gardenman

I don't know. My turkey baster is from a dollar store and isn't anything special. If I'm worried about drips I just put my finger over the end. I suck up the fry. Slide a finger over the end of the baster. Put it above the breeder box, remove the finger, and eject the fry. It's a heck of a ride for the fry, but it works.

I bought one from the Coop in January and it's still just hanging around and doing nothing. It's not rotting and it's not growing, it's just hanging out and enjoying the scenery. They sent me a replacement two or three months in and it's done great. I've tried warmer water, cooler water, more light, no light, drying it out again, and nothing has impressed the dud. It's still just hanging around. It has to do something eventually, either grow or rot, but for eight+ months, it's just hung around. I was checking it yesterday to be sure it was still firm and it was. I'm giving it time, lots of time, and eventually it should do something. I just don't know when or what it'll do. The replacement bulb they sent is great though.

I have an Etekcity infrared thermometer that I use for everything. (The red laser dot makes a neat cat toy and can also be used to annoy the fish who think it's food and chase it around the tank.) I also have an instant read digital probe thermometer that's used for cooking and they both agree on temps. If you're shopping for a conventional glass tube type thermometer in stores, be sure to compare the readings on all of them. You'll find a general agreement on most with some varying wildly one direction or the other. Quality contorl for thermometers is not great.

No. Mine are still mostly red, but with dark splotches on them while young. They outgrow the splotches but are mostly red even while young. Those look more like common bristlenose plecos to me. They may change a bit as they get older, and maybe become more calico.

A lot of "private breeders" will also import fish and sell those to keep up with demand. I've seen several YouTube/FishTube guys who started out as private breeders selling their own fry who now mostly import and resell. You might as well buy from Petsmart as from them since they're all just buying and reselling fish instead of breeding them themselves. If a "private breeder" you're interested in buying from has unboxing videos showing them unboxing hundreds of the fish they're "breeding" yeah, they're not so much a "private breeder" anymore as just another fish store. You have to be a smart consumer these days. If a "private breeder" always has ample stock of whatever fish you're looking for, odds are they're not breeding them but are importing them. Real breeders only have stock from time to time. It's cheaper, easier, and more profitable to import fish than breed them yourself, so many former "private breeders" have gone that route and more or less deceive their buyers who think they've buying locally bred fish. I could name names, but that might get me in trouble, but just be forewarned that it's definitely buyer beware time in the tropical fish hobby. A lot of people who made their reputations on fish they bred, aren't selling fish they bred these days. They're just reselling stuff they imported.

Nerite snails are typically wild caught, so you don't know how old they are when you get them. You could be buying a geriatric snail at the petshop and have no way of knowing.

Yeah, I agree with the rest. More air and don't worry. Tropical fish can take warmer temps better than colder temps. Cold kills more than heat.

The biggest issue you're likely to have is keeping a narrow dish with a large surface area watered. Evaporation will require you to top off the dish daily (at least. Maybe faster depending on the light source you use and the humidity level in your house.) The plants should grow fine as long as you can keep them adequately hydrated but that may be more of a challenge than you're anticipating. Miss a day and you could find everything withered and dead. As the plants take hold and start to grow emersed, the loss of water will increase as the plants will also shed water through their exposed leaves. There's no easy way to cover a dish garden like that so evaporation will be faster than one finds in an aquarium with a cover. It should look neat, but the maintenance could be challenging. Algae control will also be an issue for you. Snails will crawl out of a shallow dish and other algae eaters need more water.

Assuming there are only two genders of rainbow shiners, male rainbow shiners tend to be slimmer when viewed from above and more brightly colored. The females tend to be broader to hold the eggs. (If you're a believer in there being many more than two genders, well I can't help you.)

My baby super reds tend to be dark splotched (for lack of a better word) while young then turn more and more red as they mature and once they're a couple of inches long they're a solid red with no dark splotches.

Oscars are very emotional fish. I've had one sulk for days/weeks over minor changes. They're also a pretty smart fish. I wouldn't be overly concerned. Reflections are an issue and Oscars like to redecorate their tanks, so yeah, he'll play with the anubias. I wouldn't try a dither fish with him. If you do you'll need something big and tough like silver dollars, tinfoil barbs, etc. I've found they like toys. I've used plastic golf balls, artificial plants with a weighted base. Small stones or pieces of driftwood that are small enough for him to move. (Not big enough to break the tank if dropped though.) One of mine would spend hours picking up his weighted plants and moving them around. He'd drop, then swim away and look back. He'd then swim around them and more often than not, pick it up again and move it elsewhere and repeat the process. They're a smart fish often in a relatively boring environment. Keeping them mentally stimulated helps.

Reselling happens a lot, and I mean a lot on Amazon. As an author I know multiple other authors who have found resellers buying their books and then marking them up, often absurdly high, and reselling them on Amazon. It's not bad for the original provider as those reselling had to buy them to resell them, so most people just let it go. It can be funny though to find a paperback book of yours suddenly listed for $20 (or much, much more) when a reader could buy it new from you for $4.99 at the same place. The resellers hope to find naive idiots, and sadly there are a lot of them out there, to exploit. You see it a lot with hard to find video game consoles, computer hardware, shoes, and other collectibles also.

