Odd Duck

Have you been testing daily? If you moved a good, gunky pad plus poured in FritzZyme 7 you might very well miss the ammonia dropping, nitrite spike and drop and only see minimal nitrate spike.

I don’t know of any treatment for parasites that doesn’t also risk killing snails. Theoretically, if you are keeping only snails and no fish with them, you would potentially break the life cycle of any parasites that need the definitive host (fish). If you have raised snails for multiple generations with no fish, then you are probably as close to parasite free as possible. I would have to do some serious digging into fish and snail internal parasites in order to determine if it’s possible to get snails to be fully parasite free. And the same for whiteworms, Grindal worms, and blackworms. Blackworms are especially concerning for me since they are from an aquatic environment and the others aren’t so they would be less likely to carry fish parasites. One of these days I will, but not tonight.

Vinegar eels live just fine in the tank and like to be up at the top. If you can get a good dose of vinegar eels, they could potentially live off them for several days. Live Moina, Daphnia, or Ceriodaphnia (that last one is near impossible to find unless someone local is raising them or you can find someone on eBay or something - long shot) are excellent choices since they will also live and potentially breed in your tank if they have enough cover and food. As far as how long you can leave chili rasboras, likely several days to a week if they are currently well fed and healthy, tank parameters are good, parameters are stable, and the tank is aged enough to have some good microlife.

So very true! My replacement colony of super red plecos is growing up and the largest just started showing bristles. I’m like, “Alrighty then, GET IN THAT CAVE!!!” 😆 😂 🤣

Short of testing the food you’re feeding, meat eaters, especially live food eaters, are going to always be at risk for parasites. If you’re raising your own live foods, the risk drops fairly significantly, but unless you’re doing some testing for intermediate stages inside the live food, there’s always going to be some risk for re-exposure. This is exactly why I raise so many of my own live foods now (or at least I try, sometimes more successfully than others). Are you doing weekly Levamisole for at least 4 weeks and every other week for Praziquantal while peas are in quarantine? If you suspect intestinal parasites, I would repeat the same deworming regimen as in quarantine unless you’re specifically seeing Camallanus. If you see Camallanus, then just the weekly Levamisole x 4 weeks. Always be ware there’s is risk of significant +/- total snail/shrimp die off with every dose of Levamisole and Praziquantal.

It’s really too many with my current arrangement but hopefully I’ll be able to make some progress on getting the fishroom “Offish” finally done and things will get easier. 😝

@bodotdot Since you moved a nice gunky pad, you may not see an ammonia or nitrite spike. I agree with @Galabar, try adding ammonia to about 2 ppm and test every 12 hours to see if you can catch a rise in nitrites, then nitrates. If the ammonia and nitrites clear in 24 hours, you should be ready to go.

It’s not about what I did today but about what these 2 did today. I didn’t think they were going to manage it with the way things were going when I left the house late this morning. He insisted on the smallest cave despite me offering 3 different sizes he wants only the watering spike. I put them back in since he stopped trying to breed when they were gone. It took a few days of pouting, but he decided on the spike again for breeding. She has been going in and out of a bigger cave trying to entice either of the boys into action. This guy finally took the hint. Can you see how she gives up in disgust at the end of this video I took this morning? That look like, “He’s pretty but he isn’t too bright!” Well, he must have finally figured it out because they got the deed done. There are eggs in the cave tonight after we got home from paintball. I can’t get a picture because I can barely get a glimpse past his big “shoulders”! But I should have some long-finned babies this time around since the short-finned female is in a different tank now. And look! The old lady figured out how to post her own video!

Welcome! There’s a few fishroom build threads on here, so some might be helpful. A quick search will get you to them. Some new, some old. All have some good info.

I would say the exact same about you! 🤗

I’ve been cycling tanks this way since 1975. There didn’t used to be a chart to tell you how much water to change, or anybody even using the terms “fishless’ or “fish-in” cycling. This was how it was done. Nobody tested back then. I don’t remember test strips at all and didn’t get test kits until the mid 80’s(?) or so. We were the only people we knew that had a test kit when we got ours. Mind you, we know a lot more now and I’m definitely not disagreeing with doing a chalkenge with ammonia, that’s an excellent suggestion. I’m saying cycling with food works just fine, especially if you’re using pre-cycled media from another tank, or used some filter sludge / squeezin’s, or appropriate bottled bacteria. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@anewbie, I have soooo many bad pics for every half decent pic I’ve taken. I really need to go through my phone and remove a few hundred bad fish pics. 😝

