well-stocked tank. Both changes were with cooler water, and done around evening. 2. It's been stormy in Salt Lake City, but it also got to 70 for two days last week. During this time I left the window open, sometimes until late at night. Since this is an unheated tank, the temps inside would be naturally fluctuating from a Springtime high to a Springtime low in the high 50s or low 60s. 3. I was conditioning the neon tetras to breed by feeding frozen daphnia two-three times during the week. Between that they got normal Top Fin fish flakes and some Fluval Bug Bites (Bottom Feeder Formula). So, nothing particularly pricey or hard to obtain. Lots of protein, though. 4. I replaced the plants but held a bunch back. Everything was trimmed while I was reverse respiring. This created two "islands" in the tank of driftwood and java fern/swords. There is now a clear kind of channel through the middle that's spotted with local granite and shale stones. They seem to think they're in the center of a river, and this more open area is where they hang out. The egg deposits are at both ends of this channel on the glass. So your big takeaways are: 1. High protein to condition. Would suspect the thawed frozen daphnia being blown around by a HOB filter are simulating bugs washed downstream. 2. Big water changes to simulate rain coming downstream. (Doesn't seem to need particularly soft water, mine goes through a water softener which just turns the minerals into mineral salts. Still shows up as "very soft" on the test strip, but my TDS is closer to 200). 3. Natural temp changes throughout the day from pleasantly warm to reasonably cool. 4. Potentially a habitat that somewhat mimics the middle of a fast flowing river.

@Karen B. Scrubbing Pad: What you're looking for is basically Scotch-Brite Pads. They're green, rectangular, and come in boxes of 8-10. Main thing is to get a pad that isn't treated with oven cleaner or soap. Here's an Amazon link for reference. As far as containers, you could use smaller tupperware or the like. The only thing with a smaller container is that you want to set up several, as it can crash faster on you with less surface area to contaminate with disease or chemical contaminants. Good rule of thumb with small cultures is to treat it like you would a nano-tank. Check it regularly so you catch anything going wrong early enough to fix it. That is the rule I broke with my 5.5G getting planaria. Had I caught that earlier, I probably would've lost less shrimp, scuds and snails. Check regularly, check often. When I raise something like vinegar eels, for example, I like to start up several bottles of them at the same time. If any one bottle goes wrong, I've got spares to keep the colonies going. And since I just got eggs laid, I'm honestly kicking myself for getting rid of the vinegar eels instead of keeping them after the Scarlet Badis passed. Looks like I'll be scouring aquabid or ebay for another colony sooner rather than later. And this thread gave me just enough info on grindal worms to add them to my shopping list.

Well, the plan for this spring was to breed my neon tetras that I was conditioning up. Then I was going to collect those fry after a few days in the dark, and raise them up in a breeder box. Making slow, reasonable tweaks to the process as I went along, also getting some good cultures set up for when it was time to raise up my slightly harder to breed fish. Yeah. I noticed some activity tonight next to the jar of Süßwassertang that I'm holding next to the tank after I reverse respired the entire collection... and in the words of Gedde Watanabi: "Supplies!" While I'm on the subject of movie quotes, I'd like to just say: Dang you, "and Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm", dang you to fudgin' heck. Prime suspects are pitbull plecos, which I'm finding almost no data on egg raising, so I'm gonna treat it like Otos... First pic is the eggs on the glass, removed those with the cardboard from a gift card and a pipette. Probably will do the next batch I find with an actual plastic gift card, I just couldn't find anything flexible enough on short notice. They're currently chilling in the green lidded specimen jar you can see on the bottom of the 2nd pic with a few drops of methylene blue. Plan is to stick them into the left side of that breeder box, with the middle section of Süßwassertang providing cover for any infusoria I can start up on short notice. I also have some Hikari first bites. Or I could do the old paintbrush with repashy dust on it if it comes to that. Going to start boiling water over old broccoli as soon as I finish this post. I've got filter floss ready to dam the exit of the breeder box once I get a better handle on the flow and the declorinated water works its way all the way through. Shouldn't lose any wigglers or fry. Really, really wish both my F1 ghost shrimp hadn't died in planaria quarantine. I could've used a nanny shrimp, and I don't trust my surviving scuds around eggs. Trying to decide if the breeder box also needs some floating plants to promote infusoria. This time I am about halfway prepared for the surprise spawn. Was hoping to be closer to all the way prepared, but I've made a start.