It depends on your goal and your fish. If you're raising fry, then multiple feedings a day with food readily available will get you the largest fish the fastest. Commerical breeders will often feed their fry six or more times per day. Some never stop feeding. They start at one end of the facility and by the time they reach the other end they go back and start all over again. If you want your fish to reach their maximum size, then multiple feedings a day is ideal. (Assuming your filtration can handle the waste.) By and large fish grow their whole life, but their most rapid growth takes place in the first few months to a year then growth slows down. If you restrict food while they're young, they never reach their full potential. If your goal is to have a beautiful tank with minimal algae and your filtration is just barely adequate, then feeding less is better. Some fish are gorgers (often predatory fish) and will eat a lot at once then eat nothing for several days before gorging again. Gulper catfish are a prime example. They'll eat a fish nearly as big as they are, but then will take a while to digest it so they don't eat again for a few days. There is no "Feed your fish exactly this much at this interval" rule. You just do what works for your goals and your fish. Mine get two heavy feedings a day and they're good with it.

Simply Betta has a few sponsors, but she has over a hundred thousand subscribers and something like 8.4 million views since she's been on YouTube. Getting sponsors is not an easy task unless you build a big audience.

The fastest solution is a diatom filter. They're not very common these days, but they'll really polish your water and leave it sparkling. Marineland has a Magnum internal filter that lets you use a micron cartridbge and diatomaceous earth to polish your water. It's around $50 and can be used in other ways also. It's their ML90770-00 filter. You can find lots of before (green water) and after (clear water) photos at a major online retailer.

Snail populations boom and bust with food. More food means more snails. If the fish get hungry enough they'll eat snails also. My swordtails wiped out a booming snail population when I had to go into the hospital for fifteen days. With nothing else to eat, they ate the snails. If you keep the tank well fed, even slightly overfed, you'll have lots of snails.

I kept freshwater clams in my water garden once, but it's been years ago. Knowing if they're dead or alive is a challenge. In a water garden or pond setting a dead clam isn't a big issue. In a fish tank it can be. Given their reproduction rate, they'd be handy to keep if you were raising a Mbu puffer. The costs of feeding those guys can be onerous, so raising your own food would be wise.

That "lily seed" looks more like a lotus seed to me and it will outgrow your tank in a hurry. Lotuses want to be planted in big containers (really big containers) and are typically grown in ponds. Water lily seeds are very small while lotus seeds are very large and look like yours. I'm pretty sure you're growing a lotus.

You should be fine. Concrete blocks are insanely strong in compressive strength. A typical 75 gasllon tank is four feet long and the weight will be spread out fairly evenly along those four feet.

Ambient lighting shouldn't be an issue as fish experience full moons on a fairly regular basis. A full moon can be pretty bright. The ceiling lighting may even be beneficial. I've had some crazy goldfish who would try to swim sideways if a room light was on in a dark room thinking the light was the sun/moon and where the light was where the surface was. They'd roll onto their side and press against the front glass. They were pretty, but not all that smart. The first few times I thought something was wrong with them but as soon as I turned on their light they'd go back to normal. They just assumed where light was coming from was up.

It kind of depends on what you mean by meanest. Female guppies will eat their own fry and do so happily. That's kind of mean. Some cichlids are known to stake out a territory that's six feet in diameter and attack anything that enters, whether it's something big and aggressive like a caiman or a tiny tetra. Wolf fish, gars, snakeheads, and lots of other fish tend to be a bit vicious. Piranhas are killing machines. I had a silver arowana that I had to keep a net between him and my hand or he'd attack me everytime I went into the tank. In my experience, Oscars and Jack Dempseys have been okay fish to keep. They're aggressive, but not crazy aggressive. At least the ones I've kept. There's the Eye Biter from Lake Malawi that's been known to attack a fish by eating its eye, then crippling the fish and either eating what it wants or leaving it to die. That's kind of mean.

As a rule, Super Reds get more uniform in color as they age. Very young fish tend to be more mottled but turn red later in life. I'm not actively breeding them now, because I've got around sixty of them now from previous spawns. They're a neat fish.

Fluval seems to be sucking up a lot of smaller companies these days. They're on their way to becoming the 800 pound gorilla in the aquarium hobby.

There is a freshwater version of Miracle Mud. It's pricey as heck, but it's out there. It's about $25 for 2 pounds. Miracle Mud is one of those products that has some "true believers" who swear it's a miracle product, and then there are the others who say it's just dirt and you can get similar results (maybe even better) by using bagged topsoil (around $3 for a 25 lb bag) in a freshwater refugium. The Miracle Mud marketing claims sound a bit "snake oil" like to me. They claim it reverses hole in the head disease, enhances fish colors, and is the most comprehensive filter medium on the market. Eh, okay. It's 80% ocean mud and 20% something else they add. I don't necessarily buy their marketing. If I was doing a freshwater refugium, I'd be more incluined to go with top soil. Oh, and they want you to replace 50% of the Miracle Mud on a yearly basis also. In a 40-65 gallon tank they recommend ten pounds ($125 worth) and then replace half (5 pounds) every year.

It does make you wonder why they're so expensive to buy in fish stores when they spawn like rabbits. Raising the fry is absurdly easy also. Local petshops sell Super Reds for around $30 each for little ones (give or take a bit.) I've got about sixty (or so) now from various spawns. They're easier to raise than nearly any other fish I've ever raised.