Sapere_Ceta

I offered him another blackberry today. He acted as though he grabbed ahold of it perfectly, and then he dropped it and started waving his claws around, as if it didn’t fall, until he finally grabbed it off of the bottom 🤣

Today, I found my remote that I lost for a while. The two dim times were raised by two. That way, it’s still dimmer for my light sensitivity, but a little bit brighter for the plants. I vacuumed up more gnats today, and trimmed some leaves that I accidentally damaged today (I’m not always too graceful with the vacuum, haha). Of course, I misted the enclosure too. I think the mistings are slowly helping the plants regain a little bit of their green color back, the Moss seems to be not as brown in some spots. I think with enough time and continuation of maintenance, I’ll start to see them regain a healthier appearance.

A few days ago, I did a 40-45% water change on Gandr’s enclosure. He handles larger volume water changes well, so thankfully I can do one large one once per week, sometimes a little sooner. But previous to the water change, I gave Gandr some blanched spinach. After he finished his meal, or when I assumed he likely did, as he was staying in his cave, I started up his water change. I misted the aquarium down, vacuumed up a couple more gnats (they’re so good at hiding, I never catch them all, haha). I also poured out more of the springtail enclosure, as I don’t think I had gotten any out from the first time. I know I got a few out this time, so I think I will start to see more in the future! I can always repeat the process if needed.

While I was vacuuming, Gandr had poked his head out of his cave. He looked adorably grumpy, and walked forward a little more, staring out of the cave, with his body was sideways (what a goof). He came out to investigate, so I shut the vacuum off and moved the vacuum back, so he could look at it from a distance. Afterwards, I went and prepared him a strawberry, and sliced it into halves, so it wasn’t too large. He was back in his cave when I came back with his strawberry, so I tapped a few times to get his attention. It took a little longer to draw him out, but he once again stepped out into the cave entrance with his body completely sideways. I tapped again, and he came out completely and went to the front panel, where I fed him his strawberry. He got ahold of it a little more easily this time. I tried to place it into his little claws close to his mouth, which seemed to make it a little easier (though he uses his big claws to try and grab everything, in a very clunky way). He decided to take it back to his cave this time. I later gave him a tiny piece of strawberry, and he took it with his little claws better. Though he tries to grab everything with his big claws too, and almost pinched me, in his excited, grabby hand mode, but didn’t. I think he was trying to be a little cautious though, as he would move his claw away and not close it on my fingers, haha.

I started up my plant maintenance again, as well as waged war once more on the gnats. I vacuumed them up, all but one I believe, though there might be some hiding. I think that I likely will be able to get rid of them completely soon, maybe if I get the vacuum out every day to every few days to catch the stragglers. Though there’s always 3-6 I end up finding every so often, when I think I’ve taken care of the issue (is this an excuse to get tree frogs now? Just kidding, haha). I misted and watered them all as well. I poured some of the liquid from my developing springtail culture into the land portion, and allowed some charcoal to spill out with it. I have a small amount of springtails (more than a dozen) inside the culture that have been reproducing, so I’m hoping within a few days, I’ll see some springtails in this enclosure. If not, I’ll wait a little longer and repeat the process. The Moss isn’t very happy, but I’m going to get back to readily keeping it misted, since I’m getting a handle on things again. I also did photograph a little bit of the new growth I’ve been seeing. I didn’t take photos of all of it, as I’m terrified I’m going to drop my phone in the water and fish it out too late (my hands have been tingling nonstop lately, so they’re very numb and not working well, and I recently dropped my phone into some water because of it). So here are a few plants that I’m seeing some new growth from:

Yeah! He is adorably uncoordinated, haha. When I add his food in, there were times he frantically runs around hitting the front panel nonstop with his claws, until he finds it. But, I then I tried hand feeding him one day, and he didn’t mind it. So, I’ve been doing that for most foods, excluding the bloodworms and occasional krill or shrimp pellets.

I am sometimes that way with Arachnids. I would love to keep some Tarantulas someday, but the small house spiders that occasionally spook me can look off-putting to me. Gandr has for some reason helped me feel a little less creeped out by small spiders, I didn’t realize how there are a lot of similarities between the two.

Here is another GIF of Gandr eating a blackberry: He didn’t notice how it fell so quickly. It took him a while to catch on, but he found it shortly thereafter. I have an idea on how I might get him to be able to grab it more easily. But, he gets excited with his food sometimes (hence the cute little lunge), so I’m not too keen on getting accidentally pinched if I make an error. It likely wouldn’t hurt much though, but I wouldn’t want it to spook him, if he sees he didn’t grab the correct object. He doesn’t mind tongs from a distance in his enclosure, but doesn’t like them by him at all. So, I will try my idea maybe next time, and see how it goes. I’ve handed him blueberries once before, but he’s not always the most gentle.

