beastie

Interesting debate, I didnt know we have expensive equipment, maybe it depends on what and where. I do buy a lot of things secondhand and at fish fairs, which are usually lower prices than the online stores (also no shipping, but entry fee and driving so...) I checked and my airline hose is around 0,56 USD per meter. It is not the point of price with me, but reusability, I try to not waste things if I can help it, I water plants on water change days of my fish tank so I could reuse the water, I let my water out to outside storage that collects rain water and I use it to water lawn and plants in the spring-autumn, and I suspect it leaks back under ground so I dont feel like I am wasting it, I like buying things from people who do not need them ( got a 2213 eheim for like 9 euro and I am not using it but I couldnt pass that up! :D), I almost do not buy aquarium plants anymore, cause we just swap with other keepers here and hey, no plant meltdown either, since it is used to the city water and is not farmed out. We do have incredibly cheap fish in my opinion, sometimes if I listen to Cory talk on his channel and compare. My most expensive fish was a sewellia, 8,5USD per fish, but bolivian rams (or other rams) will go for around 1 USD, one luminatus or pygmy corydoras would cost me 1,7 USD, neon tetras will be around 1USD too (but their genetic makeup lately is weak weak weak)

Thanks, will look into this. For me the bleach like products might be cheapest, but I am afraid I wont use gloves (or they will get eaten by the bleach) and I less inclined to hurt myself with peroxide than bleach

So I have been using a silicone airline hose (wider than the normal one by like 1mm I think) to suction out and put water in under gentle flow for my smaller tanks. But it is catchin algae, almost impossible to clean. It requires scraping, and I do not have anything that small to scrape with. I tried putting bleach solution inside to clean, did not help. I managed to put a bendy wire in to scrape off for now ( it started black) but I want to avoid this in the future. Any tips?

Hillstream loaches like a fast current and almost no tetra likes a current nor their temp preference. Danios like a current, i have white cloud minnows with them, they enjoy the current too but the fry wont hatch/survive the turbulent setup. I would avoid bottom dwelling fish, i have them with panda garra and they chase them from places. The garras don't mind but timid fish like corydoras, plecos or other could be too scared. Or you can move the barbs to the hillstream tank and set up the corydoras with your favorite tetra and adjust both to match each species better.

Haha oh yeah. They may notice them, at some point, later on, but yeah, even in small tank when they are alone there - oh look, bugs are hitting my face, whatever shall I do about it Hope your pairing works, I love their group behavior

That is just reflection, they have this shine to them, in the belly area, but they are not green. Must have been the plants. I am never again having hatchetfish btw, I do think they just like the number 6,I started with 15 I think 2 years ago, had most of them jump out until 6 remained, bought 8 more last year, quarantined, added, and since june or so, most of them jumped out until there are only 6 again. Never again with this fish....

I did my best to provide some staple of food in the beginning, had a quarantine full of diatom algae and when I feel like they were not eating enough, I put out my oak leaves that I had submerged in a closed jar filled with water for few weeks. The leaves have the super slime on them that the otos will munch on. Otherwise yeah, repashy, even sprinkled I guess, lots of driftwood, broad plants ( mine sleep in anubias, they use the leaves as a hotel, everyone on a different floor). After some time they are stable enough and eat whatever. If they ae hungry I see them going in for pellets that I put in for other fish, so will ocassionally dump some algae/spirulina stuff in at night, some vegetables, blanched leaves like mangold work too, green beans. But unlike usual advice, you have to leave that vegetable in the tank for 48 hours. They dont pay attention to it when it is still hard. I do not know what my otos eat, but my glass is spotless, they hang out around driftwood and munch on that, there are leaves all over the tank and I thought I lost some of them but the other time I saw 7, and I was under the impression I only had 4. Alas, I no longer would buy them or recommend them to anyone. The quarantine/feeding/acclimation losses are still 60% even if you try your best and 90% if you dont.

Since today was maintenance day for me, some more pictures. First off, the gouramis and the hatchefish (for now they work awesome, no issues, no fear) Now the pygmy corydoras tank. I removed the endler, cause the pygmies do not seem to be shy at al, they are all over, burrowing, swimming, hunting microworms. Please ignore the killed plant, I left it outside too long and it froze... And lastly the clown killifish tank. I think it is too dense. Can a tank be too densely planted? I mean the fish seem ok. But how would I know they are not...