It’s been pointed out to me that I’ve never introduced myself. I go by Odd Duck on many forums so chances are if you’ve seen that name around, it could be me. I’m an “old lady” now and have been keeping fish (not continuously) since 1975. I’ve had fresh tanks for most of that time. We had a fish only salt tank for a few weeks then switched it to a reef tank almost immediately. That was back in 1983. I kept one or more reef tanks going until about 2003-ish. I can’t remember exactly when we sold the last one. Still had a couple fresh tanks for another year or so before selling those, too. I’ve had all kinds and sizes of set ups and bred a variety of fish, some purposeful, most more accidental “back in the day”. I rescued a pair of Jack Dempsey cichlids in April of 2020 to help get my dear friend out of a difficult situation (not her fish, but ended up her responsibility to find them a home). They were fascinating and gorgeous and made a ridiculous number of babies for me within 5 weeks after I got them. This rekindled my love of fish and fish keeping and away we went (dragging my poor hubby along for the ride). I now have far too many tanks and have been planning to do a fishroom and making glacially slow progress in that direction over the last year or so. The goal is getting all, or at least most, of my smaller tanks into one room with automatic overflows so I can just go around the room with my refill hose and do water changes. Much less time and labor involved, far happier fish. Potentially, eventually go full auto on water changes in the fish room at least. I have a pair of 100 G tanks on either side of my TV that I watch far more than the TV. I now have the Jacks in a planted, 75 G with a pair of festivums, a group of tiger silver dollars, and a reverse trio of bristlenose plecos. All of whom intermittently do their part to destroy the aquatic plants but they can’t access the emerse plants, so there fishies! I now have 23 fish tanks plus a 10 G and 3 jars for live food culture. Plus a 180 G waiting to be set up after the fishroom happens - it will go where the current rack now stands. I have had decent success breeding plecos and cories, ridiculous success breeding the Jack Dempseys, and some random success with a few other species. Links in my signature to lots of stuff, far from all my tanks. I’m one of those people that knows a lot about some things, a little about a lot of things, but I’ll tell you straight up if I know nothing about other things. I’m not afraid to admit if I’m wrong about something and I’ll be the first to apologize if I’ve told you something wrong or said something stupid. I am a bit prone to being brusk or brutally honest because I’m very thick skinned myself. I try hard to rein in the bruskness and brutal honesty into a more gentle honesty, especially online because it’s so easy to come across hard and harsh without expression or tone being available. If I feel I can help, I will. I mostly avoid the “Disease” section if possible because I see far too much animal pain and suffering at work, but if you need me, tag me. I’ll help where I can. I work very long hours, but short weeks in a veterinary ER, so I’m not online every day and can’t always answer back quick depending on where I’m at in my work “week”. Far too much for most people to read through. If you’ve made it this far there’s a decent chance you may already know most of this about me already. For those who didn’t, Howdy, from Texas. Sharon Pic of the troublemaker tank from about 3 weeks ago. I put an SAE in there today to see if it can better control the BBA.

Her.

I never introduced myself either. 😆 But I post so much I don’t know how anybody hasn’t seen a few from me.

Not laughing at you, just funny that you felt the need to introduce yourself at this point. I’d trust your advice over nearly anybody else’s because it’s so clear that you have far more fish keeping, breeding, and selling experience than most. 👍🏻

I want to find small, cheap, but fine mesh fish nets. Cheap enough I don’t care about bending the handle but the mesh needs to be finer than average so plecos and cories (and duckweed) are less likely to stick. Not brine shrimp fine, but finer than most nets. I’ve got 2, a very small one that fits easily into specimen containers and the next size up that’s about 5.5” x 4”. Both are older than most of the aquarists on here (probably from the 80’s). The bigger one is just about perfect for nearly everything I’m trying to catch from my smaller tanks but the corners are getting frayed (one corner is really bad now) so fish can squirt out even after I have them trapped against the glass. I have had no issues finding better quality, more durable handles but everything is coarser mesh or MUCH finer mesh that’s so fine it makes the net notably slower to swish through the water. Sometimes you need a faster swish than that even when you mostly use your hand to coax fish into a still net. I also want to have enough nets I can soak them between uses. Plus keep at least 1 per level on each rack. With my profession, I’m a bit more paranoid than average about disease transmission between tanks.

Super reds are “hot” right now, but so are honeycomb pattern plecos. L519’s are one of the smaller species with that pattern but there’s at least 3-4 others that I can think of right off. I’ve also got Rio Paraguay’s that I’ve been waiting patiently on them to breed (also a honeycomb pattern but get almost a inch longer than the L519’s) but I need to get some young BEL’s out of their tank. Then there’s Wabenmusters that get to about 5” that have a slightly more open honeycomb pattern. Plus L037’s (Hyposomus faveolus), “Honeycomb” plecos that seem to trend a bit more yellowish in their spots and get to nearly 10” long. There’s at least one other I can’t remember right now. But nothing stands out or is quite so distinctive like a super red. But rubber lips are supposed to be about the best for eating algae and cleaning glass.

Just what I was thinking! I was most definitely well past “kid” when that came out. I was graduating vet school that year and I took 7 years off between high school and college, and college for me was 7 years. 😆 It sneaks up on ya!

I wish I had some super reds ready for you! I’ll have more of the L519’s (pigmented, and honeycomb pattern, don’t look naked 😝) ready fairly soon. They need to grow up a smidgen more. They also stay smaller overall by quite a bit compared to other bristlenoses. They max out at 3.5-4” vs the 6-7” of an adult male BEL, or super red bristlenose. @nabokovfan87 Remind me what size tank you want them for and what type fish to go with? Pic of a couple from the first clutch of L519’s.

