MrGibson

Hey sorry for the late response! I actually don’t have any yet. I ran into issues with getting a proper tank going for them on time but I’ve got a 10 gallon tank that’s been maturing for a bit now. I’m hoping to get a pair in early may. Do you have any experience with them? From what I gather they’re fairly straightforward.

Yeah puffer is for sure thoroughly ruled out. I think at this point the best way to narrow down the ID is to grow it out lol

Looking further into this tonight I’m thinking I can maybe say it’s some kind of pupfish, similar to flag fish. The only issue I’m seeing is that most pupfish have truncated caudal fins whereas this appears to have a rounded caudal fin. I guess it’s possible that shape changes with age maybe? so far I think the closest match I’ve gotten is desert pupfish but I don’t believe those are commonly kept, and again the caudal fin is off. And thus the rabbit hole goes deeper.

Flag fish crossed my mind as well, largely from @mountaintoppufferkeeper’s post, but I’m not really sure. I may try to figure out who I’ve bought plants from and see what they think. I’d agree on it not being a puffer at this point. Seems like this is the leading theory at the moment.

@Fish Folki know you’ve worked with a good number of species. You ever seen a fry like this?

I gave up on a gif. Here’s a link to a video. any ideas? The movement of the mouth has me thinking it’s not a puffer. side note, does anyone know the term for fish mouths that extend forward like that? Just curious

Update! It reappeared! I’ll work on getting a gif posted

Appreciate the comparisons. I’m definitely going to try for some video this weekend. Im not certain it’s a puffer but I’m having trouble thinking of anything else that moves like that. I’ve got a new light coming Monday as well so that may help brighten things up for better visibility. I’d say it’s probably around a half inch or so right now but that’s really a guess based on the few glimpse I got of it. I’ll be sure to update if I get any video thanks 🙂

Hey y’all. Tonight while sitting in front of my medaka grow out tank I noticed a little fish along the bottom that I didn’t put in there. I was only able to get some pretty terrible pictures of it. The current theory is it’s maybe a puffer if some sort based on its movement. It stayed near the bottom and slowly moved from spot to spot while moving its eyes in the orbits and picking food off the bottom. It’s hard to tell because it’s so small but it appeared to not be using its tail to swim and was moving very slowly and smoothly. I’m assuming this fish had to have come in as an egg on a plant or something and hatched out in my tank. I’ll attach the pictures I was able to get even though they suck in hopes it can inform some guesses. I’m thinking I may camp out in front of the tank with my dslr and a macro lens for a few hours this weekend to get a better look. If I’m able to I’ll update this thread. @mountaintoppufferkeeper I know you keep and breed some puffers. Any ideas? thanks y’all!

Another update, I took some myriophyllum out of this tank yesterday and some of it had rooted through the mesh and into the soil. It was firmly held in place, but would come lose with some gentle encouragement. I plan to give the rest of the plants a chance to get rooted through and I may add some more species to test out a wider range, but if all continues to go well I’m satisfied I have a solution and I’ll likely be trying some apistos in this tank 🙂

That’s great info to have! I’m testing one of the ideas and it’s going well so far. Here’s the thread where I’m documenting that 🙂 It’s going well so far and it seems like it should work quite well for digging species, even if not entirely necessary for A. Cacatuoides. thanks 🙂

Everything is going well so far. Need to give more time for plants to root. I’ll say that having a barrier under just shy of an inch of soil makes planting a bit of a pain, but it’s doable and if needed a plant weight can come to the rescue. More to come 🙂

Oh gotcha! To further serve your point, I didn’t realize there was an E50 lol

What makes you say it doesn’t exist in the US? I’ve ordered two fluval e100 heaters on Amazon in the last week here in Tennessee.

Got some plants in with more on the way. I decided to do a preliminary test just on the ability of the craft grid to keep the soil in place when the cap was disturbed and it performed well. I used a substrate spatula to very aggressively move the sand and to blow water around across the top of the soil. Some of the soil fines came up but really not much. Certainly much less that we’re I to do it in a standard dirted tank. I think that if the plants are able to root well this will be a viable solution. I may end up putting this to the test with a pair of Apistogramma borellii if I can find an unrelated pair. anyway here’s a picture of the water after my assault on the substrate! I’ll keep testing with different methods of disturbing the cap and report back!