I’ve gotten some new growth in Gandr’s setup lately. I can’t say I’ve done the best with misting though, so I really need to get on top of that. I’ve been having a gnat issue still. Every time I seem to get a handle on them, I’ll find more. So, I will have to keep an eye on them more frequently, as I slacked a bit because of how I’ve been feeling. Still not nearly as bad as before though. I’ve kept the setup on the dryer side, as I didn’t want the gnats to be able to successfully reproduce. This in turn caused a little bit of dry out with some of my plants. I also have been having a slight fungus issue, and the springtail colony I purchased for it arrived very dead. Some eggs survived, so I have been replenishing their numbers, and likely will be able to add some to help solve the issue soon. This is just before the blue light came on tonight: Not all of the plants are happy, but I’ve had a lot of new growth on some of the plants. I’ll start getting more on top of the setup tomorrow and forward from then on. But, I always have been keeping up with his water changes. He had one recently, and came out after and seemed pleased. I also have been filming when I feed him here and there. I’ve never sent a GIF through this app before, so I’m hoping it works. But here is my attempted GIF at me feeding Gandr his Spinach: If I was successful at my attempt, you’d see how he is hilariously uncoordinated and goofy with how he eats. I love when he wriggles his claws around trying to grab his food, like little grabby hands (or in this case, claws). Sometimes he decides to eat in front of me, while other times, he’ll slowly back into his cave with his food. I try to not confuse him with my hands (thinking they’re always bringing food) so I put one finger up as a way to say “I’m getting you your food”, then I tap four times when adding the food, and give him a thumbs up after the food is added, or he will stand there and panic or hide (he used to be afraid of any food I would add; the carrot fear likely is one he still has but has not been tested further). The thumbs up is a safety signal.

He’s been doing good! He’s been coming out a lot, waking up at around the same time I do, and comes and goes throughout the day. I’d say I see him out usually 3-4 times a day. Occasionally, he’s up at around 3am, wanting to get out sometimes. Though, I haven’t let him come out on the couch besides the time I last posted, as I’d worry something would go wrong. He’s such a fragile, clumsy guy! Haha. As I’m typing, he’s out again for the fifth or sixth time today. He’ll come out and put his little claw to the front panel, or stand up and get little glass pets. I don’t see him use the land portion, but he certainly tries to get onto the couch here and there. Currently, he’s waving his claw out of the water at the front. Every now and again, I catch him with his face sticking out of the water, usually covered in bubbles. It’s so funny.

