Jump to content

Eric R

Members
  • Posts

    395
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Feedback

    0%

Everything posted by Eric R

  1. There's the New England Council of Aquarium Societies: https://www.northeastcouncil.org/ Our local club, the Tropical Fish Club of Burlington, is a member. We've been doing monthly online meetings with presentations from either local club members or guest speakers, we had Scott Feldman from Tannin Aquatics this month. We did an auction in October, and met in a parking lot (with masks) to exchange fish/items. We're doing an online auction with PVAS, the Pioneer Valley Aquarium Society, in the beginning of March. One of our members is going to drive down to exchange fish and plants and then drive back. Your profile says you're in Western Mass, PVAS is based out of Springfield.
  2. I wish that all new fish and/or new tanks for first time fish owners included precycled filter media, test kits or strips for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and instructions on proper water changes.
  3. Being one of the cichlids known for good parenting, they do reproduce relatively easily in home aquaria, given the right conditions. However, in my experience they don't reproduce nearly as quickly as livebearers. I actually may tweak their tank conditions too encourage more spawning, as I've only seen it occur once since getting the colony 6-7 months ago. They can eventually outgrow their tank space, especially if you don't give them extra room to start with. I have brought some of the colony to the LFS in the past, and they've been nice enough to give me store credit for them, which is always a convenient arrangement when raising fish that breed easily.
  4. The particular fish I have in this tank (cardinal tetras, corydoras, and apistogramma) are all native to rivers in South America with low kh and ph. I'm trying to recreate their native habitats more closely, as I feel the fish are more likely to thrive in conditions closest to what they've evolved in.
  5. I'm not certain that driftwood, leaves, or other botanicals remove minerals from hard water, at least not in substantial quantities. My chemistry isn't the best, but I would guess that the magnesium and calcium ions present in hard water react with the tannic acids released by the botanicals creating calcium tannate and magnesium tannate, which are insoluble and would be removed from the water as a precipitate. However, I don't think you can do this in large enough quantities to reasonably remove hardness from aquarium water. I'd be curious to have this confirmed by someone with more chemistry experience than me however. The best way to decrease pH, in my opinion, and what I've had success with, is to use an RODI unit or buy distilled water from the store (though the RODI unit will probably be cheaper in the long run, especially if you have a larger tank). You can either mix the RODI/distilled water with your tap water, or use 100% RODI/distilled water and remineralize it slightly. Though how necessary this actually is, I'm unsure. Our aquarium club had a talk from Scott from Tannin Aquatics recently, and he said that he's never actually been able to get his own aquariums below 6.0 ph, even using water with virtually no KH for his tanks. I would definitely recommend either mixing RODI and tap or remineralizing tap water to make sure you have a KH or at least 2 or 3 until you are quite experienced to try using softer water. And whenever you try changing your KH or pH, be sure to go very slowly so that your fish can adapt. I've been slowly replacing the water in my 55g planted tank with 5 gallons of RODI water at a time, twice a week, over the last two months, and I've lowered the tank dKH from 7 to 3, and the pH from 7.4 to 7 by adding in handfuls of maple and oak leaves.
  6. Here's my 10g mini-colony of Neolamprologus multifasciatus. I have two adult males that have staked out opposite sides of the tank. I added the rock in the middle to divide their territories, which seems to be working well so far. There are a few either females or juvenile males also sharing either side of the tank, and at least one fry in the group on the right (I had seen four at one point, but if there are still more than one, they aren't all out at the same time). If I ever have the space, I'd love to setup a large tank with 30-40 of these fish, they are so interesting to watch!
  7. I haven't kept gourami, so hopefully someone can chime in that has more experience with this specific species. I don't believe they are active swimmers, so I imagine your main issue will be territorial aggression. In this case, your 29g cube is better for stocking than your standard 29g aqueon, because of the footprint. My suggestion would be rearrange your scape to make several small "territories" (4-5) within the tank using plants and hardscape for the males to claim. Breaking up line of sight is a good way to decrease aggression with territorial fish. If it's densely planted, you'll probably increase your chances of it working out. You'd also probably do well to add a nice cover of floating plants with long roots, like amazon frogbit, red root floaters, floating fern, etc. It will also depend on whether you end up with 3m/3f, or 2m/4f, or 4m/2f, etc, as well as the personality of the fish. Some fish of the same species will be more or less aggressive than others. Also, FWIW, sometimes having larger groups helps decrease aggression among fish, as there are more fish to spread any aggression out among than having it concentrated on a single smaller fish. And sometimes it helps to have fish all come in as one group, especially juveniles, than adding them at different times; they will all be a similar size as they grow, and they will be more used to their "siblings". I'd say give it a try, if you're willing to either re-home any aggressive fish to a spare 10 gallon tank, or a LFS, or another fish keeper in your area. If you do need to bring the fish into a LFS, you can also ask them about store credit for the fish. I get 1/3 of what they sell fish for at my store for some of the species I bring in, especially if they are more rare or in high demand.
