MrGibson

I’d love to work with imbellis at some point. Super pretty fish.

Found it! The video is primarily talking about caridina shrimp like crystal reds but aside from water parameter things I think everything should be transferable. His philosophies on feeding will certainly impact my shrimp keeping when I’m able to get started again. Hope this helps!

I’ll dig around YouTube for that video and report back if I find it 🙂

Beautiful! Please update again as they get bigger and feistier! I’m really getting excited about bettas again after years and I’m really wanting to give breeding a try. I’m gonna start with albimarginata as that seems like an easier start but I’m very interested in digging into bubble nesters eventually. I actually just bought my first splendens in over 6 years today. I found an awesome breeder here in Tennessee so I’m a few weeks I’ll be making a 3.5 he drive each way to pick this guy up. https://imgur.com/a/PftRT86 Stupid excited. Do you work with any species other than splendens?

Babies have started hatching out this evening and are looking healthy so far! I’ll try to get some good video of them and start a new thread in the morning to record my first journey in easing fry. 🙂

Alright I’ll to my best to be thorough and go point by point here 🙂 Tank choice: I’d go for the biggest tank you have available and a shallow tank would be just fine. There’s a whole subset of reef tanks called lagoon tanks that fit that bill. I would love a tank with the dimensions of your larger one to play with. Now given you have previous freshwater experience, you know that more water is more stable. When it comes to coral, stability is of the absolute utmost importance. More water is very helpful im doing that, and if you can swing it I’d put the biggest sump you can manage on the tank to further this. That said my nano reef is AIO with no sump so it’s not absolutely needed. Fish choice: To go along with your choice of tank and keeping things stable I think it’s probably a good idea to keep stocking fairly light for your first go. For example in my 18gal reef I have a pair of clownfish and a tailspot blenny and that’s it, and I’m pretty well at my limit for fish there. With your larger tank you could do more than that but do a ton of research on each fish species and their compatibility, and I’d focus on “nano” species primarily. A smaller bio load per fish potentially means more fish and more variety if that’s what you’re after. That said there are no hard rules, just like freshwater, and the same concepts of stocking slowly and allowing your biological filter time to adjust work the same way. Fire fish are super cool and you can have more than one of them per tank. The things to look out for with them are that they’re crazy jumpers and you need the absolute tightest lid you can possibly get, and they can be somewhat sensitive from what I’ve seen, though my experience with them ends at me working in an lfs years back that had them frequently. They’re super peaceful so they’re great for a community, but I wouldn’t put them with anything that’s aggressive as that can stress them a bunch and really get them trying to carpet surf. Another thing to consider with salt water and specifically reef fish is that very few are readily available captive bred unlike the freshwater hobby, and many of the fisheries they come from are in trouble. If you can find a fish available captive bred, take that route even though it’s more expensive. I say that because they may be in trouble in the wild, but also because in some areas of the world the capture of reef fish is done with things like cyanide to stun the fish. This absolutely decimates any coral near where the cyanide is released and often these fish will make it to the LFS just in time to die in the hobbyists tank. All that is to say if you’re interested in a fish, see if you can source it captive bred, and if not try to find where they come from and if methods like cyanide are used on those reefs. Light and coral choice: It sounds like that light may be fine but I’m not an expert on exactly what wavelengths coral need to thrive. Likely that light would do fine for hardier corals. I’d recommend potentially just sticking to soft corals, and maybe some low demand LPS corals if you want. Mushroom corals are super tough and easy, but be discerning in what you get as some will take over. My absolute favorite soft corals are zoanthids or zoas. Most of them are super easy and many are stunning under blue lights, but be cautious with these as they produce a compound called play toxin that can be very dangerous. That said in the 10 years I’ve been in the reef hobby I’ve heard 2 or 3 stories total of people having issues, and those were mostly anecdotal. For LPS I think frogspawn is a great choice for a beginner as they tend to be very bright and they have huge polyps that will move with the current, though I’d shy away from other Euphyllia like hammers and torches when you’re just getting started. Cyphastrea is another really cool one that’s pretty easy. All in all there are tons of great beginner coral options and I couldn’t possibly list them all here. You’ll have success with some but you will absolutely have some failures too, especially as a beginner. For that reason as with fish I’d push you towards aquacultured corals rather than wild collected to start. Many of these corals are actively dying off due to ocean acidification, so having one plucked from the ocean and dying in your tank due to inexperience is not ideal. Aquacultured corals tend to be hardier as well which can help you gain some confidence, and then when you get more advanced and really get good with coral you can look into wild corals that you may be able to frag and spread around the hobby through your own aquaculture efforts. Salt water mixing: So I do mix my own salt and I’d recommend it especially if you already have an ro/di unit. It seems like you may already be aware that mixing your salt with tap water can lead to trouble so I won’t go in depth with that here. My setup is a 20 gallon Rubbermaid trash can with an ro line in and a float valve. I have a power head in there to mix and a pump with some vinyl tubing to get mixed water out. There’s also a heater in there to temperature match my tank. Especially with sensitive corals temperature matching is very important. Skip hygrometers and get yourself a decent refractometer from the start and you’ll have more consistent salt water and an easier time over all. Regarding water changes I don’t do them on a schedule, I do them when my test results say I need to. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with regular scheduled water changes if you prefer it, I’m just lazy lol. I also would recommend you not worry about dosing your water for quite some time. With soft corals and easy LPS water changes alone should be sufficient to keep your water where it needs to be. Dosing can get complicated and expensive, and I think can be a vector for a newbie crashing a tank. Lid options: so my current tank has a glass lid as the manufacturer sells one and that was easier and it cuts down on evaporation. My previous reef had a diy mesh lid that was also great and I don’t think there’s a wrong answer between them. It depends on what you want out of the tank regarding light penetration and evaporation. As I mentioned earlier with fire fish a lid is a must, and there can be no gaps at all. If any fish can find that gap it’s a fire fish. Final thoughts and advice: Reef keeping is awesome, and I’m always happy to see new people getting into it. You mentioned reef2reef, I’d also recommend checking out humble fish and reef. I find it to be a much friendlier place than reef2reef and it has some very very very knowledgeable people on it. I’d recommend checking out the reef beef podcast if that’s your thing. The hosts are two very knowledgeable people with lots to discuss and teach. As far as philosophy goes, I highly recommend you focus on enjoyment rather than optimization. Myself and many others have driven our selves mad and arrived at tragic and expensive heartbreak through chasing parameters, getting the perfect dosing cycle, fiddling with reactors and on and on. At this point with reef keeping I want to keep things simple and fun. I’m not an aquaculture business, so I’m no longer trying to grow my corals as big and as fast as possible. If I can keep them happy and healthy, then they look nice and that keeps me happy and healthy 🙂 One more thing(and this applies to freshwater too) is that if anyone is dogmatically telling you there’s one “correct” way to do things, they’re either trying to sell you something, or it works for them and it’s how they do it so for them that means it’s best. There is no one way to do literally any of this. There are people out there who break every preached rule in every way they can think of. Hell I know of people who grow coral in unfiltered jars. In reef keeping (or just general fish keeping and many other aspects of life) the so called rules are not prescriptive, they’re descriptive. They don’t exist to say “this is how it’s done and it’s only done this way.” My philosophy is that they exist to say “this is how we can explain how things have worked in the past, so build upon this, learn, and innovate.” Being dogmatic and treating descriptive concepts as prescriptive stifles innovation and holds the hobby back. Don’t be afraid to try things out, but really out thought into what could go wrong ahead of time, and how you can minimize risk and respond to outcomes. Anyway this is getting pretty ramble so I’ll cut it off, but please don’t hesitate to ask for clarification on anything I’ve said or point out that I missed something you asked so I can loop back and address it. Good luck and happy reefing!

