Hobbit

Saaaaame!! 🤣🤣

Oh wow, what an emotional rollercoaster. I’m really glad so many fish made it. You’ve done so well with this move despite the setbacks. I’m excited to see what’s ahead as you restock!

@Cawafuoshi thanks!! I’ll have to look into those.

I made a short video to show what’s been going on with my baby plecos. About half the babies I get from my pleco pair have this issue, and the ones that do only live a few weeks. The other half seem fine and grow up healthy and strong. I assume these defects are showing up as a result of inbreeding; I’m 99% sure my parent plecos are siblings. The parents both seem completely healthy, but that’s recessive genetics for you! I recently gave my mom pleco to @Goosedub so he can breed her with some new males. Hopefully their babies do better!

This is fascinating! Thanks for tagging me @Guppysnail. 😊 I’ve only ever had red body ramshorns with a copper/brown shell. My water is super soft so it’s not the best environment for them, but they’re wonderful little creatures! I love the shiny morphs. I did have one snail that “unrolled” for some reason. The forum named him+her Squidward. Unfortunately Squidward has now passed on, and while I tried to line breed him+her, I never got any swirly babies. I’m wondering if he+she had a soft shell and got squished in a tight spot one day and just ended up with a bent growth plate.

It sounds like things are going well overall! The hard part is behind you. Very excited to see how everything looks in the new place!

Oh no! How sad and how weird that your pleco managed to get out. 😣 I have plenty of super red bristlenose pleco babies growing up right now, so whenever you start thinking about another pleco, I’d be happy to give you one. ❤️

Thanks! @Odd Duck I didn’t think of using nail scissors—that makes a lot of sense. I tried using a razor blade and was able to get a gill flap out to examine under the microscope, but I didn’t see anything. The razor wasn’t able to penetrate the body without just turning everything to mush. 😕 Hopefully I won’t have another opportunity to use this advice any time soon, but I do sincerely appreciate it!

One of my platys just passed away ☹️ and I’m wondering if anyone can recommend their procedure for trying to figure out how a fish died. In this case I’m suspecting some sort of parasite, but I could be totally wrong. She was gasping a lot before she passed. Two days ago I had started a treatment of paracleanse. I only have a pocket microscope that goes to 120x, and no real dissecting tools or anything. What’s my best strategy here? And I recognize that this thread could get graphic, which is fine with me, but for everyone else: please don’t read unless you’re prepared for potentially graphic discussions. Thanks in advance!

Aww so exciting! I’ve noticed the Egg Song can also be the Alarm Song. My roosters even sang it the day we decided to, ah, not have roosters anymore. They don’t have too much room in those little bird brains so I figure they have to reuse circuits sometimes. 😄 @laritheloud your chickens are so sweet! I wish mine enjoyed pets like that!

You know, the tank where I have a BBA problem is my warmest tank (80 F). Hmmmmmmmmmm…

Well I’m about to be away for a week so I won’t try anything yet, but I’m definitely going to try some stuff when I get back! I’m not looking to get into CO2 long term (famous last words)—this is more of an algae defense measure, so once the algae’s down I’ll ease off on the CO2. Easy Carbon and hydrogen peroxide haven’t been enough, unfortunately. I really appreciate everyone’s help!

I don’t think it was me? I’ve had some fish with jaw deformities, and at least two of them weren’t able to eat well enough to thrive. ☹️ But I also have lots of ricefish that just look a bit funny, and they seem perfectly happy! I don’t breed them though.

Yeah, we were told to have it sit 24 hours and then run a hose into our ditch for 4-5 days, day and night. 😕 It’s a good thing we don’t live in a drought area. If the bacteria comes back, we’ll just add a sterilizer to our system—UV or reverse osmosis or something. I think we’ll end up doing that regardless, since my husband has immune issues. And our electric bill is probably shot anyway because we’ve been doing mold remediation for the last few weeks. It’s kinda a mess over here. Are you sure your friend didn’t get the test while there was still chlorine in his water? 😬

My two yoyo loaches chillin’ a few years ago. It looks like they were trading jokes.