Indostomus picture dump. They are almost impossible to properly focus on. Plants are in the way too 🙂 Next time, bare tank

I have the clown killifish fry, for which even Cory commented juveniles will eat the smaller ones, and I have the pseudomugil luminatus, again four or five larger fry, nothing smaller. At what point will they stop, is it size related, age related,...? I just wonder when I will see new fry, to start feeding paramecium again, or use the fry powder as I had before, which brought the luminatus to the adulthood.

I use a gravel vac for sand tanks, to suck up the top 1 cm layer, but not deeper. If I dont, corydoras have bacterial issues, if I go deeper, I get algae. In some tanks, like the shrimp one, I dont gravel vac at all, in some I have snails digging through the substrate. Many old schoold fish keepers never gravel vac and have amazing tanks, father fish has some videos regarding the microfauna that lives there. I would not omit cleaning substrate with sensitive substrate dwellers I guess

I have and always have had mts in my tanks. I love how they maintain the substrate, they are the reason why there are no decaying gas pockets, they never touch the roots of plants, they help maintain the wood. I would never add them to a tank with stones in some shape or some hard scape, as they can level whole tank like that was designed in a way during a night 🙂 overfeeding make cause a population explosion but when you don't feed, they disappear. At most points i even thought i didn't have any mts until I took a sieve and checked substrate. They are that good at staying hidden 🙂 other burrowers you may consider is faunus after,but you have to feed it to not eat your plants. And same for certain rabbits (like the sp.)

No idea how old, I suspect around two months now, clown killifish fry. It is the size of a grain of rice and the black blur in front is the parents hard to photograph but they are absolutely cute, little bumblebees

Be careful with the ember tetras, they are lazy and prone to over eating 🙂

Any idea how does easyfish or ocean nutrition bbs compare to your brands? Thanks

This tank has a super large flow, so I am not sure if I can achieve this. I did once spray repashy powde into the tank ,that was a big hit among the sewellia and garras alike. Is it better to make the gel or to sprinkle the tank the powder directly? I never found if it is usable like that or if the maker advises against it.

In some cases I dont quarantine at all (like the panda garra or hillstream loaches, cause I dont have a QT that would match the main tank parameters). TBH All I can quaranitne against is ich and fungus, as for any form of parasites we do not have the medicine, so. Anyways as I said, havent had ich since 10 years ago when I was keeping tanks for the first time and the sellers at the fair are carefull to sell healthy fish, and there is even a guarantee somewhere they are already quarantined, if they are from outside breeders, not the sellers themselves. Alas I was quite confident and so far, no issues. Thus why today was moving day. I have whole day to watch the fish in the tank, so decided to move the Pearl Gourami male to the (now cant call it that) South American tank, to the female that has been there a week now. It was adorable, right away they found each other, checked each other with feelers and have been together ever since. I hope the bliss lasts and not like the last time when he was mean. I took a short video. Excuse the floating debris, I honestly do not know what is the issue in the tank anymore to cause this. Thanks to no background in the video it is not so visible, but the male has really nice color, deep orange, and the female has a blue tint to the bottom fins Even the female before chose this spot, but he male too, this is above the filter output in the calmest part of the surface, on the right side of the tank. In the middle the leaves are, and on the left side, the hatchetfish are. So far so good, so please wish me luck these two work together well and with other fish too. Inspired by @Chick-In-Of-TheSea Snoopy pics I took one of my bolivian ram. They constantly spawn so it is on one hand a heartbreaking cycle. Almost every two weeks, they pair, the lay eggs, eggs hatch, wigglers wiggle, free swimming fry, and on day three or four, the other two b-rams eat these hatched b-rams against parents guarding. Every time...sad really. I love their community and social behavior, I think they may be happier than if I just had one b-ram, but the price.... As I was dropping the gourami to the tank with the net, I decided to net out some loose leaves on the surface and managed to scoop up my yellow male endler. I have three males, afaik, in this tank though I have only seen two in a while. I called it fate and dropped the endler to the cube, to the pygmy corydoras, to keep them company for a while. I assume if the corydoras start breeding he would be in the way, but I think I have few months before that, so for now he can stay there . Onto my clown killifish tank, I am seeing the fry more (since it is larger) and to my pleasant surprise, there are at leas two of similar sizes! They are like grain of rice, but roundish, and they full on look like bumblebees, little round black and yellow things. Absolutely adorable. The helena here also looks good, it is not burried at all most of the time, it is actively going through the tank. I find it very nice looking. Especially the killer snout. Regarding my asian tank, all three sewellia are now active and visible most of the time. I am feeding them a smidge more, mangold leaf here, cucumber there, algae waffer at lights out. I plan to feed every other day as it may have been feeding in the past that was my problem. I keep expecting the algae covered stnes to be their primary food source, but I may be wrong. I also finally put the airstone on a timer, so I dont have to manually unplug it and plug it back in.

