JettsPapa

For the last 22 years I've worked for a division of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. My division develops, builds, and tests roadside safety structures (bridge rails, guardrails, signs, etc) and anti-ram structures such as fences, walls, gates, and drop-arms used to protect sensitive installations like power plants, military bases, and embassies. See https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Texas+A%26M+Transportation+Institute+crash+tests for some videos you might find interesting. For the first 11 years there I worked on the construction crew, but in 2009 I moved inside and started doing the drafting and some design work instead. I've really enjoyed it, especially since as I'm getting older being out in the heat and cold isn't as much fun as it was in my 20's and 30's. I was a little surprised (I don't know why) to see there are several other people here doing CAD work. I've been using Solidworks the entire time, and am fairly active on their forum, and have written quite a few blog posts answering frequently asked questions there. I was also happy to see the post from @Danielabout supplying honeybees. I worked for a local beekeeper for 2-1/2 years before going to work where I am now. It's a multi-generational company named B. Weaver Apiaries (I suspect he's heard of them).

I have a few cows, and have had them for decades. I refer to it as a tax deductible hobby, though they do make me a little money most years. I read a lot. In fact, my office/fish room has 9' of wall space taken up with bookshelves, with about half hardbacks and the other half paperbacks double-stacked. Occasionally I think about how many more fish tanks I could have if I moved the books out, but I've enjoyed recreational reading for close to 50 years and fish keeping less than two years, so the books are still there. I know I could get a Kindle, or something similar, but part of my enjoyment is finding books in stores that I think I'd like but haven't run across before (pre-COVID, of course). I like listening to music, and listen to Pandora all day long while I'm at my desk, with it usually set to Shuffle. I have a decent range of genres and artists I like, from Bob Wills to Muddy Waters to Stevie Ray Vaughan to Etta James to Ray Wylie Hubbard to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Bonnie Bishop to . . . .

I believe you were given bad information. I've had it in my 10 gallon red shrimp tank for almost a year and haven't had any issues. If it doesn't cut shrimp feet I'm pretty sure fish would be safe.

I have quite a list of "No-no's". I have also never done a "fishless cycle". When I set up my first tank I didn't know anything about the cycle, so of course I added fish immediately. Since then I've always seeded new tanks with media from old ones and also added fish immediately. I haven't tested my water in months. I do weekly water changes of around 30% in the fish tanks and about half that in the shrimp tanks, so my thought process (such as it is) is that I'm going to change water anyway, so why waste time testing the water first? I only quarantine fish going into my 65 gallon tank. I cringe when I think about what it would cost to replace those fish. The angelfish is the only one that cost more than $10.00, but the Lake Kutubu rainbowfish didn't cost much less than that. It adds up. The 65 is also the only tank with a lid. I also got tired of scraping mineral deposits. By some people's standards I wildly overstock. "one inch per gallon" rule? I'm closer to "one fish per gallon" on a couple tanks, but it's working well. Being heavily planted helps. I also started out with just a few fish in each, and added more gradually to get to the present levels. I tried to temperature match when doing water changes when I first started, then talked to my daughter-in-law, who started keeping fish shortly before I did. She refills hers with a hose from outside. I started doing that too on the larger tanks a few months ago, and it sure beats lifting buckets of water up shoulder high to pour into the 65. I'll revisit this when the weather gets colder, but I suspect I'll keep doing it. I have one set of tools that get used interchangeably between tanks. I know a lot of people who are smarter than I am (which is most of the world population) say Seachem Excel does nothing for plant health, and only kills algae, but after using it to treat staghorn algae in my 40 gallon tank some months ago my plants definitely looked better. I started using it in all my tanks, and the plants look great. I now use it 5 days a week (they get Easy Green the other two days).

Hello @Steph’s Fish and Plants I also had some accidental fry that I'm hoping are CPD's. I had moved some guppy grass from my nano fish tank to my 10 gallon shrimp tank, and noticed a few tiny fry a few days later. I assume the eggs hitchhiked on the guppy grass. I've been feeding them some small pellets and shrimp food that I roll between my thumb and finger over the tank to crush as fine as possible twice per day. Of course that results in hundreds of times more than the three or four fry can eat, but the shrimp and snails eat the excess. So far they seem to be growing and doing fine.

@ChefConfitmade some good points. It's not something you're going to make significant money at without a big investment and a lot of hours, at which point it's your job. My plants need thinning occasionally anyway, and while I'd prefer cash to store credit I also prefer store credit to just throwing the excess in the trash.

Hello, I really like Pearl Gouramis, and applaud your choice, but while they aren't shoaling fish like tetras or corys they are social. Because of that I'd encourage you to get more than one. I'd say to start get one male and two females, but you could have even more if you have room with your other stocking. I have two males and six females in my heavily planted 40 gallon breeder tank.