Clownfish are great. I have a pair. If you want a pair start with a known established pair or two very small fish. They’re sequential hermaphrodites meaning they hatch as males, then the most dominant fish will become female. If you end up with two females you’ll be in trouble as they’ll try to kill each other. A male kept alone will eventually become female as well. I think starting with fry rock is a good idea and it’s what I’ve always done. You’re correct that many different hitchhikers can come in on the rocks. Some can be beneficial, others can be outright dangerous for your tank inhabitants.

Today I watched some of my medaka fry hatch out and started on an experiment regarding modifying the walstad method. Some trimming of plants and removal of snails happened here and there too. Also researched some interesting new plants.

I’d be interested to see what your system looks like once it’s going! I’ve wanted to make an aquaponics system for the last decade. Maybe I’ll get around to it sometime soon

This is a solid idea. I may give this a shot when my next order shows up. Thanks!

I mix my salt to 1.026 and it just took some trial and error with the refractometer to get a feel for how much salt to add. Sometimes I do overshoot a tad so I just dilute with ro. For the cycling I would just directly dose ammonia. If you’re starting with live rock and sand you may not have too much cycling to do. As with the fish be mindful of where live rock is coming from. With nitrates some corals will use them up but I also think many people are overly worried about it. If my nitrates hit 10ppm and I’m not having major algae issues I don’t worry about it too much. If I we’re keeping SPS I might worry about it but there are SPS guys out there who will straight up dose nitrate and phosphate like we do in freshwater to encourage growth. Many ways to do it right, it just depends on what you’re looking for. I don’t do water changes very often, but I also don’t feed super heavily. That’s something you’ll need to feel out with your system as there’s not really any one way to go. As far as adding corals the more mature and stable the tank the better, but with hardier corals, especially softies like zoas and mushrooms, I wouldn’t personally worry about putting them in within the first month. Honestly even with SPS I don’t think I’d wait more than three months unless I was having trouble with something. If everything is coming back stable in your system and you’re cycled, you’re probably good for basic easy corals. happy to help 🙂

I’d recommend syngoniums. You can find some at big box stores and if you look online there are some pretty cool ones. My understanding is that they’re riparian plants in their natural habitat so they’re perfect for this purpose. I’d also recommend cryptanthus potentially if you have a way to secure them. They’re a terrestrial bromeliad that I believe is also from riparian zones. Lots of philodendrons and other aroids would work as well. I’ve seen some people use alocasia.

Geotextile was another idea that I had, as was egg crate like you mentioned. This is the stuff I’m using here https://www.joann.com/13in-x-22in-mesh-5-plastic-mesh-embroidery-canvas-by-big-twist/16057135.html It’s the same plastic grid you see people use for catching eggs from egg scattering fish just in a larger size than I’ve seen recommended for that. I’m testing this first since it seemed like it’d be a good balance between allowing plant roots through while also keeping the soil mostly in place. I may test the other two ideas as well but I’ve got fairly high hopes for this one so I’m hoping I don’t need to lol. I do think that even more so than a standard dirted tank this will make plants very difficult to move as they’ll basically be weav themselves through the mesh. If you’ve got cichlids trying to move plants around though maybe that’s not such a bad thing. We’ll see 🙂

Hey friends. I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to keep some South American cichlids prone to digging in a dirted tank and I’m now setting up a 10 gallon tank to test my idea of using the plastic craft grid from JoAnn as a permeable barrier between the cap layer and the soil layer. The idea is to accommodate some digging behavior and still keep at least the vast majority of the soil in place. For now I have the soil, barrier, and cap in place in a few inches of water and I’ll be sure to update when I plant later this week and then over time as I play the role of the fish and make a mess. Stay tuned!

flow is indeed very important. Depending on what corals end up in the tank and which tank size you go with a decent return pump may be enough, but a power head can really make a difference. Getting one that can turn on and off to create a wave pulse is what’s I’d recommend, as what I’ve found really will make a difference is RANDOM flow. When you have a pulse going around and through your rocks, colliding with itself and the current from your return you get lots of little currents in different directions. This will gently blow coral back and forth and every which way seemingly at random, and many of them will appreciate it. It happens to look really neat too 🙂 Tidal gardens is a great recommendation for a resource and I can’t believe I forgot to mention it lol. That channel is where I started really learning about coral all those years ago. Personally I’m not one for bare bottom, but I’m also not one for the old school deep sand bed. I prefer to have the extra surface area for my nitrifying bacteria that 1.5-2” of sand provides, but you can definitely have a gorgeous healthy tank without it. As I said, no one way to do anything 🙂

Absolutely gorgeous! I’ve heard a lot of the wild bettas are quite the acrobats and have a propensity for carpet surfing. If I ever work with them a tight lid will be in order for sure