Well, if the plecos you are concerning yourself with are wood-eaters like Panaque types, then yes, they'd take care of the leftover bark... a bit. Don't expect them to be beavers, though. I'd still get yourself a good dremel-type tool with the sanding/grinding head and see how much you could remove when the wood has been soaked. Two biggest concerns are tannin leach and biofilm. Tannin leach is why we're suggesting that you soak the wood. When I added a bunch of driftwood to my hardscape a year and a half ago, I soaked it for a full week with a weight on top. This was sandblasted mopani, not apple. So, barkless, well soaked... and it still gave me an accidental blackwater tank. Bucket water was changed regularly and I didn't add it to the tank until the bucket was clear for several days in a row. Still got tannins. Tannins can mess with your light penetration for plants, and they also slightly soften the water, lowering your PH. You'll need to prepare yourself for these conditions, they're largely unavoidable. All we're suggesting is mitigation, not prevention. Biofilm is the other concern. There's a common underwater fungus that likes to infest newly sunk driftwood. While you'd think that aufwuchs eaters would find this stuff at least edible, YMMV. In my tank, my Otos ignored it, the Amano Shrimp wouldn't go near it, the nerite physically threw itself off of a piece of driftwood once it encountered some, and even the MTS colony wasn't making a dent. I had to scrub it off with a toothbrush every few weeks. I have ramshorns now, and they do seem to keep it managed in the few locations I've noticed it crop up. Again, YMMV, the tips above will help mitigate this some.

A. Seems like a female. My current batch haven't bred yet, but the ones I'm suspecting are females all have the same general shape as yours. B. If she's pooping just fine, then it's likely not a digestive issue. Are the poops really long and stringy? That'd be an indication of worms. Fish poop is normally stringy, you're looking for over an inch and whitish. You've got both meds used in de-worming. If she had it, it should be passed by now but maybe it needs another round. C. Could be an internal tumor, but there's not a whole lot you could do about that. It'll take its course without your intervention. She'll just be doing her thing until one day she's not. D. Might also be a gut blockage if she's been going for the high-protein food, but you said she's been pooping. Dean normally does live-foods to condition otos for breeding, if I remember right. That'd be high protein, too. So, you might've accidentally conditioned her to breed if her gut is working fine. If it's eggs, then your best bet is to do the next water change with 5-10 degree cooler water, ideally quite a bit softer as well. Maybe sneak in a gallon or two of RO water from the grocery store as that's almost mineral-free. She'll be the center of attention within an hour or two, and you'll see T-poses as she latches onto a male. I don't think there's any real risk of letting her hold onto those eggs, at least I haven't heard much about egg-bound Otos... The thing about Oto fry is that they have a pretty low survival rate if you're not actively trying to raise them. If you don't want more, just trigger her and then leave the eggs in the tank alone.

