Odd Duck

I think you could easily have double that in a 15 G with fairly light overall stocking level. They really are tiny! They are roughly 1/4 the length of most cories but a small fraction of the body mass. It would probably take at least 10-12 of them if not closer to 20 of them to equal the weight of one of my big bronze cories. They look like they only weigh a few grams or so each, but the bronzes have got to be at least 30 grams if not more. I’m not catching any to weigh them and weirdly, google hasn’t helped me with this question. 😆 But I wouldn’t worry a bit about putting 12-15 into a well seasoned, planted tank with normal, regular water changes.

Well, eggs are missing. So he must have gotten so agitated that he wasn’t tending properly, or someone else got in there, or something but they’re gone without a trace. The other male has made a big wallow underneath the left hand driftwood piece so the deep clay layer is stirred up again. 🤦🏻‍♀️ The tank has looked dirty since last week, now with no signs of clearing since they keep stirring up the substrate. Note to self, no dirt layer with bristlenose pleco males. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤷🏻‍♀️ I suspect this is not the daddy from the first clutch as he stayed tight in the cave the whole time. This guy has been guarding only loosely. It might be because he was getting harassed and challenged by the other male, but it hasn’t worked out well for the eggs. I’ll know in a few more days if the small group of eggs that initially got kicked out of the cave are going to hatch in their breeder net. I might have to put the little cave back in on the left end to see if the original male will move over there and leave this male alone. I can’t tell these boys apart since I almost never see them side by side and when I do see them together they are gently scuffling so I can’t do a good comparison. I thought for a long time I only had one mature male in here. It’s only recently that I’ve been seeing both at the same time. They’re the same size, same color, nothing so far distinguishes them. Oooh, I have head shots, potentially of each but could also be the same male. I need to compare them and see if there’s a quick way to tell them apart or if it’s going to take a very close look to tell them apart. I’ll take all the comparison help I can get. These are the best head shots I,have and I don’t know if they are of each, or the same, male. Now my mission is to get head shots of each the same day to see if I can learn to tell them apart.

Google says up to 120 cm in height for that variety. Probably why it’s not behaving the way you want. I’d probably look for a different variety of sword that stays shorter but has the look you want. E. harbich, horizontalis, osiris, and leopard all look like good options size wise and some interesting colors, too. I’m sure there are others that have different leaf shapes that would fit the size and look you want. I’m a big fan of swords. I can’t give you any advice about the Hygrophila since I’ve never tried it.

Stronger light will tend to keep swords shorter. Under lower light conditions they will “reach” for more light and grow taller. More light isn’t always going to be your friend for the Anubias and Java fern I can see, so increase light with great discretion. Maybe floaters over the lower light plants so they don’t end up with algae. Other than that, you may need to different tank for that sword if it doesn’t fit the look you want. What’s the species or variety name?

