clovenpine

Thanks to all for your support and advice! We had a great FIN-dig today using several of these suggestions.

@Flumpweesel, what's a beatle drive? I love the "guess the guppies," "pin the gonopodium," and "fact or fiction" ideas. Thanks so much!!

I'm in the midst of planning our First Annual Holiday FIN-dig for our local fish club, and I need suggestions for fun games to play before the dinner! Current ideas: Fish trivia, where members can play individually or form teams and write in their answers to be "graded" after each round. Prizes will be awarded after each round and a grand prize awarded to the winningest player/team. Need: fish trivia questions. Never Have I Ever: Fish Edition, where all members start with their hands raised and lower them when an action is called that they've done before. Shamelessly stolen from the ACO game show at Aquashella. Need: actions/situations that will eliminate veteran fish keepers so a newbie has a chance of winning. Aquascape Sweep, where individuals or teams get 5 minutes and a $150 budget to fill their shopping carts on their preferred website to set up a new tank. Ideas to be judged by panel with the best, most creative, most cost-effective aquascaping idea as the prize winner. This one will be hard to judge and might create bad blood, so I might scrap this idea. Need feedback and tips to keep it fun. Club Scavenger Hunt, where participants must match the fishkeeping fact to the club member. They'll receive the fact list at the beginning of the event and turn them in when the meal is served, with the winner being the participant who matched the most details to the correct member. This is to encourage interaction and asking questions to get conversations started. Need input: is this inappropriate or intrusive? How do people who struggle socially have an equal chance of success? Might scrap this one. Need: suggestions for more fun and inclusive games!

Did I just...*checks time*...yes, I definitely did just spend 2.5+hrs reading an aquarium forum post and 13 pages of comments and loved every minute of it. I can't remember the last time I was this excited or comforted about the potential of the internet. Folks, this is amazing, groundbreaking work and kudos to you all. You should be proud of not just the science, but of the "science communication." I was able to read, understand, apply, and *enjoy* the entire write-up. That's incredible given the complex ideas and volume of data you were working with. Thanks for all your efforts, and I can't wait to try this "citizen science" experiment.

I can't tell you how excited I am to see this! I'm definitely going to participate in this "citizen science project," and it just so happens seltzer is BOGO at my regular grocery store this week! Thanks for the link!

Thank you for the common-sense check! Honestly, I wouldn't think twice about adding wild plants to one of my community tanks where I can observe the fish and medicate for illness. This is my first real foray into keeping large fish in ponds,and I'm nervous because I'm not sure I'd be able to identify a problem in time. It sounds like duckweed will be a safe bet, especially given the huge volume of rain we've had in the past few weeks. Thank you!! I have no problem with snails, so that's great news. Thanks!

I live in central Florida where a lot of aquatic and floating plants grow wild. I've often been tempted to grab some valisneria, bacopa, anacharis, or water lettuce, but is that safe? What are the dangers of adding wild-collected plants into home aquariums? As silly as it sounds, I'm running very low on duckweed. There's a drainage pond in my neighborhood that's lousy with the stuff, but could it possibly carry parasites or diseased fry/eggs that could infect my goldfish? Would a salt-water rinse help make wild-collected plants safer? I'm planning to set up a kiddie pool to cultivate duckweed and mosquito larvae for them, but that will take a while. What veggie matter can I give them in the meantime?

@PotatoFish, can goldfish overeat duckweed? Mine are mad for the stuff, but I know they're susceptible to bloat...

Re: self-contained undergravel filters, I love the work this guy is doing. There are several videos in a series where he tries out several different substrates, etc. https://youtu.be/y42h7jKyJuQ

Update: thanks, all, for your help and advice! With good water quality, good food, and patience these girls seem to have turned a corner. I set up a 75g stock tank mini pond for them with two sponges, a static bog filter, and two waterfalls (mostly for aeration/temperature control, though I do still do daily cool water changes since August in Florida is not kind to cool water fish). They're eating a variety now: vibra bites, a mixture of krill and spirula flake, and frozen brine shrimp. Still can't get them interested in roughage, but maybe that will come with time. They're much more active and swimming more easily, and they seem more comfortable in a pond setup than in the tank. In the pond setup I'm not able to monitor their poos. Should I treat with worm meds just in case, or can I assume that since they're eating and active then they're also popping appropriately and leave well enough alone?

@adk gal , thank you! I'll definitely try offering them higher - fiber vegetable foods if I can get them interested in eating. I'll start changing out the salt with the water change today and look at treating with prazi pro once it's all gone. I'm wondering if they were already struggling and that's why the previous owners were trying to dump them...but fish don't get to this size without being healthy at some point, and I'd really like to get them back on track.

@Flumpweesel , I can't get them interested in eating anything. I feed very lightly in quarantine anyway, but they won't do for any sinking or floating prepared foods. The smaller one will occasionally sift through the substrate for pellets, but the larger one won't eat at all. I have no idea what kind of conditions they came from. I ran into these folks in the parking lot of a Petco where they'd tried to sell/give the fish away, and their next stop was the gator-infested retention pond in the cracker barrel parking lot 😞

I recently acquired (5 days ago)two adult ryukin goldfish from a family who were planning to dump them into a retention pond and "set them free." I've never kept fancy goldfish before, but I'm concerned that their behavior might signify some health problems. Reba, the smaller of the two (body a little larger than a golf ball), spends most of her time sitting on her belly on the substrate. She does occasionally swim around and sift through the coarse sand for food, but not often. Dolly, whose body is the size of my closed fist, floats vertically head-up in a back corner of the 55g quarantine tank. She swims normally when she does move, but again, very very sedentary. Temp is 72-74, 0 ammonia and nitrite, <20 nitrate. pH is 8.2 and gH and kH are maxed out on the test strips. I'm doing daily 40-50 % water changes to both control temperature and prevent ammonia buildup since the tank isn't used to that kind of bioload (new tank with a cycled HOB and two cycled sponges from other tanks). I'm also dosing salt at 1T/5g. Neither fish has any outward symptoms of disease. So, any ideas? Is it my pH or hardness? Are they just stressed and taking a few days to settle in? Are they goners? I'd really like to see these ladies make it!

On mobile, so I didn't get all the options. I watch everything except for top-fives and unboxings (ok, yes, you got me, I watch those too),but I prefer livestreams, business updates, and personal updates/fish room vlogs. I actually stumbled on this thread by searching "favorite coop videos." I was certain that SOMEONE had already had the idea of a bracket -style voting system where we could once and for all determine the "fan favorite" best Coop video. Somebody should arrange that! I already know my vote for Best Coop Video of All Time (So Far), but it would be interesting to see others' submissions.

We hosted our second club event today! Everything is going so much better than I could have anticipated. We've finally found an affordable venue for monthly meetings so we can have a consistent location and schedule. Today's meeting featured a great presentation from a club member about their custom 800-g pond/tank build and a stunningly successful auction. We've already had two more members volunteer to speak! We're planning to have two shorter presentations at the meeting as opposed to one long one, and everyone seems to like that idea. We're ridiculously fortunate to have Ryan from Wild Fish Tanks as a member and auctioneer. He's a fantastic entertainer and very knowledgeable, so he knows how to "sell" the fish up for bid to drive the prices up. We're still kind of finding our stride with knowing our "market." 1" BN plecos go for like $10 each, but gorgeous and/or rare adult cichlids go for <$5. We probably need to interact more with the cichlid/monster fish groups in the area to expand our market and offerings. Still having some trouble with payments/calculations around the auction, but folks have been kind and patient while we iron out the kinks. Folks are just so excited to have a local club that they're willing to put up with our growing pains.