I’ve had a few reef tanks. I’ve got an 18gal AIO right now that I actually just got coral back into after a period of some issues. What’s the plan you have in mind?

This is very sad news 🙁SIP Murphy

I don’t think I have a definitive answer here honestly. You may be able to but it may not last as the bettas grow. If you give it a go make sure you have another tank that either the bettas or the chilis can immediately go into if issues arise.

@Fish Folkwhats that last darter pictures here? To address the initial topic though, I’m very interested in trying to keep pygmy sunfish at some point. I’m not able to keep any fish native to my home state due to our laws but thankfully those aren’t found here. The contrast on the males is crazy. Very cool fish

If you’re handy I’d for sure go for a 2x4 rack like shown in the video @Tlindsey shared. With just a few tools and some time you can get a very sturdy relatively low cost rack that you can break down if you’re moving house or something, and you can paint it whatever color you like. I’m personally partial to black for things like this.

I’m intrigued by these fish as well and I’d like to breed them at some point. The noises that the males make at each other during their little swirly mating display is something I’d love to hear coming from one of my own tanks. Some day, maybe soon 🙂

I’d have to agree with what the others said. I’ve not kept tiger barbs myself, but when I worked in one of the LFSs here years ago they were one of the fish I heard the most complaints about from customers who’d put them in community tanks.