That’s excellent that you have the microscope with both video and picture! You can make the slides now that will be dried and stained. Once dried, they are stable is stored carefully away from moisture. Just save them and do the staining later. One of the reason’s for the Gram’s stain is because it stains differently for different cell wall structure. That different cell wall structure is the first clue we use to pick an antibiotic treatment since different antibiotics work differently. Many antibiotics work against the bacteria’s cell wall so that first clue on the structure of that cell wall is how we decide which antibiotic to use. So, catch the fish, collect the samples, you can lay the swabs down on something sterilized for safekeeping, then transfer the fish to quarantine. Once the fish is safely transferred, then you have time to make the slides. Make your slides to be dried and stained first since the sample will tend to cling to the swabs. After that, make the wet mount slides since it can “wash” more of the sample off into the water droplet on the slide. Take the video and pictures of the wet mount slides first since they have to stay wet. Start the salt treatment with the fish now in quarantine. We may be able to suggest something to get started based on the wet mount images. If the wet mount doesn’t give us answers, then once the new stains arrive, we can take a look at those stained slides. If you can make enough stained slides we can try each of the different stains and see how they look different under the microscope, starting with the stains you already have on hand. Phenol Red is actually fairly good for fungal hyphae, so that would be good to try. Bromothymol Blue might be interesting to add to another wet mount to see if it would help us see otherwise clear organisms better. Use just a tiny droplet of the Blue added to the water under a coverslip after rolling the swab in the water. You might want to have a couple of swabs ready and very quickly roll one right after the other over the larger spot so you can make multiple slides once the swabs are collected. Each swab should be able to make several slides, then at least 1 or 2 wet mounts, too. Save the first slides rolled out dry for the Gram’s Stain and the Giemsa Stain. Then do a couple more for dry staining with your Phenol Red and Bromothymol Blue. Do one wet mount to look for motile organisms with no stain. Then try a wet mount with a tiny bit of the Bromothymol Blue. I don’t know if any motile organisms will stay motile with the stain present but it is worth trying even if they don’t stay motile. If they do stay motile, it will be interesting to watch blue stained organisms swimming around! Bit rambling here, it’s very late and I can’t sleep because I’ve had a cold. Making a plan is probably a really good idea so everything is organized and ready to start. The fish catching, swabbing, and transferring to quarantine is the most important part that takes the highest priority. After all, we’re doing this to help the fish, not accidentally hurt her. The quarantine tank should be set up, ready to go at the right temperature, ideally as close as possible to the same pH, and with nice clean, dechlorinated water. I typically don’t add the salt until the fish is in the quarantine tank. I measure my salt dose carefully for the amount of water in the tank, mix the salt into a cup of tank water, then gradually pour it into the tank so as it mixes in, the fish can adjust more gradually than if the salt is already in the tank. After your fish is all taken care of, then the slides can be made. Make your list of how many slides you want to do. Mark each slide on which slide will get which stain. Make your wet mount slides with and without stain. Leave the dry stained slides to dry completely before staining while you get the videos and pictures of the wet mount slides. Stain the dry slides with each of the stains you have on hand and get your pictures. Hold the unstained slides until the new stains arrive. My schedule is a little different than most because I work in an animal emergency hospital and work very long shifts on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I’ll be off and on the forum over the next couple days this week. My schedule means I won’t be on the forum much at all on my work days and might not get on the forum at all on those days. But I’ll be back on Wednesday to see your progress after the new stains arrive. If you tag me by typing the @ sign, then my screen name, then clicking on my name on the list that pops up, it will create this tag - @Odd Duck and I will get notified about your posts the quickest possible and respond as quickly as I can. Others on the forum are also very knowledgeable about fish care and treating illnesses in fish, so they will be able to help, too.

They tend to be a bit cyclic, and will lay much heavier certain times of the year. But when they are happy, they will lay intermittently through most of the year in the aquarium, if they have the right stimuli and conditions. You don’t necessarily want them to deplete themselves, of course. I try to get them to lay periodically because the girls will get sooooo heavy with eggs they just look tired and I want to prevent any egg-binding. But fall storms and spring storms seem to really trigger them a lot. At least for me in Texas. Summer time is harder to trigger them because I’d have to buy bags of ice to get the water change cool enough to trigger them. The amount of ice I can produce easily isn’t enough to get my tap water cool enough even when mixed with cool (72-74’F) room temp RO water.

I seem to finally have another pair out of my angel tank. The darker gold koi was a fairly new addition and she(?) is pairing up with one I’ve had for months. Breeding tubes are starting to partially drop but only out a little then quickly back in so far. They are picking and cleaning some new sword leaves I just added and bossing around the whole tank today. I have the pair hanging around the middle and towards the right end. Everyone else is hanging around crowded into the left 1/3 of the tank. 😆 I’ll be moving the pair tomorrow to my 29 G after I do a big water change on it (which was planned for tomorrow anyway). Tomorrow is 75, 29, and 20 high WC day.

I would also suggest one of the dwarf cory species and shrimp. I wouldn’t do a “regular” bristlenose since they can get 6-7” and far too big for a 15 gallon tank. But my L519’s are only 4” and not a particularly active species so that might be possible. There are other small pleco options, but you’d want to stay under 4-4.5” tops I would think. Clown pleco would be another option since depending on the species they stay in the 3-3.5, rarely up to 4” range. Clowns MUST have well-aged wood to gnaw.

Mine never took any dry foods at all, not even freeze-dried Dapnia. They refused wingless fruit flies looking at them in pure and obvious disbelief that I would offer such nasty things. They would eat frozen bloodworms but not with enthusiasm. Fry up to very small juvies will take microworms and vinegar eels, baby brine shrimp, but small scuds were a favorite. The babies would take the tiniest fresh hatched scuds along with the microworms and vinegar eels. Older juvies would take nearly anything that fit in their mouths for live food (except the fruit flies - sneering peas resulted). Daphnia, Moina, scuds, whiteworms, and blackworms were favorites. Bladder snails, ramshorns (proportionate to their size), bigger snails if crushed, and they relished a few mosquito larvae. They would also take Grindal worms but usually a bit slower after the juvies reached subadult age where you could just barely start to tell them apart. They seemed a bit put off by their tiny size, like, “How can we get full on such tiny worms, Mom?” They really seem to like the hunt, so giving them fast moving, active live foods like Daphnia or scuds was always very exciting and got a very lively tank for a while.

