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Beardedbillygoat1975

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Everything posted by Beardedbillygoat1975

  1. Awww @CinnebunsI am proud. Armored catfish are a real passion for me. Presently I have 3 types - Venezuelans, Pygmy’s (albino and regular) and Gold Lasers. I’ve been on the verge of getting pandas again recently but I’m trying to make sure I don’t over extend myself. As my journal and posts indicates over and over I have a collectoritis problem and well I don’t know what’s good for me. Anyways yes I love when people post here. It really warms my heart. ❤️ and ☮️ to all my fellow Cory keepers!
  2. Nothing better than new baby panda corys. I may just have to start back up again!
  3. I’d say that from an online retailer I’d expect these kinds of loses. Locally I’d be shocked. In general the younger the shrimp the better they adapt. Sometimes they sell you old shrimp and they can’t cope with another set of parameters. Several months of seasoning the tank could mean 1-2months could be 4 months. I would say that 3 months is minimum to build up enough biofilms and algae’s. Food should be left less than 12 hours. Don’t let rotting food be the end of your colony. In general, underfed is better than over. Gel foods like Repashy work well. Do your know your tds, gH and kH? As you Move forward that could be helpful as you move through your shrimp keeping and try to refine things. I hope this time is the one for you. My own journey was after a long break from the hobby my wife purchased me a Fluval Flex 15 and I just couldn’t keep the cherry neos alive. Turned out I had babies in the filtration section but I did lose quite a few adults as the tank seasoned. At 6-12 months it finally became mature enough for a good colony of shrimp. Honestly my most successful setups have been more leave it and forget it setups - 20 g tub with moss, duckweed and guppy grass did better than my 20 g long that was “ideal.” Or the tank is so big it just can’t fail - my 60 g Orange Sakura tank is like that with 100s of neos. Good Luck and let us know how we can help.
  4. Shrimp and Fluval Flex’s are interesting- always found the shrimplets in the filtration chamber. I think it could work. Keep a test kit or strips handy and watch your parameters after the fish are added.
  5. I make batches of it in squares and I also feed it in the powder form. Then there’s small particles all over for them to eat.
  6. Lots of options. Sponge filter would work. A hang on back with a prefilter sponge on the intake could work - Aquaclear makes a nice one, I have this one on some 10 g cube tanks and they work well with easy flow for the fish you’re talking about An undergravel filter would work well. If you’re just going to use low level stocking you could heavily plant it and go no filter or Walstad. I think the questions more about how you want to run and maintain the tank. How quickly do you want to set it up and have it running? The beauty of being an aquarist is that you can take multiple approaches and get different but equally interesting results.
  7. Yep and @Patrick_G has supplied us both with fish!! He almost got me to take some of his Nothos!
  8. I agree with @Tony sthat when their water or tankmates are not to their liking they’ll stop breeding. In general, they like harder water. Ideally pH is greater than 7. Many times initially the pH will be up at setup and then as time goes on and the tank matures the pH and hardness sometimes can fall. So checking your parameters is a good place to start. I love crushed coral. Next I’d look at the dwarf frogs - African Dwarf Frogs are carnivores. They are super derpy but are ambush predators. Platy fry often hug the substrate after birth and will be a little lethargic initially. They are an easy target for the frogs. I’d bet that your Platys are having fry but you’re not seeing them.
  9. The Bronze Cory or Coryadoras aeneus like their water a bit cooler low 70s. In general, Cory’s like water on the softer side but these fish have been in the aquarium trade for so long like can accept a wide range of parameters. Feeding should consist of mostly meaty foods - worms, insect based foods with black soldier larvae and brine shrimp or other small crustaceans like daphnia, cyclops. I often will take the freeze dried tubifex and bury it in the sand for them to find. It’s a hoot to watch them! Breeding - Optimally you have a 2:1 ratio of males to females. Age wise probably 9-12 months old. Then when you’ve got some females who are looking rather broad through the girdle I feed them heavy on blood worms, tubifex and brine shrimp for 3 days. If I can time it I’ll do this when I know a weather front is coming. Then I’ll do a large volume water change with cooler water 5-10 degrees usually and within hours to days I’ll see eggs on the glass, moss and plants. They can be colony bred but if you want a higher yield pull the eggs and watch @Dean’s Fishroomvideos on raising Cory fry!
