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Hobbit

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Everything posted by Hobbit

  1. Hobbit
    Those are some preeeeety fish!
  2. Hobbit
    Those shrimp look amazing!! I’ve thought about trying orange neos because they just look so bright. 😍
  3. Hobbit
    I could see the patterned background looking nice with a big orange goldfish in front of it! But in general I like the solid colors more. Or some gradients like they have here: https://www.aquariumvinyl.com/solid-colors If I wasn’t trying to cut costs at every corner I’d totally get something nice from that website. 😁
  4. Hobbit
    Aww it’s fun to watch them go zip zip zip into the new tank and immediately pick a spot. So glad you’re feeling better about things. 💖
  5. Hobbit
    I got worried when I saw the article was posted on April 1… but thankfully the study was posted on March 31. 😅
  6. Hobbit
    Aaaaaaaah sooooo excited to hear your methods!!! 🤩
  7. Hobbit
    ^ Yes, thank you!!
  8. Hobbit
    Well, the female will lay a LOT of eggs, but because it’s difficult to raise them, you will probably only end up with a few per generation. It’s a difficult balance the first three weeks between feeding them enough infusoria to survive, yet not ruining the water quality in the fry box. I’ve raised four broods, and largest of those was 16 fish. The others were 3, 3, and 6. I would say your current tanks would be enough for them—I just had the parent tank, a fry box, and a 10g when I started. 🙂 You can check out “breeding honey gourami” in my signature for more details!
  9. Hobbit
    Ooo just checked out the most recent tank updates! I’m loving the background! Since I’ve found two art students on this thread, I have a question: I tried putting construction paper on the bottom of one of my tanks since I heard that a dark bottom will hide mulm and such. But I just taped it in place, so of course it wasn’t flush with the glass and it was totally invisible. When filled with water, the bottom just reflects whatever’s above it. If I used something to actually stick the paper on the bottom of the tank—something like mod podge—would I actually be able to see it? Or am I just asking for pain with that plan? I’m imagining bleeding+blotchy paper, air bubbles, and then more reflecting once it’s all said and done… Also if one were to use paint, what type of paint sticks to glass? Any oil based paint? I have old cheap oil paints I bought to copy Bob Ross… 😄 Would those work?
  10. Hobbit
    I’ve bred both platys and honeys, so hopefully I can help you out here! As for the platys: unless you only have one female platy, your two tanks will get very quickly overwhelmed. Right now I have four adult females breeding, and I have a ~12g area for the smallest fry, a 10g for medium fry, and a 20 long for the larger juveniles. That’s in addition to the areas the breeding groups live. I used to have just a 10g for the larger juveniles, but I recently upgraded to a 20 because I was using my quarantine tank to reduce overcrowding. 😄 I bring them to my LFS when they’re about 1.25 inches, which takes maybe 4 months. So if you go with platys… be ready to be overwhelmed! Or just hope that they eat some of their fry. 😉 As for whether you’ll be able to raise them in your betta tank, I’d say probably! Platys are pretty active and they like to explore, so I imagine if you ave 20 fry in with your betta, as they get older and bigger he’s going to get pretty annoyed with them. But if you’re taking them out to bring to your fish club or LFS or something when they’re still pretty small, he’ll probably be fine. He sounds like a chill dude. Honeys are much more difficult to breed because the male needs to be able to make a bubble nest and protect it from the other fish in the tank. If you have a lot of platys in with your honeys, the male may not be able to keep them out of the nest. As I said above, platys are pretty active fish. The other hard part is that you’ll need to feed the fry infusoria several times a day until they’re big enough to take live baby brine shrimp. In my experience that takes about three weeks. My honey fry will NOT eat anything but live food until I forcibly transition them off of it, which I don’t like to do until they’re fairly large (10-12 weeks in). I go from live BBS to frozen BBS to some kind of flake or pellet, and it takes about a week. They have to get hungry enough to consider trying the stuff that isn’t wriggling. So all that said, I’d choose either one or the other rather than trying to do both. Honeys are super fun and extremely rewarding to breed. I love their behavior, and they’re definitely more interesting than platys in my opinion! But they’re complicated, and not everyone wants to take on that kind of project. If you want to breed two creatures in your 20g, perhaps choose either honeys or platys and then do a ground dwelling fish, like plecos or corys? Oh and one more thing: if you just want to keep platys and honey gouramis in your tank, they’ll do very well together. It’s the breeding part that might not work (for the honeys).
  11. Hobbit
    I also use cling film! My 55g display tank has a dark blue cling film and my 55g breeder has just a frosted film. I prefer the ones that are semi-transparent because I think it makes the tank look deeper. I’ve also used tablecloths and old shirts. 😄 Here’s a shirt background—it’s draped over a piece of rectangular cardboard:
  12. Hobbit
    Aww I love your kitty’s little voiceover there 😄
  13. Hobbit
    Yep, you’re right. My biology brain was just getting picky about semantics. 😜
  14. Hobbit
    Technically we’re not allowed to sell or give away fish on this site. It doesn’t mention trading though, so perhaps trading is okay? (I know we have a “Trader Feedback” feature but last I heard there weren’t plans to utilize it any time soon.)
