gardenman

The survival rate in the wild is likely less than one percent and even the most ruthless culler saves more than one percent of their fry. I can't find any stats estimating the real-world survival of fish fry in the wild, but given the number of eggs laid and the relatively small number of adult fish, I would assume less than 1% would be about right. Pretty much everything eats fish, fish eggs, and fry, so yeah. Going from a fertilized egg to an adult fish is very challenging. Captive bred fish have a much better survival rate and can survive with defects that would doom them at a very young age in the wild.

The bulkhead could be an issue unless you mount it to the very bottom in a flat spot. Bulkheads don't like curves so any side penetration would likely fail. The Brute dolly design looks like you might be able to knock out that round thing in the middle of it but you'd need to be sure the bulkhead fit in cleanly.

I've always liked the idea of a string/thread strung across the top of the tank with a small bottle of wingless fruit flies at one end of the string. The fruit flies could climb out of the bottle and across the string making themselves into perfect targets for an archerfish. A pole on either end of the tank to support the string/thread with a guard of some sort on either end to prevent fruit flies from wandering off. (A sticky trap perhaps?) Then let the flies wander out and along the string as targets. If you happen to have houseflies in your home (hey, it happens) then putting an attractant near the tank to lure the flies towards it could make the tank self-feeding. (And yes, there are house fly attractants.) Lure the gullible flies into the range of the archerfish and let them do the rest. If you have a very, very forgiving/understanding spouse, you could even raise your own flies and let them fly around and feed the archerfish when they got in range. Things could get out of hand though as flies are pretty prolific. You might need more archerfish.

In the aquaculture world, hormonal injections are commonly used to encourage breeding. Lots of stuff has been published about it. Here's a link to a Texas A&M series of articles on it. Induced Spawning - Aquaculture, Fisheries, & Pond Management (tamu.edu) (Farther down that page is an article titled "Hormone-induced spawning of cultured tropical finfishes" from the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea with many references to other articles. As to hormones in the water column, I've seen the breeders of exotic plecos use guppies and other livebearers to encourage their plecos to breed. I would assume it works since they do it and they believe it works. You want to minimize water changes while doing so for the hormones to reach a substantial level, but it's a fairly common practice among that group of breeders. Most common aquarium fish breed readily, so most of the time you don't need to encourage breeding. Just give them adequate conditions and they'll breed, but some of the more exotic plecos are a bit more challenging so the addition of hormones seems to help. (Or at least the breeders think they do.)

I use a brine shrimp net instead of a sieve. I also use it for scooping mosquito larvae from my rain barrels for fish food. I just find the nets more versatile. And because they're fabric they tend not to get clogged as easily.

Supreme/Danner made those type of pumps under the Airmaster and Dynamaster labels. You can still find them around in thrift stores and eBay. They were on their way out by the 60's as the more modern type was replacing them. Supreme used those same motors on a variety of items. You could find the same motor on their HOBs, diatom filters, and airpumps. They did a good job, but with exposed belts and moving parts you'd get sued out of existence if you tried to market an air pump like that today.

In general, water doesn't get cycled, but tanks do. Beneficial bacteria need something to attach to (hardscape, gravel, filter media, tank walls, etc.) and not just hang out in the water. There are some bacteria in the water, but the real populations are on the hard stuff. The more hard stuff you have in a tank, the more beneficial bacteria you tend to have. Breathing in algae filled water is interesting. During daylight hours, algae, like all plants, breathe in CO2 and exhale oxygen, so during the day an algae filled tank/tub is probably easier for a fish to breathe in than a "clean" tank/tub. At night things get reversed. The algae strips oxygen from the water and the fish can be in trouble if there's a lot of algae all taking the oxygen from the water. Massive fish kills, whether in commercial fish farming or home ponds, often take place overnight when the oxygen gets depleted, and the fish suffocate and die. In deep ponds stratification can lead to massive fish loss when the stratified layers get disturbed. In a tank setting, something simple like an airstone or surface agitation from a filter return will prevent too much oxygen depletion overnight, but without that, things can get messy if you've got a lot of green water. In general, green water is a good thing if you're trying to keep fish. Not great to look at, but good for the fish. Just avoid extremes.

