Phoenixfishroom

I previously established that just regular old, terrestrial moss grows just fine underwater long-term. Yesterday I collected five other types of moss that I found growing around outside and brought them in and cleaned them. And I put pieces of each in a couple of different gallon jars full of water, and I am going to first be finding out whether all of these also do well underwater, and if so, then I am going to start subjecting them to lower light conditions, keep the jars at different temperatures, and make one of them slightly brackish. I will try to remember to update with results in over the next month or two.

I will start. I really like n.similis and also feel they are underrated. They are every bit as good as multis and look better too. I also love blue occies, my experience is that their aggression to conspecifics is overplayed as long as each male has a solid 6” of territory to defend. The shell dweller I would like the get next is lamprologus ornatappis. Like puncs they don’t really live in the shells, but they do breed them, so I would could them. They are interesting and pretty and we don’t see nearly enough of them.

What is your favorite shell dweller? What species do you feel is underrated or wish we saw more of? great experiences? Bad experiences? Lessons learned? Pictures and videos? everybody could use some super cute shell dwellers in their life. Let’s talk all about them!

Thanks!

I went to make a post with some cool videos of petrocephalus simus because they are far too busy for pictures to come out good, but it keeps telling me the file type isn’t allowed. It says videos in the title of that forum section so I figure someone knows how….. help please? 🤨

I open the bag and pour out half the water then slowly add water to the bag over a half hour to an hour, depending on the fish, until is is at the original height (which I mark with a sharpie before pouring half out). While I am doing that I have the bag in a cup which I float in the tank on a small inner tube meant for floating a drink in the pool. Once the water is a 50/50 mix of bag and tank water I pour it through a colander and put the fish from the colander into the tank. I have never had any negative effects although I am sure they are probably a little indignant about the colander transfer bit. None of them have ever voiced a complaint though.

I just tripped over this and I know it is old but I can tell you that I don’t float them and why. the first time a fish was shipped to me I didn’t know about breather bags yet, floated them, and within a couple minutes all the fish were on their sides. They were all fine again within a couple minutes of me pouring them out of the bags into a bucket. The second place that I ordered fish rub with aqua imports and they have a big sticker on top of their box that says don’t float them and that is how I learned about breather bags and made an educated guess about what happened the first time. I was curious how everyone else acclimate them so I did a search just now and this came up, I wanted to share for the next person who comes across this page searching that question.

I thought of another thing that would be a huge money saver. I have started using full spectrum dimmable LED light strips for my tanks instead of tank lights, I glue them to a piece of metal and coat it in epoxy resin. They come 4 or 8 strips to a controller which works well because I have my tanks on racks. If it were automated though you could come close to the 24/7 lights with it by getting maybe 4 strips with 8 bars each and 4 smart power strips. One is set to max brightness, two are set to maybe 60% and 30% yellow/orange and the last one is not full spectrum just blue LEDs for nighttime. You could program the power strips in sequence and have 8 tanks running for like 160$ edit: 160 plus the cost of the metal strips and epoxy which is negligible. You could use things other than epoxy as well, I just happen to already do epoxy resin casting and have gallons of it around all the time. But clear glue would work too or even plastic wrap, anything to keep the water off of the LEDs. But the strips are like $20 each and I saw a power strips for like $20 each also. now I am thinking I may have to get one of these smart home yellow boxes, I am definitely still not about to have Alexa or google home listening to me all the time (don’t care if that sounds kind of tinfoil hat lol)

Yeah, it is specifically breeding info I am looking for, thank you though.

This would be awesome for my mudskipper tank! I currently use 2 pumps on timers to operate the tidal flow and have the filter/heater in the reserve tank on a timer to only run during low tide and the heater in the main tank on a 4th timer to run during high tide. There is also a reptile tank control box with a temperature and humidity sensor to run a heat lamp and mister and a led 24/7 programmable light. Sounds like you could automate all of that through the app if you were savvy enough (I am pretty sure I am not though lol)

@Fish Folk yeah if you could that would be great

Repashy Soylent green, cucumber, zucchini, carrots, hikari micro algea wafers, first bites

Probably worth mentioning that I do still feed all of my tanks with flakes/pellets, wafers, frozen brine and mysis, and live insect larvae and flightless flies that I culture separately. It is quite possible that if it was the only food source feeder animals could not effectively populate tanks with micropredators.

I have a stable neocaridina and/or scuds population in most of my tanks and daphnia colonies in the pipefish tanks. The first two work anywhere with the right parameters, lots of small hiding places, and enough live plants/moss. A warning though, if you don’t have enough fish to keep them in check scuds can get pretty out of control and when their population gets too high they will start damaging plants and can collapse an shrimp population in the same tank. Daphnia is more difficult to establish and will only work in a tank with really heavy planting and no filtration. You also need to dump kind of a lot in at the beginning and add more from time to time until the are able to establish themselves and I am not sure that they could ever get a real foothold in a tank with a heavy fish population or fast more agile swimmers…. It isn’t that hard to outrun a pipefish.

I purchased some a.brichardi, commonly sold under the common name red Congo tetra even though it is inaccurate and there is actually another fish called that. They are gorgeous, brightly colored, and grow to 3-4”. I think they are easily one of the most stunning tetras out there, so much so that they are now destined to be the main attraction in a 75 gallon african biotope. It is a shame they are so rare in the hobby and almost prohibitively expensive. It appears that they are not often bred in captivity, and is not nearly as easy as most tetras, so it is difficult to find much of anything about doing so. Curious if anyone has experience with keeping and breeding these guys and would care to share their experience? Would love to be able to get a captive bred population of these going and pass them around to some other breeders so we could see these show stealers around more often.

