[Suggestion Box]

I did at one point have a online fish store I called it.  Goal was to purchase fish from hobbyists and then transition them to others at a low cost.  Be the middle man for those who did not have a local store or club.  Ultimately I ended up moving states to eventually move back to my home state.  I also found that it became difficult to house all the fish and then I ended up offending a few people when I literally did not have the cash flow to purchase fish at times.  Add on the cost of shipping and supplies and not everyone wants 1000 guppies.  I enjoyed it while I did it but needed some major tuning to get it right.  I would argue that it would be “easier” to establish a new website that is Aquabid 2.0, but with my extremely limited knowledge I also see the cost of running that site and then the marketing to drive that site would be near impossible.  I would say this forum is one of the best ways to trade fish.  You see what others are working on and can strike up conversations with them and see if you can find a deal. 

[Kribensis Breeding!]

After watching the Aquarium Co-Op video on breeding his Albino Kribensis I took all of the advice and applied it to my Moliwe Kribensis pair and IT WORKS!  This is a picture I was able to get of the female hiding in the coconut hut with the entrance blocked off with the substrate.  You can see the male in the reflection and he now has his own territory under an Easy Planter that is in the tank.  This is a huge success for me as this is the first I hope successful Kribensis breeding in my fish room!

[3-D Printed Aquarium "Stuff"]

3D printing is an awesome skill to have for this hobby.  Nice to see it being used in the fresh water world! 

[EVER HAVE A TANK BREAK OR LEAK?]

About 3 years ago now I had a glass 220 gallon tank blow a seam out on me.  My wife heard a loud popping noise and ran down stairs to find the tank leaking at a fast pace into the basement.  I was at work at the time and when I got home 45 minutes later the tank was 3/4 drained and all that water was in the basement now.  I rapidly had to remove the fish and finished draining the tank.  When I got the tank moved and all the sand pulled out I found that a seal on the side literally separated apart.  That was a bad bad day, $500 in damages to my basement.

[Best way to feed baby brine?]

A few of my tanks got infested

 

[Best way to feed baby brine?]

32 minutes ago, Cory said:

I'm not a fan of the bottle. I too bought some, it feeds too slowly for all my tanks. I even cut the stem WAY back. I like the turkey baster still. I really wanted that medical bottle to work 😞

The tip of getting the non drip was genius. If plans work out that I am able to expand my fish room to triple the size I will be adding the turkey baster gallon jar combo for sure.  

[Best way to feed baby brine?]

Ever since I saw HC Aqua post up the best way to feed baby brine shrimp I had to follow suit!  This allows me to feed all the tanks and fry trays super quick.  What is your favorite way to feed baby brine shrimp to your tanks?

[Best way to treat a small wound on a dwarf chain loach]

5 minutes ago, Leo2o915 said:

So do a whole treatment of maracyn awesome thanks Trent 

I think that would be your best course of action.

[Best way to treat a small wound on a dwarf chain loach]

2 minutes ago, Leo2o915 said:

Ordered some dwarf chain loaches from Aquahuna don’t know if he got it on his way here or just recently should doing stress guard be good enough daily or add salt or the maracyn? TIA 

If it is a wound I would recommend salt or maracyn.  In my experience stress guard will not do much as you need to be cautious of a bacterial infection on the wound.  

[What to do with my tank after an unexpected fish death]

4 minutes ago, Emily M said:

Hi fellow fish keepers!

Been a rough week here in my fish room. Learning many lessons as I’m new to the hobby. 
I lost my betta yesterday, it was a young fish, but stopped eating and within three days was dead. 😩. I had a small ammonia spike, I think because of the food it wasn’t eating. It had no outward signs of illness. PH 7-7.5, nitrates 20, moderate hardness. Temp 80 deg F. 
I am treating another tank for internal parasites (I stressed the fish out moving them) so I do wonder about that, and could I have cross contaminated them. My question is, the tank is nicely cycled, I’d like to put another creature in there (it’s a 5 gallon). How long should I wait, and do I need to treat the water with anything? Confidence is shaken, but I think I need to try again.

appreciate your advice!!

First I am sorry for your loss, never easy losing a fish.  If I can give encouragement though it is to not let this shake you to much but learn from it and try again.  On the basis of your fish being treated for internal parasites that would not come from stress after moving them, not sure if there were other signs of that.

