Fish Folk

(1) Treat sick fish in a quarantine tank. When treatment is done in a display tank, a handful of things can go wrong. (2) Add an airstone. Raising temperature lowers dissolved oxygen. Your fish need more air. So will your bio colonies. (3) Add some FritzZyme 7 or similar. Your bio colonies aren’t that established. Meds can affect this.

Woah! NERMs got to check out a surprise find of my day… A few minutes later, serving up bbs (wait for it)…

I am not certain about these species… but there are some fry that can and will gorge themselves to death. I use the free Walmart liquid medication syringe with airline on the end to feed BBS carefully measured amounts.

How large is your fry tank? Is it a bare bottom? How is it filtered? What are you feeding and how often? Fry sometimes die from (1) foul water (2) improper feeding (3) predators (4) inability to breathe (5) getting stuck

I think the sewing material you’re referring to is simply called “canvas.” It used to be called “Darice Mesh.” But these holes are too large. Fry will swim through. You’d need to 3D print much smaller holes. For 3D printing… maybe @TheDukeAnumber1 or @FlyingFishKeeper could jump in. I think they’ve been doing some 3D printing re: aquarium parts. I know there’s others here too. As for your sponge divider problem, I’d like to see your setup. I find a 40 ppi matten filter foam works wonderfully. I push it down into the substrate a ways, and make sure it pushes out / expands out to create a little pressure on the sides. I cut it to rise right up underneath the rim, so the glass lid rests on it. I’ve not had problems with fry passing through.

With small breeding projects I do, a handful of fish do fine with fry hatching or growing out at room temperature. I built a Jug Shelf system based success I found over the last several years setting jugs out here and there in my fishroom… This inspired a dedicated shelf primarily for fry from Nothobranchius rachovii… Nothobranchius guentheri… Fundulopanchax Scheeli… and Betta Imbellis… The idea was slowly visualized and built out in steps… After adding substrate leftovers, primed sponge filters, airlines, Pothos cuttings, java moss, Catappa leaves, heat-tape, and a thermostat… here is a video overview… (Sorry that video kind of trailed off… my phone actually konked out 😂)

Personally, I would not go with that. There is likely a good reason why standard plant weight strips are made from zinc magnesium alloy. Here’s a planted tank forum thread. Copy from one business’ explanation…

Alrighty. Just made two videos showing a couple basic filters I employ. 2x HOB 75s for overstocked grow-out… And here’s a small Powerhead + Sponge Filter mod I learned on the Forum here…

Autumn Blaze Snakeskin Guppies. Bit of a ramble. Few lovely ones here…

These guys haven’t been productive lately. But they look sharp! Here’s the mister…

There are many resources. I’d start easy with s video like this… Then check out some older videos from Corvus Oscen… Key is getting it set up correctly. Basically, it drains down to a sump tank, goes through a bunch of filtration steps — including particulate catching, bio rings, planted nitrate sucking, etc — then gets pumped back up the lift return to the main tank.

Is it drilled through the glass? Bottom? Looks like a standard overflow system to connect with a sump. See if your neighbor has another tank that night have been the sump.

If you’re only doing a handful, it’s overkill to get the Danner Pondmaster AP-40. I’d suggest just one pump for each room. The 100 is probably overkill, but this series was my favorite before the PondMaster…

I just got rid of all these… Everything I need is now run on this one pump… That is supplying air to approximately… 39 sponge filters… 8 extra air stones… 1 powerhead. This is spread between 3x rooms, 16 tanks, and 10x jugs. I used a full 300 ft spool of ACO Airline… I ran the airline up above drop-ceiling in my basement. It comes off the pump in 5 separated lines that run down to ACO gang valves… Glad to answer any questions, make a video, etc.