  15. Hobbit
    I’m not sure that’s true… if it’s genetics you should see a fairly consistent percent with bent spine across each brood (esp since these broods are so large). But whether it’s many affected fry or just a few, it can still be genetics. Since there was just one affected batch out of many from the same parents, that points away from genetics and more towards water quality.
  16. Hobbit
    Oh whoops! Sorry to take over your thread @Wil! If we’re talking about the USB nano air pump (the green one), I’ve found them to be almost totally silent. I have 10 running right now. I did get one once that stopped working almost immediately, but Candi took care of me and sent a replacement. Every once in a while, you may just get a dud. They will shut off if overheated or over worked. I broke one that way and have damaged another. I didn’t realize there was something blocking the airlift tube in one of my breeding tanks.
  17. Hobbit
    My husband’s a computer science professor so we’re also aware—and honestly somewhat resigned—that we’re always being monitored. Not necessarily for nefarious purposes, but it’s still creepy. A few days ago Facebook suddenly started showing my husband ads for chicken stuff, and we figure he must have gone to a website that mined his data and matched it with mine. We avoid having any “smart” devices other than our phones. I remember a few years ago there was a baby monitor company who’s monitors were hacked. And then the thing with the smart doorbells being hacked, was it last year? Last week I was complementing my brother on his new gaming mic and when he told me it was a knockoff from China, we ended up giving a 10 minute political speech to whatever Chinese agent might be listening. It was a joke of course, but still.
  18. Hobbit
    I’ve had a generation of platys with bent spines when the water in their outdoor tubs got really soft. I imagine it’s the same principle that @WhitecloudDynasty described—if the mom doesn’t have enough nutrition (probably calcium in my case) then the babies don’t develop very well. I’ve actually kept one of those babies and she’s about six months old now, seemingly very healthy. She’s about a quarter of the size of her mom, but other than that and having the longest poop strings ever, she seems pretty normal. Her name is Ziggy. 😁
  19. Hobbit
    @KittenFishMom I’m really glad your mom’s doing a bit better. In terms of not testing the water because you don’t have the energy to fix it if there’s a problem: I’ve been there. A lot. My philosophy is that if your fish look fine and the tanks don’t smell terrible, it’s not an emergency and it can wait. When we have the energy to keep on top of everything, that’s great, but right now your tanks are not the priority and that’s okay. ❤️ If you get in a pickle and need to get rid of some of your fish, just let us know and we can help. Maybe someone on the forum lives nearby and can come get them. Or, you can tell us what LFS’s are near you and we can call them and ask if they’ll take your fish. Arranging things takes mental energy that you don’t have, so if you need to figure out and put together a fish plan, say the word and we can help. 🙂
  20. Hobbit
    I was about to make a post asking similar questions about the new air pump. I tried to install two last night but ended up taking them both out and putting the nano USB pumps back in their place. ☹️ Maybe I’m also doing something wrong? I was trying to hang them—one on a metal rack and one up against the wall—and maybe they don’t work well in a vertical position? The two problems I’m having are the noise and the strength. I’m very noise sensitive, so I know most pumps just aren’t going to work for me. While the new pumps are definitely quieter than any other company’s pump I’ve tried, they’re definitely not silent and unfortunately the buzzing is too loud for me. The nano USB pumps are far quieter. (And before you ask—no, it wasn’t rattling against the metal rack. I made sure. 😉 The one against the wall sounded the same.) Strength-wise, I was trying to run just three airstones off of it and it wasn’t strong enough. That makes it weaker than two nano USB filters. I tried switching out the gang valve for some in-line valves just in case the gang valve was leaking, but that didn’t help. I’m really hoping I’m just doing something wrong, because I’ve never been disappointed with a co-op product until now. I was really excited about these guys!
  21. Hobbit
    If you have room to keep them and you’d like to keep them, then I’d say keep the males and potentially cull the females. If you have an all-male tank, they won’t be able to breed and they can live out their natural lives. That said, I’m not sure how many females you have that these guys have impregnated. The other option is to put them in with an angelfish or something who will eat any new fry. I agree with you that selling them is probably not a good idea. My LFS will take malformed fish for his clients that have turtles, so perhaps that’s an option?
  22. Hobbit
    Hmmm interesting! Good to know!
  23. Hobbit
    Nooo Ursula Flerken is untouchable!! 😤
  24. Hobbit
    @Beardedbillygoat1975 thanks! Wait you’re not saying I won…? Do regular hearts not count for votes? (Even so I definitely don’t* have the most heart eyes on this thread 😅) Pretty sure the only honor I have is posting last. Ohhh is that the real way to win this April Fools competition?!?
  25. Hobbit
    I’ve been wondering about UGF’s and maybe this is the time to ask. So… they pull water through the substrate, into an uplift tube, and then… do they just dump the water out at the top? Is there a sponge that collects mulm? Do they work in fine gravel or does it have to be coarse? Don’t they get clogged? And then do you have to rip out your substrate? Teach me the ways of the UGF!
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