It took over a month for Gandr to seemingly fully settle into his new setup. It took a long time to get him to eat, and I have added leaves in over time to help encourage him out. He’s taken all of these, so I have added plenty more over time. He really enjoys his leaves, and grabs them and has constructed a large leaf fort with them. It’s disrupted the filter’s flow, but I don’t want to fiddle with it, unless it seems like it might cause problems. The past few days have been a major leap for him! The past week, he began coming out and would interact with me, for up to two hours even. I also have been showing him that my hands above him are the same as those in front of him, so I’ve been repeating small sessions of the same hand signals to him from both angles, which seems to have helped a great deal. I had a few gnats discover his setup, and made the mistake of following a honey trap tutorial to try and catch them. It shifted during the time I was sleeping, and leaked honey all over. It was a mess! I was panicking a bit, as it started dripping into the water, and Gandr decided to try and fight it. I was worried it would stick to him (luckily didn’t!). He “fought” bravely, while I was panicking and cleaning it up as quickly as I could, until it was all done dripping. There’s a few areas with residual honey, but all is well. When we interact, it’s often “waving” back and forth. He’ll also put his claw up to the glass and hold it there, so I’ll put my finger to it. He usually stretches up and wiggles his little legs and small antenna, and I’ll give him glass pettings. There were times, where we would interact for a long time, and I would get tired. The one time, I got up to shut the light off, as I wanted to go to bed. He was waiting by the front, and I was slowly limiting our interaction up until this point (as I was hoping he would go and wander, so I could turn back around and sleep). He quickly turned to face me, on my way to laying back down on the couch, and he did the cutest little wave with his claw. I waved back, and he walked up and stood up on the plastic, wiggling his legs and antennas as usual, so I gave him a final set of glass pettings before using my goodbye wave signal. Then, he went to walk around. Yesterday, he finally discovered the land portion, and laid on the Moss for a short time before diving himself clumsily back into the water. He always is such a klutz, haha. He manages to always fall on his back, but seems to be indifferent about it. I got a video of him taking his “first steps” on land too. Here is a photo of him resting on the Moss: His face was covered in bubbles, lol! Shortly thereafter, he tried to make an escape from the front. I was worried he’d fall, so I held my hand in the front, while he was trying. He was then trying to use my hand to stabilize himself enough to pull himself out of his enclosure further. I was curious enough to see what would occur if I would try to use my other hand to stabilize the back portion of his body, so I showed him my other hand and slowly moved it under him. He was a tiny bit spooked, so I stopped and waited to see if I should move my hand out from under him and stop. But, he then continued on, and so we got to the point where I could lift him gently out. I placed him on the couch, while I sat on the floor to monitor from a lower point. All was going well, until he managed to stumble and fall between a pillow. I quickly got him, which spooked both him and I. I moved the pillows, and he then relaxed and walked around the couch. I didn’t realize how many spots he could fall in, so I decided to put him back, as I was really worried and didn’t want to risk any harm to him. He was indifferent about the experience it seemed, as he didn’t hide afterwards, and tried to escape the same way two more times shortly thereafter haha. The second time, I didn’t help. But the third time, I decided to set up blankets and make a safe area he could walk on, without any risk of falling or getting stuck. After, I offered my hand to the front, and he used it to pull himself up, and then I introduced my other hand and lifted his lower body up very gradually. This is when he started his third escape: I gently placed him down, and laid back. I tried to move my hands out of the way, and observe for any signs of stress. He then caught me completely off guard. He started waving his tiny little legs and antennas, and so I started doing a tiny little wave and said hello pretty quietly (not that I’m expecting any reply, haha). He originally on a black and white blanket further away from me, but walked over and down to my right hand, tapped it with his antennas and claws, and then cozied up right by it on a portion of the blanket. He started making little quiet noises, almost like a bubbly clicking. It was so cool! I took a quick photo of him too: I also would like to mention that the white dots seem to be possibly healed injuries from the times he’s been clumsy, which happens a lot. We sat like this for a long time, and then he decided to get up and was tapping me with his antennas. He started walking all over my arm too. I at first thought he might have wanted to go back to his enclosure behind us, so I put my hand out and he walked on it, and I held my hand near the land portion of his enclosure. But he stopped and didn’t get off. I waited, and reluctantly brought him back, where he slowly got off and started wandering again. He was clumsily dragging himself across the blankets (I feel safer with the blankets, as a hard surface would probably cause friction to his body). He found a spot on the blanket, near my feet and hung out there for the remaining time. At around 3am, I was tired and decided to gently get him and place him back. I placed him on the land portion, and he then clumsily fell into the water shortly there after.. rather than using the sloped rocks to walk down haha. He was walking around and watched me put his screen down, so he couldn’t try to escape while I was sleeping. It was an interesting experience for sure, and I would prefer to keep this as a rare occurrence, if he does try to do this again.

He did have a lot of strange behavior that seemed like molting (he goes on his side or on his back and wiggles a lot, but the behavior has definitely decreased. It does occur from time to time still, seemingly in small fazes, where it will be much more prominent and suddenly stop occurring). He hasn’t seemed to have any molting issues thus far (he has his first molt a few months ago, successfully thankfully). Thanks! I appreciate it!

Awesome! Thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been adjusting it, based on everyone’s advice here. It’s been very helpful. My light has always been a little weird, especially with certain buttons. I noticed it didn’t cycle all of the way through, so I’m having to mess with it again, and I’m hoping I can get it to cooperate for me haha. Although it’s been unused for years, it was stored away nicely, so hopefully it works well.

Got it, that definitely makes sense. I’ll give that a try! Thanks so much for the help! I’m excited to finally use this light. It’s also nice to be on a forum where people are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable. This light apparently isn’t made anymore, so it made it tricky to try and figure the lighting out, especially since new models kept being brought up or talked about instead of the CC.

All good! That’s awesome that it works well for you! It sounds like you have a great setup, figuring out what works for it and all!

I refined it a little more so it matched the remote times. Maybe something like this to start off with the spectrum percentages, keep them low and gradually go up 10% every week to few weeks while they adjust (so long as I am not seeing any signs of excess light)? The B (Blue) would likely stay the same.

I’d say 2-3 honey gourami are likely fine, assuming they’re the true honey gourami, and not the thick-lipped honey gourami (they are often more aggressive towards other the true honey gourami and get larger). This would give you fish more at the top level, so they’d likely have a nice big space of their own to hang out in, as all of the other fish tend to reside lower than that.

You could potentially try a potassium supplement, see if that does anything beneficial. It’s probably just that they’re taking their time, as they’re slow growing plants and progress is very tediously noticeable. But sometimes too low of potassium can restrict growth rate, especially for Java fern. It doesn’t always show up as a noticeable deficiency until later on, so sometimes a compromised growth rate can be a sign of it earlier on.