Howdy. I just joined yesterday, and I've only been keeping fish about 1-1/2 years, but I've done a tremendous amount of research in that time. There's still a lot I don't know, but I'll help if I can.

Hello @James Black Here it is. I cheated. I opened the file in Paint, outlined the area I wanted, and pasted it here directly.

No, I don't. I remove any snails I see, but that's it.

It's an LG phone, using Firefox.

I'm trying, but it's not working. I clicked on the "Add Files" button, selected a picture, and it says it's uploading, but then nothing happens. Edit: I just tried again, but I noticed the file is 54.4 MB, and it looks like that's slightly larger then the max allowed. I'm afraid my rudimentary tech skills aren't up to the task of making it smaller.

I keep common goldfish outside in cattle troughs to control algae and mosquito larvae, and while it isn't common in my part of the world, it occasionally gets cold enough for a layer of ice to form on top, and the goldfish survive it just fine. With that bring said, I suspect the temperature change your fish went through was just too abrupt.

I'd be cautious about two angels. I haven't tried to keep a pair, but everything I've seen and read about them says that if they aren't mixed sexes, and pair off, there's a good chance they'll fight when they get older, so that one of them will wind up bullied or dead. I'm not saying it can't work, or not to do it, but if you do I'd suggest keeping a close eye on them, and have a plan for if you need to separate them. If your tank has a heavily planted area so there's hiding places that may help.

Trilineatus corys (usually sold as Julii, even though they aren't) are one of my favorites, and readily available at most places.

Can you define "VERY High PH"? My pH is 8.2, and I have a wide variety of plants and fish thriving in it. As mentioned above, most fish will do better with stable pH, even if it's outside their ideal range, than they will with it going up and down while the fish keeper chases the "perfect" pH.

Mine like the Hikari Sinking Wafers and Xtreme Cat Scrapers. I don't feed algae wafers often since it's my understanding that while corys are herbivores, they're healthier with a diet leaning more toward animal protein instead of plant material.

I reached out to a "local" (about an hour from me) aquarium store by email a few weeks ago asking him about shrimp, and since it had occurred to me that I never see pearl weed or guppy grass for sale I mentioned I had some of it also. He only wanted to pay $0.60 store credit for the shrimp, which I declined because I've been selling my culls online for more than that. However, he said he'd give me $2.00 each store credit for twenty portions of guppy grass, which I had packaged in clear 12 ounce food containers, with printed labels. He wasn't there when I delivered the plants, but I dropped them off, along with a few similar packages of guppy grass (which he hadn't asked for). About two days later I got an email from the owner thanking me for the samples, and asking for another twenty of each. When I made that delivery he still wasn't there, but the young lady working there said my plants had been selling really well, and they had even sold some the same day I delivered the first batch. At $8.99 he's making a pretty good profit, but I'm happy with the $2.00 each I'm getting.

Hello, I recently bumped up the pearl gouramis in my 40 gallon breeder to eight. I had a fairly large male, and added another small male and six small females (I hope; it's hard to tell when they're that small). It's only been a couple weeks, but I'm really liking them and it seems to be go well. The tank is heavily planted, so there's plenty of hiding places in case of any aggression, but I haven't noticed any so far, and it's not unusual to see all eight at the front of the tank hanging out, even when it's not feeding time. Anyway, sorry for the novel, but I wanted to give you another option, and I'm a big fan of pearl gourami. They're less likely to be aggressive than the dwarfs, and less prone to health problems, and I think are just as attractive, especially when they've gotten comfortable in a tank and matured a little.

Hello, I just joined this forum, and am looking forward to being on it. I've been keeping fish for about 1-1/2 years, and currently have 6 tanks running. I stock heavier than most people would recommend, but I keep up with my water changes and general maintenance, and the inhabitants (plant and animal) are thriving in all of them. They're all anywhere from moderately to heavily planted, which helps them handle the stocking levels. I have a 65 gallon with a koi angelfish, a pair of super red bristle nose plecos, and schools of Lake Kutubu rainbowfish, lemon tetras, black neon tetras, and panda corys. My 40 gallon breeder tank has eight pearl gouramis, and schools of serpae tetras, pristella tetras, and corydorus trilineatus. My newest is a 20 long with schools of sparkling gouramis, kubotai rasboras, dwarf emerald rasboras, celestial pearl danios, and corydorus pygmaeus. If I was doing it again I'd probably skip both the rasboras, but it is what it is. I have a 10-gallon tank with red neocaridina shrimp, along with a few fry that apparently came over as eggs when I moved some guppy grass from the 20 long into the tank. They're still too small to identify, but I'm hoping they're celestial pearl danios, or at least not hybrids with them and the emerald rasboras, since after stocking the tank I was told they can cross-breed. Then I have one 5.5 with dark blue neocaridinas, and another one with cull shrimp.