  10. Make sure to get a mat or some styrofoam to protect the desk. Best of luck with this project!
  11. I’ve thought many times when the big box sale happens about this cube tank and now I’ll think doubly hard! It’s a beauty of a tank. Well done! If you give white clouds some bushy plants like Pogo Octopus or floaters or moss they’ll community breed. They tend not to hunt their young.
  12. I have 25 or so Pygmy corys in my 60 g and it’s almost like they aren’t there. Only at feeding time do I see big groups. I keep telling my wife I need to add another 10-15!
  13. Fun to catch-up on your journal and always nice to see a fellow GSAS member! Have fun!
  14. Just a little update on my puffer keeping. I unfortunately lost my trio of Pea Puffers. I never effectively got them dewormed and decided to pull them out of their 11 g bowl for a 15 g QT hospital tank but they quickly died one daily for 3 days. It was a bummer. On the positive side of things my Tetraodon schoutedeni - Congo Spotted Puffer aka Princess Peach is thriving. She has carved out her territory and is very happy. Especially after a water change and a good bloodworm/Vibra bite feed. Hope all the puffer keepers are well. Have fun!
  15. I feed Repashy in powder form for my Pygmy group. Works great and they’re community breeding which is lots of fun.
  16. Wow, 2 months since I’ve been here posting. Life the universe and everything so on to my tanks. The Bowl - well the pea puffers never thrived in the bowl. I had trouble getting them healthy from the start. I tried the triple QT regimen, Colu’s recommendation for deworming and did it 3 x and got skinny puffers and so I pulled them to a qt tank and in the process lost the trio. It was sad but it felt like no matter what I did it was going to go this way. RIP to the trio. I have decided that although an 11 g bowl is a good size I was not going to do fish again. I still have an otocinclus in there and there he will stay. I felt like this was an opportunity to do a Caridina setup. I love mischlings - Caridina with lots of diverse genetics that throw crazy color combos. I’m lucky that locally we have some great Caridina breeders. Our local shop (not the coop) has them for under $10 a piece and a local breeder I know gave me a group of 12 for $5 a piece. So I’ve got some crystals, Tai bees, blue bolts, orange eye tigers, shadow pandas, and some orange neos from my 60 g I put in to make sure it was habitable before putting $100 worth of Caridina in. It’s become a really fun tank again. There’s a Where’s Waldo effect to the tank looking for the different shrimp types. Just did water changes on my 45 and 60g tanks. They’ve been enjoyable. I’ve not gotten the plants where I want them in the 45 g but in the 60 the plants look stellar. The most recent additions are in the 60 - a group of 6 Threadfin rainbows - Iriatherina werneri🌈. https://youtube.com/shorts/-SQ2Gq-AAfs?si=WAY2DcQI2w5JCkhF Also in the 60 g although sightings are rarer are my L397 Tiger plecos, gorgeous fish. You’ll notice this very brown mulm and this is from the group of 6s love of wood 🪵. Lordy I tolerate it because the shrimp love it but every month I get in there and vacuum it out and it’s back within days it seems like. https://youtube.com/shorts/-JL8XIrlr2s?si=fXUvLV2AOybrdNU0 I still love the 45 despite my problems with the plants. With the high protein foods the puffer (Princess Peach 🍑 our Congo spotted puffer) I’m just not able to fertilize the plants the way I’d like. Many of the plants look great but eventually I’ll graduate this group to a 60 g or bigger and I’ll plant to run a bigger canister on it along with an undergravel filter. https://youtube.com/shorts/x-Jtbr4kKGk?si=Ui0m54SovstMqKSj I hope you all are having fun and enjoying the hobby.
  17. @bnaturallydo you ever get Axelrodia riesei? Looks like a fun small and red tetra. Thanks for all you do for us locals!
  18. @LionheartsGhostI am so sorry. I had a horrible event last winter with a stray wild bunny and a power strip. Lost my breeding group of irrubesco and essentially my whole fish room. My sympathies! In these carefully curated environments that we sink so much love and attention on for something without and outside our control like a weather event to take out fish it’s just so difficult. I’ve been through it many times over the years but doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
  19. @Fish Folkwith your sons tank all that algae and overgrowth he may have a better survival rate! looking forward to more livebearers content!