Awh, thank you! I really appreciate that! It’s really nice having a platform to share on, especially one with such kind people on it. 🤗

That’s awesome!! That’s definitely understandable. I felt that way with certain parts of training I decided to skip out on with my cat. I didn’t want to add to frustration haha. Lol! Cats are wonderful like that, adorably selfish almost. That would be hilariously awesome, haha. I couldn’t imagine the chaos, Gandr pinching the service dog and hanging on for dear life, the service dog running around in a panic near me, trying to bring him over at the same time, oh my! 😅

I broke out my old Finnex Planted+ CC. I am pretty unfamiliar with lighting, although I’ve been doing some research on lighting to try and understand it better. The Finnex CC was barely used, as it was on the last aquarium I had to take down shortly after my brain and spinal surgery years ago. Being a 48” fixture, I strung it through two setups, my crayfish’s (Gandr’s) setup, and over my 20G tall I am starting over. Plant wise, they’re low to medium light plants (I’d say 3 are medium to high): Ludwigia peruensis, Ludwigia arctuata, Cryptocoryne undulatus ‘Red’, Red Tiger Lotus, Bolbitis huedelotii ‘Difformis’, Cryptocoryne petchii, Cryptocoryne balansae, Bucephalandra Kapuas Brownie Ghost, Hydrocotyle tripartita ‘Japan’, and Hygrophila pinnatifida. I’ll have Eco-Complete as a substrate, with root tabs, liquid fertilizers for them, if that’s useful knowledge to you all, if it makes an impact on lighting. I don’t have the specific percentiles decided, because I wanted to see if there were any blatant flaws from this point already. But this is what I was roughly jotting down as a lighting idea, though I’m wondering if it’s adequate, assuming I’ll get the specific percentages in order. Normal would probably represent a higher intensity lighting period, though that will likely need heavy refining. I’m wasn’t necessarily intending for a sort of weird dim siesta time frame, but I get extremely light sensitive at certain points in the day, especially from 3-5pm, any time after 8pm, and in the morning at 9-10am (depending on my symptoms, I can have all day severe light sensitivity, as I already cover most of blinds on the windows with blankets haha, but generally, those are the times I really notice it at). I was curious to see if I would be able to keep the fixture in a certain dimness, but not poorly affecting the plants. Would this work decently, or would it *likely* need adjusting, and if so, what would you all recommend? I do have red some plants, though I’d say they’re not as difficult as most red plants, so I’m sure that will also come into play on any lighting schedule. ALSO, these plants are all new, so if I should start out lower on any hypothetical high intensity lighting periods, feel free to let me know. 🙂

I added a temporary screen last night before going to sleep. The top is cable tied, but the bottom has bendable plant weights to secure it when I can’t always be observant. I can also take them off when I don’t want to obstruct the view. He was pouting the entire day about it after immediately inspecting them last night. I didn’t see him the entire day, and ran around the house, worried, with a flashlight in case he escaped haha. I finally decided to stick my finger in the cave he’s usually in, and felt a tiny little pinch, so I backed away and let out a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to bother him, but I wanted to make sure he was okay. It was nice to know the screen worked as well.

It’s really strange.The carrots had me surprised haha. I tried to feed him them, the same way I feed all of the foods, but he panics when he sees them and refuses to move, no matter how long. So I tried reducing the size of the carrot shred, later on when I’d add them in to see if I could improve his fear. But I’ve never made progress on it and decided it wasn’t worth it to continue, since it’s not a daily necessity and he’d never see carrots again outside of adding them in for him to eat. Me too! This is his full time enclosure for now. It’s larger than my 20 gallon in walking space, and about 2.5-3 times larger than the bin he was in. It should allow him space when he grows a little more. In the future, when I move, I’d love to turn a 75-90+ gallon aquarium into a paludarium for him in the future.

Yeah! It can be awesome to use! Very affordable too! The setup, minus the plants and filter was a total of $23 to make. I’ve always found foam to be so awesome, with the various types, you can make cosplays, props, scenery, and so on. Awh, thanks! I didn’t know if it would work, but I remembered that crayfish in the wild scoot back if they’re not wanting to fight, so I thought it would be worth a try. When my cat was alive, she was semi-feral and very high drive, so playing often wasn’t enough, and I thought training would be worth a try. In the end, she knew 26-30+ commands that I taught her in a few languages: English, some French, and the dragon language from Skyrim (my favorite game) just for laughs. It helped me practice training for a service dog prospect, which I’m hoping I will be able to have within the next year. Routines and socializing can make such a difference in behavior that we’d consider unhealthy. I was reading about crayfish brains, and they share the same chemicals that cause anxiety as humans. Even medications for humans lowered the seemingly anxious behavior. So, I tried to think of methods to reduce anxiety triggers and responses that could potentially work, and mixed that in with how crayfish behave.

I’m thinking it will take a while, he gets stressed out easily. Nope! First time. He originally only stayed in the living room. This time, he wandered through the dining room, turned the corner, and ended up in the hallway. My mom caught him trying to get into her room, and we both observed him for a moment, with him noticing us, and he still wanted to walk around 😂