Hobbit

I second the baking soda. I’ve used it in my tanks because I have super soft water. As long as you only add a little, you’ll be fine. Take a cup of water out of your tank, mix in maybe 1/16 tsp of baking soda in it, and then pour it back in. If you want to be extra cautious, pour it in bit by bit over an hour. Then re-test your water and see how the buffer looks. You want it to be at least a little green. It doesn’t have to be all the way at 40, but at least half way there would be nice! 😁 You can repeat the baking soda dose if the first didn’t get you there. Your tank looks awesome!

Yes, I would have to agree. Before putting the corys in there, the sand got dirty but the plants were clean. Now the sand is spotless and the plants are filthy! 😆 To everyone: thanks for your advice! This is super helpful.

I have a 55g tank with platys and corys that has no formal filtration right now, just two air stones. It’s under stocked and planted, so there’s plenty of beneficial bacteria to go around. The only thing that’s missing is some mechanical filtration to catch the mulm. Now, I do love me a sponge filter and I use them in my smaller tanks. But if I’m being honest with myself, I know I will not want to reach into that tank up to my elbows to try to retrieve a mulmy sponge for cleaning. It just won’t happen. On my other 55g I have a powerhead with an intake sponge, and that’s fine, but apparently I’m a cat at heart and I’d really like to not have to reach into the water at all. 😅 Is there such a thing as a quiet HOB that will collect mulm for me?

Yep, a pitcher works just fine! When you pour the water back in, just put your hand under the water flow so it doesn’t stir up the mulm too badly. I still use pitchers sometimes if I don’t feel like getting out the hose.

Im so sorry for your fish! ❤️ I did have some platys develop spots like that on their head. It was a group that was prone to cancerous tumors (specifically black pigmented ones) because of their genetics. If you’re interested, I wrote a whole post on it here. Most of them grew external tumors, but I did have one or two grow something like this on their head. It never grew into a raised bump, just got bigger and bigger. I don’t know whether it eventually killed the fish because I gave it to my LFS to be a feeder. So based on my very limited experience, I would guess this is a melanistic tumor.

I had to find this thread to report that yesterday, I couldn’t find my root tabs, and then last night I dreamt that I found them. I was so sad this morning to realize it was a dream 😭😂

Don’t give up on the bolbitis. I had a clipping that melted back into little more than an algae-covered stick. A year later, it looks like this. (Excuse the mulm dust) It took off when I moved it from a high-pH high hardness tank with low N, to a low-pH medium hardness tank with moderate N. It also gets more light in this tank. It’s not properly anchored to anything, but there is actual soil in that pot that it’s slightly rooted into. I’m not sure which of those factors are contributing to its success.

I’ve had colonies of seed shrimp at various times, and unfortunately they’re too tough for young/small fry to eat. My ricefish couldn’t eat them until they were more than halfway to adult length. Cyclops won’t hurt your fry (that I know of) but they will predate infusoria. So just keep an eye on the quality of the culture.

Wow, that’s a lot of fry!! Congratulations! Just a note if you out them in with live plants—be careful not to over fertilize. I think I stunted my platy fry’s growth with a buildup of sulfur, which is in most off-the-shelf fertilizers. And if you give your fry some snail pals, you won’t need to worry about a buildup of dead plant material because the snails will take care of it for you. 🙂

Does it look fat around the gills or just around the belly? I had a neon tetra that seemed to have an issue with weight gain and was fat all over for its whole life.

I’d be a little worried that some roof materials may have leeched into that water. I don’t know much about roofs, but we just got ours replaced and shingles are weird things.

I’ve done this inside a tank to seal off a crack. I actually used glass from a small picture frame I wasn’t using. If you have a piece of glass like that and some silicone lying around, just pipe a generous amount of silicone on the new glass and stick it over the broken patch. Then silicone the edges so you don’t cut yourself 😉

Whatever the white stuff is, it’s most likely harmless. I also use vinegar to clean my tanks because it’s nontoxic, and even if there’s a little left over on the glass, by the time you fill the tank with water, it’s so diluted that it doesn’t affect the pH. Does the white stuff come off when you gently scratch it, or is it totally stuck? If it’s stuck, I would just leave it be. You don’t want to mess up the silicone by scrubbing too hard. That’s what I would do, anyway!

🤣🤣🤣

My LFS just got a pair of these from one of their customers! At least I think it was these. They are sooo stunning in person! Congratulations on the fry!!

