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.

Huh. I was told it was a mystery snail and didn't question, but the wife did get her from a sketchy pond shop. I got her individually and the babies appeared one at a time over the course of several weeks without me noticing any eggs, so I guess that checks. I know that I read about their egg-laying on reddit a couple times, and I guess my cognitive dissonance did a great job of overlooking that until now. Well crap, what kind of snail do I have?? pH is ~7.6, my snello recipe has straight calcium carbonate added, and the salty shrimp is hypothetically adding calcium to the water. Should I be aiming for a general KH/GH?

Hi all - I've got a handful of mystery snails, which have all spawned from my affectionately named Mama Snail here. Unfortunately, I feel I haven't done her much justice - she has a decent crack along her shell, as well as some deformities along the tip of the spiral of her shell. I have focused much of my husbandry on the fish in the tank and not the snails, so I'm looking for some advice/guidance there. I started feeding snello and adding salty shrimp to our water (TDS 200-250) some months ago and I feel that her shell has improved some since then. I have read about some advices on gluing eggshell to their shells, but don't want to do more harm than good. She is going on a year now, so I guess my main questions are a) what, if anything, should I do to address her shell damage? and b) what should I do to prevent this/ensure proper husbandry for my snails? Any resources, reputable sources, care guides, etc. would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the welcome, all! If anyone knows what the little red plant is, feel free to give me a shout. @Fish Folk, the cardinals are the best "accidental" buy I've made for sure! I can't wait to get a few more. @BeeGryphon thanks! I used Seachem Flourish & Flourish Trace when I first started them, but I've fallen off on the habit - they've really taken off on their own! @TrogdorTheBettanator Go for it! Mine has not been difficult at all, it acted like a rhizome plant initially (no roots, don't bury, just rest on top of the substrate) and grew its own roots. I got mine from a brick & mortar fish store in MD, but I'm sure they're good through aquarium co-op. I'll be sure to share pictures if/when it flowers!!

Some types of gravels can increase pH, and in a small tank that’s my guess. Replacing it with another substrate could help, but if your RO water is testing acidic <7.0 you could keep at the water changes and see if that brings it down.

One of my newest arrivals is settling in nicely and snacking on the sponge filter: While my first baby shrimp (ready to leave the breeder) is hanging out with a soon-to-be mama!

@nabokovfan87 Thanks! It's a Tetra i10-30 - a little bit different but same basic principle. I've pimped the filters on my other tanks, but this video gave some interesting techniques. I think I'm going to hold off on this one for the short-term for budget reasons, we've been able to avoid those issues so far by overlapping cartridges and while that isn't the most convenient, I don't really like the filter in general and may not need it in the long run.

Hi! Happy to be here from KY (for the moment). Forgive my poor-quality pictures and my poor-quality glass! My wife & I have recently gotten back into the hobby with a small collection of nano fish, cherry shrimp, and snails. Pictured here is our newest tank, a 55 gallon planted tank with small groups of harlequin rasboras, neon tetras (not pictured), and kuhli loaches, plus a handful of assassin snails (not pictured) and several (dozen, hundred?) bladder snails. It's a good little group, soon to be joined by a group of cardinal tetras in my 20 gallon. They have been moved in slowly over the last few weeks after having set up the tank in January, and we just saw our first fry this morning! My eventual plan for this one is increasing the planting, building out the schools/shoals so that they each have about a dozen, and adding a single or pair of bristlenose plecos. The plants seem to be doing well for the most part: Rotala are just about ready for some cuttings, the hornwort is on its third round of cuttings, the banana plant grew its floating leaf last week, the java fern is struggling a bit but paradoxically propagating like crazy, and there's a java fern, java moss, and a couple other plants and grasses. Bonus - I bought this plant (below) locally and have no idea what it is. Anyone? The kuhlis have been predictable elusive since adding them to this tank, so here's a shot from before they moved: Loaches gonna loach. Second tank is a 20 long that holds some skrimps, mystery snails, and a small school of cardinal tetras that will eventually be moved over to the 55 gallon. The cardinals were an accidental buy - I got one lumped in with my first batch of neons, and of course the only answer was to buy him a school. The shrimps are majority neos of different colors and grades, with two amanos that were part of a group that tagged along with some plants. I also have two quarantine tanks going - a 5 gallon with a small group of red cherry shrimps and some stowaway ramshorns, and a 10 gallon with two short fin snow white bristlenose plecos (and a mystery snail who avoided the evacuation to the 20 long). Anyways, glad to be here and glad to be back in the hobby. Ultimately we would like to breed neos and plecos, but will be moving out of state in the next 3 months so we are switching gears to prepping what we have for the move and are done buying new fish (unless I can get my hands on a group of longfin green dragon plecos) until they are settled back in. Thanks!

Nitrites have bounced back to 0 and ammonia is holding at 0.25 or less, so hopefully that's the worst of it. I'll test again tonight and then resume daily testing, hopefully will be able to complete the quarantine as instructed. The bad news - apparently my wife snuck a dose of the bottled bacteria we got for Christmas in there last night, and now she's convinced it worked. Send help, lol. Fingers crossed for these guys - my first snow whites.

Thanks for the advise all - retesting now and will try to get a picture up when I get results. @nabokovfan87 - cartridges and yes, added an airstone. The guys are very active and seem to be handling everything well. @Pepere - thanks, I held off of water changing yesterday because I'm not too worried about 0.25-0.5, but I'm not sure I'll end up redosing. I agree, I got a bottle of bacteria for Christmas and it didn't do a thing for my 55g. @Mmiller2001 & @Colu - thanks! If I need to treat going forward I'll definitely do this.

@AllFishNoBrakes Guess that's just my luck. Any other suggestions? Per the faq instructions they've been fed nothing, so that's not a variable.