Back in the day, those were the high-end hobbyist type of pumps. They moved a lot of air. They also needed a lot of maintenance. The motor needed oiling. The belts needed replacing. They often used felt as the facing on the piston and that would get worn and need replacing. When they were finely tuned and working well, they were largely unbeatable in that era. They were also pretty loud. Supreme was the big maker of them back in my day. They also used the same motors on their Aqua King and Super King power filters.

The experts in shipping big fish are Predatory Fins. They import and ship out very large fish on a regular basis. If you drop them an e-mail they'll likely offer you lots of good advice and maybe even offer to sell you some of the supplies you'll need. In general, you don't want to feed him before shipping. At least double bag the fish. There are super strong vinyl bags that can be used also. They're not common or easy to find, but they're pretty much bulletproof. Heat or cold packs depending on temps can be important. You'll often see small chunks of the Poly Filter material included with smaller fish. A full 4"X8" pad of the material might be a better option with a full-grown Oscar. A hungry Oscar might be inclined to eat the smaller pieces typically used. There are fish anesthetics that can be used to calm a fish also. A local vet might be able to help you with those. It's doable. It won't be easy, but it's doable. Very large fish get shipped quite often with good results.

Snowstorms also. I was born in November of 58 and we had two blizzards in February and March of 58 where couples were trapped at home with nothing else to do. I was one of many blizzard babies born that year. About half the kids at my school were born in that blizzard baby window. If you check out Facebook Marketplace you're apt to find used cylinders selling pretty cheap. (As low as $15 locally though most are in the $50-$100 range.)

Teh Marina/Fluval hang-on breeder boxes are great. You won't be disappointed with them.

Cheap and easy would be to get a 10' long piece of gutter with two end caps and paint it all black on the outside. Inside of that put some of the T-5 LED shop lights (6500 K) daisy-chained to one another. (You can get six of the 4' long 6500K Barrina T-5 Shoplights at Amazon for $42.) They can connect end to end with an included cable so you only need one switch/smart outlet/timer to control the lot. For around $60-$70 you can have a ten foot long, very bright light for the tank that looks pretty good and is the right spectrum (daylight.)

Flow through an under-gravel filter is an interesting topic. (Flow rate through any bio-filtration is an interesting topic.) You want some flow, but how much is enough and how much is too much is highly debatable. Some say the bacteria can convert the ammonia and nitrites nearly instantly, so the fastest flow rate is best. My gut says more exposure time is better, so a slower flow rate is better. Matten filters are typically considered one of the best aquarium biofilters and the flow rate through most Matten filters is very slow. In many cases very, very slow. Some of the bigger koi houses in Japan use very slow filtration rates also. When you watch veteran fish breeders, they typically use sponge filters, and they often have them set up with very slow airflow. Now part of that is to protect the fry from buffeting, but it also seems to make their biofiltration more effective. As long as you've got some flow through your biofiltration, I think it'll function fine.

Cuttle bone is one of those "It can't hurt and might help" things and it's cheap. I've used it before and once it sinks it's easy to tuck into the gravel and it does slowly dissolve. How slowly it dissolves largely depends on your water chemistry. If you have very acidic water, it'll dissolve more quickly than it would in neutral water.

Parasites typically need a host and that host is usually a fish, not a plant. Is it possible one was resting on a plant that you brought in? Sure. Is it likely? Probably not. Parasite eggs tend to drop to the substrate and linger there, so they're not in the plants. Duckweed tends to have fairly minimal roots, so I wouldn't be terribly concerned about contaminated fish eggs on it. Things like water hyacinths with large bushy roots are more attractive to egg layers. If you're moving those or water lettuce, or similar plants with long bushy roots, then I'd be more worried about bringing in eggs. Duckweed isn't as common a place for eggs to be laid. Could there be an issue? Sure. There can always be an issue. Is it likely? Probably not. Many of the fish we buy in stores are wild-caught and most have had little to no treatment before we get them and by and large things work out okay.

Add more fish. They all exhale CO2. (Well in as much as fish exhale). Adding more aeration might help also. Air has more CO2 in it than aquarium water. Which is why commercial aquarium plant producers grow plants emersed. If you throw enough air in, the water should absorb more CO2 from the air. I've been intrigued by the idea of putting an air stone under a plant so it gets bathed in air, potentially exposing it to more CO2 than the water could absorb. Think of it as a semi-emersed system. It might not work because emersed growth is different from submerged, but it might work. You'll want a plant well anchored or rooted though if you try that. The air will want to lift it. More fish, more air, both should get you more CO2 in the water. Not as much as you'd get from CO2 injection, but maybe enough to make a difference.