It definitely is a bit of a trick moving them. Keep trying, you’ll get the feel for it.

You can just coax them to stick to your finger, then coax them to stick to the breeder box. I either touch my finger to the glass next the egg, then sort of lift a bit and slide at the same time across the egg(s) and the egg will usually stick to your finger. Then you kind of reverse that action to roll them onto the wall of the breeder box. I’ve had the best success with the eggs on the wall of the breeder box vs. on the bottom. I’ve also use an old plastic credit card and press it tight to the glass, coming up from underneath the eggs slowly and lifting the whole egg mass onto the card. Then I hold my thumb gently over the mass of eggs since the whole group won’t reliably stick to the card when I do this. Then lift out and into the breeder box and I try to stick them to the side but it won’t always work, for some reason. Turning off any pumps/filters so there’s minimal flow during this part can help reduce the number of eggs dropped. I use this method when there’s been a mass laying which my bronzes are known to do. I got a crazy number of eggs from one particular laying and only collected about 2/3 of them. They weren’t sticking to the sides of the breeder box and I had a fairly poor hatch rate despite doing a methylene blue treatment the first day and having abundant (well, some, maybe not quite abundant) tannins in the water. Pics of the literal heaps of eggs they laid last October. I’ve never seen them pile them up like they did over the course of a couple days. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Don’t forget the theory that females are both drabber and smarter so they hide better and are less likely to be caught for import. I’ve not quite lost my mind yet so I won’t be paying $100.00 per female but I wouldn’t mind getting a nice trio to see if I can manage to breed and raise some. 😉

Decoder follows - brace yourself because it’s long. I figure if you don’t know @Guppysnail, then many others won’t either. I’m going to go back to the basics of genetics. Hetero means “different” or “other”, homo means “same”. So Heterozygous means the individual carries 2 different genes (usually one dominant and one recessive) vs 2 versions of the same gene (both dominant or both recessive). So your lovely angel-winged, extra frilly BELBN (blue-eyed lemon bristlenose = BELBN) likely have 2 versions of the long fin gene meaning they are Homozygous for long fin. I suspect this means they express long fin even more exuberantly than “standard” long fin. The short fins are Homozygous - they have the same gene on each chromosome pair for the short fin gene. When you mix and match an individual that is heterozygous they have the potential to contribute one of each type of gene to their offspring. So one baby may get the short fin gene and one baby may get the long fin gene. Sex cells - whether sperm or egg - have only half the normal number of chromosomes so only one version of each chromosome makes it to each baby from each parent and the baby then has normal chromosome pairs. When each parent can contribute one trait (this is very oversimplified since we’re only talking about a single, specific trait here), then we get fairly strict rules on what the babies can show or express from their genes. if we were to cross a short fin male with a pure long fin female, we would get all long fin offspring since long fin is dominant. Mom gives only long fin genes, Dad gives only short fin genes. These babies would all be heterozygous for long fin (and short fin). Crossing these babies will give you a mix like your kids show. I’m going to draw a Punnit Square for example and link the pic. The top example is an extra frilly long fin Mom (I’m making the assumption she is homozygous for long fin = LL). It is standard to use the capital letter for the dominant gene and the small letter for the recessive gene. Dad is short fin and since we know this is recessive, we know he is homozygous for the short fin gene = ll (hard to tell with this font but that’s 2 small “L’s”). You can see that each individual can contribute only one characteristic. You get one type of offspring on the first mix - all “regular” long fins because they are heterozygous = Ll. They have one gene for each characteristic. When you cross the offspring from that mix, bottom example, you get all mixed but in fairly set proportions. Typical would be 25% = LL that will eventually end up frilly, 50% “standard” long fin = Ll, and 25% short fin = ll. Variations from that in any particular clutch may be somewhat random or there could be a health issue linked with the homozygous gene. Now the COLOR on bristlenose plecos is a COMPLETELY different scenario and I don’t think anybody has them completely figured out because each color seems to have a different location for the gene and they may have incomplete dominance or expression in how the different genes interact to show the color of the fish. I don’t know if this helps or is too complicated. It’s a . . . . . not excessively busy day in the ER (don’t want to jinx it!). I may or may not be available to answer questions later tonight but will be available off and on for the rest of the week.

