Hobbit

My platys tend to get nervous and pale after they give birth. They hide for a week or so—and it makes all the other platys suspicious so they hide too! I lost one or two females at the start of my breeding project, but the ones I have now seem to recover just fine. One thing you may want to watch out for is the males chasing them too much. I know you said the males have no interest in them, but do watch those males right after the females give birth and see if they’re chasing them to exhaustion. I’ve had some males that are very aggressive and will chase females “in heat” ruthlessly. Those males get booted from the broodstock. Only respectful males get lucky in this house!! When my females go into hiding, I try to use live foods like bbs to encourage them to eat and swim around a bit.

Ahh I have plants that look like this. I thought I was giving enough potassium, but I guess not. (Also what’s AR?)

Aww bummer! I didn’t realize this. I understand the decision though.

I agree! No real wrong answer. Some bettas like to sit on top of larger leaves, so an amazon sword or large leafed anubias could be fun. Reusing the filter is totally fine. Probably even better since it will save all that beneficial bacteria! (Make sure to use dechlorinated water for the rinse.) Some filters put out a pretty strong flow which bettas often struggle with, but you can tell just by watching Boba if that’s the case. If he does seem to struggle with the flow, you can always put a piece of coarse sponge in front of the outflow to slow things down a bit. Seems like a fun project. I hope your girlfriend likes it! 😊

Congrats @Mmiller2001! You’ve worked so hard on that tank and it looks amazing!!

Congratulations! I’ve wanted to try orange shrimp for a while. Your plants are gorgeous and your shrimp seem very happy!

I believe all the contests are closed at this point, but voting may still be open for the Design Competition and Re-Written Directions.

We had a really fun week! I was also hoping to enter the design contest but ended up being much busier than I expected. 😛 Thanks so much to @FlyingFishKeeper, @Beardedbillygoat1975, @Torrey, and @xXInkedPhoenixX for hosting events! And special shout-out to @FlyingFishKeeper for getting plans rolling. Happy third-year-of-the-forum, everyone! 😮😍

Thanks everyone! I’m honored!! I still wish I had moss like @Darth Mollusk, but I guess the moss is always greener on the other side. Thanks to @FlyingFishKeeper for running this contest!

Well folks, the contest is officially closed. Thank you to everyone who celebrated this wonderful forum by eating tacos, regardless of whether you entered this competition! FINAL Leaderboard: @DannyBWell eating 48.2 oz with a TES of 16.6 tacos! 🥳 @Torrey eating 39.86 oz with a TES of 13.7 tacos! Patient Spouse™ eating 36 oz with a TES of 12.5 tacos! @Hobbit eating 17.95 oz with a TES of 6.19 tacos! Congratulations, @DannyBWell! You are once again our taco-eating champion! Your prize is our respect and admiration. 🥰 Happy nerm week, everyone!

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea thanks for sharing that lovely video! You have a sweet kitty. 😊

