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Brandy

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Everything posted by Brandy

  1. Brandy
    Lol, +1 for them all being individuals. I have one I originally named Satan. Then he promptly mellowed (or became excessively lazy) and even allowed shrimp. Still, even in a 55g I think multiple bettas together is asking for issues. They are territorial predators. Everything is either a meal or a rival. I think Satan doesn't care about the snails and shrimps for "enrichment", they are simply too difficult for snacks. He cares a lot about me with a handful of pellets, and is a fan of live foods too, so he gets fed multiple tiny meals a day to keep him from getting bored. The snails and shrimps are there for my benefit, and that of the live plants I like in the tank.
  2. Brandy
    @Nataku, As a person who has snakes as well....I want pics. My kid has 2 ball pythons, a wild type and a blue eyed leucistic. They have the most dull and uninspired tanks--shavings, water bowl, one hide, and wood. Kid refuses to add anything for fear of disease I think. "Kid" is 17, so I am not at liberty to completely override, but I am campaigning for enrichment. What fish in the aquatic portion?
  3. Brandy

    Sad Cory

    Brandy replied to RovingGinger's topic in Diseases

    If he's small and lethargic, would internal parasites be a possibility? I don't know anything about how prevalent they would be in corys?
  4. Brandy
    @pedrofisk I want to see this when you build it. Seriously. That sounds awesome. Also, we need a mad scientist subgroup here soon...
  5. Brandy
    Lol, I wish I had a ditch full of daphnia!! I LOVE the font you chose for the video, this is so fun. What is your full stocking list, or is it a surprise? 🙂
  6. Brandy
    Shrimps have their own set of parasites that only affect them. I would say a good careful inspection would probably do as well.
  7. Brandy
    I think shrimp babies are pretty tasty treats for some adult fish, so if you have less cover you will have less shrimp. If you don't feed them on purpose but just let them scavenge leftovers. Additionally, I think more people around here WANT shrimps, so while getting rid of extra snails might be a problem, offering stores or friends shrimp is likely to be easier. Also I would only keep it in the box until it is big enough to go back in the adult tank. I am not a sword tail breeder, but I imagine with good food that wont be very long. A month maybe? I am guessing someone with sword tails will know more.
  8. Brandy
    I do live in a small apartment. I have several small tanks, but if I could keep just one, I would keep the 29gallon that I have currently, but the guppies would replace the current stocking list. I couldn't give up the guppies, and the 29g is the biggest tank I have space for. I would keep the guppies, the red cherry shrimp, the otocinclus and kuhli loaches. If I am talking pie in the sky, I would get a bigger tank and jam pack it with plants and still have the same fish but maybe add some angels and rams--which are in the plans for this tank...sort of. Maybe. Also this tank needs more plants, particularly anubias. Gosh, I am glad I don't have to stick to just one.
  9. Brandy
    That ammonia is really high. I would water change a fairly large amount, and then add plants or an ammonia binding water conditioner like Seachem Prime depending on what you have available. If you have neither plants or Prime, just change water more often, it will work. Feeding a lot will cause the ammonia to go up like that. If you have just a single fry, you could contain it in a breeder box or some smaller container that you can float in the larger tank so that you can feed a bit less--not because the food costs much, but because it will pollute the water. You want to put the small bits of food right in front of him/her if you can, so he/she can find it easily. That is easier in a confined space. I would not advise shrimp in a hospital tank. Shrimp are great if you are raising a lot of fry, but not if you need to medicate fish because they are sensitive to a lot of the strongest medications. However, Neocaridina davidi are pretty easy to care for, they reproduce easily and are pretty hardy, should be compatible with guppies, swordtails, and platys if given cover.
  10. Brandy
    Interesting. I have never tried to dose with ammonia when I planted heavily. I put snails in and waited for the algae to start growing and snails to produce their own ammonia. Then I just added fish slowly and monitored ammonia and nitrite closely and used prime and water changes to keep things under control until the bacteria caught up. I am interested in how this works and what other people will say. Sorry I am not helpful, but I am interested! 🙂
  11. Brandy
    Would the Otocinclus be the only other fish in the tank? Mine will blend in with my rummynose tetras and school with them, and they are surprisingly fast. A bigger school makes an individual fish harder to badger.
  12. Brandy
    Perfect! I Knew those things existed!! I just couldn't figure out where I had seen them! Thank you!
  13. Brandy

    Is this ich

    Brandy replied to Lolo8234's topic in Diseases

    I don't actually know exactly what it is, it seems like the pic showed ragged edges, sorry. I was guessing it is either fungal or bacterial or both--one can follow the other opportunistically, and they have similar looking symptoms. It doesn't look like a parasite that I am familiar with--not that I have an exhaustive knowledge by any stretch. If it is not responding to a single dose soaking for a week, I would go with the full treatment dose for both IchX and erythromycin, especially since the dosing schedule for those two meds is the same. I think that is the beauty of the quarantine trio--they are compatible, so you don't have to know exactly what it is, you just have to be close. Hopefully the antibiotic will catch it with the IchX adding some antifungal support, and you will see a turn around fast. Keep us posted!
  14. Brandy
    Putting away my tools. It looks like the aquarium co-op warehouse exploded in here sometimes, I trail from tank to tank, dripping water all over the place, leaving a bottle of prime here, a shrimp net there, a pair of planting forceps hooked on the edge of a shelf next to an abandoned test tube rack...And then I am interrupted by a family or work "emergency" that requires me to handle it, and there it all stays. I need to devise a caddy of some kind. A 5g bucket on wheels, with tool holders around the rim! I bet @Bill Smith has already designed one.
  15. Brandy
    Well, a "tank" is not required to be beautiful. You can get a large clean plastic storage tote...and use it for storing aquarium stuff after.
  16. Brandy