Yes, you’re right. I jumped in the shower to get ready for work right after I posted and I realized they both had to be heterozygous for short fins. So the super long fins are likely a double up on the long fin gene, “regular” long fin is het for the LF gene, and short fins are homozygous for the “normal” recessive gene. I definitely have eggs in the cave now! Checked again right before I left for work and there’s a nice big blob of eggs easily visible now. So I’ve got a few eggs in the breeder net that I don’t know for certain if they’re fertilized or not, but I think they are. We’ll see soon enough if they hatch or fungus.

That’s interesting considering most of the reading I’ve done says long fin is dominant in BN’s. I’m honestly not 100% certain if these were your girls or not. I’ve added 5 LF girls to this tank over time and these are the 2 that are still with me. This tank kind of just swallows fish a bit since it’s so heavily planted anybody that passes I don’t ever see them sick and rarely find bodies. They hide, then they’re gone. I occasionally see female bronzes that are a bit roughed up after intense breeding but they always heal up fine. My parameters are never off since the tank is so over filtered, planted, and lightly stocked for its size.

@Mr. Buzard and students, When you catch the fish, use a cotton tipped swab and roll it gently against the large spot. Use that swab to roll against at least 2 different microscope slides, and then swirl it around in a drop of water on a third slide. Place a cover slip on the third slide right away and lay the other slides to dry flat. You could probably do some extra slides as back ups. Gently heat fix the 2 dry slides, then stain them using Gram’s Stain and some version of a Giemsa stain - DiffQuik is one that’s easy to get. Look at them under the microscope going all the way up to oil immersion (1000X magnification). You can take pictures using your phone (you may need to use a short “stand off” tube (shooting through the center of a narrow [about 1/2” wide] roll of tape usually works well) to be best able to center and focus on the image. If you can attach the images here, we may be able to help you identify what you have and how best to treat it. If you have extra slides and other types of stains available, then methylene blue would be a good option. Anything that stains fungal hyphae would be good. Even the purple counterstain works OK to use wet under a coverslip as the last slide you make after the water only slide. If you can take a video of anything that’s moving in the wet mount slide (the one with the cover slip on the water drop), that can be very helpful. Use the newest phone available for the video since many older phones don’t capture movement as well. If you have a special camera for the microscope, that would be even better. I would definitely start salt in the water in the quarantine tank at 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons and consider starting the Kanamycin (Kanaplex is one brand) or Minocycline (Maracyn-2) so you can start to reduce any bacterial component that might be part of this infection. I’m working today until 10 pm and may not be able to,eat back online after this, but I’m off the rest of this week and will be able to check back frequently to see if you’ve been able to send any pictures. If you don’t have all the equipment and materials needed to do the slides and stains, that’s OK, don’t feel bad! Most people don’t have those things and we can still figure out a treatment that should work for your lovely pleco!

My 100 G nanofish tank has been an absolute hot mess for a while. I got lazy and let BBA overrun the tank due to other things happening in my life besides fish. I’ve been working much harder at getting caught up on things by doing larger and more frequent water changes along with keeping up better with plant maintenance, removing spent and dying leaves, etc. The BBA status is improving and the BELBN plecos are going wild. The cories have been breeding like mad. It’s a hot bed of fishy frenzy right now. The big boys have been sparring and have the substrate (sand over a thin clay bottom) all stirred up and the water is very cloudy but parameters are great. The long fin females have been very interested and hanging around the caves, clearly ready to spawn. The boys are all over the place. Last night I got off at a decent hour for a change, the lights were off, and I decided to check on the plecos. There was definitely a female in the cave with a male! Today when the lights came on, all of them were either in the favorite cave or around it. I didn’t move fast enough to get the pic of one big boy in front of the cave with the 2 females on the wood over the cave and the second big boy in the cave. I can’t see if there are eggs in the cave but there were some eggs kicked out of the cave. The eggs are now in a breeder net that’s directly in front of a good HOB current. There are chunks of IAL and a mulberry leaf in the breeder net and a few very small, immature neo shrimp for “baby sitters” in with the eggs that were loose. There is a female in the cave again as I’m typing and the boy is in backwards, presumably fertilizing more eggs. Next pic is loose eggs that were collected and are now in the breeder box, one boy in and one boy out of the cave, and the entire group hanging about the cave with only the tail visible for the male in the cave. Even the youngsters from the last clutch are hanging around the area but I couldn’t get a decent pic of that. The precious clutch are doing well in their new digs (only a few were left in the cave in this tank for daddy to tend) but I’m not sure yet if they are going to be long finned. I thought one of the long finned females was the momma, but I don’t see much length on their fins yet. Now I only have long finned females in this tank so I should get only long finned babies. I’ll be watching like a hawk over the next 5-7 days to see when the first fry is visible (assuming everything goes well). The fry will get pulled as soon as they’re close to coming out of the cave since I have fish in this tank that might eat fry, so they’ll get pulled in about 10-12 days from today.

