Xaos

Hi everyone, it's been awhile! I searched the forum but wasn't able to find any broad or specific advice on foods, so I'm looking to share my feeding regimen and also to look for suggestions on what to add, especially for my more carnivorous plecos! I have two breeding projects going, with snow white ancistrus and green dragons! Being mostly herbivores, I think they're generally happy with lots of spare vegetable matter (canned green beans, fresh lettuce, zucchini, cucumber, etc.), but we also rotate through Hikari Mini Algae Wafers, Repashy Morning Wood, Repashy Soilent Green, Sera Catfish Chips, and more occasionally Fluval Bug Bites. They of course have plenty of mopani and driftwood around. My L239 Blue "Panaque", Brutus, is the less complicated of my more meat-eating plecos. He's a big fan of the Fluval Bug Bite sticks, and he occasionally gets Repashy Bottom Scratcher and Repashy Soilent Green. He will also occasionally nibble on the Sera Catfish Chips, but the Bug Bites are the only thing he really goes crazy for. Last but not least, we have my L091 Three Beacon, Diego! He has somewhat confounded me. He's somewhat shy, having taken up residence in a hollow log in my 55-gallon community tank, and is not easy to observe. The most we see of him during the day is his third beacon waving around outside the opening to the log. I can sometimes observe him eating if I put food directly outside of his log at night, when the room is dark, and then sit motionless outside of the tank for several minutes. Sometimes if I walk past the tank in the middle of the night, I will catch a glimpse of him, but he's very quick to notice anyone around outside of the tank. So it's hard to tell what he likes. My concern is that he hasn't grown terribly much since we got him about 5 months ago. I've been reading that they get to 9"-11", and he's grown to maybe 4"-5" from about half that size. I can't find much on their growth rate, but I would expect him to be a bit bigger by now, so I'm concerned he isn't eating well enough. In any case, he's offered pretty much all of the above - canned green beans and fresh veggies, all three types of Repashy (Bottom Scratcher, Morning Wood, Soilent Green), algae wafers, catfish chips, and bug bites. He's mostly interested in the higher-protein foods, as to be expected. We've recently gotten more consistent access to local frozen foods, so I'm looking to expand to include bloodworms for him and Brutus but I'm also open to other options. Freeze-dried are the only local shelf-stable options for higher protein products I've seen, and as they don't sink they're not a great option for my bottom feeders, but I'm willing to order online if there are better options. I've heard mixed things about hikari/primarily fish meal products, but I've also seen them highly recommended, so I'm curious to see if anyone else is more informed on that.

Day 5 of treatment has come and gone, and he's much improved! Still a couple of visible spots, but I'm pretty happy. I'll continue treatment for at least two more days, I think, and probably a couple more after that at this rate. On a less ich-related note, I've switched pronouns, as I have a sneaking suspicion he's a boy... He's got a great personality, a good appetite, and I'm really excited about him going forward! Once I've moved, I think I'll be looking to pair him up and start a breeding project.

Thanks! I've done that with the most recent water change, and added an air stone. She is already showing some improvement, I think!

Got a new blue panaque pleco (Baryancistrus beggini, L239) on 4/12, and settled her into a well-filtered 5g for quarantine. Yesterday (4/13) I noticed the onset of what looks to me like Ich, so I dosed the tank with Ich-X (2.5 mL) last night and am getting ready to do the first water change & re-dose. Wish us luck!

So I said this to my wife, and she says she thinks it was sold as a ludwigia. Hasn't grown much but hopefully it'll grow out to be a bit more obvious. We'll see!

My hornwort is doing very well, so I think I’ll have some to toss in with everyone! Haha.

I'll try to start one up soon!

Thanks all! I don't have a LFS as we live quite remotely, which complicates a few options for us but this has all been very helpful and I feel much better about our plan for moving them. I found some 12"x24" bags on Amazon that I think will work well for us, and just divide each species into a bag. We have a battery-powered air pump that can run two lines, so we might play around with splitters to see if that would work for some of them. We also have some media that I may try to seed & toss in with them. It will probably be a bit of overkill.

