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Odd Duck

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Everything posted by Odd Duck

  1. Odd Duck
    Well done! Love your port idea, it’s genius! A smaller syringe and shorter tubing might be easier on the port since it would stand upright and be an easier funnel to deal with. It only needs to be big enough to accept the tubing or the tip of the transport syringe. A 3 ml syringe would be lighter and not bend the tubing over. Maybe try the transport syringe without the tubing, just draw up and run the water with eels/worms directly into the “funnel” syringe. Then when you replace the plunger into the port syringe it will push all the feeding down into the tub. If you want the port tubing to kink and mostly close off between feedings without needing to have the plunger in the syringe, keep the larger syringe on a short piece of soft silicone tubing. It will fold when not held upright and close off the port for you.
  2. Odd Duck
    Excellent topic! After the Snowpocalypse / Snowmageddon here in Texas in February of 2021, I’ve been working slowly on getting better prepped. I was incredibly lucky because I evidently share grid with the nearby fire station and never lost power. But it was my warning. There were people in the more rural outskirts that were out of power for up to 3 WEEKS! In freezing temps in an area that was and still is EXTREMELY ill prepared for such extended cold. People’s tanks froze solid and seams split inside their houses! Even if tanks didn’t freeze solid, many lost every single fish and plant. There were people in shelters because their area was without power for days. It’s fairly easy to survive a few hours without power but surviving days or weeks without is completely different. I have boosted my supply of battery UPS but we also have a couple decent sized generators that would keep us warm or cool and fish tanks running between them. We do keep enough gas on hand to run them for several days. The eventual plan is a whole house generator with at least one (and probably 2) 55 gallon drums of fuel at all times. Even if we never need it. This may sound extreme when we didn’t even lose power during Snowpocalypse, but better to have and not need, than need and not have. There are 246 deaths attributed (directly or indirectly) to that storm across 77 counties in Texas with about 2/3 of them from hypothermia. People and their pets FROZE TO DEATH in TEXAS. Do at least some basic prepping if you can, even if you can’t afford or are comfortable with a generator. Know someone that has one, know where a shelter would be set up, know how to wrap your tanks in bubble wrap and have blankets you can wrap over the whole thing, have battery UPS that can at least run your tanks for a few hours, have a camp stove you can run (outdoors only, don’t kill yourself with carbon monoxide) to heat water, etc, etc. Be safe and be prepared!
  3. Odd Duck
    Congratulations! Looks fantastic! Plus those bonus plants, yummy! 🤣 At least they’re the good ceramic base ones. 😂 Better for resale. 🤣 🤣 🤣 So funny they included that with such a high end tank package purchase. I wonder if they were chuckling to themselves when they plopped that in there. I can’t wait to see how things develop and what you do with this new venture!
  4. Odd Duck
    Just a heads up, I’ve had a few dozen pea puffers by now with the multiple attempts to integrate Bad Pea Daddy into a shoal and then raising a dozen or so babies (not from Bad Daddy). Not a single one was ever the slightest bit interested in Vibra Bites. I think you have to pretty much starve them to force them to eat anything other than live or frozen, meaty foods. Mine will eat all types of live foods off the bottom of the tank, but wouldn’t even take live fruit flies as they were floating or after they were sinking down and drowning. They truly need live foods and Vibra Bites are definitely not that.
  5. Odd Duck
    What about other species of dwarf cory like hastatus? Or exclamation point rasboras? They tend to hang out down very low in my 14 G cube compared to the chilis that are mostly up top. I haven’t had them in a species only tank or without the chili group, so I’m not certain if that behavior would carry over without the chilis there. I’ve been trying to find more to put in my 6 G cube and move over the 2 accidental strays I ended up with. But they seem to be a bit more robust and bolder than chilis.
  6. Odd Duck
    Thank you both. Much better now than I was. Still not 100% yet but getting there.
  7. Odd Duck
    If your pea puffers are that small, then you can add adult bladder and ramshorn snails to the tank now and they should be making young snails that are ready when the tiny murder beans are ready. It would be really nice if you could find scud cultures since they reproduce very fast and baby scuds were THE favorite meal of my baby pea puffers. Pic shows a freshly nabbed baby scud going down the hatch of the young pea puffer. I tried to make scud “refugiums” using plastic boxes filled with leaves and with plastic craft mesh inserts in the lids so the scuds had someplace to reproduce where pea puffers couldn’t get to them. The idea being they would serve as an ongoing, self-renewing source of live food. The boxes didn’t work. They might work if the entire box was made from craft mesh but the lid with a mesh insert didn’t work. The boxes might also have been too small or not a rich enough food source inside for the scuds to keep enough of the juveniles or adults inside to make the next generation, I’m not sure.
  8. Odd Duck
    You should start to see a difference soon. The spots will usually start disappearing in 5 to 7 days. Make sure you are doing everything to reduce stress, too. Since it’s primarily on one fish, that fish is stressed for some reason. Stress causes reduced immune system function. Try adding more hiding spots. Dimming the light is an excellent choice - good thinking there. I often forget to mention things like that. And see what spots look like on day 5 and 7. If still present, I would do exactly as planned, - water change, add back salt, and redose one or both of those days if spots are still there.
  9. Odd Duck