    Is this ich

    Brandy replied to Lolo8234's topic in Diseases

    Charcoal would strip the meds out I think. That is its purpose. I think the trio as a supportive quarantine measure is great, but for something like this maybe go with the full course, as described on the box? I would assume "fin rot", which could be fungal or bacterial or both, so I would use maracyn and ichX together? They can both be dosed daily.
  17. Brandy
    My ramshorns are in love with cucumber. The fish not so much. So maybe better bait in the trap? Alternatively, remove the FISH to a quarantine tank and then you can napalm it with whatever snail killing chemical you like...but you will need to find most of the corpses to avoid a nitrogen spike. I think this is the real reason to avoid killing them chemically.
  18. Brandy
    In my other life I work in a microscopy lab. I get to play with confocal microscopes with tunable white light lasers that cost more than any home I have ever owned. My kid had a real (student-grade) lab quality microscope by age 8. It featured in several prize winning class projects. We may not have always had the latest shoes, the kids backpacks might have been duck-taped together, but I spent the money where it mattered, lol. This is a photo with a cell phone thru the eyepiece of flagellated algae.
  19. Brandy
    I got some recently locally from a hobbyist. I told him I wanted it to fill in across a large tank and he deliberately chose plants with runners on them. I was told the original plants would do very little, but the runners would be aggressive. This has been my experience, the runners are growing, slowly at first, the "mother plant" is basically plastic with some browning. Edited to add: I think it establishes roots first, and so it is growing, just not where you can see it. Like we used to say with garden vines, first year sleep, second creep, third leap! hopefully it isn't years tho, lol.
  20. Brandy
    As you pointed out, they did have accurate thermometers. A mercury thermometer DOES measure accurately, our eyes and the gradations on the shaft are the limiting factors. I suspect many of these things were measurable then by different names. Nitrate and Nitrite were well known in the 30s for their use in both agriculture and explosives, and nitrifying bacteria had been known since 1892 (Winogradsky S. Arch Sci Biol. Vol. 1. St. Petersb: 1892. Contributions a la morphologie des organismes de la nitrification; pp. 88–137. [Google Scholar]), but I don't know if their role in the aquarium hobby was widely known? I feel like the whole point is to sort of compare the hobby then and now, so without the bench marks we would use currently this could get less meaningful. Maybe you could make a compromise--measure your benchmarks once or twice but largely make decisions based on the technology they would have had, and take modern measurements AFTER making the decision, to check your work in effect. Like "I will make a water change xx% at xx frequency due to this line by Innes" but then after you do that check to see if it led to the anticipated outcome or not. This is like a science experiment, where we should have a WRITTEN (to keep us honest) hypothesis before conducting a test.
  21. Brandy
    Maybe you need creative accounting. I have spent an inordinate amount on tanks lately--still less than I used to spend on eating out, entertaining, clothes, and travel. I mean, can we count as a credit the latte you did NOT buy, the movie you did NOT attend? I did not get to go to Paris. I can buy as many tanks as I want.
  22. Brandy
    I have not tried this specifically. But I think chemically it would work out well in a short term way. It might not be necessary, depending on the sensitivity of the fish. If you brought the tank to the appropriate pH level, however long it took to reach your normal level would be more gradual than the plop and drop method. You would be exposing the fish to one less stress at a time, and potentially that could help. Would I do this for white clouds or danios? nope. But after my incredibly shocky tetra adventures, I am a big fan of minimizing shocks for those fish. I would STILL drip acclimate those fish because pH is only one water parameter. Your TDS/GH is likely also higher than their source water. Another thought I have is to use half your own water and half RO water to fill the QT tank matching their source water, drip acclimate, drop them in, and then water change slowly back to 100% tap water over the next few weeks. (I am really irrationally paranoid about tetras now, in case that wasn't obvious. please take this all with a grain of salt)
  23. Brandy
    As long as the hole holds the line, yeah. Or make your own from a take out lid. Found the video
  24. Brandy
    I was thinking you might get better results with an extra incandescent light on it. The top would totally help too. Older lights would have been less effecient and therefore dimmer and warmer? If you blanket it at night will it help? I suspect all those things are tiny changes in the scheme of things, but they might add up.
  25. Brandy
    On some aquarium co-op video someone slid lids from clear plastic containers (think like the kind you get with a fountain soft drink cup) over the air hose line to stop excessive splashing. Maybe that would work for you?
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