  8. I may be borrowing a PAR meter to test some other lights in the near future. If I do, I can test this as well and post the results here.
  9. As someone who has worked as a carpenter, I'd recommend skipping the pressure treat and stick with untreated spf (spruce-pine-fir, your generic dimensional lumber). You should paint or finish the wood anyway, so the pressure treat isn't necessary. Some of the chemicals used in pressure treated wood aren't things you'd want around your fish (or other pets), especially 4x4s that are rated for ground contact. Also, pressure treat is notorious for being more twisted/bowed than untreated wood (which can be bad enough already), and as it drys it tends to shrink or warp even more.
  10. Depending on what you're using for a thermometer, I've found some of the cheaper digital ones to not be very accurate unfortunately. I think your fish should do fine even with the water at 75-76 degrees though. I'd still suggest checking out the inkbird controllers. For $30 I think they can be pretty useful equipment. Unfortunately, they won't help your heaters run hotter if they are preset though, but it will at least give you a better idea of what the tank temps are, as well as some protection against a heater thermostat failing in the on position and cooking your tank. That's one of the nice things about the aqueon pro heater series is that they are adjustable on the heater itself. I usually put my probe near the filter, where there's the most water turnover and where I should get the most average water temp for the tank.
  11. That you can't get the tank warm enough with a 150w heater seems odd to me. My room temp hovers around 62 right now, I have a 150w heater that brings my 20g up to 75. According to aqueon that 150w should be enough, though you never know how accurate manufacturer recommendations are. Are you using an external temperature controller? I run inkbirds on my aquariums and find them to he really useful and provide peace of mind. A good setup would be to set both the 150w and the 100w heaters on the inkbirds with the the 100w set lower than the 150w, so that if the 150w fails off the 100 is a backup, and the inkbirds will keep the heaters from overheating the tank if they fail on.
  12. I have a 48" on my 55g low-tech heavily planted tank. Below is my current schedule. I wanted something that looked somewhat natural, with sunrise and sunset, and no siestas. I also wanted a fairly long viewing window. The long sunrise and sunset times that are high on pink/warm white or blue give me extra lighting for viewing without having so much light during those hours that I get much algae. I have a little gha growing on two branches that are just a few inches below the light at the top of the tank, and a little bba on the edges of one or two plant leaves that have grown right up to the top of the tank's surface and are only a couple inches below the light, but no major algae issues and plenty of plant growth. It probably helps that I keep the lighting at moderate levels even during the middle of the day, and that I have a fairly deep tank.
  13. I really want to setup a puffer colony tank in a 20L. I wish the tank bred ones were easier to find. I see them occasionally on aquatic arts, but that's pretty much it. Which is too bad, they're supposed to be not that hard to breed.
  14. I like my tank of multies, I keep them in a small species only tank. Had a larger colony in a 20 long, kept a breeding pair and a few junveniles, traded the others into the LFS for store credit, and downgraded to a 10g. Dwarf cichlids have a lot of personality. My multies do fine in our hard (120+ ppm alk) 7.4 ph well water up here in Vermont. You'd definitely need to use aragonite to increase your ph/hardness. Wish we had softer water though! I have a south american planted community tank with cardinals, 4 species of cory, RCS, and two apisto pairs. The apistos are spunky, they are the only fish I have that instead of hiding when I walk right up to the glass, they come check me out face to face! Pretty fish too, looking forward to them breeding. I use RO water to lower the ph and alk on this tank.
  15. It's my understanding that water softeners replace mg and ca ions with sodium ions, so if you're keeping fish that prefer soft water, you may want to do some research as to what affect this extra sodium could have on your fish, especially if you plan to further add minerals to your water to increase hardness. You should probably get a TDS meter, in addition to your gh and kh test kits, you can get them pretty cheap.
×
×
  • Create New...