Here's something you might not have been thinking about... what time do you feed the tank? Your danios and mollies are probably active in the day, they're also top and mid-water feeders. Your corys may be nocturnal. If you're giving them pellet around the same time as the others, the pellets/wafers might be sitting in the tank all day. That leaves plenty of food for the bladder snails. You've got the leftovers from the danio/molly feeding in your water, plus you might have uneaten pellets or wafers because those fish aren't active in the tank just yet. It's like leaving out a snail buffet. If you have an auto feeder set up, you may want to switch one of the food types to a second auto-feeder, or just do manual feedings of that. I sort-of cheat this system by setting my autofeeders for right before lights out. The food may sit on the substrate for a bit before the nocturnal fish become active, but it isn't for long enough to attract many snails. I wouldn't go entirely nuts on the bladder snails, though. They do perform quite a bit of cleanup. I keep those, ramshorns and MTS in my 20G specifically to keep the plants clean and the sand turned over. They do a really good job, even if the BBA is getting out of control because no one seems to eat that. Some bladder snails is fine, tons of bladder snails is not. If you're considering a predator, then dwarf chain loaches are probably ideal. Whenever I deep clean the tank, I find empty shells near all the loaches' favorite hangouts. They'll chow down on ramshorns, MTS, and bladder snails. They have a preference for smaller snails, though. Mine leave the adult MTS and Ramshorns alone. They also haven't bothered my Nerite snail once he got around dime-sized. They did however, eat my assassin snails. Assassin snails have a "food coma" state they go into right after a big meal, and my DCLs decided this was an opportune time for an easy meal. Good rule of thumb on "food coma" vs. death is the old sniff test. If you don't want to barf, the snail is fine to be put back in the tank.

Well, after watching Bentley's stream last night and shooting him an email for advice, I decided to get a quarantine jar set up for each of my pets. This way, if the main tank crashes from treatments, then at least I have a backup colony to reseed. The forest of Süßwassertang got dried out next to the sink so that any scuds could be located fleeing towards water and plopped into a jar. A clump of rotting easter grass now graces my garbage can. I'll reseed with my jar of cuttings once I'm sure the infestation in the tank is gone. Pro tip: If you ever need to remove your scud colony from a moss or süßwassertang clump, place about a quarter inch of water in a jar. Place the moss clump so that only a bit of it touches the water. As it dries out, the scuds will all flee into the water. You can grab a big bunch of them this way. This was actually my first stage of separating the colony and it worked for *most* of the scuds hiding there. When separating out the snails for their own jar, I noticed that they were crawling with planaria. Pretty sure I've identified my host. Some of the planaria I found crawling on the jar walls are even the same color as the ramshorn snails, which per Chris Lukaup is a good sign that they've been eating the snails. I've found (2) TWO bladder snails, which is not a great start to cleaning out a tank I set up to breed those in. @nabokovfan87's video helped a ton, I've got some API test tubes still lying around from an expired kit, so making those traps will be a pretty snappy DIY project. I'm thinking bacon as bait. I had completely overlooked Mark's videos as I didn't think he dealt much with planaria. I'm honestly on the fence between No Planaria or just lowering my water level and reverse respiring the entire tank. Maybe I'll wait and see what Bentley suggests then weigh all the responses. Until then, I guess I'll be manually re-jarring shrimp, scuds and snails every few days and salting the old jar down. Good thing my family has a Costco card and likes nuts. Again, @nabokovfan87 and @Guppysnail, thank you both for the advice. I'll probably end up incorporating a little bit of everyone's suggestions before I'm done with this.

