Phoenixfishroom

Curious if anyone else is keeping these guys. Just got 5 of them and am interested to hear other people’s experience with them. Also curious if people think that 150 gallons is big enough for when they are full grown or if I need to invest in a 200 gallon. here is a picture of them in quarantine with a couple new dorsal band whales. They are all eating well and appear healthy so far. Very cute little guys too 🙂.

Honestly I hate aqueon filters, they just randomly stop running sometimes and you come home to find them burning out the impeller while they fail to self prime (they definitely fell at self priming pretty much all the time). I like the topfin filters a lot I have couple of 110s, and two smaller ones as well. The media compartment is huge, they move a lot of water, and they are easy to clean. They also self prime, much better as long as your water level is high enough. The only thing I don’t like about them is that they don’t sell replacement parts. They will however give you a new one if you call corporate and complain about the impeller burning out and it being ridiculous that you can’t just buy this part somewhere like you can for every other filter…. They have done it for me twice. Since then, though, I have been replacing the ceramic center pole of the impellers with pieces of metal the same size and it has been working really well and having them burn out prematurely is no longer a problem.

There is not a breeding report for this species because they have not been bred in captivity, I am hoping to change that. is worth pointing out that plant catfish doesn’t have breeding reports for every fish that has been bred in captivity, they only have reports from people who are on that forum and care to write one. I have seen other species that aren’t reported, but are known to be captive bred also. When I went to go write a breeding report for my. Synodontis contractus I saw that it was the first one and I know for a fact I am not the first person who has had them spawn. There also isn’t one for synodontis decorus, and I know someone who breeds them. I may have been unclear that what was hoping to find with this post was with someone who has experience breeding p.nudiventris or p.aurintiacus. They are both know to spawn in aquaria but are not the easiest fish to breed. it is likely that my wormlines would require the same conditions and have similar triggers, and also not be very easy to breed, so input from someone who has done, it would be very valuable. ( and a picture of one of my nicest looking ones because I love taking pictures of my fish and this species is so handsome lol)

Were you able to find out about that?

I figure this is a good entry point. I would like to actually have the lights on a year long loop if that is possible, so my daytime lengths can be correct for each tank. Each strip can be programmed individually so I can have the Congo and the Rio negro in one room. once I have the lights down I would want to automate some pumps for tidal flow and rain, sending my phone info about conductivity, salinity, ts from smart meters, and eventually have it controlling water level, temp, conductivity, etc by telling it what to do on a year loop and giving it ways to respond to the meter values. Gonna message you But basically I want to have a bunch of biotope tanks that simulate the seasonal changes to water parameters and daylight hours of the region they represent…. And I want it to happen without me doing tons of extra stuff all the time lol

Are you pretty good with programming? I have been using full spectrum LED strip lights for some of my tanks and I am really happy with it for a bunch of reasons. Since my build style is “lets see how much I can over-engineer this” I want to take it several levels up and get addressable LED strips in full spectrum and color change and use a combination of both strips set into fixtures that I am currently prototyping all wired to a single ardueno or raspberry pi and code them to run a 24 hour cycle with sunrise and sunset, full spectrum daytime, and red/blue night light (I use red for my woodcats at night because they can’t see that wavelength). The thing is I build, I tinker, I do NOT code. I need to bring someone with that skill set into this project and it sounded like it would fit in with your interests

Right?! I have been wanting them for a long time and am not at all dissatisfied with them. I accidentally ordered eight of them…. But I’m not mad about that either lol. I am looking for a 50 gallon lowboy to make a dedicated hillstream loach tank so I can breed exotic hillys. Now I just need to find the black lizard hillstream, those are really cool too. I have not ever actually seen them available yet anywhere except for aquarium glasser. I have been trying to find some people who want to do a group order from there with me, once I pull that together the rare fish will be so much more accessible

Feeding them is not a problem I already had a group of Dora’s pipefish that I got 2 years ago. No, actually none of them went to the same tank. There is a khuli loach tank because I have like 30 of them, there is also a hillstream loach tank, the pipes got their own tank …. I would recommend a tank full of khuli loaches for everyone, they are so great. It is by far the most active tank I have and I could watch them all day!