1. How many tanks do you have? 2x 55 gal . . . 1x 40 gal . . . 1x 33 gal long . . . 1x 29 gal . . . 1x 20 gal tall . . . 5x 20 gal long . . . 4x 10 gal . . . 2x 5.5 gal . . . 1x 2.5 gal . . . 10x 1-gal jugs . . . 1x 1-gal shoe box I always say "17 tanks" mostly because anything less than 5 gal I regard as a temporary fry hatchery 2. How many times a day do you feed? I feed twice per day, Monday - Saturday. Once morning (at least before noon) and once after dinner. Generally speaking, Sundays I do not feed fish. I give them (and me) a "rest day." I leave the lights low / filters on. The exception to this is when I am raising fry, I feed them every day twice. One of my tanks is at work, and gets fed Sunday - Thursday, twice a day. I sometimes feed it once on either Friday or Saturday. Sometimes I just let it go without food. Almost all of my tanks are planted, providing ample food for fish to nibble at all day long. 3. Do you, or have you ever, target-fed some species in the AM, some in the PM hours after the lights go out? Yes. Catfish species, in general, feed after lights out. Occasionally, when breeding Corydoras, I feed just before or at lights-out. Same with Ancistrus. Annual Killifish spawn furiously right at lights-on in the morning. Sometimes I try to feed well to help them recover. 4. Do you feed certain foods on certain days? The same thing every day? I try to feed frozen foods once per day, and dry foods once. I like to vary foods as much as possible. Live foods are served up whenever available. But it doesn't always work out perfectly as I wish it would. Certain species have dietary demands. U.S. natives need frozen foods and live foods exclusively. Fry are fed live baby brine shrimp whenever available -- usually 4 days per week. Guppies tend to get fed a bit more dry foods than other species. My preferred frozen foods: Bloodworms, Spirulina-Brine Shrimp, Mysis, Daphnia My preferred dry foods: (Xtreme Krill Flakes, but no one sells them out here) Bug Bites Color-enhancing flakes, Bug Bites Spirulina Flakes, Omega One Algae Wafers, Omega One Kelp Flakes, Vibra Bites

Found the kink! All fixed. One pump running everything. Pondmaster & Supreme by Danner Model AP-40 / 5,000 gallons / 10 feet depth / Airflow inches 2,900 / 40 watts

I think I just discovered a guy in Aruba who will ship eggs of this particular species. Fun, informative website here.

This plastic fry container clouded over. But you can make out the fry “skating around.”

AquaBid > Killifish > Killifish Eggs I personally avoid importing to save transit drama. Seller "Sellfishgals" comes recommended. Also, here's a look at the eyes in the Killi eggs - "Eyed Up"

Female American Goldfinch, breeding plumage, photo taken 05-05-2022 in Western MD

The long wait is kind of fun, if you've got other things going on in the fishroom. Time really flies. We are getting close to the time when I plan to "wet" the Killifish eggs. I've ordered by mail a set of Nothobranchius rachovii Biera 98 eggs. And I bought a trio of Nothobranchius guentheri and collected eggs from them to dry. The rachovii eggs can take 5-6 months to lie dry and dormant. The guentheri, on the other hand, take only about eight weeks. Today, I decided to pull out the dirt and have a look at the eggs. Here are the bags... And here, for your viewing pleasure, are videos of my picking through this dirt looking for eggs. If you have nothing better to do ya NERMS, watch this... Nothobranchius rachovii egg check... Nothobranchius guentheri egg check...

SRBD fry going strong. With lots of hydra chillin’ on tank glass thanks to heavy BBS feedings…

It feels nice to have a single pump! I will keep a tub of these old diaphragm pumps in case of some emergency. The whole basement is a lot quieter. I didn't go with the Linear Piston only because I was able to get this pump through my LFS by trading them fish I breed. I got it for a lowered cost, plus helped out my community of aquarists by getting them fish bred in our local water. On some bad advice from a local hobbyist, I had bought this pump on Amazon to run everything... Nope. Just nope. It ran only about 1/2 of them. I will keep this one, though, to act as a (partial) backup as well. I'd say -- if you can reasonably afford a Linear Piston Air Pump, go for it! Someday I may try to do this right and instal some PVC airline loops around the basement rooms. For now, I'm OK with running lines up through the drop ceiling.

Well… recovering from a ruptured / repaired achilles has been a bit hard on the hobby. I’m relegated to literally crawling down into the basement with crutches and back up again to care for 16+ tanks 2x a day. HOWEVER! Today I painstakingly replaced a central air pump with this pondmaster (Danner) pump… I did find a problem in one of the lines (likely a kink up above the drop ceiling somewhere), but all of the other valves worked great. Here are just a few… As a sad testament to what a Frankenstein this hobby can be over years, here is the pile of the now obsolete air pumps this one replaces… Now if i could just figure out that one problematic line… 🩼🩼🧐

Nope! Nothing. I've been checking just about every day. I added a bunch of Oak leaves in the banded darter tank. They really seem to like those. Males are very colored up. I also have been corresponding with a NANFA breeder who has documented his breeding processes with Banded Darters before. But nothing yet. Rainbow Darters spawn in gravel. I haven't focussed on breeding them yet.