Aquarium plants are finicky. Think of them as the housecats of the plant world. My cats will gulp down a food one day and then turn their noses up at it the next. I have four nearly identical tanks. Plants that thrive in one die in the others. And vice versa. Why? God only knows.

That small of a tank with that many plants actively growing, and having been established as long as it is, would make me think that something else is going on. Overfeeding would be one option. Shrimp don't produce a lot of waste. They're tiny little things. If the water going in isn't the issue, then my suspicion is that something else is going on. Maybe something died under one of the rocks and is decaying? Maybe uneaten food has accumulated. You have CO2 and actively growing plants. I'm guessing you're also fertilizing the plants. Maybe the fertilizer is adding ammonia? Ammonium nitrate is a very common fertilizer especially in the DIY plant tabs. If you've got ammonia in your water, you've got plant food there for the plants. They should strip the ammonia out pretty quickly. I wouldn't add any additional fertilizer for a bit and see if the problem doesn't resolve. It could be that ammonia is somehow leaching from the gravel or rocks in some manner. (More likely the gravel.) Shrimp require very little in the way of biofiltration to remove their wastes. You're not keeping koi or huge cichlids. Shrimp are tiny little things that don't produce a ton of waste. You shouldn't be seeing ammonia levels at all keeping shrimp in a planted tank that's been established for a while.

I would expect glass shortages to get worse too. Glass manufacturing is an energy intensive business and many US plants have closed. Two from my youth in a neighboring town (Anchor Hocking and Gaynor) are gone. Soth Jersey used to be a glass manufacturing hub with plants in Salem, Bridgeton, Glassboro, and Millville, but most are now gone. The energy costs and regulations have largely killed the domestic industry. Glass is heavy and fragile to ship long distances and with limited domestic production, the supply will likely be low for a while.

Just be forewarned, fish will often end up behind a Matten filter. Fry will squeeze through an impossibly small opening and adult fish may jump over and in. You often hear of people finding a missing fish or unexpected fry behind their Matten filters. Having one placed so you can easily inspect what's behind it is wise.

You can always go with the no-drill overflows as a safer alternative to drilling a tank. There are a number of commercial and DIY options out there.

When doing selective breeding you want an image in your mind of what your ideal fish will look like and how it will behave. Some cauliflower swordtails now have dorsal fins so high and heavy that the fish often have to sink to the bottom to rest as it takes a lot of effort to swim with all of that finnage. If your goal is to add even more finnage then you have to factor in the impact that might have on the fish's ability to swim. Guppy breeders got so intrigued by making larger and larger tails that they ended up with some fish who could barely swim. At ninety days you may find one or more of the females in your trio converting to being a male as they mature. Some swordtail males are very late developing. If you like the parent stock in general, I wouldn't fuss too much about the initial trio. You just want healthy fish as much as anything to start with. They'll have the genes you need to work with. Once they spawn and you have fry then you start selecting the ones you want to breed from there. You'll have a much larger selection to choose from. An initial spawn of a young female swordtail might only give you ten to twenty fry. Later spawns are more likely to give you 50-100 fry. You'll have a lot to choose from at that point. Whatever quality you're looking for will pop up at some point. You just have to identify it and continue to breed and cull to get more of that trait.

Large bulkheads, pipes, and fittings are often priced way higher than multiple smaller ones. It's not hard to spend $45-$50 on a three-inch bulkhead. You can buy a 1.5" bulkhead for around $8. And the pipes and fittings are also priced higher for the larger diameter. And bigger holes can lead to bigger problems. They're harder to drill and may be more prone to leaking. As a general rule, if price and reliability are important to you, you're probably better off with multiple smaller ones to get the flow you want rather than one large bulkhead.

I've used cuttlebone and they do work, just very, very slowly. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Slow changes to the water are often better than drastic ones. And the rate at which they melt away depends on your water. More acidic and they'll dissolve faster. Less acidic and they'll last longer. Mine did sink, but it takes them a day or two. Maybe longer. It's a cheap, easy way to add extra calcium.

Yours look fine to me.