gardenman

I use the tines of a fork, but pretty much anything works.

I'm using a Nicrew SkyLED on my ten gallon tank and it's got the java moss in there pearling away. I'm pretty impressed by it.

Pretty much the same for me. My grandfather kept fish and handed down tanks and stuff to me in the early to mid-sixties. I dusted off an old light like that a while back and used two of the CFL daylight bulbs in it an it did a credible job growing plants, but the lifespan of the bulbs was pretty short. There wasn't enough venting in the hood and the bulbs overheated a bit.

Yes.

My snails came today and all were dead and had been dead for several days. (You can imagine the smell.) Fed-Ex took nine days to deliver a two-day package. I'm not a happy customer of Fed-Ex. The seller did a great job. A nicely insulated box, two heat packs, lots of insulation, the snails were double bagged, they had a good sized chunk of poly filter material in with them. I couldn't ask for a better job by the seller. He just couldn't overcome Fed-Ex's incompetence. Fed-Ex blames it on "severe winter weather." Yeah, I checked the weather at each stop along the way. The coldest daytime high at any stop was 46 degrees. On every other day the temp was in the fifties and sixties with one day in Memphis hitting seventy. There was no precipitation or high winds at any stop. Weather shouldn't have slowed things down at all. The weather at each place the package landed was fine. Fed-Ex is just incompetent. Yesterday they tried to shift the blame to me by claiming they'd tried to deliver but I wasn't here. Uh, no. Their own "detailed tracking" proves that's a lie unless they somehow managed to drive 15.1 miles, through seven or eight stop lights and a bridge toll in nine minutes. That would require an average speed of 100.65 miles per hour. They lie, they don't care that they're lying and they invent nonsensical reasons why they're incompetent. No more Fed-Ex for me. I'll pay double to buy things that come though other shippers just to avoid Fed-Ex.

I agree. It definitely looks like stems to me.

The calcium block is a smart add. More food wouldn't hurt. Babies are typically more susceptible to other issues also. A parasite that causes a minor inconvenience to a larger fish/snail can devastate a young fish/snail. It's also possible a fish has developed a taste for baby escargot. My swordtails had never bothered my pond snails then I ended up in the hospital for fifteen days and when I came out there were only empty snail shells and no live snails left. They got hungry enough to eat the pond snails. (They don't now that they're back getting regular food.) It's entirely possible something in your tank found out that baby trapdoor snails taste good.

The survival rate in the wild is a very low percentage, so fish tend to lay lots of eggs. And I mean lots of eggs. In our tanks we can ensure a much higher survival rate, but then what the heck do we do with all of those fish? The Cardinal tetra females can lay upwards of 500 eggs each spawn and if everything's right, they'll spawn very frequently. If you have a healthy school of Cardinal tetras and each female lays 500 eggs and you're able to save all of those eggs and raise them up, you could supply the world with cardinal tetras. The numbers get absurd. Koi tend to only breed a few times a year but a big female koi can lay over a million eggs. You need a pretty big pond for a million koi. The numbers can get more than a little crazy in a hurry.

Yeah, egg layers can produce a lot of fry in a short period of time. If you're not prepared for it you can end up knee deep in fry. It can get a bit overwhelming.

If you look at the pictures on aqua huna you'll see they often have a coin (typically a penny) taped on the tank giving you the size of the fish. Their fish tend to be quite small based on the photos.

I haven't tried it with red plants but my java moss pearls under the Nicrew SkyLED Plus aquarium light. It's a pretty bright light. It's also a pretty cheap light. If one isn't enough adding a second could give you all of the light you need. Bear in mind my java moss is growing without CO2, so for it to be pearling at all is neat. There's a constant stream of small bubbles rising from the java moss and when a fish zips trough it, there's a lot of bubbles shooting up from it. It doesn't pearl in any of my other tanks but it loves that light.

