Jabberjaw

What do ya'll feed your clown plecos. i have 5 in a tank with Mopani wood. I've tried algae tabs, shrimp patties, meat patties, cucumbers, broccoli, spinach and regular fish food. so far i haven't seen them eat any of it. They're all young, 1-2" long. so I'm concerned.

I'm trying that now on my magenta's. I'm pretty desperate for a hatched clutch, I'm down to 1 female and don't want to have to buy more. my other female died 😞 But i haven't had a successful clutch from them yet and they're not laying that many either. maybe 4 clutches so far, none have hatched. we'll see if this small one I have will hatch, they're pretty close.

I had to increase my temp it's 74-75 i think, will look tomorrow when I get home. I have cuttlebones, feed high calcium foods, and add calcium powder to Snello, so i'm hoping I have that fixed. Thank You when I had mine at 78-80, they grew too quickly so i'm trying cooler. I'll move it to 75, see if that works. Thank you I keep it damp, if it dries out, i add more water to the one below to dampen it. if it's too wet, i wring it out or change it for a new paper towel. I try to keep it damp, just not soaking wet. Is that right? Thank you

Only the circled one hatched. The others didn't and when I squished them, they were gooey inside, no babies. At least I have about 100 beautiful purple babies. So I've started floating the tubs in an aquarium that is warmer than the rest. We'll see how the next batch does. They're magentas so hopefully they hatch, I'm very low on them. Why are they holey like something came out of some of the cells but nothing did. Have I done something wrong or is this normal? soooo, now that I have my beautiful purples, my last few batches had thin shells even though I fed them kale and other high calcium veggies. I have very hard water, almost brackish. I bought calcium powder but not sure if I actually need to add it to the water but I have been making snello with it and feeding them the snello as well. BUT i had them in an aquarium that was warm and they grew very quickly. this time once these guys are big enough to be go in the grow out tank (they're in a breeder box ATM) the tank is a cool water tank so they grow slower. Is this a bad idea? what is an optimal grow out temp? I have this tank set at almost room temp (70f). Thank you all for the help.

Temperature helps a lot that might be part of my problem. I have to turn the temperature of a tank up and put them all there. I have seen them mating I have a lot of them that just go at it like bunnies LOL I have switched them around until I know I have mated pairs. I'm attaching pictures of the ones that are in the containers but I bet it's temperature I bet they're too cold I will take care of that now. Do you think it's too late for the ones that are currently in the containers?

no, it was before. that the one that hatched had over 400 babies :0 gold f/chestnut m. i think that female died. i had 1 gold die. purples i have 2m/1f magenta not sure about 1 but i know i have 1m/1f for sure. have not gotten any purple or magenta to hatch. gold/chestnut i have a bunch of each, not sure which ones laid the clutches on those. each color has their own 20g with some guppies or platy's in it. except the gold/chestnut. they're in different tanks and most have either platys or Florida flag fish in them. i'll get pics in the morning when i get home. thought i had pics on my phone but....

I am having trouble with my mystery snail clutches. I was able to get 1 to hatch, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong with the others. Nothing else is hatching. they don't stink, they were laid over a month ago and just sit there, doing nothing. This is what I do to hatch them: I take a tupperware container, pole holes in the top. wet a paper towel (not soggy, just wet) and put in the bottom. take another and fold it, put clutches on it with a flap over the top. every day, wipe off the condensation. and they don't hatch. they don't stink. they start getting holes in it, but nothing happens. the one i crumbled, it's all goo. 😞 what am i doing wrong?

Because i have a lot of tiny fry, I planned on putting some kind of mesh at the bottom of the overflow. I'd have to keep it clean so it doesn't get clogged, figure I'd put rocks and things up against it to help keep them out also. maybe some of the pea gravel I put in the bottom of the tank with larger rocks in front of it. I would also have to make it as a complete corner insert, I really don't want to have to empty the tanks to put the overflow in.

I think I'm not going to drill. Flumpweesel has a very good point that It would make it more difficult to sell if I decided to get rid of that tank. I'm going to try a combination of a few peoples set up. i don't want anything blocking the view of the tank because people come and buy from my tank themselves sometimes, I want an overflow box so if I lose power I don't lose the siphon. Shut offs for each tank so I can separate the tank from the sump if necessary. Thank you everyone for the input. i've "agonized" over this decision for a couple months while I've been renovating and just got to the point I had to make a decision.

