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Brandy

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Everything posted by Brandy

  1. Brandy

    Fisk keep dying

    Brandy replied to Neil's topic in Diseases

    NO. I just did an ammonia test. this is how my water looks before I add anything: This is what it looks like after 8 drops from the FIRST bottle: This is after the drops from the second bottle:
  2. Brandy

    Fisk keep dying

    Brandy replied to Neil's topic in Diseases

    Typically guppies can have parasites, but are tolerant to a wide range of water parameters and conditions. Guppies are sometimes imported from countries that use salt/brackish water in their production, and that can put them in shock when they come back to fresh water here. Usually those are the more expensive strains, but not always.
  3. Brandy

    Fisk keep dying

    Brandy replied to Neil's topic in Diseases

    Ok, walk us through your water change routine. include where your water comes from...well? municipal? Give us any symptoms the guppies showed. Let us know your tank temp. And I don't understand "completely clear" in the nitrate and ammonia tubes, as mine (API tests) are yellow when they read zero, so just to double check, what kit are you using? If it is API, and the tube isn't yellow, double check your directions.
  4. Brandy
    First baby brine! Orange bellies! Now we are on our way!
  5. Brandy
    I have guppies that I love to cross just for fun. I have worked out a system that works for me so far. I have a tank with a few choice adults and young fry. Once fry are big enough, I separate by sex, the females to a 10 gallon to grow up, and the males go to a community tank. Once I find females I'm happy with for replacements, the extras go to the community tank The tank is also home to young acaras, who will happily hunt down every fry dropped. Food for acaras, grow out for mutts. Once the community tank gets full of guppies it's time to sell or trade for food. The flaws in this system are that the acaras may potentially eat adult guppies one day, which doesn't concern me too much, and secondly, now the ACARAS are breeding...
  6. Brandy
    They swim REALLY fast. I put a blurry one for a thumbnail, but pics will have to come once they settle down. 🙂
  7. Brandy
    They are free swimming! I have SO MANY!! Also mama/dad who dug the nest is still gaurding it. She has at least 6 fry also! So they must have already started moving them when I pulled the rock!
  8. Brandy
    No the second set was even brighter and more beautiful. I suspect the 10 days dulled the first set down. Maybe with good food they will recover. Also, @Nana Finopolis this is my first time ordering guppies, but I keep and breed mutts--my original 5 now number over a hundred. I have lost maybe 2 in that time. I keep them in soft water, and unheated tanks. They are indestructible.
  9. Brandy
    Lol, so is mine. I used a bunch of crushed coral and wondershell, and the babies will be acclimated to my water.
  10. Brandy
    I have rummy nose in with my angel, and they "do the thing" just fine. I have about 18 total. Its a full tank, but I can support it and it looks amazing.
  11. Brandy
    I have been drooling over some cool guppies I saw online, but I have not been able to really find them anywhere but on Ebay, or in Thailand. I was to scared to spend the money to import them but I finally decided to take a shot on some that are probably first generation (or 10th?) americans. So I bit the bullet and ordered a trio. I got a tracking number, and cleared a 10 gallon, asked the seller for water parameters (VERY hard water) and brought the cycled tank up to as close as I could get while I anxiously waited. The tracking number showed no progress for 8 days after they were supposed to be shipped, and I contacted the seller to find out if they actually were in a box somewhere, or if they never left. The seller gave me no information and supplied a new tracking number, so I assumed there was a goof and the fish were never actually shipped. 2 days later they showed up, healthy, fine, a little duller than the pictures and kind of skinny. I left a good review anyway, and started them on a round of levamasole immediately, and offered baby brine which got them eating. They perked up, but still seemed small and duller than I had expected. Three days after that I got a second trio, this one was GORGEOUS, and one of the females had dropped in the bag and not eaten the fry. Wait...what? The first set was in the mail for TEN DAYS. Aside from being hungry they seem fine. I am flat out amazed. I LOVE GUPPIES. So for the record, I ended up with 6 fish + about 15 fry for the price of 3. I have contacted the seller and offered to send more money--obviously.
  12. Brandy
    I have an angel in a standard 29. he is happy enough, lording over everyone. With soft water I would totally go with SA type fish, and because I am drooling over them, I would put in silvertip tetras. Then a contrasting angel, and some corys or khulis, and otos. But if the angel seemed too big, the Opaline would also look great.
  13. Brandy
    I have been getting insane hatch rate, but I notice that it is broken into 2 feeds for me: a longer hatching period, spanning about 12h. This is perfect for my set up. If I want everything to hatch at once I put a light on it (for the extra heat). The other thing I do is add baking soda with the aquarium salt (1/4tsp for 1L) because my water is crazy acidic and soft.
  14. Brandy
    Oh, geez, you could eventually have enough shrimp to send them home with interested kids as prizes. I would have done anything for one.
  15. Brandy
    Stocking suggestion: Nerite snails, 1-2, red racer if you can find them, zebra or tiger if not. 1 Betta, preferably long finned and therefore slower. Add moss or small leaved low growing plant and a few more rock piles, wait for algae to build. Then, 8-12 red cherry shrimp--add them at night after dark with lights off to let them sneak passed the betta. They will add endless interest to the tank without over stocking, and multiply.