When I saw those times posted I knew they were flat-out lying. I know how far away their New Castle facility is as I've been there before to pick up a package. On a good day when I catch every light right and there's no traffic I can make it in maybe twenty minutes. There's no way to do it in nine. Marvin now says there was no delivery attempt today due to a backlog and can't explain why I got the notice that they tried to deliver but failed because I wasn't home. Bear in mind, there's no signature required on this order so my presence shouldn't have mattered anyway. They've just been lying to me from day one. They blamed the initial slowdowns on "severe winter weather." There's just one problem with that excuse. I checked the weather at every location the snails have gone and the coolest daytime high was 46 degrees. At no stop was there any precipitation of any kind. The weather in every location has been better than normal, but sure, it was the weather's fault. Maybe their drivers like the spring air and warmer temps so much they forgot to do their jobs. Today they tried to blame me for not being here. Uh no. Fed-Ex just annoys me to no end. Now I get to wait one more day to see if my snails are dead or alive.

Stuff I've bought through UPS or the USPS comes fine. It's just Fed-Ex that is horrible here. They now say they'll definitely be here tomorrow, Tomorrow will be the ninth day they've been in Fed-Ex's hands. My supplier sent out shipments last Monday and Tuesday. All of his Monday shipments met the same fate as mine and are stuck in Fed-Ex purgatory, but his Tuesday shipments all arrived on Thursday as they should have. Fed-Ex is just pathetic.

According to Fed-Ex's "detailed tracking" they tried to deliver it at 7:45 am, then checked it into their New Castle, Delaware facility at 7:54 am. Now, the New Castle facility is 15.1 miles from my house. There are seven to eight traffic lights and a bridge toll between me and there. They seem to want me to believe they went 15.1 miles in nine minutes. That's an average speed of 106.7 mph. With traffic lights, and a bridge toll. And they were able to get it there, unload it, and scan it in their system. All in nine minutes. I've been discussing this with "Marvin" on their Twitter help page and he's promising to look into the matter. What happened is that they flat-out lied and got caught. They've been lying the whole time. They never tried to deliver it today.

Thanks for that link. Fifty pounds for $25 shipping included (at least for Prime members) is pretty neat. I like that.

In my vision it's not so much a hobby breeder but a professional indoor fish farm in an old department store/large supermarket, maybe even an abandoned mall. Rows of tanks with vats/stock tanks under them for grow outs. Culturing much of the live food for the fish in the facility. Literally hundreds of thousands of gallons of water under cultivation. It would be the ultimate aquarium hobbyist store. Plants grown and raised in the facility. The fish all spawned and raised in the facility. The startup costs would be enormous and the risk of being taxed out of business would be high, but I think it's doable in the right setting. As the hobby stands now everyone makes a profit along the way. The guy catching or breeding the fish for the wholesalers makes money. The wholesalers make money. The importers make money, the middle men make money. The LFS makes money. In theory you could cut everyone else out of the picture and sell better fish, at a better price, that would be healthier, happier, and less stressed. You'd have to be up and running for six months to a year before you could really have fish to sell, so you'd be starting out way in the hole financially. If the facility worked well, you'd have more fish than you could sell locally, but you could open satellite stores that you could supply from the main facility. I think it's doable, but you'd need a pile of cash upfront. Once started though, the cash flow coming in could be pretty good. If you just matched the prices of local retailers but offered better quality fish, you'd likely become the preferred retailer in your area. Since you were the only one making a profit from the fish/plants you'd cut out the middlemen. There are people selling plants like duckweed for $6.99 a cup. In a setup like I envision it's essentially cost-free to grow plants like duckweed. You'd want the facility in a moderate weather location so you don't have to spend too much heating or cooling it. Everyone in the hobby now makes money before things get to the local fish store, so why not bypass all of them and take all of the profits for yourself? In my youth (the 1960s and 70s) we had a very small little shop run by a nice couple called the Evans out of their enclosed back porch. They raised their own fish and plants in tanks in their basement. Their fish were always fat, happy, and healthy. They cultured much of the food they fed them and made a decent income from the hobby. I think that could be expanded on a commercial scale. It would be a big gamble with a lot of cash going out upfront though. You'd want your own well (probably two) so you didn't have to pay for the water. You'd want good quality water. (Some wells are not so good.) You'd want something to do with the used tank water. (A commercial greenhouse next door would make some sense.) You'd need the right staff. (Arguably the hardest part.) It would take a significant investment of time, money and energy, but over the long term, it could work out very well.