I have an outbreak of planaria in the tank I raise shrimp, snails and scuds in. Looking at a reply by @nabokovfan87 on another planaria thread, I'm pretty sure it's either a Dugesia or Girardia species. Since I'm planning on introducing some of these as either cleaners or prey items into the main 20G tank at some future date, I'm gonna need to solve the 5.5G's infestation. Not to mention starting up the 40G breeder... was planning to start it cycling with snails and plant cuttings, that's on the backburner now. Now, main plan is to treat the tank with Levamisole. Mainly because I saw a Keeping Fish Simple vid where an actual shrimp breeder tells me the shrimp-safe concentration of Levamisole. You can see that here at the 9:50 mark. I'm planning to order some of that from Select Aquatics, or pick some up from my local farm supply shop. That'll be several weeks down the road, though. The nuke is on it's way, but I need to contain the outbreak while my orbital weapons platform gets into position. Here's what I have in the tank itself: 1. Scuds... probably both genuses, as I seem to have two differently sized/colored strains. 2. Bladder snails, (which are crashing and need saving). 3. Ramshorn snails, (which I have seen the planaria devour the egg cases of, but I have a ton so no harm there). 4. Ghost shrimp. (These were mostly installed in the tank to prep it for neocaridina later on, they're also looking rough). I do have a number of jars/tubs with pumps/filters I could park a few snails/shrimp in if needs be. The snails will have to be moved anyway before the Levamisole. Now, as potential short term control measures, the 20 G contains the following candidates: 1. 3 dwarf chain loaches... (I know zebra loaches eat planaria, do these?) 2. A single very old female gold white cloud. (This is the tank boss). 3. 4 neon tetras that I am trying to condition to breed. 4. 6 juvenile pitbull plecos that I would rather not risk on an experiment as I plan to breed them. 5. 4 java loaches, (at least I think there's 4, darn things are everywhere at dinner time, but invisible when I'm trying to get a head count). Would transplanting any of these over to the smaller tank potentially reduce my infestation? The 20G is long overdue for most of its plants to be reverse respirationed to get rid of a BBA problem. I figured I'd give the fish a vacation while I reduced the plant load over a day or so. If I did both things simultaneously, I wouldn't disrupt the 20G's balance bad enough to cause lasting harm. Probably looking at just a water change while the plants are in the bucket. This tank mostly gets top-offs. Again, I just need a bridge while I get the treatment ready. I have been scraping the planaria off with an algae scraper, but this misses any hiding in the silicon seals or my forest of Süßwassertang. I also have Aquarium Salt. Might start with that after I check on the dosage that won't fry my snails. Come to think of it... would just moving the snails to a tub and dosing with salt solve the issue?

Mark's Aquatics on Breeding White Clouds pt. 1 of 2 The above video series may help you out. Idea isn't necessarily to give you tips on breeding so much as highlighting how they breed in case you've been sending some unintentional signals to them. They like to spawn first thing in the morning after an evening storm. So, if your light doesn't slowly ramp up intensity and the room is naturally dark... You'd be telling them it's "business time" every day when the light goes on. Other ideas: 1. Maybe paint on or add a black film background so there's a definite "hiding spot" easily reachable from anywhere in the tank. May relax your females some. 2. Are they choosing the corner with the water sprite? (I think that's water sprite... could be guppy grass). They may be taking cover under some leaves. White clouds like being under plants, sometimes they'll even sleep on plants. They may be stressed because the male is behaving like he's ready to breed and they don't feel comfortable enough in the tank to do that.

To find wild type livebearers, your best bets are: 1. Get Gills - Bit like Etsy for fish. Individual breeders run small shops off a main website. 2. Dan's Fish - You'll see more goodeids here than poecillids, but there's always a chance of finding some. I believe Dan might have had something to do with starting Get Gills, as they share an interface. 3. Aquabid - think Ebay for fish... interface looks a lot like early Ebay, and you've gotta know your old online payment options, like postal money orders. 4. Vivvy - Newest entrant to the market. Run by Aquatic Arts. Bentley is not a fan. A bit like Get Gills, but with a slicker interface. 5. Ebay - the old standard sometimes still kicks up the odd livebearer auction. 6. Your local fish club. Mine runs a service through the "Band" app. 7. Your local classified ads. 8. Select Aquatics. While the only Poecillid he still sells is Alfaro Cultratus, he still lists the contact info for people he's sold Yucatan Mollies to in the past and the like. It might be worth sending Greg Sage an email if you're really struggling to track a particular species down. Mostly he carries goodeids, but he's up to two species of limia as well. I'd share links, but I don't recall the linking policy for these boards off the top of my head and don't want to step on any toes. Everything I've listed above is an easy Google search.

My amazon sword started out like yours, but once I got it dialed in it really took over the corner. I wouldn't start adding stuff now until you really know what your plant's final form is going to be. Instead, I'd go the cheaper route and just give the sword a root tab and then wait a bit. That sword's kind of small, the leaves look a bit more like emersed rather than submersed leaves, and so you're not seeing it in it's full glory. You could try upgrading the light, but that's more expensive. The root tabs also work a bit quicker. If anything, you might be overplanting that corner. Try to picture that corner with a sword plant with leaves that almost touch the surface, are all definitely "sword" shaped instead of canoe paddles, and there's about 15-20 of them in a tight bunch. That's what you build around. I would save those other plants for moving toward the mid and foregrounds.