  16. Brandy
    My most recent dumb thing, ask the non-nerm boyfriend to fill me a bucket of water while I was cleaning a tank. He kindly brought it to me and I had it half emptied into the tank when I suddenly thought to ask "hey, you put prime in this, right?" Cue frantic race thru the house, jumping over the cat to grab a bottle of prime left handily by the sink while he looks on in confusion. 🙄 No casualties thankfully.
  17. Brandy
    This is the place. Tons of newbie questions get posed and answered daily, by nice folks with friendly answers. Please use the search feature to explore topics as you get familiar with the format here. You may also want to introduce yourself under introductions, and check out the guidelines here: And tutorials on how to use the forum are here: Welcome!
  18. Brandy
    Given the symptoms, ich is not the biggest worry compared to the fin rot and general apparent misery. Given that you have multiple things actively going on, the sit and soak method that is Cory's preemptive treatment is not going to cut it. If you look at the box directions, Maracyn and paraclense dosing schedules are compatible, ichX is not. When I have a heavily sick batch of fish I therefore use the Maracyn and Paraclense (aka API Erythromycin and API General Cure) thru a full cycle per box instructions, then subsequently treat for ich. During the Maracyn/paraclense treatment I don't raise the temp. The reason I do this is that the bacterial and parasite infections are faster killers than ich. I then tackle the ich. Once that is beat I do a second round of parasite treatment for any unkilled eggs. Surprisingly, I have not had my cycle crash through all this.
  19. Brandy
    I like angelfish as a cheaper low effort version of discus, and I have found in a larger tank German Blue Rams also work if you really like the classic cichlid shape but want to avoid carnage.
  20. Brandy
    In my area we have very soft water, under 30ppm GH at the tap. Depending on the type of fish I am keeping I add: Nothing for south american fish that like soft acidic water, some minerals build over time with evaporation if I don't have a lid on. A small amount of crushed coral/aragonite in the filter or substrate which gradually buffers the water for "normal" fish and invertebrates. A large amount of crushed coral/aragonite + wonder shell for fish accustomed to very hard water. I also feed a calcium containing food to my shrimp a few times a week to help them grow. Regarding cycling, I use plants and snails to get it started, then add fish once the tank is seeded with bacteria. The cycle completes with fish in. In case of ammonia/nitrite spikes, I use Seachem prime to bind it until the bacteria catches up.
  21. Brandy
    That is a lot simpler, lol. This is why we pay Cory the big bucks. 😁
  22. Brandy
    @Cory, what if the forum generated ideas collectively, for say, the next week, then a mod locks the thread, and one volunteer collated them into a list that could be handed off to you or the mods, and you could just pick one and give it a little spin or refinement if you felt it needed it? Alternatively, you could delegate this of course. I feel like there is interest, and this is really just people asking for a writing prompt--we can crowd source that. The down side is could be that we could be just as misinformed as the rest of the internet, and that would potentially be associated with your brand, but so far we have been a very self policing and self correcting group. Really what I am proposing here is that if the forum members want a thing like this they participate in making it happen. This can be a community building exercise. While we all appreciate Cory's generosity with his time and effort, WE have the ability to simply decide to do this ourselves. Cory does not even need to curate this--democratically we can decide what the question of the week should be. There are many options for how to accomplish this, we just need a person to start organizing it. I nominate @quirkylemon103 @CorydorasEthan @James Black and @Aubrey to start it off in a new thread (name it "help us come up with a listt of questions of the week") if they want, and if Cory approves. I am sure @Daniel can be persuaded to lock the thread at some previously agreed upon threshold. What do you think?
  23. Brandy
    How would you do this if you were not on a well? Dechlorinate and refrigerate fresh water each day?
  24. Brandy
    I don't always quarantine. Situations when I don't: I am going to put new fish into an empty tank I am going to put several hardy species together in a small (under 20g) tank within about a month I am moving my own fish between tanks Times when I wish I had: The first thing I bought was wild caught tetras from a big box store to add to an inherited betta tank. I lost everything. I put many fish into a larger tank...and ended spending a lot more than I thought I needed to to treat them in that larger tank--but did I? I could have treated 3x in a 10g, or 1x in a 30g, same cost. I brought home a school of tetras with ich, and it took FOREVER to treat the display tank, over and over and over. THIS is the number one reason to do a separate QT with no gravel, so that you can get out in front of infections like this one that spend part of their lifescycle off the fish. I don't always "quarantine" but I DO always TREAT incoming fish, especially for parasites. This is critical for me. The avialbility of effective safe medication makes me actually less inclined to quarantine most of the time. I would rather prophylactically treat everyone every so often.
  25. Brandy
    I wouldn't call them peaceful, haha! More thwarted...Sparkling gourami's are on my wish list too. I think you should absolutely exploit the size differential here--set up a pile of rocks that has tiny little crevices that shrimps of any age can get into, and fry can get into, and once in a while stick a catappa leaf inside. The size of the pile dictates how many hiding places you will have, so if you have too many survivors take out a few rocks.
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