Ugh! Fed-Ex now claims they tried to deliver my package this morning but I wasn't here to receive it. Uh, no. I've been within ten feet of my front door since about six this morning. I was literally six feet away from it at 7:45 AM when they say they tried to deliver it. This isn't even a package I have to sign for, so I'm not sure what kind of weird game they're playing. As a rule Fed-Ex just throws (literally) a package on my front porch and scurries off. They never check to see if I'm here or not. Their own "detailed tracking" still shows it to be in their sorting facility. I'm fed up with Fed-Ex.

If the ammonia truly tests at zero then ammonia didn't kill the fish. Newly bought fish often tend to die simply due to the stress they've been under getting to your home. Fish bought in a LFS (local fish store) often originated overseas, either wild caught or bred in captivity. They were then bagged in large quantities and shipped to an importer. There they would have been poured from the bags into holding tanks. They aren't always handled perfectly at this stage as all the importer cares about is keeping them alive long enough to sell them. Any dead fish would have been removed, but significant losses can occur at that stage of the process. Ten to twenty percent dead at that stage of the process is not unusual. The importer then sells them to a wholesaler. They're bagged once again and shipped off to the wholesaler who then dumps then into holding tanks. The wholesaler typically doesn't do much for the fish other than remove the dead. The big wholesalers then typically sell the fish either to a company like Petsmart or to regional middlemen who then sell the fish to local fish stores. Those sold to chains like Petsmart go to their main locations to then be distributed to local stores. A fish you find in your local store may have been caught, transported, dumped in different water, five, six, seven times or more in the time from when they were caught until they reached your local store. At each stage, they were viewed as stock and the only goal of those holding them was to keep them alive long enough to sell them. Most of the fish you find in stores have been through heck and back and are lucky to be alive. But stress can kill and those fish have seen a lot of stress. Many have gone days or even a week or longer with little or no food. (Well fed fish tend to pollute the shipping water with their waste so those shipping fish will often deprive them of food for days before shipping them.) They'll have been caught and moved an insane number of times. They'll have experienced vastly different water on multiple occasions. To say they're a bit stressed would be an understatement. You as an aquarist think you must have done something wrong when newly bought fish die on you, but in many cases you didn't. I really love the idea of a regional fish farm where every fish sold through the place was raised in that one location and treated like a valued pet the whole time and not a stock item. The startup costs for such an operation would be enormous, but such a system would be better for the fish and ultimately the aquarium keepers.

One final note, take photos and video as you're opening the box. Note the delivery time and the time you're opening the box. Screenshot the delivery notice from whichever shipper is delivering the fish to you. You can prove you did nothing wrong that way. Also read up on the acclimation instruction by the provider. They may be counter to what you think is right, but if you don't do it their way, they can reject your claims if they're really tacky. Also don't assume the fish are dead until proven dead. Some fish can revive from a seemingly dead state when placed in good water. Good luck!

A Matten filter is basically a giant sponge filter. In smaller tanks it'll go across one whole end of the tank. In a larger tank it's typically placed in a corner and curved and held in place by some plastic/acrylic. An airlift tube or small pump is used to move water from behind the sponge which is then replaced by water flowing through the sponge. Many believe it to be the best form of filtration currently available. Swiss Tropicals were the first US company that I'm aware of that sold Matten filters but they've been building a following over the years. They're a very easy, efficient, relatively low cost, very low maintenance filter that's largely foolproof. It's a tough combination to beat. (And yet I don't use one. Hmmm...)

