[Ziss brine shrimp hatchery in aquarium]

If you don't mind a bit of a janky setup you can use some clamps to fasten it to the tank. I did this once cause my room temp is a bit low and I needed bbs fast.

Like @doktor zhivago mentioned make sure your hatchery doesn't leak!

Here is a great video where dean shows how he hatches bbs. If you prepare your bbs like this they should survive until you feed again the next day. This means you can hatch them outside of your tank and don't have the potential of acidentally spilling 2 liters of saltwater into your tank.

 

 

Let us know how it goes 🙂

[Feeding Sera Micron]

IMO it depends on the kind of fish you feed.

Some fry are very stationary and wont go looking for food, in this case your way of feeding allows for precise placement of the food to where it needs to go. Other fry are quite active and in this case the "sprinkle on top of the water" method works just fine.

To accurately answer your question about the nutrient content you would need some pretty specialised equipment. Water is a solvent and it for sure deminishes the nutrient content of a smal foodparticle like sera micron after some time. 

If you wanna be a pioneer and help us find out if there is some big drawback to it you could split your next batch of fry in two identical groups and feed one group with fresh food and the other one with food that was soaking for a while.

[What do I need for sponge filter?]

On 5/28/2024 at 8:12 AM, Tony s said:

You could even check out coops new sponge filter with the easy flow tube. Gives you a small amount of horizontal flow.

I second this. It not only gives a bit of flow but it is much more quiet than without the new outflow tube.

[Corydoras Sterbai eggs not hatching because of hard water?]

On 5/27/2024 at 2:43 PM, Tony s said:

That can be an issue. Usually more sensitive species. But, man that’s a high gh. Not worried about the ph, kh. If you have a water softener in the house, it will strip the gh from your water. Then you could mix it with your normal aquarium water source and get something around a 10 gh. Still hard, but much less so. 

Getting a 10gh shouldn’t bother either your plants or shrimp. I might do it slowly so to not your shrimp.

@Tony s I try to minimize the additives I add to the tank but I'm looking into getting a RO-unit to slowly dilute my tapwater with RO water and keep consistent water after I get to a point I like and the fish are happy.
 

On 5/27/2024 at 6:17 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

Do you have photos of the process with your eggs? That would be interesting to see.

My coop test strips do PPM. Im not sure what 10 GH converts to in PPM but : my parameters here are 300+ ppm GH //30-40 ppm KH // PH 6.8-7.0 

Not all the total dissolved solids that make up everyones GH are the same im sure. It is possible that there could be something dissolved in your water that hardens the eggs. 

I do run lots of live plants its possible they are eating something that would otherwise harden egg shells. Ive hatched panda cories, sterbai corys, multiple puffer species, and some dwarf pikes here without a shell issue. 

 

@mountaintoppufferkeeper No, I did not take pictures but will do if I get to it in the future. My GH is about 580 ppm and 200 ppm CaCO3 (KH) depending on the season, we have very hard water around here...

Hmm... I have lots of live plants too, maybe my corys just need some more time since they just startet laying eggs a few weeks ago.
 

On 5/27/2024 at 8:39 PM, jwcarlson said:

If those hardness numbers are accurate, that could be an issue.  My sterbai hatch successfully in my tap water 20-22 dGH and similar for dKH.  I haven't tested it for awhile.  

To test your theory, get a gallon of distilled water from Walmart and put your eggs in that.  Do you use any methylene blue?  Eggs don't hatch well for me without MB.

@jwcarlson I guess those levels could be harmfull to some fishes but since even my ottos are happy I guess it's something else.
I had the same idea about trying to hatch them in destilled water. Will do that the next time I get around to collect a few of the eggs.
I didn't add MB but I also never had problems with moldy eggs. In fact until now every single egg I saw was fertilized, like 100% of the egs. That inof itselfe is crazy to me 🙂  

[Corydoras Sterbai eggs not hatching because of hard water?]

I have a group of 8 Sterbai Corys that recently started to lay eggs in my 45g comunity tank.

I pulled some eggs a few times and put them in a hang-on breeding box for hatching.

The eggs develop just fine and on the day I expect them to hatch they start wriggling but never break out of the shells. After a couple of days they stop moving and die.

My guess is that my local tap water is just too hard and somehow make the eggshells to tough for the fry to berak.

My tapwater has a kh of around 11-12 and gh of 30+ and ph of 7.6-7.8 the last time I checked. Since my Fish seem happy, my chery shrimp breed hundreds of babies and all the plants grow like weeds I never bothered adjusting the water except of adding some dechlorinator.

 

What are your thoughts on this?

[I need help to find out if a fish is sick or injured.]