I recently saw a video on YouTube (though I’m not sure which channel. Maybe keeping fish simple?) where an experienced shrimp keeper said his focus wasn’t on propagating shrimp, it was on propagating biofilm. Like you mentioned wood can be a great source of biofilm as can leaves. The leaves that come to mind are mulberry like @wuht mentioned, oak leaves, Indian almond/cattapa leaf, and magnolia leaves, all of which would also add varying amounts of tannins into the water. In the video I mentioned the shrimp breeder didn’t clean the sides of his tanks and in some of the caridina tanks the walls were absolutely covered with babies, so that may be another route to consider. If I remember right he also said he just doesn’t feed colonies until they get to around 100 shrimp. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll see if I can turn that video up. Good luck with your shrimp!

That’s a neat surprise! I’ve not looked into black worms yet but they seem like a pretty decent live food. If I were you I’d see if I could catch some out and culture them. It’d be pretty cool to maintain a black work culture that just apparated in one of your tanks.

I’m not super familiar with guppy genetics(or really genetics at all if I’m realistic lol) but it sounds like the colors could be sex linked traits where the gene determining color is in the sex chromosomes like Tony was talking about. It’s be really interesting to continue breeding them and see if that was indeed the case or if you could get blue tailed males or red tailed females. After a quick search I found that guppies do indeed have sex chromosomes as most fish do. I know at least some reptiles and I believe some fish actually don’t have sex chromosomes and their sex is determined by temperature during embryonic development. I couldn’t name any fish off the top of my head but I recall reading somewhere that there are fish like this. I’d guess in those cases maybe sex linked traits aren’t a thing but again my genetics knowledge is lacking. Kind of went on a tangent there but a cool concept nonetheless. Pretty neat to have a split like that show up in your tank!

That’s why I went for medaka eggs as my first go. I’ve heard they’re ridiculously tough. The embryos are spinning around in the eggs today so I think they may be due tomorrow! Got a video of it just now. Here’s. Link to that for anyone who wants to see 🙂 https://imgur.com/a/xnKYIYo

There are sometimes listings on aquabid for NA natives, and if I’m remembering right Jonah’s Aquarium is a recommended source for NA natives. I don’t know what the laws are in Vermont but you may be able to collect from the wild there. Here in Tennessee we’re not allowed to keep native non game fish though so check your local regulations. There are a number of people who keep NA natives here on the forum who may chime in too. Oh also it may be worth looking into your local NANFA chapter and seeing what’s going on around you. If nothing else the NANFA guys can get you on the right track with NA natives. Welcome to the forum!

Appreciate the response! Mine haven’t hatched yet but according to my math and when they got shipped I think they should hatch this weekend. I think I’m about as ready as I can be for my first time raising fry.

One more thing I should add is I dropped in some magnolia leaf litter to get some tannins in the water and also to hopefully get some biofilm going on them to further help out whatever little critters I can’t see in there that the fry will want to eat. I think based on the current state of the eggs I’ve maybe got 2-4 days before they start hatching but that’s half educated guess

Hey y’all! I’m going on the egg hatching and fry raising adventure for the first time right now with some medaka eggs I ordered. I have a few live food cultures going along with hikari first bites and sera micron so I think I should be good on food, but my concern is them finding said food. The way I currently have things set up the only tank I have available is a 10 gallon walstad that’s fairly heavily planted. At what point would y’all move them from their little methylene blue have to the 10 gallon? It’s fairly recently set up so there aren’t any booming infusoria populations just yet. That said to jump start it I did squeeze all the fun gross stuff out of an established sponge filter into here. Any thoughts or advice? thanks y’all!

Sure thing! Keep us posted!

To piggy back off of the woodworking related suggestion would a diy plywood aquarium maybe be a feasible option? I’ve not made one before so this may not even be a sensible idea but I feel like that might allow for you to add in a plywood platform to build up your land on and then maybe have egg crate or something covered with moss and plants and have some filtration stuff under there like seeps designs has done on a few paludarium builds. There may be other ways to go but a plywood platform seems like it would give a solid base especially if you reinforced it from underneath.

Bump for fresh eyes

Really appreciate the input! Which dwarf cichlid species have you kept in Walstad’s? I’ve yet to actually keep EBAs but @Fish Folkmentioned that in his experience they messed with the substrate less than rams and apisto cacatuoides (both of which I’d also like to keep lol). I’ll put some thought into all of these methods and what might work best here. The method with the screen is most similar to what I was thinking. I’m most leaning towards egg crate on top of the soil inside the cap. I’ve pushed back doing new world cichlids of any sort in favor of a more typical walstad that soon will have a new pair of Betta albimarginata and hopefully some Microdevario kubotai as well, so I may try to test some of your suggestions along with my ideas out in 10 gallon tanks to see how plant growth may be impacted and also to dig around in the substrate myself to see how everything holds up. I’m sure I can dig more than an electric blue acara if I put my mind to it lol. Thanks again!