    If the breeding stock was dewormed thoroughly before breeding then the risk is lower for intestinal parasites but far from zero for species that mostly eat live prey. I would caution you that adult pea puffers aren’t reliable about eating baby brine. Honestly, they aren’t across the board reliable about eating any one prey item. Snails, especially bladder and ramshorns, are a favorite. So that with a reliable source for Daphnia and whiteworms and you’re likely OK. If you can also culture scuds, those are as consistently accepted as Daphnia, blackworms, and whiteworms. If you want to breed, you’ll want Grindals, too, for babies, plus at least one species of tiny worms - vinegar eels, microworms, banana worms, Walter worms. Babies will usually accept baby brine shrimp. Adults will eat Grindals, too, but prefer bigger worms. I’ve not tried earthworms with mine. Unless you want to try to pick out tiny, young earthworms, I don’t know if pea puffers will take them. I think adults earthworms will be too big, but I’ve seen pea puffers take bites out of the foot or antennae of adult mystery snails. 🤷🏻‍♀️ The risk would be if the pea puffer killed the earthworm without eating most of it. That would have to be closely supervised to remove uneaten bits.
  10. Odd Duck
    @Colu is exactly right on the treatments. Those look like raised spots that are somewhat irregular in size like Epistylus instead of nearly identical and flat like Ich. Don’t raise the temp as that favors the Epistylus.
  11. Odd Duck
    Sorry I’ve been absent from the forum for a bit. Got very sick with something stomach and just getting back to normal yesterday. ParaCleanse has both the Praziquantal and Metronidazole. It depends on what I’m trying to treat whether I recommend metronidazole or not. I follow the listing exactly how I have it above if I’m aiming at the most common intestinal parasites. Metronidazole certainly has uses as well and Paracleanse can be substituted in the regimen for straight Praziquantal of PraziPro if that’s what you can get.
  12. Odd Duck
    Yep, criss cross forks with the tines pointing down so they hang on to the plants better.
  13. Odd Duck
    You’ll want to have water circulating in there. If you do some lights, you’ll get a jump start on coralline algae. Fragging was barely heard of when hubs and I first started a reef tank. Keeping SPS was an almost mythical achievement back in the early 80’s when we set up our first reef. LED lights have MASSIVELY changed reefkeeping from way back then. It was all about LPS and macroalgae. Getting good coralline growth was a big deal! Now tons of people frag and SPS is a standard thing. Now the LPS is hard to get.
  14. Odd Duck
    Wow!!! That’s a gift and a curse and if you’ve had reef tanks previously I know you know exactly what I mean. 😆 You don’t need to get all new live rock. Even if there was fancy live rock that no longer has polyps, etc, you can still use it as base rock for your structure. Just keep it wet and let it cycle again. Then you only have to get whatever fancy rock and frags you want to add to it. Live rock is the biggest part of your biofiltration with the way reefs are set up now. It will save you a ton to just let that rock cycle again vs. buying all new. Fresh, new rock stinks sooooo bad anyway. Your cycled rock will be waaaaayyy less stinky and will cycle way faster. It’s like getting a jump on the cycle by using an already cycled filter.
  15. Odd Duck
    So many babies! 😍
  16. Odd Duck
    So many smart people around here! Excellent questions and topic. There is always risk of introducing new potential pathogens (whether they are bacterial, viral, fungal, or parasitic) when moving fish between tanks. Even more so moving them across the country or across the world. The most important thing is to do everything you can to maximize overall health since that will support their immune system. There’s some evidence that having beneficial bacteria around can stimulate the immune system to work better. Doing a gradual exposure is smart and may be helpful to act a bit like a vaccine / inoculation so the fish’s immune system can learn how to deal with the microlife in your tank(s). Wild caught fish would likely be well-served by getting a full round of deworming and certainly a solid quarantine time is the best way to spot if there are issues and allow for treatment time. I’m also a believer in making the quarantine tank as “homey” as possible giving the fish hiding places and plants as appropriate to minimize stress. If I have to discard or disinfect everything afterwards, I will. So do everything you can to keep the fish healthy and you are supporting their immune system.
  17. Odd Duck
    Sounds like some progress is being made. If she is looking good overall at the end of the treatment then a break is good.
  18. Odd Duck
    So sorry for your loss. I appreciate you trying so hard and doing everything you could for Spike.
  19. Odd Duck
    I tried some searches earlier and found nothing that even came close. Now when I put some of the lyrics in and search, it directs me to your post!
  20. Odd Duck
    @Guppysnail, you just need to put a tank in front of a west facing window. I had to hack off the tallest of my lucky bamboo a few weeks ago, it was all falling over. This pic is from a couple weeks farther back when it was only starting to fall over. It will get to just barely touch the ceiling before it falls. This is the second time I’ve had to cut them down. Ignore any ugly leaves and algae. 😆
  21. Odd Duck
    Yes, it could be a sign of infection but it sounds like it’s going the right way already.
  22. Odd Duck

    Columnaris?

    Odd Duck replied to jwcarlson's topic in Diseases

    I would repeat every other day until convinced he has fully healed.
  23. Odd Duck
    I caught it! That’s why I thought the whole story was about the fish getting into things and prowling around! 😆 Placement for your bear bag is key! 🤣
  24. Odd Duck
    It was a funnier story when you said “fish”. 😆 Still funny with “cat” but what really cracked me up was the bear bag/bucket!
  25. Odd Duck
    So sorry! Sometimes there are underlying internal injuries that we can’t see.
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