Hey there

Thanks for taking some time out of your day to help me 🙂

 

I have a heavily planted Juwel Rio 180 that's about 1.5 years old with a group of 12 harlequin rasboras, 12 neon tetras, 8 otos, 3 plecos, some nerite snails and about 1millionish cherry shrimps.

About 5 months ago I noticed that one of the harlequin rasboras developed a bump near his left guiles. Since my harlequin rasboras love to ride with the strong flow of the water inlet of the filter and frequently jump out of the water while being pushed back with the current I concluded that It must have been injured during one of the jumps.

Ofc, I monitored it and the other fishes closely (I don't have the option to set up a quarantine tank) but everything seemed totally fine.

Now I'm on vacation and my mother-in-law sent me a video of the fish. It seems to have developed a white spot on each side in the back of the black scales. It behaves totally normal - it is active, swims and interacts with the other harlequin rasbora, eats well...

I uploaded the video my MIL sent me here https://imgur.com/a/STxnlAu . There are a lot of particulates floating around, but that's because she just did some maintenance of the tank... 

Can you tell me what might be up with this little one?

Thanks and have a nice day.

[I need help identifying algae and finding a treatment method.]

Hey o/
I hope yall are doing good and are healthy!

The past couple of months were realy hectic for me and besides feeding I had no time to care for my shrimp tank.
I finally have some spare time to do so but now I'm stuck with my plants being covered in algae and I'm not quiet sure what the best course of action is from here on.

For now I reduced the Timer of my light to a 8h (4h on, 3h off, 4h on) scheddule with which I can still enjoy the tank and also intend to dose my fertiliser on a more regular and controled manner.

After trimming my plants I noticed that because of the rapid groth and neglegtion on trimming the plants the lower parts of the plants had suffered quite a bit because of lack of light. 
I'm not quite sure if I can just replant my cuttings because there is heavy algae groth on them and bide my time for the algae to hopefully go away or If I can treat the cuttings in some manner to kill the algae on them but not the actuall plant? Or should I just throw the cuttings on the compost and hope that the remaining stemmplants recover over time and replant them afterwards?

I included some pictures of one of the cuttings with the most algae on it, the cutting is about 15cm/6-ish inches.

 

On another note... I would like to add a few nerite snails to the tank but for some reason I can't manage to find a rule of thumb on how many snails to add to x amount of gallons or planted tank of x size. What are your thoughts on this?

 

Many thanks beforehand for your advice!

[Hazelnut leaves]

On my way home I picked up some hazelnut leaves from my garden and I was wondering if I can use them like for example indian almond leaves for my Shrimp tank? 

The leaves fell of the bush naturally. We had some frost the last couple days tho, idk if this matters... 

Do I have to treat the leaves in some way like boiling and re-dry them if I can even use them? 

Cheers

Flavio

[What kind of snail is this?]

I recently set up my first tank. With the plants I used there came a few hitch hikers with them. 

 

Can someone tell me what kind of snail these are and if it's a good idea to keep a few of them in the tank? I intended to add some rams or narite snails anyway but since I got some "free" snails... 

 

Just want to be sure that these aren't some kind of massive hassle down the ro ad. 

[Do I need to remove algae while establishing a new tank?]

I set up my first aquarium 5 days ago and now I notice some algae starting to grow. 

ATM I'm cicling my planted tank (no fish or Shrimp so far) with the addition of liquid starter bacteria and co2. I seem to recall it to be normal for algae to grow during the time a tank is established and that the algae will "stop" growing once the cicling is done. 

 

Is that more or less correct or should I start to clean up the algae in addition to the water changes?

 

Sorry if my englisch is wierd it's not my first language... 

[I need help to identify critters.]

2 minutes ago, Brandy said:

Well, there is about a 90% chance they are pond or bladder snails. You should consider whether you want those in your tank, and act accordingly. You COULD take them out, put them in a jar of water with a little lettuce, and let them hatch. Then you can decide if you like them as they get big enough to identify. However, one warning--if you hope to raise an egg scattering fish, they may eat the eggs.

Thanks 🙂 that's a great idea!
I was thinking about buying a few ramshorn snails or so but maybe I got some nice free snails already.
 

[What did you get done today?]

First water change of my new tank (my first tank ever) and identified some snail eggs (with the help of this forum) that apparently came with some of the lilaeopsis mauritiana I planted.

[I need help to identify critters.]

Should I let them be even If I don't know what type of snail it is or would it be better to remove the eggs?

[I need help to identify critters.]

Hey yall o/
I just bought my first tank and set it up two days ago.
I'm very pleased with it and can't wait until I can add some fish and shrimps.

Today I noticed two spots on the lilaeopsis that have some sort of eggs on them.
Can someone help me to identify the critters? Just in case I should remove them before they hatch...