  20. Always love starting with Not So Sad Bowl update. Presently housing a pair of Pea Puffers, 3 common Otos, 3 SAEs and it’s been a fun aquascaping challenge. Deep substrate with an integrated UGF. Plants are an interesting mix - Crinum front and center, moss carpet up front, mix of rhizome plants, dwarf sag, little po lets of crypts, I’ve really enjoyed the challenge of it’s limitations. I haven’t discussed my fishroom in awhile. I got a better RODI system from an online retailer and finally got it setup. Rated for 100 gpd but that’s at 60 psi and out the tap I’m in at 40. So I’m probably getting 60% of what it’s capable of. I’m considering a pump to boost up the PSI to 60-90 psi. That’s about $100-140 which brings up an interesting topic….Financing my hobby is something I’ve become more conscious of. I’ve realized over time the impact it can have on other parts of our family life. So in the last 6 months I now scrimp and save from selling plants, fish, shrimp and excess tanks and equipment to fund the majority of the hobby. It’s been enlightening. I and others have spoken about how limitations can bring on more creative and interesting avenues in the hobby. It’s a good challenge. I’m feeling a lot of gratitude towards what I have, what I’ve achieved and what’s ahead. Much of what I have in the fishroom has been obtained locally. I’m not buying, selling and shipping online. I’ve stuck with the club and our PNW online communities. Shipping is god awful expensive, hard on the animals and yields so many challenges on the receiving end in terms of husbandry- I work crazy hours as an NP less crazy then I was (down from 60+ to 40-50 now) but I have to keep a balance between my families needs and my hobbies needs. I think during the pandemic this got twisted for me. It’s taken me years to sort through that. I’ve now got 4 active breeding setups in the fish room. All are planted and I’m harvesting plants from them. I have one tank beside these 4 that’s plant only with lagenandra meboldi red, nurii crypts, AR, and a moss I can’t remember the name of. 1. 60 breeder, it’s a deep sand substrate with a UGF, an Eheim canister and powerhead/sponge filter combos. It’s got a breeding colony of diamond tetras, a colony of mixed ancistrus (plain LF, plain SF, lemon blue eyes, calico sf, and albino) about 6 adults 2 f/4 m and 7 juveniles all LBE, and 12 gold laser corys. The diamonds have 5 generations and they now number about 20 individuals, 6 adults, 14+ juvies and probably 10 more babies hiding 2. 40 breeder, 7 super red ancistrus with LF genes, 20 Japanese blue gold guppies some with double sword genes and 12+ tangerine tiger shrimp. 3. 20 long, 30 adult cherry and bloody Mary shrimp, 10 blue aura tiger shrimp, 5-7 Sulawesi orange foot rabbit snails baby baby’s not even 1/2 “, and lots of ramshorns. 4. 20 high, 5 (2:3 m:f) adult Santa Claus guppies and 20+ fry, 6 L519 juvies, blood Mary shrimp, Malawa shrimp and some Aura blue tigers. Here’s video of 3 of the setups. Hope everyone stays warm along with their tanks! Have fun!
  21. I have neocaridina and Malawa shrimp as well as some big Amanos. My Congo spotted puffer has occasional interest but is much happier with snails and freeze dried krill. Speaking of feeding has anyone used meal worms or some of the species that are fed to bearded dragons? I ask because they’re easy to get at pet shops.
  22. What do you think it’ll take @Fish Folk? She bulging with eggs. Just not his favorite girl?
  23. @LionheartsGhostgreat stuff in those videos and thanks for your first hand accounts! Puffer fry survival success is very difficult. In talking with Dean at our GSAS club meeting last month he indicated he thinks that the effort required to keep these smaller puffer fry alive burgeons on the impossible unless this is your full time job. He has only been able to keep Congo spotted puffer fry alive for a week or so before losing his batches. This was with infusoria, rotifers, micron foods, golden pearls he listed off a couple other things as well. He thinks maybe if he shut down his whole fish room and focused only on puffer breeding could he pull it off so I think your experience is indicative of most hobbyists and even master breeder level hobbyists. Have fun!
  24. I keep them in tanks with overzealous hair algae and that seems to keep them very occupied and away from the plants but yes I’ve heard they will decimate a tank if not target fed!! I am so glad I created this page. Great info above and well done everyone. Have fun!
  25. @Galabaritll be an interesting experiment. With a clean tank, ammonia and no other sources of nitrite - I think nitrosomas is 7 hours and nitrobacter is 13 hours in optimal conditions in terms of duplication but under usual conditions it’s 48-72 hours from waste water literature. Can’t wait to see your results. Have fun!
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