That looks like an excellent guess! My mind would never have gone there. They get to 3 feet long depending on species!

Buypetshrimp.com has decent quality shrimp at decent prices. I’ve never bought shrimp from AquaHuna but their fish are usually decent quality, very good prices, excellent shipping price and prompt shipping.

Nearly all the aquatic soils leach ammonia. That’s what makes them a “soil” vs just gravel. Do you have a test kit? Of test strips? Drop test kits are considered more accurate but I’ve not found big differences between the strips and drop kits. Mostly I don’t need an exact number, just trends or presence/absence depending on the parameters I’m concerned about testing in any given situation. I don’t know your fishkeeping experience, but are you aware that a 3.5 gallon is extremely small for fish? Nearly all fish need a bigger tank than that plus the smaller the tank the more difficult it can be to keep the parameters steady. I generally recommend shrimp only, maybe a small snail or 2 in a tank that size. It can be done with a couple very small fish, but it takes significant dedication and usually more frequent maintenance to keep fish happy and healthy in such a small tank. Plus extremely careful selection of fish. Most small fish are shoaling fish and like to be in a group. A group of 6 or more is too big for a 3.5 G in nearly any species bigger than microrasbora and they are borderline for comfort in such a small tank. Did you have a species in mind for your micro tank?

Here’s the best pic I have of his topside from June last year. I have newer pics but none show his pattern better. See all the texture on his back half? Makes me think of the surface of a cat’s tongue. That’s supposed to indicate male.

I’m 99% certain it’s a male because if the denticles along the back half of the body. It’s big enough I’m slightly concerned about it, but everything I can find on sexing says male from the denticles. I’ve tried a couple times to get him a friend but they’ve not done well and ended up passing with no visible issues - not skinny, not bloated, not an empty belly, seen to be eating, no skin lesions, nothing. Just found dead with no apparent cause. I’ve not heard of them being a particularly sensitive species, but I haven’t been successful with any except him. 🤷🏻‍♀️ 😞

Much better picture but I’m still not certain. I do think that could be a gold spot but need someone more expert than I am to confirm. Pretty fish!

I have been rinsing biomedia in tap water for literally decades with no issues. I don’t rinse ALL of the biomedia in the tank at once if it’s well stocked, but a lightly stocked tank, . . . . rinse away. I do tend to run loads of filtration but haven’t always in the past and not once have I had an issue. I often rinse filters/biomedia very well when resetting tanks and may, or may not, test the water before the next inhabitants go in it as long as it was a well seasoned filter and restocking is light. If nobody got sick in quarantine, I do nothing with the tank besides a water change before the next fish go in it. I neglect my filters horribly. The HOB’s tend to get a full cleaning only when I reset tanks, or it gets noisy, or there’s a rare unfortunate incident. I really need to make progress on my fishroom and some easier water changes so I don’t feel the need for anything but sponges in my small tanks. I rinse prefilters only when the water flow is impeded (not really what I recommend at all) but I run loads of plants, redundant filters, generally light stocking, etc. I don’t have a pharmacy of meds. I do have dewormers because of pea puffers, but don’t routinely use them. I also keep Kanaplex on hand, but no others. I’m sure there’s other things but can’t think of any right now.

Frogbit is likely your best bet. It grows fast enough that any the SD’s can snag through the fence won’t matter. Plus if there’s any extra, just plop it across the fence for some nice, fresh food treat for the SD’s. I know it’s a delicious edible for many fish because I’ve had plenty that like to nibble the roots. It has potential to grow very long roots, so the SD’s may be able to snag some themselves by grabbing root tips that get through the fence. If the roots only get pruned, the frogbit will produce forked roots at the break and just have denser roots for the other fish to hang out.