Got a package today and am really happy with the quality of the contents: Red lizard hillstream loaches, silver khuli loaches, and black line pipefish

Mine are too young but I do know people who have spawned them, they do not receive parental care but are unlikely to get eaten by the parents. To raise the fry you need to have infusora as the first food. Then you can move up to things like micro worms, rotifers, and finally baby Brine.

I ordered 10 of these guys and they are the best looking pipes I ever got in the mail. 9 of them look great and are eating frozen baby brine, rotifers, and calannus for me. The daphnia I have is too big I have to get some hikari daphnia tomorrow. once they are out of quarantine they will go into a 30 gallon walstead style tank with shrimp and daphnia in it (eventually, it took awhile to get the daphnia established in the other Pipefish tank…. A long while, and a lot of daphnia). I thought about adding scuds but I don’t know if they will hunt the daphnia or not. I am pretty comfortable with them because I also have the other doryichthys species, doras Pipefish, I have been keeping those for about 2 years now and I am hopeful that they will spawn soon. There are 2 males and 5 females in that group (and I am always looking for more, my dream is to have like a 60 breeder with nothing but like 30 fresh water pipes in it) My understanding is they become sexually mature at around 2 years. I love them so much and my goal is to eventually find all of the species of freshwater pipes, I would like to have some of the African species like enneacampus ansorgii but I have not ever seen those for sale. I did made an attempt with rainbow belly and all I am gonna say about that is I would be willing to try one more time but I would definitely not order them from the place I got the first batch, they were very small and came looking like they hadn’t eaten in a while. For a minute I thought that a couple of them might bounce back but unfortunately even the ones that kind of started eating never really bounced back. Once they go too long without food and their gut bacteria dies you can’t really save them. Anyway, I would love to hear an update on how yours are doing!

If you want floating plants I would recommend water lettuce if it is a highly lit tank, I also really like frogbit and tigerbit. Lots of plants that people usually plant make good floaters too like hornwort and water sprite. If you don’t have a top on your tank, I put cuttings of Pothos in my tank and hang them over the side and they root in there and they are huge nutrient suckers so they’re great for that. Water wisteria is also a really big nutrient sucker and that can be planted or floated.

No! Don’t do it! It is basically the cancer of aquatic plants, you’ll never get rid of it. It’ll be an all the tanks even if you didn’t put it in all the tanks. My friend even found duck weed in his coffee the other day. There is absolutely no getting rid of it, it’ll cover the whole top of the tank, super fast and then you’ll just be scooping it off and throwing it out all the time because no one else wants it. If I knew then what I knew now there would be no duck weed in my house.

I wouldn’t probably keep zebras in a walstead. They require a very high flow rate and the temperature upwards of 80°. They are messy fish and they require pristine water. So that being said, I wouldn’t put them in a small tank. They also don’t really want a heavily planted tank that’s not their natural environment they want a tank that is more sparse in plants, and very full of rocks and driftwood lots of places for them to crawl into and hide. They also require a very protein heavy diet hence me saying that they’re messy fish, even more so than most plecos because if you don’t have filtration, that’s turning your water over 10 times an hour. The flow isn’t fast enough for them and it’s not keeping the tank clean enough

Shell dwellers, bristlenose pleco, blue eyed rainbow fish, and corydora. I have two lfs that buy from me so I breed blue eyed lemon, super red, and albino BN because regular people still want them you can sell them on eBay and stuff and any ones that you can’t sell. The stores will still take. I just ordered a bunch of snow whites because the stores can’t get them yet and breeding pairs still fetch a nice price. I do well with my corydora similus, because they are at the intersection of popular and difficult to source, and the Pygmys and habros. The more rare corys bring an higher price but are slower to move are harder to move than you would think. Like I have 20 duplicareus fry that I have not had takers on yet.