No, they're both still empty. I suppose that's as good of a start as any. Gonna need a lid, probably oughta read that ACO reviews to see how the new light does with 40 Breeders, and then set up the Top Fin HOB I bought for 5 bucks at the club auction. Been meaning to hotrod my HOBs with the new coarse foam and filter floss anyway. Most of my plants are epiphytes, so I could easily start dividing stuff and putting it in once lighting is hammered down. I also need to reverse respiration a few of the java ferns to remove some BBA. Yeah, I also "keep" MTS. With a pair of Comm degrees, I tend to pick particular language when describing my tank residents. The neon tetras on the other hand, are my "pets". MTS are like farm animals, they have jobs. You have to manage them in their jobs so they can remain effective at doing it. MTS plow and churn my substrate, getting rid of my excess food. I used to keep dwarf crays to get rid of excess food, but the MTS seem less "fin nippy". Bladder snails get behind the mesh wall holding the süßwassertang, or behind the filter to clean up brown diatoms. Ramshorn snails are neutrally buoyant enough to clean plant leaves that the nerite snail would be too heavy for. And so on... Here's a little MTS trick I learned last week. (Not going to claim to invent it, I just figured out how to do it myself last weekend). Get a cheap plastic net from one of the big box stores. Little blue or green job with mesh that is just a bit bigger than your substrate grains. (I suppose this might not work great if you're not using sand, YMMV). Using your siphon hose, get a swirl of substrate and MTS going by holding the siphon edge down in or really close to the substrate. Now slide that net under the end of the siphon and raise the hose up in the tank. You should see all the baby MTS start raining down as the pressure in the siphon lessens. They'll pop into the net, which you just need to tap and wiggle like you're sifting flour. Sand goes out, snails stay in. You may lose some very tiny snails, but you'll keep the bulk of them. After learning that trick, I got to take my three Dwarf Chain Loaches aside and have a little chat. "Look, you guys ATE the assassin snails. I wasn't gonna say anything, but you have one job here. Please stop letting me down." I don't hold high hopes for these guys, they're pretty little morons, but morons all the same.

It's really interesting reading these responses. Especially the ones from people with bigger tank preferences. Being honest here, I almost answered the "when was the last time you spent half an hour looking at a tank" with staring at two 40G breeders. They're both empty. I keep looking at these things and trying to imagine all of the possibilities. Then a voice chimes in with "Jeebus, what were you thinking?" I could probably breed X in there... but I can also breed that in a 10 G, where I'd have more control over my parameters. Yup, watched Cory's video on easy racks for 40 breeders and bought the same shelf and two 40 breeders. Still trying to come up with a plan. Local fish club wasn't willing to take the project off my hands last auction, so I'll eventually have to get serious with these things. On the plus side, the 20 G and the 5.5 G both fit on one shelf with room for more "stuff". I also worked out how to make some nice looking black shelf liners with hefty bags and duct tape. Leaks aren't going to worry me about the shelf giving way. It's just... what do I put in there? Where do I even start? Think I may lurk around Select Aquatics' channel and see about getting the entire Eiseni complex as a CARES project. I know Greg's got Doadrioi. Goliad Farms has Lyonsi mislabelled on his website, (but notes this in his videos), and I see Dan's occasionally listing straight Eiseni, (he just isn't sure of the collection point). I'd like to get into rarer live bearers, but I'm also kind of a tiny cory/pleco nut. @mountaintoppufferkeeper's divided 40 has all kinds of my gears churning right now.