Easy, Sustain-able* Infusoria Culture *in that you can sustain it over time. This product makes no claims about environmental impact. Materials: Fish tank water Dechlorinated water Two jam-sized jars Baker's Yeast 1-2 Tablespoons of gravel Window Pipette or siphon Time to useable infusoria: 2 days to 2 weeks Instructions: Add the gravel and approximately 20 granules of yeast to one of the jars. Pour the fish tank water over the gravel until the jar is about 3/4 full. Swirl jar gently to allow the yeast to mix in. The water should look cloudy. Place the jar near a window. Direct sunlight okay but not necessary. After 2-3 days, swirl the jar. Put the jar on a dark surface and look down through the water. You should see very small specks swimming around. If you see no swimming specks at all, leave for another day or two. If in another day or two you still don't see any swimming specks, go back to step 1 and try using dirtier tank water. And don't beat yourself up--this is a trial and error process! Once you see swimming specks after swirling your jar, pour 3/4 of the water into a new jar, leaving a little water at the bottom. Feed your fry out of this jar using a pipette. Always swirl the jar before feeding your fry! Add approximately 20 granules of yeast to the first jar (the one with the gravel in it) and fill it back to 3/4 full with dechlorinated water. Once your culture gets established, you should split the culture (steps 5 and 6) every two days. The culture will sustain itself best if you split it just before the infusoria reach maximum population. Why this works: Infusoria cultures are usually boom-and-bust, meaning their population rises rapidly and then crashes rapidly when either the water gets foul or their natural predators (like cyclops) catch up in population. Because infusoria's natural predators are slower than they are to reproduce, we can keep the predator population in check by splitting the culture more frequently than their reproductive cycle. The gravel in the culture gives the infusoria as well as beneficial bacteria more surface area to live on. Including a healthy beneficial bacteria population as part of the culture keeps the water from fouling and makes this infusoria extremely safe to feed to fry, even in large amounts. Infusoria prefer to live and feed on a surface rather than swimming mid-water. This is why it's essential to swirl your jar before you feed your fry: to force the infusoria into the water where you're able to slurp them out. This method has no foul odor, so you won't be giving your spouse/roommates/family something else to complain about! A poem to help you remember to swirl the jar: Sweetie Sally swirled a speck of swimming speckles A speck of swimming speckles, Sweetie Sally swished. If Sweetie Sally saw the swirl of swimming speckles, Then siphon slurp those swimming speckles for your famished fish! Brief bio: I've been in the hobby since 2019, and my first breeding project was honey gouramis. As often happens, the project chose me rather than me choosing the project! Honey gourami fry are very hard to raise because of their extremely small size--too small for vinegar eels at first--and their refusal to eat anything that's not moving. My attempts to learn how to culture infusoria for them were frustrating. There were a lot of different methods out there, most of which produced disgusting, smelly, rotting water even if they did eventually grow infusoria. That meant you could easily kill your fry if you fed them more than a few drops. Plus most methods called for you to set up an entirely new culture every few days or every week, which seemed like far too much work, especially for someone like me with chronic health issues. Eventually I took inspiration from my sister's sourdough starter, which she splits every week. The rest was just a lot of research and some basic experimentation!

Wow! @DannyBWell coming in to defend his title! The determination and digestive system of a champion! And omg you have the coziest living room with your cute doggo and the lit candle and that very pretty looking tank. I hope you’re not in too much pain. 😄 Current Leaderboard: @DannyBWell eating 48.2 oz with a TES of 16.6 tacos! 🥳 @Torrey eating 39.86 oz with a TES of 13.7 tacos! Patient Spouse™ eating 36 oz with a TES of 12.5 tacos! @Hobbit eating 17.95 oz with a TES of 6.19 tacos! Just one more day to enter before we declare the winner. 😃 See what you can do! Can you eat more tacos than a hobbit??

Nerm Week is almost over! Don’t forget to post what you learned this year, vote in the photo competitions, and enter the re-written directions competition, the ultimate fish room design contest, and the taco eating contest! Links are all in the main post above. 😊

The breeding setup contest for our Nerm Week celebrations reminded me that I had this thread. 😄 So I figured I’d post a small update. Here’s the setup now: The biggest and probably most important change I’ve made in terms of the physical setup is that I’ve added an air stone to every compartment. I was having an issue with fin rot in the middle compartment, and my best guess is that the water wasn’t circulating enough and was getting particularly foul near the bottom. The middle compartment’s air stone is encased in a home-made air lift tube to try to get the water circulating more. I’m also keeping the water level lower so I don’t get loud bubbling from the fry slurpers. The ladies have definitely slowed down their baby-making, even though they live with adult males now. I think a lot of babies end up in the pothos roots or floating plants rather than the fry slurper and end up getting eaten. But I also think the females just aren’t producing as much. I’ve been feeding less live food, so that might be part of it. The slower pace isn’t a bad thing, though! 😄 I’m down to just two grow-out tanks now (a 10g and a 20g) and I should be able to get rid of the 10g soon.

Your moss game is on point! As Hobbit, I approve of this Hobbit Snursery.

Just a reminder that today is the last day to submit a photo in our Nerm Week photo contests!

