gardenman

I have a suspicion that a lot of the gunk in a sponge filter that we wash out when we clean it is in fact, the good bacteria. I've watched stuff floating around in a tank with a sponge filter and I've yet to see anything get pulled into the sponge filter. If something happens to land on the filter it tends to stay there, but I've seen very small stuff (flake food for example) drift right down alongside of the sponge filter and never move towards it. Maybe it's the flow rate on my filters, but as mechanical filters, they're not especially effective. I don't know if anyone has done an analysis of what comes out when you clean a sponge filter, but my suspicion is that much of the gunk we wash away is bacterial growth. Which brings up the interesting question of "Should we clean our sponge filters?" Washing away the bacteria we need seems counterproductive. Is a filthy, dirty, sponge filter better than a freshly washed one? Do we hurt our tanks by washing our sponge filters? I don't know.

There's useful and there's useful. Bacteria in an established tank is largely omnipresent. Within seconds of the new filter hitting the tank some bacteria would be in it. Would it be enough to be meaningful in a new tank? No. I think two to three weeks of use in an established tank would make it much more efficient when moved, but even an hour is better than nothing. In just an hour it would have picked up some, maybe quite a lot of bacteria and be more useful than a sterile sponge filter right out of the box.

One of the first fish wholesaler scenes I ever saw was shot at that fishery. It was a local PBS program on businesses in Pennsylvania and they were focused on the goldfish farm in the episode I watched. (This was many, many years ago.) They had sorting tables where five gallon buckets of fish were dumped as people sat around the sorting table sliding them around to the appropriate new bucket for bagging and distribution. I was used to fish being handled gently and gingerly and these large expensive goldfish were not being handled in that manner. When they brought them in from the ponds, the fish were in no water. The buckets were just literally filled with fish. They were dumped out on this big table and then just slid around to be sorted into new buckets that were set on the floor and they plopped down into those new buckets (also empty of water but full of fish.) When a bucket of sorted fish was full it was hauled off to a bagging station where a bag would be filled with fresh water, the appropriate number of sorted fish pulled from the bucket and dumped into the bag. The bag would then be filled with oxygen and sealed and set aside. It was eye-opening to see how fish were handled on the wholesale level. I marveled at the time that any lived through that kind of handling. Goldfish are tough little critters though. I wouldn't necessarily recommend a hobbyist do what they do on the wholesale level though.

There was a pet shop in Pennsauken on route 38 (on the way to Cherry Hill) called Tisa's back in the day that had a massive show tank at the front of the store with calico fantails/orandas in it that I always loved. It was just an amazing tank. I always vowed that some day I'd have a tank like that. About ten years ago I had an empty big tank and decided to replicate it. I bought eight baby calico orandas that appeared to be in perfect health. I fed them Repashy Soilent Green, they had duckweed, not that they were overly fond of it, assorted flake foods, and frozen foods. They grew rapidly and then six of the eight developed swim bladder issues. It kind of broke my heart. A few were nearly always floating upside down while others were always lying on the bottom of the tank. Two of the eight were great however. That dream tank idea died. Lots of people have had similar experiences with fancy goldfish. They look great when small, but as they develop bad things happen. YouTuber Jennifer Lynx (Solid Gold Aquatics) has stopped keeping goldfish due to their health issues. Philly Goldies (who's a vet by the way) also had lots of health issues with her goldfish. A quick note about Tisa's pet shop. It was owned by John Tisa, who was the brother-in-law to Antoinette Tisa a New Jersey opera singer. It was a great little pet shop. I used to love shopping there. I bought many a fish there over the years. My copy of Sterba's Freshwater Fishes of the World came from there.

My personal experience with juvenile fancy goldfish is that the majority develop swim bladder issues as they mature, so buying already adult fish is a safer option. If they were to develop swim bladder issues they'd have likely already done so.

Just to follow up on my previous post. I think a reverse flow UG filter with the water coming from a canister filter and then the mechanically filtered water gently flowing up through the gravel bed makes the most sense for a DIY project. You need no uplift tube at all and can simply put the spray bar for the canister filter under the UG filter plate with just the return hose going down. A filter made and run in that manner would not disturb your betta at all. There would be less likelihood of the gravel clogging over time. Wastes should stay in suspension and be easily filtered out by the canister while the gravel bed did the heavy lifting of biofiltration. The spray bar would distribute water relatively evenly across the width of the UG bed. It would be a very nice, gentle, easy filtration system for a betta. You can get canister filters for tanks as small as 10 gallons for well under $100 also. Using a canister filter in this manner might cause more wear on the filter as it's pumping the return water out against the water pressure in the tank, but I doubt that it would be a huge problem.

I'm posting a cover photo of a booklet produced by the University of Delaware many, many years ago and photos of the pages from inside showing the construction of a DIY undergravel filter to help you out. To give you some idea of how old this booklet is, the price for a 20 gallon tank then was listed as $17.94. I believe it was published back in 1975, but there's no copyright.