1. What was the first fish you ever kept in some sort of an aquarium? Mollies and platies from the lady who lived across the street. I kept them in my turtle tank and they did pretty well until the musk turtle learned to hunt them. 2. What tank are you most proud of and why? The 20 G next to the computer. It's been up and running for over 8 years continuously now. Fully planted. Looks a bit of a mess, but everything I put in there seems to do well. 3. How did you get here, specifically to these forums? I was watching one of Cory's videos to fix a specific problem I was having. This lead me eventually to the store, and from there to the forums. A retail trail of breadcrumbs to a place to answer all my questions in the hobby. 4. What is something you think you do to make the hobby easier for yourself that others can use? Storage tubs. Straight up clear plastic, big-box store, storage tubs. Great for quarantine, great for small breeding projects. Cycle up a sponge filter, fill with water, then you're off to the races. I'm also a leading proponent of re-using Costco nut jars to breed micro-fauna. 5. What is something you specifically wish for guidance with in the hobby? How to get started breeding otos and oto-like fish. T-pose, non-cave dwelling plecos and catfish. My school of pitbull plecos is about to start the final push to their max grow-out size. Which means it is finally time to start getting some eggs so I can supply my local area. 6. What fish do you miss most? I miss when the local mom & pop shops near me would get in miss-shipments. You don't see that with the big box stores that dominate now. See, the little shops would occasionally get in "mystery fish", which is how you get exposed to some really rare and wild stuff. They'd know it was some type of say Apistogramma, just had no idea what type. That allowed a curious kid with a library card to do a little research and maybe walk away with something rare and cool to keep. 7. How often do you change water? Is this the same for all of your tanks? I've been changing much more often lately. Main tank has had about 3 water changes in the last two weeks. Ghost shrimp and scuds have had mostly top-offs in that time. I tend to change very rarely because I plant very heavily and the parameters stay very constant. When you keep fish this way, but then have to do changes more often to get rid of say tannins in the water or meds, you end up accidentally promoting new behavior in your fish. Like breeding behavior from otos. 8. What is better, one big tank or a rack of 20Gs, why? I'd say the rack of 20s. My favorite tank is a 20, but the more tanks you have the more options you have for stocking, and moving fish around who aren't doing well in a particular tank. If a fish is getting picked on suddenly, you always have a plan-B available. 9. When was the last time you spent 30 minutes staring at a tank? Within the last two weeks, when I was rethinking my 'scape. Around the time Cory started doing videos about what to do when you burn out of the hobby. I started having questions. I mean, I fed the fish every day, I monitored their lights and fertilized the tank. But was I really enjoying having the fish? My solution was to change up my hardscape and plantings so that now I see more of the fish. I find this re-invigorated my interest in the tank. 10. What is your favorite food to feed your tanks? Repashy Super-green. I do enjoy it when I pop a cube of Hikari frozen daphnia in the tank and they all go nuts hunting them down. Even my otos and plecos get into the act. Super-green is just more fun to make and place.

So for your pygmy cory questions, I have actually done research in these as I eventually plan to breed each species. 1. Pygmaeus likes between 71-78 degrees F. These forage on the bottom like other cories, but they also spend time "hovering" in the mid-water and resting on plant leaves. Black neons help coax them out more if your school is shy. Also seem to like following otos. Mine were a joy to keep. They also did fine as long as I was heating the room they were in to a comfortable "room temperature" during the winter. 2. Habrosus likes between 71-78 degrees F. These are pure bottom dwellers, you see them do the little cory dance all over the tank. These make some of the better YouTube videos on corys. 3. Hastatus likes between 71-78 degrees F. These are your most expensive of the little guys. They really like the mid-water if you also have a conspecific tetra. I believe "reed tetra" is the correct one. If it has a tail spot like the Hastatus, it may look enough like the fish to promote mid-water shoaling. 4. There's also Cochui, which like slightly hotter water. These are super hard to find outside of Europe. Supposedly behave much like slightly larger Habrosus. Been trying to get a school before I commit to starting a pygmy cory breeding project, since I can usually source the other three species. I asked Dan's Fish about these last night in the live-stream and he said we were unlikely to find any unless someone takes a huge risk on an import order, (which he was not planning on).