Shipping is a big issue right now. It frustrates those on both ends of the sale. The shipping firms are all a mess right now. I paid extra for two day shipping on a recent order and it's now day eight despite that. The seller is upset as his orders are all dying in the hands of the shipper and he'll have to refund the buyers. The buyers are upset at getting dead fish. It's not a good time to be shipping live stuff. If you do go ahead anyway, try to prepare the fish as much as humanly possible for spending up to ten days in shipping. That would mean a heavily insulated box, packing them with pure oxygen, including decent sized pieces of poly-filter material to help absorb waste, smaller numbers of fish in slightly more water. Double bagging at the very least, and maybe triple bagging. I would largely ignore heat or cold packs as they have limited effective use time (72 hours at most) and just insulate the heck out of the boxes to keep their temps stable. All of that costs you money though, but it may be necessary until shipping gets sorted out.

The type of filter needed is more dictated by the bioload you'll be adding. Six angelfish and a school of tetras could be handled fine by matten or sponge filters. They're not especially messy fish. Six big Oscars would be a whole different story. The plants (a lovely tank in the photo by the way) will help process the fish waste. Things will take a while to go bad in a bigger tank, so you can play around with filtration a bit until you find what works for you. But for angelfish and small tetras in a five hundred, I'd start out small and scale up as need be. It's good to remember also that a heavily planted tank may create more debris that could block an overflow for a sump which could lead to flooding. A loose bigger leaf or two in the wrong place at the wrong time can lead to all kinds of chaos. If the flow to the overflow got blocked, the pump in the sump would drain the sump into the tank, overflowing the tank, burning out the pump and likely any heater in the sump. In an office setting that could be a serious issue. (It's not fun anyplace, but in a fishroom the occasional flood is less of an issue.) A series of matten filters or sponge filters are much less likely to cause chaos. (Assuming you install check valves on the airlines feeding them.)

I'm in a similar situation. I've got eight mystery snails that were bagged and shipped on 2/28 and were supposed to be delivered on 3/02. Suffice to say Fed-Ex two day shipping wasn't two days and they're still out there (on 3/08) meandering around the country. I've set up a large breeder box for them should any be alive when/if Fed-Ex ever decides to deliver them. They'll be starving if alive and I can do some intensive feeding in the breeder box. I've got a batch of Repashy made up for them and added an algae covered anubias for them to munch on also. The breeder box will also be much shallower than the tank, so they won't have to climb high to get to air. I'll temperature acclimate them, but then plop and drop. Snails are messy to transport small distances. Their shipping water is typically a bit murky/muddy after a day or two of shipping. We're on day nine (I think) now, so their water will be a mess. Fed-Ex blames the delay on severe winter weather, but the coldest day at any of their stops had a high of 46 and at no stop was there any ice, snow, or other precipitation, so Fed-Ex is lying. These are biggish snails at one inch, so I'm not optimistic any will be alive, but if they are, I've got a snail ICU set up for them to make life as easy for them as possible once they finally get here. Assuming they ever get here. Breeder boxes are handy gadgets to have for such situations.

For anyone wondering, this is what a ripe female Super Red Bristlenose pleco looks like. You'll notice she's quite roundish in the body compared to a "normal" pleco. She is quite likely rather full of eggs and just waiting for the male to notice. Sadly, he's not really noticing so far. He has checked out one of the caves a few times today and given it a cursory cleaning, but his heart isn't into it just yet. Hopefully in a day or two he'll get a bit more motivated.

A large sump system filtering multiple tanks gives you more stability. A ten gallon tank can crash pretty quickly. Twenty ten gallon tanks with a fifty gallon sump gives you 250 gallons of water which is a bit more stable. As a general rule with aquariums, the more water volume you have, the more stable a system stays. Things can go wrong quicker in small volumes of water than in large volumes of water. With every tank connected, you're dealing with a much larger pool of water. If things do go wrong, they tend to go wrong more slowly and gradually. You can still use sponges and plants in each tank also.