I got an order from Aqua Huna with ten cherry shrimp in a breather bag and their instructions were to float the bag, so I did, but I propped the bag up so only half was underwater and half was still exposed to air. There was enough contact with the tank water to equalize the temps, but the bag was also still exposed to the air for gas exchange. It worked fine. When in doubt, try and prop up the bag so half is exposed to the air and half to the water. Technically, you shouldn't ship in breather bags as live fish are supposed to be double bagged and you can't double bag a breather bag, but people do what they do.

Regarding costs, watch for the dollar a gallon sales at the bigger pet shop chains. That's a great time to buy tanks. People selling used tanks often ask for far more than you can buy a new tank for. Sponge filters are cheap and very effective. Lights by Nicrew and the sort are quite good and very affordable. It doesn't have to cost a fortune to start a new tank. If you take advantage of a dollar a gallon sale ($29 for a 29 gallon tank) and use a sponge filter ($5-$10), air pump ($10-$15), Nicrew-type light ($20-$30), You're well under $100 for a 29 gallon tank. Something like pool sand or Safe-T-Sorb as a substrate will be very affordable.

It could be a slime mold. Slime molds feed on the biofilm on glass. Getting rid of it is easy. It just goes away by itself. It can take a couple of weeks, but it'll just disappear and be gone.

Male swordtails can be very, very slow in developing. I've had two year old 'females' suddenly develop a sword and gonopodium. Most livebearers ship to stores while quite young and the visual difference between platies and young swordtails are largely nonexistent if no sword is visible. Odds are your store got a shipment with platies and swordtails and seeing no swords assumed the swordtails were platies. Odds are someone who bought "swordtails" from that store is wondering why their fish look more like platies and never grow swords. It's very easy to confuse the two if all you've got is an invoice and the bags weren't labeled. "Are these the platies or the swordtails?" It can be a guessing game. They guessed wrong.

I would consider putting shrimp and puffers together a very high risk/low reward venture.

A lot would depend on the personality of the individual bettas. Some are pretty chill and could get along pretty well while others are hyper aggressive. Adding a bunch of female bettas might help quell aggression a bit also and could help keep the boys distracted. (Or it could lead to more fighting.)

I've used a Fluval Breeder Box to drip acclimate fish and shrimp before. I just drain it out first, pour in the fish bag and water then set it to a slow drip. Tank water slowly gets added and the fish/shrimp get a slow, gradually changeover. I tend to siphon out half of the water in the breeder box when it gets close to flowing into the tank so the bagged water doesn't contaminate the tank. Once I'm comfortable the fish/shrimp are acclimated I scoop them out and then dump the water in the breeder box down the drain.

I've offered to catch the fish I want myself on multiple occasions when it's been clear the person trying to catch the fish was overmatched, but no one's ever let me. I don't know what they think I'll do, but they always are horrified at the prospect of someone else dipping a net in their tanks. One fish catcher once dropped a fish I wanted onto the floor then eventually scooped it back into the net and dumped it in the container and was shocked and annoyed when I said I didn't want it after they'd dropped it on the floor. There are some really bad fish catchers out there.

Val is a quirky plant. It pretty much does what it wants to do and in many cases that's melt away to nothing.

Regarding green beans as food for baby plecos, mine have a hard time with the green bean skin on whole green beans. They'll readily gulp down the interiors of the French-style ones however. So, if you have the option, buy the French-style green beans for the baby plecos. The snails will come along and consume the skins later or you can scoop them out. One more thing, if your shrimp are Amano shrimp, they could prey upon the baby plecos. Other shrimp are pretty safe, but Amano shrimp have been known to hunt and kill fry.

I have a ten gallon tank that I use as a quarantine tank for fish I don't trust. Now I just got a fish order in last Friday and I opted not to quarantine them, but to isolate them instead. I got six panda cories, six albino cories, and ten cherry shrimp. Each went into a breeder box attached to the tank they'll ultimately end up in. This was done for several purposes. One, it somewhat isolates the new fish while still having them in the water they'll ultimately end up in. This limits the stress on them when they do get added to the bigger tank. They had no signs of external parasites upon arrival. All were smaller than ideal so I can fatten them up and get some growth on them while in the breeder boxes. I can observe them far more easily in the breeder box than even in the quarantine tank since all of my tanks are heavily planted. There's no risk of a fish picking on the new arrivals when they're in the breeder boxes. They don't have to compete for food with the massive hoard of fish in the big tank. They get their own food. One panda cory died for unknown reasons, but everyone else is doing great. One death after five days for 22 new arrivals isn't bad in my experience. If the panda cory had died in the bigger tank his death may have gone unnoticed. The other fish could have eaten him or he could have been hidden in the plants. By having him in the breeder box, I was able to easily find his dead body and remove it. What I do tends to vary with the fish I'm getting, where I'm getting them from, and how the fish look when they arrive. If the fish are small, appear to be healthy, come from a trusted source, and I have an empty breeder box, into the box they'll go. If I'm a bit iffier on any of those things they're more apt to end up in quarantine. for observation and possible treatment.

I have a water garden full of goldfish and also full of duckweed. The goldfish are almost never fed by me, but they pretty much ignore the duckweed. (Either that or it grow so fast it looks like they ignore it.) The goldfish seem happy though and reproduce in the water garden so they're doing fine.