I keep cleaners and dither fish with almost all of my breeders. I put either a young bristlenose or two that I am growing out or some otos in, as well as some shrimp and assassin snails for cleaners. Then I also put a school of tetras or rasboras that I trust not to eat eggs in the breeding tanks too. Gives me comfortable breeders, a place to grow out some plecos, and as an added bonus you can breed the dither fish too with a breeder box off that same tank.

Wondering if anyone has any leads on a school of p.mellis (honey blue eyed Rainbowfish)? I have been working with lines of p.furcatus (fork tailed) and p.luminateus (red neon) and just think pseudomugils are the best. Have been searching for some p.mellis for awhile and having no luck.They are such cool fish and so difficult to get, as well as being endangered in the wild. I would really like to set up a breeding colony and be able to supply some to some other pseudomugil breeders, increase the availability. so if you have some, or could refer me to someone who does that would be awesome.

Honestly I couldn’t even tell you what a panda egg looks like, I have never seen one, just new wigglers in the Java moss (cory fry love Java moss) from time to time. Found a panda fry in my upsidedown catfish tank the other day, I guess an egg hitched a ride on some plant clippings I brought over lol. Some cory species, like my emerald bronchis pretty much always lay right out on the glass. Others hide them so good you never see where. Even weirder I never see any pygmy or habro eggs OR fry but I definitely have way more of them than I ever purchased lol. side note. I saw my smudge spot corys going nuts tonight after I cleaned their tank but I can’t find a single eggs. They are just teaching reproductive age and I am gonna be pretty happy if they just did their first spawn. I guess I will know in a couple days. 🤩

I see you asked if sand would be a good alternative, the top layer of my substrate for them is aquarium filter sand, under that I have dirt mixed with pea gravel and peat. They feed by sifting sand through their mouth and out their gills so finest grain sand is really the only substrate that I would ever recommend for them. The dirt is under that and I don’t think it effects breeding success one way or the other. Someone else recommended pea gravel to me, helps any fry that end up hatching in there hide. I have a layer of Indian almond leaves above the sand which helps replicate their natural environment, helps hide eggs that fall, and or course creates the black water environment.

Honestly I’ve never heard of anyone successfully breeding them in a community tank, pretty much everything else I keep in groups of 1 pleco species, 1 Cory species, 1 schooling species, and variations of that. Khulis are tough, they are tough for experienced breeders, and I think at the end of the day some of it boils down to the temperament of your fish and if you have one that wants to do it. also, khulis are black water fish so you need to give them a planted black water tank with a nice current, really clean water, and slightly higher temps than they are often kept at are good too.

They did not want their picture taken at all. I swear sometimes it’s like fish know when you want to take a picture.

I also never pull eggs, if I want a better hatch/survival rate I just plan tank mates around it, every species I breed except for khulis either lives and breeds in a community tank, in fact I have noticed that a LOT of species of Cory and pleco are much more likely to breed in a community environment, they feel safer when they can observe prey species out in the open. My clown plecos, for example, won’t breed at all without dither fish, my L397s and wabenmuster ancistrus didn’t ever spawn in a species tank either but… not they are both in tanks with a species of Cory and a species of schooling too water column fish and I have 2 clowns, an alenquer tiger, an albino BN, and a wabenmuster on eggs right now that I know of all in community, planted, settings.

Panda Corys are hard not to breed lol. Start off with like 8-10 individuals, grow them out together. 75° low/moderate current, sand substrate, moderate/heavy planting and lots of little caves and hiding places so they are comfortable. I drop the temp by like 5° when I do water changes. As long as they are old enoug and conditioned for breeding (I supplement with occasional frozen/live protein, feed repashy spawn and grow mixed with community variety frequently, and feed bug bites bottom feeder and community formulas daily.) Mine spawn in a community tank with emerald dwarf rasbora, cpds, a couple hillys, and a breeding trio of albino bristlenose. I don’t breed intentionally for sale, I have a lot of other corydora species I am working with for that, so I don’t ever pull the eggs or fry and I still get between 5-10 fry make it long enough to be past the risk of getting eaten after most water changes (which I do once monthly on that tank with just small spot cleans to suck up the pleco poop in between)

They are gorgeous! They came bigger than advertised and are not showing stress coloration. Nice dark black likes and the other lines range between light yellow and almost orange. Never even seen nicer looking ones in pictures honestly. When he got them they were black and bright red! He said they lost the color quite a bit but started to brighten back up pretty quickly. I have to clean that tank I will try and get a good picture for you. Looking to purchase like 6 more. They are going to be my new breeding project, that being why I am looking for people who breed chubbys, I have given up on finding other people breeding these, I can’t even find anyone else who has them. Planet catfish only has 6 other people who ever owned them and they are all inactive now

Yes. 10 individuals in a heavily planted 20 tall, dirted, species tank, 80°F, internal filter and HOB creating a mild/moderate current. There are lots of floating plants and a spawning mop as well as lots of moss. The only other inhabitants are adult amano shrimp, a couple assassin snails, and a small group of breeding cherry reds. Check the spawning mop at least every day because if the eggs fall to the bottom they will be eaten. I condition with repashy spawn and grow, blood worms, baby brine, and daphnia as part of their diet full time. I also have lavender kuhli but the have not spawned yet, they are much younger though. Kuhlis don’t breed until they are at least 18 months sometimes even as old as 2 years the first time they spawn. They pair off so it is better to start with a decent size group and grow them out together, I have not seen any aggression during spawning or between males.