daggaz

I would ask this guy if you can include his guide on breeding amanos. https://www.garnelio.de/en/blog/shrimp/amano-shrimp-breed-in-the-aquarium

My reasoning for not being excessive about scrubbing all surfaces is this: Whatever you got came from a house plant (most likely worst case in the soil) so there's not a huge amount of it; you didn't spill a jar of liquid pesticide in. Whatever it is clearly got into the water column. Most likely, it's a hydrophilic substance; most consumer poisons are because hydrophilic molecules are far more biologically available and likely to pass digestion without deactivation, easier to spread, and the latter also coincides with it obviously being up in the water column. So it's not going to really want to stick to surfaces. Some physiosorption. Equilibrium constant will strongly favor solution. So empty the tank. Flood the tank. Wait. Empty and fill again. Some chance it could remain in biofilms, then it could affect algae eaters. So if you are nervous for your ottos: scrub it all down. (You definitely don't need to boil anything and that won't necessarily deactivate the molecule.) But if the algae is toxic, then all of your algae eaters are already dead. I only see two siamese eaters on the list, and I doubt that's your entire cleanup crew. Ergo, they got it in the water column. But it's your fish and your peace of mind, and scrubbing isn't going to hurt (other than deleting all your hard earned biofilms and good bacteria).

Wife took me to our local LFS to get me a bday present (tomorrow), and my 5 year old son noticed that the empty kuhli loaches tank was not actually empty. There was only a half cm of tail sticking out from under one of their ceramic houses, but my son correctly recognized the pattern! We've been waiting for a few weeks now to get some noodles, so imagine how happy we were when the man picked up the house and found a pack of them burrowed underneath! We bought five, and he gave us another one free that was not swimming great, and said it might be fine or it might die soon. Let them all go, and twitchy twitched down to the bottom, sat around for ten minutes resting, and then promptly swam just fine into a nearby crevice. Hurray! The blue fan shrimp was observed deep in a tangle of plants, happily scooping thick algae and mold off of some driftwood. They don't always filter the water column, it would seem.

That was my suspicion. Miniscule amounts of acetone aren't exactly famous for wreaking havoc on ecosystems.

What exactly makes this stuff aquarium safe, as opposed to normal, more deadly i assume superglue? Going to build some fish houses tomorrow for our new kuhli loaches, and of course i forgot to pick some up. My LFS is closed Sundays. 😢

I don't buy much pantyhose, I swear.

Couldn't you just stuff it into a small sock? Or pantyhose?

Love that banded darter!

How was the aeration? An oxygen crash would be my first suspicion, tho you do mention fish dying afterwards. Second guess, if it was a nursery plant, many nurseries include various forms of slug poison in their potting soils, some brands are nastier than others. In that case, a double water change of >90% is going to reduce the concentration to pretty much zero. Let the water sit in the tank for 24 hours between changes if you can and you won't need to scrub everything, tho I understand if you want to anyway for peace of mind. But who knows, maybe your fish devoured a bunch of fertilizer pellets. Doubtful, but you never know.

Keep in mind it's not just about protected species. You need to check if there are regulations on keeping any native fish. Raising trout, for example, often requires a permit.

I did this, but I used oak leaves not grape. It worked fine, unrelated tank crash not withstanding. I got a lot of tannins so if you want a blackwater tank I can recommend that. Water changes cut that down again, there's a limited amount of tannins in them. There's pictures in my journal if you want yo see.

Well that's interesting. What size tank did you have? Edit : 30 gallons. Hmm. Maybe it's doable I've got 50..

Honestly, just start your own website. Put some fliers up to advertise it locally, toss some (sanitized) links on facebook, call it a day. You'll learn a valuable new skill and build a cornerstone of your business.

Can you breed sibling fish, or is that how all the mutant goldfish were created? Sucks about the male.. I really like the way these fish look, I had considered briefly to get one for my community tank but the aggression and size factor ruled that out.

I paid like 50 bucks max for my UGF and a powerhead, and it does a 50g community no problem. Can a 500 dollar ubermax filter do a 500g aquarium?