I have no idea why I was so lucky, maybe because the second I learned about them I signed up to be notified when they come in stock. But for whatever reason, ACO sent me one of the new upgrade kits last week and I’ve been meaning to post this review. I had wondered if the very top, curved piece fits the old nano size sponge filters - yes, it does, but it doesn’t have the air collar, of course since that only fits the other sizes and the newer nanos starting in 2023. You can put either end of the very top, curved piece into the older nano filter tops. I’ll attach pics below. It is a bit large and I’d like to see ACO sell just the curved bit as a retrofit for older nano sponges. I can cut them off clean to the length I would want so they would be less awkward and obvious in my 2 x 6 G cubes and the 14 G cubes (I’ve got a double stacked nano in there because I wanted the smaller footprint) - I would buy 3 immediately. My 2 G is too small for a top piece at all unless I cut it waaay down to barely more than the curved part. I don’t have any of the new nanos (I need to rectify this) so I can’t speak to how it would fit but I assume it fits the same as the other sponge filters. It comes in a nice, small box, so minimal packaging waste and shipping cost while being sturdy enough to prevent the tubes from getting crushed by anything short of a stupid degree of shipping damage. It has several parts and can make a very tall outlet to go across the surface of the water for better surface agitation and water turnover. The air collar produces equivalent air to a Ziss adjustable airstone that’s been tightened down to get fairly fine bubbles which is how I usually adjust mine. I don’t have video or an easy way to measure how much air was produced but it appears very equivalent, your mileage may vary. I used the exact same air pump - one of the ACO nano air pumps so things would be as equal as possible for comparison. The lower 3 pieces above the air collar are the same diameter tubing so you could easily remove one or two sections if you didn’t want it as tall. You can also remove anything above the air collar if you have an extremely short tank. You would lose the benefit of the curved piece that directs the flow across the water for move surface turnover. Here’s the pics. First - box, second - pieces in box (riveting content, right?), third - all assembled (if I was smart I’d have put a ruler by this), fourth - comparison of curved top to old style nano sponge top piece. Fifth - air collar and top 2 pieces running on a medium ACO sponge (lower piece of the top 2 is slid down as far as possible to make it easier to keep it all in frame), sixth - a new, Ziss adjustable airstone running inside the same medium sponge as usual, seventh and eight - the curved top piece fits into the old, pre-2023 nano sponge top piece on either end. Because of how tubes like this are bent, it may not fit readily if you were to trim it off too close to the curved part. Bending tubing often puts it slightly out of round at the curved part so DIY’er beware if you want to trim the length to be smaller to fit on older nano tops.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I put chili rasboras, ember tetras, and kubotai rasboras back in the tank when I was netting out duckweed when I had an outbreak in my 100 G nanofish tank. 🤦🏻‍♀️. It’s not nearly as bad when I use a comb to get the duckweed out and I seem to finally have it under control in that tank, at least. I still have it in 4 tanks, controlled and nearly gone in 2, still heavy in one, and still out of control in one because I will have to reset the tank for that one. It’s all in the pearlweed in there which is so rampant it’s growing out the top and has consumed the HOB filter. I also have a ton of susswassertang in that tank along with some mosses I’d like to rescue. That’s actually going to be one of this week’s projects, hopefully. I’m bracing myself for that one. I’ve got to get plants out of a couple buckets before I can even start to tackle that tank. Ugh. I keep telling myself, “It’s only 10 gallons, it’s only 10 gallons, it’s only 10 gallons.” And, “It can’t be that bad, it can’t be that bad.” 😝 It’s going to be even worse, I just know it. 😂 🤣 Forgot to mention, the 2 worst tanks are FULL of guppies and fry. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I sometimes wipe biofilm off the rhizome but I don’t try to dry it. Water sets the glue faster. If I’m having trouble getting something to stick I will scrape the wood a bit with the top of my fingernail to clear off some of the biofilm, especially for older wood pieces, or pieces that have been soaking a good while. Then glue specks applied to the rhizome, plant held in place whether fingers, tweezers, or glue cap, and drip a bit of water on the glue site but holding the plant and object very still! I want the glue to set faster once I have it placed or I know I’ll be reaching for the next plant, or my water bottle, or something, because I apparently have the attention span of a gnat when I’m holding plants on the glue. 😆

The cap of the superglue is my friend. I use it to press the plant into place on whatever object and oddly enough, it hasn’t gotten glued to the plant or the object, nor the plant glued to it yet (knocking on wood). I’m using the Loctite brand but I don’t know if that matters other than the top of the cap is smooth, and the glue tip is very small giving me better control of the amount of glue and placement of the glue. The cap hasn’t glued itself onto the bottle, yet, either, and I’ve gone through at least 10 bottles so far over the last 3 years. 🤷🏻‍♀️

My tiny tank is loaded with pipsqueaks, both shrimp and snail.