Aww thank you @Guppysnail!! I got the idea from something @Brandy mentioned in a very old thread, as well as something Cory mentioned in a live stream. I wish I could remember what the fry slurpers were actually called, but whatever it was, I like “fry slurper” better. 😄

This is my platy breeding setup! I’ve been using it for almost a year and have raised hundreds of babies from it. I believe it would work for any livebearer. The basic idea is that there are two parent compartments and one central baby compartment, all separated by matten filters. Air powered “fry slurpers” purchased on eBay transfer fry from the parent compartments to the central one. Plenty of live plants as well as a large pothos help keep the nitrates down, since I must feed the babies lots of small foods that can easily get stuck in the filters. (Live baby brine work best, since they actively swim out if the filters towards the light.) Each compartment has its own air stone to promote circulation and oxygenation. As you can (barely) see above, the slurpers have tubes with small holes at one end that only fry will fit through. Once the fry swim inside, they’re lifted up through the tube and deposited on the other side of the filter. I try to encourage the females to release their fry next to the slurpers by providing them plenty of cover in the form of live plants. I wanted to keep the slurpers relatively short because the longer the rise of the slurper, the less slurpy it is. Tall ceramic pots let me accomplish this. Here’s a picture of the setup before plants and fish, which gives you a better visual of the basic structure. The pots contain garden soil, sand, and limestone gravel, which helps keep the GH up in my soft water. Each pot has a mesh tube in its center to let water through and prevent anaerobic pockets from forming. Thanks for reading!

Yay, more CARE packages! You three are very deserving. 💖

Even though I’m hosting, I also wanted to enter just to give everyone a baseline. I am a rather small human with a chronically low appetite, so this was also good “exercise” for me. 😉 I chose to use a HelloFresh taco kit for my tacos. Usually I only eat three tacos for dinner, so I decided to stretch myself and eat four! 😄 Before: The weigh-in: Much to my surprise, after only 20 minutes or so, I’d eaten all four tacos and still had room! So of course I had to get seconds! Two extra tacos: Their weigh-in: It took me about 40 minutes total to eat all my tacos. After six tacos I was extremely full. 😄 My Taco Equivalent Score: I ate 12.15 oz + 5.8 oz = 17.95 oz 17.95 oz divided by 2.9 = 6.19 TES tacos So I ate six tacos, but they were a liiiittle heavier on average than a standard Taco Bell crunchy taco, so I get a little extra credit (that 0.19 😁) Current Leaderboard: @Torrey eating 39.86 oz with a TES of 13.7 tacos! 🥳 Patient Spouse™ eating 36 oz with a TES of 12.5 tacos! @Hobbit eating 17.95 oz with a TES of 6.19 tacos!

NERM Week is officially here! It’s time to celebrate the second anniversary of our dear C.A.R.E. Forum, which has enhanced the fishkeeping hobby for all of us. @Cory, @Zenzo, @Streetwise, and everyone else who makes this forum possible: thank you from the bottom of our tanks, I mean, hearts! 🥰 To find all the events, search for the tags "nerm week" and "nerm week 2022”, or just keep reading. There’s something here for everyone and all the events are live, so let’s get this party started! 🥳 The Events: Photo Competitions: What Did You Learn This Year? Re-Written Directions Competition: Ultimate Fish Room Design Contest: Taco Eating Contest: Whether you've been here for two minutes or a full two years, we hope you'll join us in celebrating this amazing corner of the fishy internet. Happy Anniversary, C.A.R.E. Forum!

Any taco counts! Just weigh them so we can calculate your Taco Equivalent Score. 😄 Our leaderboard so far is: @Torrey eating 39.86 oz with a TES of 13.7 tacos! 🥳 Patient Spouse™ eating 36 oz with a TES of 12.5 tacos! An amazing start to our contest.

If anyone does go with Taco Bell crunchy tacos, do weigh them if you can because I don’t have a ton of confidence in the random internet answer I got when I searched, “how much does a crunchy Taco Bell taco weigh”. 😅

Probably not 😄