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Kirsten

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Everything posted by Kirsten

  1. Kirsten
    LOL you could have the happiest otos ever!
  2. Kirsten
    Just realized I didn't know for sure, so found some interesting information here: https://details.endlers1.com So you're probably good to use any healthy female endlers you can find!
  3. Kirsten
    Wild stab in the dark, are you sure the check valve is on the right way? Are there any clogs or kinks in your air hose? All my filters run on nanos and I just got some control valves to get them under control. Even the medium size filters look like the picture below. That said, your top picture actually looks pretty ideal to me in terms of bubble size and frequency, but if you want more, yeah, I'd start checking the individual parts.
  4. Kirsten
    I would happily serve as a test subject if the co-op ever wanted to do subscription services, just sayin.
  5. Kirsten
    A trick I learned from a plumber: dry the area completely, then put a piece of paper towel there. Come back in 30 minutes and see if it's wet. This is assuming you're not getting any condensation on the glass, but there probably isn't a strong enough difference between your air and water temps to cause that.
  6. Kirsten
    Technically, I kept my first fish and snails when I was a child in the 80's and 90's, but I didn't know anything about how to do it properly and was naturally traumatized and heartbroken when the fish soon died from their poor conditions. Didn't think I ever wanted to get back into it until COVID, when I discovered a hydroponic herb garden / fish tank kit on Amazon that had good reviews and seemed like a good idea at the time, and I thought my cat might like to watch it when he wasn't watching the birds. I soon discovered Cory's videos, the beauty of planted tanks, this forum, and completely fell in love with the hobby. I now have 4 or 5 tanks running, depending on how you count, and should probably slow down sometime soon, but I don't want to!
  7. Kirsten
    Yup! That should be fine.
  8. Kirsten
    Ah, awesome! That should work for your java ferns and other hardy plants, then. Still thinking about putting a whole stinkin mangrove tree in like a half-full 120 with fiddler crabs, nerites and mollies. Actually, maybe gobies instead of crabs. The thought of a crab climbing out and interacting with my cat is...not a good thought.
  9. Kirsten
    So cool! I've often thought about starting a brackish tank to hopefully breed nerites, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. The conclusion I've come to from my (brief) research into plants for brackish is that: it's not possible. I've read that there may be some plants that are tolerant of brackish water for short period, but no aquatic plants that'll successfully grow and thrive in it. Except for mangrove trees, if you want to set up a tropical paludarium! You may have some success with macro algae from marine tanks called Chaetomorpha linum (or "Chaeto" or "cheato" for short) that can tolerate lower salinities.
  10. Kirsten

    Bettas and fin rot

    Kirsten replied to Colu's topic in Diseases

    Good question! I really couldn't tell, but I think both helped. I'm just going to keep with the good water changes and lack of stress for a few weeks and see if it gets bad again.
  11. Kirsten

    Bettas and fin rot

    Kirsten replied to Colu's topic in Diseases

    Yeah my betta's fins never seem to be in great shape. He had a stressful first few months with a filtration system that was too jarring for him. Changed the filtration to just a sponge filter (mostly for the pygmy cories), did a full course of maracyn, his fins improved a little. Did weekly, 20% water changes for a few weeks, fins got worse. Did another full course of maracyn, improved a little, but he wasn't happy with all the foaming. But it was way worse when I held off on water changes for a couple weeks because the nitrates never got very high. So now I'm back to just small, regular water changes. Always 1 step forward, 1 step back with this glum little guy.
  12. Kirsten
    Whew! Thanks everyone!
  13. Kirsten
    The platy with the affected tail is already looking a lot better. Water isn't even very salty yet, about 1 tablespoon salt for every 6 gallons so far, but I'm still seeing some light patches on a few tails, very occasional flashing (though less than before) and one stubborn cyst on this platy tail, so I'm going to keep ramping up until I get to 1 tbs per every 2 gallons or until everything starts clearing up or until my plants visibly start to suffer, whichever comes first.
  14. Kirsten
    Had my bulbs for a week or two. My partner had to (jokingly) ask why I was keeping a dead mouse in the aquarium. Just some hair algae that came attached 🙂 Just started noticing some growth towards the bottom of the bulbs. Since the stems and leaves will be naturally pink/bronze, I wasn't sure if they were roots or stems, so I flipped them over to point up just in case. But what do you think? Should I flip them back down?
  15. Kirsten
    That sounds like a great idea. Get them comfy and fed and de-stressed before hitting them with the trio. Great work and fast thinking there about pH. I think your fish have the best chance they could get in this situation.
  16. Kirsten
    I think you'll be fine with a single pea puffer. I think it's more important to provide surface area and interesting nooks and crannies to explore than it is to provide large amounts of swimming space. Here's my 5g pea puffer tank, a bit more vertical than yours, but still chock full of places for snails to hide (and the puffer to find them). You can also see how small that lil puffer is, even in this small tank. So I say get any pieces of rock or driftwood that you think look interesting and stuff it in! But definitely infest it with snails like trumpet snails and ramshorns for a good few weeks before letting the puffer loose.
  17. Kirsten
    I've sometimes seen FedEx or UPS packaged marked as "delivered" first thing in the morning and not ACTUALLY get dropped off til the afternoon. Like the driver's saying, yeah, okay, I'll deliver all of these sometime today, I just don't want to have to scan them when I take them out of the truck. I agree that you should try contacting your local FedEx hub and see if they can get you some info. You should also take a look at neighbors houses just in case they got the address wrong.
  18. Kirsten
    Yeah, small tetras can be especially fragile, not as a result of genetics, but because they're bred and sold in such large numbers, they can often be crowded, stressed and underfed all along the chain before it reaches your home. So that final stress of being chased with a net, bagged and plopped again can sometimes just do them in, not to mention any diseases they may have picked up in the store. I just lost a couple of neons the same way. Lesson learned for me is always get a few extra if you can and keep the stress super super low when bringing home tetras. It would be awesome to have locally bred tetras, but they're usually so cheap and plentiful from large farms that I doubt a hobby breeder could compete, unless they were special varieties or the breeder was really great at marketing the health and vigor of their fish.
  19. Kirsten
    Wow! Absolutely gorgeous fish! I'm jealous of members of your club to have access to them. Great work @Fish Folk!
  20. Kirsten
    I recommend tearing the whole thing down and eating it immediately 😁
  21. Kirsten
    Yeah, I say just leave the lights on longer and if you have plants, add a little Easy Green as well. Adding smooth rocks or driftwood will increase the surface area they can feed from.
  22. Kirsten
    I think both of those take care of ammonia, so you should be good to go!
  23. Kirsten
    I'd say a 55-75g would probably fit 6 cories, 10 of each of those 4 different tetras, and maybe like 6 guppies. Remember that guppies will breed like whoa and none of these fish are particularly large or aggressive to eat a bunch of babies. 6 (at least 4 females / 2 males) would get up to 20 and beyond very quickly. If you wanted another 20-40g, you could do 6-8 cories and 2-3 schools of small tetras or 1-2 schools of tetras and a few guppies.
  24. Kirsten
    If you have multiple tanks, you could try a python that connects to a faucet.
  25. Kirsten
    Mmm, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, your tank's already got a good cycle going and it could probably handle it. On the other hand, some of those meds can put a dent in your biofilter. So, I say, if it's a small tank (like 20g or less) I might mix some of that tap water with distilled water. If it's a bigger tank, I'd just use tap water and condition with something like Fritz Complete to detoxify that ammonia.
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