With your 5 gallon tank, try looking at it as a new starting point and a new thing to learn in the hobby.  I would recommend doing a water change on it, gravel vac, glass clean down to just get it set up.  If you do not have live plants in the tank this can be the new learning for live plants.  Starting with something simple like an anubias or small crypt plant.  Stocking wise, betta fish are great for that size tank but if you wanted to try something new white cloud minnows, neon green tetras, rosy loaches or even a pea puffer.  Hope to see you continue in the hobby and update us all on your success here on the forum.  You got this!

[Rice Fish and Crystal Shrimp, odd pairings]

29 minutes ago, Lynze said:

2 Japanese Neon Blue Endler males with my EBA growouts. Keeping a close eye on growth with the Acaras, but I had nowhere to put the Endlers, and for some reason these 2 males are best friends and constantly harrass everything else. They gang up and bully everything. I've tried them in 8 different tanks and the EBA juvies were the only ones that put up with their nonsense.  Will have to move them again soon, but for now it works.  

Looks like a rowdy bunch but I love it!

[Rice Fish and Crystal Shrimp, odd pairings]

Looked down tonight and found that I have Orange Medaka Rice Fish fry.  Other crazy thing is I have crystal red shrimp hanging out with them and doing just fine.  What odd pairings do you have going on?

[Angelfish/Apistos?]

I think you could pull this off.  I imagine each fish would make their own territory but each fish also occupies a different space of the tank.  Give the  apistos plenty of caves and give the angels some plants, so my vote is "That would be glorious"

[Chaos has ensued, how to go forward?!]

We all have mishaps that we can learn from.  I have a 90 gallon display in my studio that I had to recently just add a massive amount of salt to in attempts to fight off a bacterial infection.  And the first thing I had to remind myself of is that this happens to everyone no matter how experienced they are.

I would recommend a water change, 50% is a number that my mind can easily track and kind of eye ball as I am draining water.  Make sure to dechlorinate the water as you refill, I typically just add a couple squirts (following instructions) as I am refiling the tank.  

Next, lets forget about the TDS for now, I have honestly never measured the TDS of any of my tanks besides for good fun and wanting to know what this little gadget could do.  TDS is going to go up and down and I have seen some good experiments on how even dechlorinator will affect TDS.

Now lets focus on the fish and getting them healthy.  I prefer the trio of meds that the Co-Op has put together as they are easy to dose and follow the instructions on.  I see that you have live plants and we do not want to kill those with salt and the med trio will not harm them.  Probably focus on the maracyn and the ich-x as this does not seem to be an internal issue; both meds will help with bacterial.  Let that stew for a week and then get back into regular maintenance and let the plants catch up on the nitrates.

[1930s historically accurate planted aquarium]

19 hours ago, Daniel said:

Here is another clip from the 1934 movie "Dragon Murder Case." In this scene mouthbrooding African cichlids are mentioned. The genus is definitely Tilapia, but I cannot quite catch the species. @Wel-Don Tanks are these from Lake Malawi? I was hoping they would be from Victoria 🙂

 

 

Thank you for sharing the clip!  This history was fascinating!

[Coming back to fish keeping]

Sharmon it is great to have you back in the hobby and joining us on the forum!  If I may give my opinion on your questions and hopefully give you some insight.

First, substrate.  I think gravel is easiest to take care of especially when it comes to "gravel vaccing"  Much more dense so it does not get sucked up in the tube and the fish still have an easy enough time sifting through it.

Filters, I personally love sponge filters for their ease and simplicity.  When it comes to maintenance though sponge filters can in a way be more challenging because you have to pull it from the tank.  If you can accomplish that then the rest is cake as just rinse and put back.  Hang on the back filters I think are easiest to maintain to do that they are outside the tank and visible.  But harder when it comes time to clean the moving parts and then put back on the tank.

Another tool that if in your budget is a python hose water changing set up.  Instantly makes water changes easier in my opinion because it eliminates the need all together for buckets.

Good luck with the set up and hope we see you on the forum!

[Easy green - safe for crayfish?]

I used to have dwarf crayfish in a 40 breeder that was plumbed to my 220 gallon (few years ago) and would dose easy green frequently and never saw any side affects.  I would say from my experience that easy green is safe for them.

[Fishy Feeding Behavior]

6 minutes ago, akconklin said:

Thanks, @Wel-Don Tanks! I have to give credit where it's due: they are from Imperial Tropicals in Lakeland, FL. Mike has incredible fish there! And even during this time of quarantine, he worked out a no-contact pick-up system for locals, so we wouldn't have to pay shipping. His shipping is also excellent, from the reviews I've read.

