EleanorM

Mystery worms have appeared…. Can anyone diagnose / recommend treatment? tons of shrimp and snails.. and live plants…

I used to trade shrimp for store credit at a lfs. One lovely day, I was looking for stuff to spend my credit on and stopped to watch the shrimp tank (cuz I love them) and the new guy came over and tried to hard sell me some shrimp and explain to me how to breed them and even offered that some customer bred them all locally and maybe I could buy a bunch and undercut that other person.. ie. me. …. It was hella awkward

I will try patience, that usually works. per advice, i more firmly affixed the Buce, but with stone, not superglue (mostly because I appear to have left the cap loose) as above in my edit, I added a piece of Anubias Nana Petite for compare and contrast purposes: Ignore the photo-bombing CPDs.

I love beautiful plants though. I don’t mind slow growing. In fact, after cleaning floating plants out of all 4 tanks and fretting about all the baby Java fern roots all over … I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of slow growing. I just cringe at the amount of melt. These were 3x the size they are now. Almost 100% leaf loss and very little new growth, if any, to note. even the anubias has notable growth… for posterity; an edit: I added more stone to hold the Buce firmly in place. I also pulled the worst off anubias out of the shrimp 5 gallon and stuck it in for comparison over the weeks to come.

The Buce is 20 days in tank, 14 days out of pot. (They “floated”, submerged for six days). my memory sucks so the order tracking is clutch.

I ordered a couple pots of Buce from Aquarium CoOp and I do t know what’s wrong? It is the only plant I have that is on the struggle bus. every other plant seems to be doing fine. AQUARIUM/LIGHTING Fluval Flex 9 Gallon with stock light. Expanded filtration with 2 of the stock sponges each with 2x bio ring bags in each. No carbon. Sponge intake cover for Shrimp grazing/protection, low flow “fountain style” spray bar. PARAMETERS: 6.8 ph, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10-20 nitrate, 160 TDS, 75.2 F DOSING: 1 pump Easy Green 2x weekly + 1 pump after weekly water change. 1 pump Easy Iron every Sunday after 30-50% water change. LIVESTOCK: 1x Koi Plakat Betta, 14 Celestial Pearl Danio, 20x (give or take) red Cherry Shrimp, 1x Nerite Snail

This weekend: The Betta 9 gallon is doing well: there is at least one pregnant cherry shrimp! meanwhile, in the other betta tank: no one seems berried, but … Shrimplets! ok, shrimplet …. But it’s progress in the yellow world. in the Puffer tank: the ember tetras are out and about.. But the puffers are being stealthy and hard to photo. Meanwhile, in the shrimp tank, the Chili Rasbora refuse to come out of hiding.

I think I may build a full cabinet style rack out of plywood and pine once it is above freezing for a couple weeks. . .

TL;DR: this rack weighs at least 375 lbs. what, if anything, should I do to help spread the weight on the feet of the shelving. So yesterday, I modified a Walmart wire shelving system to be my aquarium rack: I put magic sliders under the feet to help distribute the weight. The outer rings of the sliders popped off. the shelf system legs are about 1/2 inch diameter. the shelving weight on the box is 32.19 lbs assembled. I added 4 1/2 inch plywood shelves over the top of the wire for a flat bottom. the rack is holding: 4x plywood shelves (4.29 lbs. each, 17.16 lbs total) 1x 3.6 gallon Fluval Betta Premium (10.21 lbs.) 1x 5 gallon Fluval Spec V (13.9 lbs.) 2x 9 gallon Fluval Flex (11.08 lbs each) 2x 8.8 lbs backs of Fluval stratum (17.6 lbs) 2x 9 lbs bags of stone = 18 lbs = 46.27 lbs in glass = 221.84 lbs in water =35.6 lbs in hardscape = 49.35 lbs in shelving total weight = 353.86 lbs the system is rated for 350 lbs per shelf, 1750 lbs. total maximum; I am way under weight. No concerns there. What, if anything, should I do to make the weight more evenly distributed for the sake of the floor?

I bought a 350 lbs/shelf unit and added stained and waxed shelves made of 1/2 inch plywood. Ooh look Aquarium Co-Op merch. well, that burned most of the day. Tomorrow is for cleanup. suddenly I have 4 aquarium free stands…. What to do next?

This is my usual process I guess. Get a tank, spend 1-2 months setting up, eventually get fish. Right now, all of my aquariums are “over stocked” according to the “1 inch of fish per gallon” rule of thumb. There are 3 pea puffers, 14 ember tetra, 2 nerite snails, and 10 (or so) amano shrimp in the 9 gallon. They’re all happy. There are tunnels and line of sight breaking things everywhere. The plants and fish are all doing well, and other than 1 ember tetra dying the day after they came home, I am unaware of any fatalities. pH on all tanks is 6.8 0 nitrates. 0 nitrites. 0 ammonia. I check water with my API freshwater master kit every Sunday during the livestream, after the water changes. I use test strips 2-3 times per week. I personally believe the key to success is patience. I set up just after Thanksgiving, finished just before New Year’s Day, and introduced livestock mid-late January, after the plants were doing ok and actively growing. I don’t put a lot of faith in “good water parameters” unless a tank is a month or so in. My tap water tests the exact same as my aquarium water, right out of the tap… i guess my point to self is, the beneficial bacteria make the water “good” and fish safe. That doesn’t come out of the tap, it comes with time. Spec 5 shown above has approximately 35 blue shrimp, 9 chili rasbora, and 1 nerite snail. Spec 5 #2 has 1 platinum white dumbo eat half veil male betta, 1 nerite snail, 10 or more yellow shrimp, and 9 neon green tetra. This was my “quarantine” tank and one day it will be a pretty girl, but for now … no photos, please 😐 Flex 9 #2 has 1 plakat koi male Betta, 14 celestial pearl danio, 20+ Bloody Mary shrimp, and 2 nerite snails.

Flex 5 gallon weekly progress (yep, the plants just floated for 2 weeks before I planted them…. week 1: picked initial layout and rocks. Don’t worry, I change my mind … Week 2: a dozen pots of plants from aquarium coop showed up. week 3: I moved the plants into a bucket, stole plants from the 9 gallon above, and found some spiderwood. week 4: I finally started planting week 5: I’m mostly happy week 6: I moved the spiderwood 1/4 inch left…. week 7 tannins are leaking onto my white sand 😞 I was away 2 weeks, so a bit of a jump to now:

So here’s my photo journal for my Flex 9 gallon. initial set up, early December 2022. There is no livestock yet, just getting the wood, rock and plants started… About 1 week later: moved some things, making more cloudy water, but more plants! Another week later: the water is better. Some of the hair grass is starting to root … still not livestock ready though. Another week: I found some Java fern! The Pearl weed has just begun to spread. I moved some more things to make the water cloudy again… Another week: more Java fern! Another week: most of the melt has ended, and real growth is happening! Another week: the plants are all super happy. The water is consistently where I want it! Goal achieved.

Aw…. I missed that entirely….

Here is the “lone wolf” of the triad: The white speck is a baby snail on the glass… This is the pair To me, the loner puffer seems full as does one of the pair. The bottom fish in the bottom photo has significantly less of a belly than the other. Full of snails? To skinny? Keep on feeding blood worms? Give them a day or 2 to go murder hobo on my snail population?