[Battery USB backups incase of power outs]

you can also get smaller ones.  this is the one I use for my internet router and modem.  IDK how well HOB motors do with "simulated" sin waves though, which is what you get from any UPS under a few hundred $. 

https://www.amazon.com/APC-Battery-Protector-Back-UPS-BE425M/dp/B01HDC236Q/

[Aquarium Science High School Class]

 

On 3/21/2022 at 10:03 AM, Hobbit said:

The variety of reproductive systems!!! Students leave biology thinking everything reproduces like humans do. FALSE! Livebearers, egg layers, egg scatterers, mouth brooders, and so much more. Often it’s the male fish who does the most parental care. This would be a great opportunity to use those “fish facts” cards that someone else suggested, and even have the class do brief presentations. You could even include different systems in snails, because then you get to talk about hermaphroditic creatures.

I'd add sex determination.  Its not clearly known for most fish.  rice fish/medaka were one of the first fish where they discovered human like "XX" "XY" style sex determination, until they found out that's not the only factor (!!).  high temps can make more males.  My pet theory is that its stress that does it not temps directly and if times are going to be bad its more advantageous  to spread your genes as a male because its less energy.

[Acclimating Neos without a Drip Kit]

I've also pipetted a little water every couple of minutes over a few hours while watching TV.  It's easy to do if you bring a cup of tank water and a cup of shrimp on the couch (or end table) next to you.

[I did a dumb thing]

Yeah,  You can't see it in the photo, but one of the original leaves came folded in half and the rest of the leaf lived on without melting back.  I assume I'll end up with atleast some holes and I guess I'll trim back the ugly leaves as new leaves come up.  Its been making new leaves very seldomly, but maybe the stress will speed it up some.  fingers crossed.

[I did a dumb thing]

I WAY over dosed H2O2 on my plants.  I've been getting so mad at BBA and staghorn that I pulled all the plants that I could and dunked them in hydrogen peroxide.  I went way over board and left them in too long, partly out of frustration and partly out of distraction.  I think my Anubias isn't going to have any leaves left and my poor scarlet temple stems are also going to have to grow new leaves too.

 

I didn't do the java fern peeking into the photo though so at least it was spared.

 

 

[Tank Cycling Question.]

Ohh if you have ada soil I wouldn't add crushed coal.  They'd just fight it out together

Also if you're going shrimp with Ada soil you could do caridinia if you want

[Tank Cycling Question.]

yeah thats a ton of nitrate.  I'd do a 50% WC before adding fish.  there will still be plenty of nitrite to keep your bacteria colony going.

 

Where did your ph start and what fish do you plan on keeping?  My generic advice would be to just throw some crushed coral in your HOB (or some other place with flow) and not worry about ph anymore.  But if you're keeping something special you may want to do something different.  Also since 6.0 is the bottom of the scale the most you can say is the ph is <=6.0

 

 

 

[Let’s get ready for summer tubbing!]

Last fall I gave a friend 20 white clouds for his gold fish pond. It's too early to see if they made it but I'll report back if we spot them.  My hope is they're a lot faster than a gold fish.

[Bloated guppies cardinals are fine.]

ok he got a epsom salt bath and i'm going to fast him for a few days.  hopefully he'll get better.  i did some searching and the white poop string (not wiggling) is actually just a normal poop for fish who haven't eaten in a bit, so perhaps his stomach is blocked, or perhaps his stomach is fine.  either way that probably means its fatal unless its blocked and the salt bath helps him unblock.  I'm not too optimistic. 

[It's done! New filter installed]

Nice setup!  Are you going to increase stocking or are most of the fish hiding in the back?

It looks like your otos got in an argument and don't want to hang out with each other anymore.

[Bloated guppies cardinals are fine.]

i really feel like it'll be hard to feed less on this tank maybe I can put him in a mesh breeder box and fast him for a week or something.  

Right now they're getting krill flake.  5 days a week

[Aquarium Science High School Class]

On 3/18/2022 at 11:43 AM, GoGreen said:

1.  Curriculum Ideas?  This is by far the biggest thing as 80 minutes a day for 9 weeks is a lot of time to fill. 

I often wonder how highschool teachers do it.  Filling 3 1 hour lectures a week in college is hard enough.  I can't imagine 5 80min classes a week and teaching more than one class.