That's awesome about your plecos! It makes me feel so good that I know I'm feeding them something they love. ❤️ 

I have some Mouthbrooding Severums that I am growing out from them.  Been very happy with the fish.

[Fishy Feeding Behavior]

18 minutes ago, akconklin said:

We've only been back in the hobby of fish keeping for the past year or so. We had lots of different kinds of fish over the years, but I don't really remember too much about them.

What I've been fascinated with this time is how they eat. And by eat, I really mean EEEEEEEEAAAAAAT!!! because we have a 55-gallon FULL of hundreds of guppies...mostly juvenile...and continually ravenous!

4 weeks ago, though, we brought some new fish home to quarantine and just added them to our tanks last weekend. 

The first were Siamese Algae Eaters. I think. We bought the ones whose black stripe continues into their tails. Well, 2 of them, anyway. The third one, the smallest one, has a black stripe that is more jagged and that's the one that eats the most algae, so now I'm not sure if they are all SAEs or if one is a Flying Fox Fish.

What's interesting about them is that I tried feeding them Hikari algae wafers during quarantine. For the most part, they just weren't interested. But when I dropped in the Xtreme nano pellets, they went nuts! Jumping right into fray with barbs to get those little yummy bites. So cool to watch.

And that brings us to the Green Tiger Barbs. They are gorgeous and fascinating...and hilarious. At least, when it comes to eating those pellets. They chipmunk them!!! Most of them can actually pull THREE pellets into their tiny mouths. Then they carry them around for a while (I guess until they soften) and then you see them munching away. 

Here's my feeble attempt to capture it. Blurry, but you can see their mouths stuffed with pellets. It's like they're playing the "Chubby Bunny" game!!!

What are the feeding behaviors you've observed that were surprising? Or hilarious? Or at least very interesting???

Alesha

You have an amazing school of Tiger Barbs there!  For me it was watching my Yellow Zebra Plecos rush out of their caves for the xtreme krill flake, I have never seen a pleco rush for flake food before that.

[All of my snails died!]

Two ideas come to mind.  One may be calcium and nutrients the snails need for their shells.  I have had nerites in tanks with lots of plants and little plants and all sorts of parameters when it comes to nitrates.  But if they do not get the nutrients they need they can suffer.  Second part, food for the nerites.  Now this is my opinion as I am no expert but in my opinion nerites are not comparable to other snails like ramshorn or pond snails.  Ramshorn will eat anything in the tank, left over food, waste, dead fish etc.  Nerites mainly munch and graze on algae that occurs in the aquarium and when there is not enough of that they often perish.

[Victorian Cichlids, Yes or No?]

A new found love for me has been the Victorian Cichlids.  It started with the Egyptain Mouth Brooder Multicolor Victorae but now has moved to other varieties.  I know some get a bad rap as they look identical in coloration.  I am curious if you have a favorite you like to see from that particular region.  Feel free to share pictures!

[Welcome to the C.A.R.E Forum - Look here first.]

21 hours ago, Chantal said:

Hello Nerms!
I recently joined this forum and look forward to learning a lot.
Here are  some of my tanks...

I find your rack of tanks with the I think Pothos, maybe another vine, very relaxing.  Thank you for sharing your tanks

[cheapest possible large tank]

The last time I priced out building a 300 gallon plywood tank I was about 500 dollars in material just for the tank and that was kind of cutting corners.  Granted I was brand new in the hobby and was just wanting to experiment.  If you are ok with doing a used tank I find that reef communities are the ones with larger tanks.  From there if you want to go freshwater I think it can reasonably be done for under 2k but that also comes down to exact wants and needs and if you want to do new equipment or used.

[What's your next tank?]

I will be moving out 6 ten gallon tanks to make room for three 20 longs.  I am trying to get more serious with breeding operations and have found that all 10 gallon tanks has limited me in some aspects.  I am starting to play more with Victorian cichlids and want the "extra space" of a 20 long.  

[Smartphone Ideas]

If you need simple upgrades for a smart phone, but lets be honest most phones now do not need upgrades.  Saying that check out the company, Moment.  They are a company based around simple and budget upgrades for video quality.  That is how I started my channel was with their wide lens and my phone.  Increased my video quality dramatically, but that was 3 years ago before phones with three cameras.