Trickle filtration is excellent for biofiltration. High-end koi fanciers often use Bakki Showers for biofiltration. The drawbacks to trickle filtration in the home are noise and humidity. They tend to be noisier than many other types of filtration and they tend to have more evaporation which leads to higher humidity in the house. A well designed trickle filter though works very, very well. Aerobic bacteria thrive in trickle towers.

Yeah, gentle is better. You just want water movement over and around the eggs.

I've been intrigued by the idea of making a tank lifting crane. Something like the cranes they use to lift and move boats. (A photo of a boat crane below. Think the same idea, just on a much smaller scale.) If you had a tank maintenance company or did a lot of retail tank sales/deliveries, it could be a smart tool to build. You might be able to make one out of PVC pipe, but the extruded aluminum might be more effective. Steel would be cheapest and strongest, but also heaviest on its own. Old steel bedframes made of angle iron could be a good starting point. A few nylon straps that would slide under the tank then crank them up to lift the tank, wheel it to the new location and then ease it back down onto the stand. (If you were bold you could even try moving tank and stand together.) It could be built to be adjustable for height, width, and length. It could be a handy gadget for the right person/store. Creating one that would walk up steps would be an issue, but for flatter areas it could be a very effective and cheap way to move heavy tanks. Just a one or two person team could even move a tank and stand like Cory's 800 gallon one with the right type of crane like that and have essentially no risk of damaging either the tank, stand or workers. You could even rent the crane out to hobbyists who need to move a big tank. Now if you need to move a big tank you need five, six, or more big strong guys/gals to help you out. With something like this, you could pretty much do it yourself. Drain the tank down. Lever up one end enough to slip the nylon strap under it. Repeat on the other side. (Maybe the middle also if it's a long tank.) roll the tank crane into position. Lift up on the straps. Wheel the tank/stand to where you want it. Lower the tank. Lever the tank up to remove the straps. Wheel away the crane. All done and no one dies. When you need to move a boat you could find twenty or thirty beefy guys/gals to pick it up and move it, but the boat crane is much easier. The same could be true of fish tanks. I think it's a doable project. If you're building custom stands also, you could even build lifting points into the stand.

Dan's fish room has a YouTube video out on raising corys. The white eggs are typically infertile but in his video he'd separated them out and to his surprise, at least one hatched. So, don't give up on them. He moved his eggs to a separate container and added five drops of hydrogen peroxide to the water and did frequent water changes. Some people use methylene blue to help the eggs. Cory eggs are pretty tough and at least some should survive anything you do to them. I always like to add air to keep the water circulating, but others don't.

Jungle Val can be a bit quirky. I have one that's doing great right now, but it did nothing at all for months. I'd just give it time and hope for the best.

I sent an order off to Aqua Huna on Tuesday (using the link on the Coop page so they get some payback) and the fish arrived today. Not bad. I ordered six albino cory catfish, six panda cory catfish, and ten cherry shrimp. Everyone was alive when they got here. One albino cory cat was barely alive, but seems to be improving. He's now sitting upright and moving occasionally. He was curled up and apparently dead on his side in the bag, but is looking better now. Kind of interesting in that you see no gill movement for several minutes then about ten seconds of rapid breathing, then back to nothing for a minute or two. Everyone went into a breeder box after being acclimated so I can feed them more intensively and keep an eye on them for a few weeks. As anticipated, all are quite small, but that's not a big issue for me. The photos on Aqua Huna show the fish relative to the size of a penny, so I knew what to expect. Small fish tend to disappear in a bigger planted tank though, so by keeping them in the breeder box for a bit I can better monitor them and fatten them up. They aren't competing with the horde outside for food in the box and they're not crowded. The breeder boxes circulate water from the tank through the boxes so the fish are essentially in the big tank, just outside it in the breeder box. Each breeder box is attached to the tank the fish will eventually go into. The albino corys are on the thirty high, the panda corys are on the twenty high, and the shrimp are on the ten gallon tank. The cherry shrimp were interesting. They were very pale with essentially no color until they hit their breeder box that has a clump of java moss with lots of algae on it. The box also has a lot of algae growing on the walls of the box. It was like someone hit a light switch. Within ten seconds of being put in that box they were colored up and feeding. They've also got a piece of cholla wood in with them for more shelter. These are my first shrimp and they're pretty impressive little critters. They're very active. Eleven of the twelve cory cats are doing great. The twelfth guy is improving. Going from apparently dead to not dead is an improvement. The ten shrimp all look great. I was surprised the shrimp came in a breather bag and wasn't sure about floating the breather bag to temperature acclimate so I ended up hanging it half in the water and half out. The bags were all 74 degrees when they got here and my tanks are about 76 so there wasn't a huge difference anyway. I followed the Aqua Huna acclimation instructions (though I really wanted to plop and drop the albino cory who wasn't looking good.) So far anyway, I'm very happy. I'm still half expecting to lose the one albino cory, but corys are tough little fish, so we'll see. One good thing about getting fish small is there's little to no impact on the bioload. Each breeder box of fish has maybe the same bioload as one of my swordtails.