I think the tank just needs to cycle some more. There are probably lots of random tasty things for bacteria to eat right now, stuff that’s coming out of the soil. But once they eat it all, the cloudiness will go away.

Does it still do okay slurping up mulm? I know you can’t gravel vac, but what about just sweeping it over the surface of the gravel?

I’m back for an update! It’s been too long. Life is still very busy but when I showed my husband the “Cory Gang” rap from Fish For Thought and he totally didn’t get it, I decided I needed to get back with my people 😄 Lots of changes around here. I’m trying to simplify my fish life, so I brought all my medaka (besides the ones outside) to my LFS. No more medaka breeding for now (besides whatever happens in the tub). I do still have medaka in my cat’s water bowl though! She loves fresh fish water. 😊 I also had a very near disaster with my 55g platy breeder. I’d gotten the tank used with a split middle bar, and after a year and a half, the repair failed. The glass was bowing probably a quarter inch on each side. Thankfully I noticed it before anything else broke. Thankfully Petco was doing their tank sale, so I got a new 55g for not too expensive. It was an unexpected 12 hours of moving fish and transferring the old tank to the new tank. I set it up without the matten filters and fry slurpers, since the mattens were getting filthy and were super hard to clean. Now it looks like this! Another big change is that I traded my Mom Pleco to @Goosedub so he could take advantage of her breeding prowess. I thought that would mean the end of raising little pleco babies, but once she was out of the tank, the last clutch of fry thrived. I don’t know if she was actively predating them, or just eating allll the food. But I ended up with more than 20 pleco babies in my community tank. Which was WAY too many. 😆 Here they are coming to the front of the tank for their nightly wafers. I didn’t mean to, but I think I taught them to be pretty scrappy. They always fought over their food no matter how many wafers I put in there. Yesterday I went to my LFS and gave them all my pleco babies, which included the ones in my community tank, plus 10-ish pleco babies I’d been growing out in other tanks. A customer actually picked some out before they’d even gotten them out of my bucket! 😊 I traded them in for 8 corys for the new platy 55g. I’m so happy to have corys again! Loachy, @Streetwise’s former loach, is still doing great. He’s hiding behind this log. If you look closely you can see his little eyeball. (He doesn’t have a bent spine—that’s just a weird reflection.) He’s hanging out there with Loachess. You can see her darker markings to the left. That’s the update over here! I hope everyone’s doing well with their fishes. ❤️

I’d like to report that Rosemary’s hunting is leveling up! This fall she caught a live vole. Instead of bringing in the house (yay) she was play-torturing it (yikes). I found myself trying to use the techniques I learned as an undergrad research intern to give the poor thing a quick death. A few months later she actually caught and killed a vole and I was so extremely proud of her. ❤️😊

These aren’t pictures of my tanks, but I take pictures for my LFS:

You have so many hiding places, I think you’ll be fine. I’m sure a cory would eat the fry if it could catch them, so you may lose a few, but that might actually work in your favor because it will leave more infusoria for the ones that survive.

My girls have been less than impressed with this solution, but maybe you’ll have better luck. 😅

It sounds like you’re well prepared!! My birds hate walking in the snow, so be ready to shovel (or sweep if the snow is light) some paths for them. 😄 You got larger breeds so they should be pretty cold hearty. I’ve heard you can put Vaseline on their combs to keep them from getting frostbite, but when I tried it, it became a dirt magnet and Fluffy just got a really dirty head. 😆 You’ll be amazed when you pet them on a freezing day and the tops of their feathers don’t even feel warm because they’re keeping their heat in so well. Their insulation is next level!

Your flocks are so gorgeous! I just love chickens. The local college put in a campus garden with chickens this year and the students love them. These silly little creatures bring joy to the soul. They also let you know when they want something. They are not shy about expressing their opinions!! Especially the “let me out!” opinion. (Mine don’t seem to mind the rain, btw 😉)

I guess I would qualify as a past fan. I’ve only vaguely kept up with the new stuff. I got SO into Pokémon in 5th grade along with my two younger brothers. That was when it first hit the states—the cards, the TV show, all back in Gen 1. We played the game boy games (I had Blue, the next brother had Red, and the youngest brother had Yellow). We collected cards and played the game against each other, and I got up at 6am to watch the show before school. I also spent most of my free time drawing Pokémon and imagining I was in the Pokémon world. I was definitely obsessed. 😄 I know this doesn’t really count, but dragonair lives in the water, so I feel like I can claim it as my favorite water Pokémon. 😁