I think I like this instead of a plastic hanging overflow box. my main concern with a drill-less siphon is losing the siphon due to power fluctuations or outages. I think this method may alleviate that fear. I can paint the pvc black to match the back of the tank, less screaming in your face there's an ugly piece of pvc there. AND, I can put the tanks in the rack immediately and add the tank to the sump as I go. hmmm

Very good point. I was thinking on the small aquariums it would take up less space in the aquarium to drill it, but it would take less space than a sponge filter to do a siphon overflow. I wonder how often that breaks the siphon. From the price of bulkheads vs the extra pvc to do an overflow siphon it's about the same I guess, maybe a little cheaper. As far as removing the tank from the sump, all the tanks would have shut-offs so they could be removed from the system if necessary. I didn't think of the selling price, very good point. Thank you

yes, I did. it made me feel like I would crack fewer tanks, but uggh. I forgot to put all my tanks have fish in them (fixed it, sorry). I would have to remove the fish to drill the tanks. they're all breeders so not really scaped...(guppy grass, some wood/rocks, maybe some hides depending on the fish) so not a big deal, just concerned with stressing the fish more. Also, have you drilled 5g tanks? there's quite a few of them. I put newly born/hatched fry batches in them to grow for a few weeks/months before transferring them to 10g. guess it doesn't matter if it's 5g or 20g, drilling is the same?. There's a lot of fish. maybe over 1k total. I've read where people drill with fish in them. wonder which would be more stressful for the fish. moving to a temporary bucket/tub, or drilling with them in there. I don't think i want to drill with them in there, so bucket/tub it is, I guess.

Re-doing my fish room. It will be set up on a sump with an auto-top off system. 20 tanks 5g to 20g. mostly 10's and 5's for breeding (all currently in use with fish in them). Can't decide if I should drill the tanks or do the pvc overflow. I've been trying to decide for a couple weeks. So concerned with cracking tanks 😞 Now it's go time, all aquariums are out and through-out the house, sealing and painting the floor and the walls, need to decide now. UGH. what are the pro's and cons other than possible breaking a tank. anyone?

That makes me feel better. I kind of figured a 20 or 29 would be fine. I have both a 20 would fit better but I guess I'll just have to wait and see how high the water level needs to be. Thank you

So, I really didn't get the answer I was looking for. Would a trickle Tower and a 20 long or 29 gallon be enough filtration for multiple tanks that contain a maximum total gallons of 90 to 100 gallons be adequate or am I going to have to figure out a different route? I'm not really concerned with the noise factor due to of the location of the sump , I'm more concerned with being able to pack the most amount of filtration in the smallest amount of area for a price I can afford. Otherwise I need to stay with all my sponge filters until I can build a larger regular sump and I don't really want to wait. A central sump would make it a lot easier to keep all of the aquariums cleaner as well as do water changes. I guess I could just do it and watch my numbers and see what happens. Anyone have any ideas or advice on the particular type of filtration I am talking about?

That makes me feel really good. I don't know about doing a 50 gallon sump though that's awfully large. I was leaning more along the lines of a 20 gallon. I can pack a lot of filtration in a trickle filter in a 20 gallon tank. At the moment I only have a total of 70 gallons between the tanks but even if I added tanks in that rack it wouldn't be able to fit more than 90 gallons. A 20 or a 29 I would think would be big enough, don't you?

Has anyone used Joey's DIY cheap and easy trickle tower sump? I watched his video and am thinking of using it for a rack of aquariums. I have 3x 10's, 2x 20's that I'm wanting to put on a central sump and thinking this might be work. It's going to be hidden, so idc what it looks like, I just want it cheap and functional. Thoughts?

I've spoken to Charles Clapsaddle via email regarding platys genetics and breeding. He did mention the swordtail issue, but I'm honestly not interested in swordtails, only platy's and I doubt I will be doing any hybrid crosses. Any elongated gonopodium on males will be culled or sold as non-breeder only, but it usually isn't as big of a problem on most platys from what I've read as it is in swordtails and guppies. I hope I don't run into it with the platy's.

that's nice, but these have nothing to do with platy's. they're swordtails, a different fish. pretty fish tho. thank you

I completely agree and that is not the kind of fish that I wish to breed. You also see the same thing in bettas where quite a few of the males can't do anything so they put things in the water for them to lay in due to their inability to swim. It just really makes me feel terrible for those fish and that is not the kind of thing that I wish to breed. I want to breed something that is strong and able to live a high quality of life. I also don't believe in surgically altering anything so if I end up with males that are like that those are not males that I would use for breeding and I would definitely not want to continue carrying that gene. I know I'm going to have to do quite a bit of calling and I'm okay with that if it means that I am creating a strong line. I wouldn't want any male to have to walk or swim around going by the nickname of stubby that just ain't right lol

i saw his page and drooled. I couldn't find a way to buy them. thought i'd email him and see if i could get a couple pairs or at least some advice. there's some that someone posted on facebook they have bred the lyretail gene into a platy also. they were absolutely gorgeous. (and very expensive). i think i'm going to get a bunch of 10gal to put in my fish room just to try to breed long fin into some types that i've never seen a long fin on. something to play with 🙂 i'm seeing a fun challenge, and wow if i succeed!

Wow that's taking me back to science class way back. I remember learning stuff like this way back then. This is good to know and makes a lot of sense. So I guess I need to buy short fins the same kind as my long fins to help offset the HH Gene. Thank you very very much I would have been frustrated and because I wouldn't have understood why I wasn't getting that many fry.

Wow no wonder they're very difficult to find. I'm going to need more tanks lol

Ok, i can do that. Is it the same with variatus? They're a little different.

No I didn't know that, even variatus hi-fin? So i need to get both hi fin and regular fin and breed them together?