If you have a bare bottom tank or haven’t added the substrate yet, my favorite method is using some fishing line to tie the wood to some large suction cups and then suctioning it to the bottom of the tank. I’m fine drilling a little hole in the wood for the line to go through, but a bit scared of drilling through rock/tile. 😄 The downside is the suction cups will eventually weaken and detach, but hopefully by then the wood is waterlogged enough to sink. I’ve used this method for three pieces of driftwood including the giant one that spans the length of my 55g.

Surprise! That happened faster than I thought. We just had the company come and chlorine treat the well. If I have to do a water change, I’ll be doing the sit-in-bucket method like all you with city water! 😄 (I have dechlorinator too.)

If you do add salt, I’d add just a tiny bit to start with in case it bothers something. I’m not an expert so I can’t tell you for sure if it will hurt anything in that tank. But I’m also all about experimenting! It doesn’t sound like the tank is too crowded. I wonder if some female platys have just been through a lot in their life before they even get to us, and giving birth takes too much of a toll on their already-stressed bodies. ☹️

Yeah... My husband has gut issues and is immunocompromised both from those and from the meds he’s taking for them. A UV system might be the safest way to go. We actually just had one put on our HVAC system to kill mold spores in the air. Usually I’m all about letting our systems be exposed to good microbes, but that might not be an option for us anymore. The fish though… They might be fine! In terms of testing, we actually had a lab come out and take the test, so presumably their worker did it correctly. Unless we have them come out and order a different test, we won’t get any more info about what exactly’s in the water. The testing report did confirm that we have a little bit of nitrate in our water. My husband was like, “Look, I thought you might be interested in this info!” And I was like, “Oh, I already knew that. 😁” @gardenman great idea for a sci-fi book, by the way!

@Wrencher_Scott it probably isn’t great. But I do have lots of plants and bio filter area and I do minimal water changes anyway. I haven’t looked into adding chlorine to our water on a small scale, but I do know that if our well isn’t broken, they’ll have us do a chlorine shock—basically a one time treatment. @Flumpweesel That’s good to know. Thanks!

Well, my life has certainly been interesting over the last month. We’ve found multiple ways our house is poisoning us, including that our well water is contaminated with bacteria. We don’t know what kind—only that it’s not E. coli. So until we get someone out to examine the well, repair anything wrong with it, and do a chlorine shock, we’re boiling all our water. Now, I’ve been using this water to do water changes since I got fish. (We don’t know how long the well’s been contaminated.) And the fish never seem bothered. I’ve had some issues with new fish getting sick, but I don’t get new fish very often, and new fish often get sick anyway, so it’s hard to pin that to anything. I’ve also never had too much trouble getting a cycle started, either. Which seems somewhat suspicious now… 😄 Everyone seems fine, including my very young platy and ricefish fry. Can I keep assuming the beneficial bacteria will outcompete anything nasty in the well?

I’ve searched the interwebs but haven’t found anything about how to do this—just a rumor that some successful aquascapers do. I know it’s more accurate to get a CO2 tank and a regulator and do all the things, but that’s a lot of money (for me) up front, takes up more space, and seems to have a lot more ways it could fail catastrophically. And we already have a Soda Stream that I can experiment with. Does anyone have an idea of how much or how little would be okay to start with? I’m mostly hoping it will help me control an algae outbreak. I don’t have to use it forever. If I get addicted to it I’ll throw in the towel and buy a system. 😄

Do box filters produce a lot of bubbles? I’ve never used one myself. Keep in mind that plants only produce oxygen when they have light. At night they’ll actually be producing CO2 and using up oxygen. Do you have your livebearers all mixed together, males and females? Probably a stupid question but just making sure. Females can store some sperm but it’s not an infinite supply.

You could certainly try salt. What’s your stocking level? She may be extra stressed if she’s giving birth in a really crowded tank. I think some platys are more easily stressed than others, just as a personality trait.

My young male honey gourami definitely took a while to learn how to make bubbles. I think he’s a year old at this point and first succeeded at making nests two months ago. I was going to suggest the hard water thing, but it looks like you have that covered. Medium low hardness should be fine. I’d leave the cup or some other kind of cover (like floating plants) in there—he’ll feel safer with cover even if he doesn’t use it for his nest. He could be stressed if your stocking is high and he feels like he can’t defend a territory. They’re not that aggressive of fish either, even though they try to put on a tough exterior. I have a platy that can run my honey male off his nest and eat his eggs any time she wants. Still trying to figure out where to put her so he can get some peace. 😛