I've never shipped before, do you have a link to those you recommend? I know to look for rounded-bottom bags and I have seen recommendations to double-bag, but other than that, not sure if there are significant differences. I'll have to buy them for this so I'd guess bigger would be better? I have a few styrofoam coolers that I can put them in for the drive.

Thanks for the advice all! Looks like I'll go with bags. What do you think would be an appropriate number per bag with my school sizes?

Hi all, I'll be moving about 600 miles at the end of May, and I'm looking for advice on the best way to move my fish with as little loss as possible. Here's my stocking: 55 gallon community tank: 5 loaches 7 harlequin rasboras 9 neon tetras 6 cardinal tetras 20 gallon: 20-25 neocaridina shrimp (babies through adult) + 1 amano ~12 trapdoor snails 10 gallon: 2 snow white plecos (juveniles ~2 inches) On day 1, we'll be packing up and driving ~350 miles over 6-8 hours. We'll then take a break, sleep, and pick back up ~12 hours or so later for the last ~250 miles/4-6 hours. So a total of ~36 hours if all goes according to plan. I've seen two suggestions: 1. Bag everyone just before we leave in the style of shipping, transport the filters in 5-gallon buckets filled with aquarium water, place bags in coolers/insulation, and leave them be until time to reacclimate in final destination. 2. Split everyone into a couple of larger coolers or bins, drive them to the midpoint, run the filters etc. overnight, and then drive to the final destination. Second option seems logistically more complicated, but I'm not sure if it could save me any heartache. I do have a battery-operated air pump that I can use. I don't have any experience moving or shipping fish, and I know I'll probably lose a few either way, but I'd love some advice from those who do. Also looking on recommendations of how many/which fish to keep in each bag, what type of bags to use, etc. I know a few basic principles either way: try to keep them in the dark, try to keep the temperature stable, and don't feed for 3-4 days prior to the move to keep down ammonia, keep the media submerged, wrap the emptied tanks in plastic wrap. We'd move them inside either way when we break for the night at the midpoint. I've got loads of plants to add to the bags/bins. I'm not worried much about the shrimps & snails, they seem to travel well. Any other tips? Thanks in advance!

As an update on the banana plant, he's sprouted a second lily pad! I'll find a good forum area to post a tank update, but we've got the cardinals integrated to the 55 gallon and the plants are doing stellar as a whole. Picture preview:

For anyone still following or looking at this in the future - the cycle recovered, did see a wobble but never hit a full ppm of ammonia or nitrite, and back down to 0 of both by the end of the week so we completed the quarantine as directed (1 packet of Maracyn, 1 packet of ParaCleanse, and 1 U.S. teaspoon of Ich-X for a 10-gallon, no food for a week, 30% water change at the end of the week). I will not be redosing, and will hopefully add these guys to my 55-gallon in a few more weeks. In the future, I think I'll stick to ParaCleanse for asymptomatic quarantines & dose Ich-X / target feed Maracyn if indicated. Thanks again to all who provided advice & support.

I don't have a local fish store, so most of my fish are shipped. I typically add Prime & stress guard to any bag that comes my way and do a slow drip acclimation into a cycled tank, and so far I've had no immediate losses with that method. I'm by no means an expert - I agree with @Biotope Biologist, I don't think of it much beyond personal choice and it seems the best of my available options. Though I have read that prime doesn't affect ammonia & nitrite like it claims to, I continue to use it; I'm getting a ship of Amguard in the next couple of days, and while I plan to use that for an upcoming move, I'm wondering if it would reduce any toxic effects of ammonia during a drip acclimation?

Thanks @Levi_Aquatics! I must have started from good stock, because I really haven't done much with them! Love the betta in your profile pic.