I do not like this stocking much, because you are going for low numbers of schooling fish and wide variety instead of a decent sized school of few variety. Please drop the odessa barbs, everyone reports behavior problems with them unless they are in groups of 10 and more. They are also boisterous, unlike emperor or cardinals and the stocking should be made around them, not having them as an addition. I would also drop either the kuhli loaches or the corydoras. Either one would fare much better in a group of 10, there is no space to keep both in at that numbers, so pick one. Why dont you pick one of the three schooling fish you like the most and do just them in a group of 15? Later on, if the tank is missing something, you can add another school. I have no idea why you got a "sounds great' on the stocking, because any piece of literature/source will say that any schooling fish are to be kept in groups of no less than six and encouraging stocking s like these is not ideal

I forgot to update on my Cube tank. I had a small crisis on the weekend, because I was away and when I came back I found one of the female pearl gouramis dead, and not recently based on the smell. I did immediate 50% water change, looked everything over and upon further noticing, saw that the male gourami is a tad more agressive towards the remaining female, chasing her and so on. I mean the tank is too small for them, was supposed to just be a two week quarantine. Since I saw no ich ( and frankly havent had ich in like 10 years) nor anything that would indicate parasites or anything, I decided to remove the female to the primary tank in advance of the male, so she has time to establish in the tank and not be bullied later on. The male will remain in the quarantine, maybe until this Sunday ( for his two weeks mark), maybe later, will see on the behavior. it is his only luck he is kind to the pygmies and I was pleasantly surprised they all survived the crisis. I did another cleanup yesterday, just in case, algae removal, increased the output of the airfilter, as I read the pygmies like some form of a current. Also my anubias is blooming, is nice 🙂 has been a while since I had one bloom and annoyingly to no end, in a tank without light 🙂

I dont really know. I want to say no, because they survived post shipping (and they came from indonesia, all are wild caught) I have had them since March, issues with algae, issue with planaria, dosing no planaria, moving them into a different tank. I feed them daily, once, with a one to two day breaks, and they have survived a week of my vacation, no issues. They are ok with severe temperature swings, summer was up to 26, when the weather dropped the tank had 19 degrees. And I feed them only two things, so a very very one sided meal. It makes me uneasy and I want to change that They all live, they all look great, I saw a snail try to climb on the fish, shrimp will regularly touch it the fsh does not care. I have no flow, virtually no filtration, I dont do gravel clean. I also do not meassure the stats, so I wouldnt even know if the tank was not doing well. I do a water change every two weeks, sometimes just a top off and always just a 10%. But on the other hand they are not breeding or the fry is not surviving ( I saw breeding behavior) With them it is hard to say, you mostly wont see them, they wont complain, they dont look bad or thin or anything to indicate they are starving or not enjoying live. I wish someone had experience with them to advise to me.

I manned up and cleaned the glass in the shrimp/indostomus tank. With a sponge. I also cleared the airhose tube in the filter, but the flow is not better. As in it doesnt exist. I raised a lot of debris and given due to shrimplets I never gravel vac, it is an interesting tank. I wonder if I should remove the sponge from the "filter" as I am not sure if it is working and just leave the airstone to provide a flow. I also cut some growing of the hygrophilla and planted them in the back and removed 80% of salvinia, as always. Since it is Wednesday, shrimp feeding time. I feed once a week something just for them, a spirulina tablet, a nettle wafer, a vegetable,... During the maintenace it showed how many shrimp I actually have and oh boy, such an explosion. Nice difference after the planaria caused them to die off, I had like 7, and now there are 30, easy.

I find it a bit strange, I have managed to have eggs hatch in a tank with rabbit snails and ramshorn snails and there was a study saying that ramshorns wont eat healthy (killifish) eggs. Other snails sure, ponds and such, but not ramshorns. I place in cucumber, leave overnight and then lift them up, but it is not 100%

Hey I just feed, they do the work :))) But thanks I took whole tank shots yesterday, it requires me to have turned off lights, turned off other tank light and in the seethrough one has to have my boyfriend standing behind it with a black sheet :))) And that is all for me this week

Asian tank, fed repashy in powder form, enticed all the sewellia to go out, to eat, to chase each other and the garras. Nothing too vicisous, just chasing, sometimes sitting on one another. Garras will chase the sewellia back but like "tag you are it" The golden sewellia is the female I have since August I believe, rest are new crew

My growing pseudomugil fry