Dial-up BBS on 1200baud? FTP and Unix? Man, Usurper was the bomb.. One forum I found that I like is barr report. It's more focused on rare aquatic plants than fish, but it's full of useful information and helpful experts.

Not sure but be careful. The Land of Freedom(TM) usually has strict laws about keeping native fish, with big fines and even prison time as consolation prizes. Results may vary from state to state, but definitely check. Imagine doing time for a bluegill.

If itcreally is high ammonia, you should get your betta out until you figure it all out. He might be ok for a while, but ammonia burns his gills and eventually he will die of suffocation.

I made an adaption to this technique that I used to nurse dying plants back to health, for cases where the plant is just not doing so good but you aren't worried about other species: 1) Rinse the plant vigorously in cold, dechlorinated water (not sure if it needs to be dechlorinated but my tapwater is so..), removing any dead or dying plant tissue, biofilm, and algae in the process. Dont forget to give the roots a good massage, too. 2) Submerge in carbonated water, but leave a little room at the top of the container for normal air. Use a glass container that is just large enough to contain the plant. 3) Plastic wrap the top. 4) Place in direct sunlight unless its a light intolerant shade-plant, then just keep it on a counter inside somewhere, but where there is still light. 5) Keep it there as long as the water is clear. Change the water for new carbonated water (rinsing lightly again) every couple days or if the water gets cloudy. 6) Keep it like this for at least several days. 7) Replant your plant in the aquarium when it starts looking green and healthy again. I got some Bolbitis plants back from the brink of death using this technique (which I wouldn't ever have thought to do without reading about Reverse Respiration here on these forums!).

Most snail parasites are internal worms/flukes, and the whole point is that the snail either gets eaten and passes the worm on, or it poops worm eggs on the plants that get eaten and so passed on. You're not gonna see that with a magnifying glass, though you might catch a snail leech in action. Snail leeches eat snails, however, and are otherwise fish snacks. So they are kind of a good thing to have in an aquarium that has loads of snails and no snail predators, tho most people arent going to like that. If you are really truly worried, you could run a separate tank for snails only until you get a decent population going, then toss some dewormer in there and give it some time before putting them over in the other tank. You need to be careful here, some dewormers will kill snails and even invertebrates. The one you commonly give to kids for pinworms should be snail safe in lower dosages. Honestly I think it's overkill tho, at least if you are picking up snails from an established snail tank at the local fish shop.

The Bucephalandra's connnected to the... driftwood! The driftwood's connected to the... hardscape! The hardscape's connected to the... glass tank! And that's when we all fall down!

I dont know, thats the standard for pH strips in the lab, really. Buffers slow down the availability of H+ ions and that can give falsely high readings if you dont give the strips time to react. They all work on chemical reactivity principles so the physics there should be the same. I'd recommend getting a pH meter tho if it was anything but the standard aquarium tank. Strips are just generally bad when it comes to precision and accuracy.

well as long as you are getting roughly the same amount of ammonia produced, its not going to make any real difference. the trick is going to be knowing how much food to use, which is why if you are going that route, most people end up dosing with controlled amounts of chemical salts.

My insanely nutrient filled substrate, no CO2 injection tank has a ton of plants and about 40 nano- to small fish, 15 shrimp, and some snails. Also my first tank, and while it did crash in the beginning, I dont think its all that hard. But yeah, who cares about the "is it natural" argument. It's not natural. It's a flipping space station in orbit around an artificial star, as far as the organisms living in it could be concerned. Its still fun to try to build a living ecosystem and get it as self-sustaining as possible.

"What about shrimp?" A few neocaridina shrimp of whatever color would be good in there, but I would be cautious about an amano shrimp as they are really voracious feeders and your tank might not have enough biotics in it for them to remain healthy. Either way, you need an older tank with more algae and biofilms before adding shrimp of any sort, and waiting is also going to help your tank conditions are more stable for them. Another kind of shrimp that you could possibly maintain if you feed it by adding powdered materials into the water, is a giant fan/vampire shrimp. They are so cool and they feed straight out of the water column (or they will begin sifting the substrate mulm if it exists, if the water column is too clear). Maybe theres a vampire shrimp expert here who could chime in..