I think there's opportunity for some ecology.  It might be cool to have a multi-quarter or multi-year even closed jar system. 

 

There's also a lot of opportunity to show how chemistry and math can be applied.  eg, if you have a 40% protein food, and you 20% water change every week, and no plants, how much can you feed every week and still keep nitrate under 50ppm.  That requires chemistry, biochemistry, nitrogen cycle (ecology?), difference equations (not calculus if you break things down by discrete weeks). 

You can talk about ph and buffering. 

Its not my area, but I'm sure there's a lot to say about plants too. 

You could even use "fish for profit" to teach basic business/economic principles.

 

On 3/18/2022 at 11:43 AM, GoGreen said:

. Stocking of their tanks?  If the kids are going to buy their tank, they can stock it however they want (obviously taking into account the needs of their fish).  What should I have the kids do for the tanks that they do not wish to purchase?  My biggest concern is what to do with them after breaking down the tank to start the next group of classes. 

I'd say either live bearers, because they're cheap, robust (if locally bred), and you can always throw them back in a 40 breeder and give/sell the extras to the LFS.  Or medaka (similar to live bearers but you need a little more care with the eggs and babies).  Or zebra danios, only because they're a model organism (like medaka) so there's a lot of rigorous protocols for taking care of them. 

 

Actually, with medaka you have the opportunity to watch eggs develop under a microscope and they lay eggs constantly.  The eggs also develop slow enough and are large enough that you can catch all the stages unlike some fish that hatch in a couple days.  I have a journal post somewhere following the development of some of my eggs if you want to take a look.

 

On 3/18/2022 at 11:43 AM, GoGreen said:

3. Equipment- For those of you that have set up fish rooms, when is it more economical to buy a linear piston pump vs individual pumps.  Each of the 10 gallon tanks are going to have sponge; if I have 15 a class, would I be better served buying 2 or 3 pumps and splitting the air or should I invest in a system.  What about if I end up with more kids?  Where would people draw the line economically? (knowing that I have a public school budget)

Even 4 pumps aquarium pumps is about 60-80$, which is still a lot cheaper than a linear piston pump.   I think you'd end up bleeding off a lot of the excess air from one of the big piston pumps. 

[Bloated guppies cardinals are fine.]

So I lost a guppy about 3-4 months ago (i forget exactly)  I didn't think too much because maybe that one was just poor stock and over bread in really hard water (my tap is soft, but my tank is about 175tds).  Then two weeks ago I lost another one (he might have been an endler or hybrid, he was quite small).  This time before he died I noticed he was slowly looking duller and his anal fins were looking raggid and he was looking quite fat.  at the time I chalked it up to him being to aggressive at feeding but now I'm not so sure.  I also don't feed much, or every day.  That was my oldest guppy (a little over a year old) so I thought maybe old age (I'm VERY good at denial).  but now the last guppy in this tank who has also been looking fat is starting to look even fatter.  like as round as he is tall.  I don't see any actual pineconing but he's def bloated.  I've noticed some stringy poop but i see it rarely (so either he's mostly not constipated, or he's REALLY constipated). 

 

He's still active, he still begs for food and actively eats.  As for a diagnosis though I'm a bit at a loss.  It could be all three guppies have the same slow disease, or... not.  I don't see any other sign of disease.  My 7 cardinals are all fine.  The otos all seem fine (though they're really hard to count because they take turns hiding). 

I inject co2 (on the low side).  kh ~2 gh 6ish  ph mid 7 during the day (tap comes out at 8.0-9.0 but has 20 tds too, so its not very buffered).  0/0/50 or less on nitrogen. (EDIT: temp is 24c)

 

Here's the best photos I can get with a phone and an excited guppy.  Any ideas?  epsom salt bath?  aquarium salt?  meds?

 

[why don't we ever talk about sulfur and plant nutrition ?]

On 3/17/2022 at 11:37 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

Here's a chart of Nutrient to plant mass (dry mass composition). I think enough sulfur is in tap water to cover most needs. 

Actually it's that table that made me ask because there's almost as much S as P according to that table and P is featured prominently.  But I think the other point you and others have made about it "secretly" being in most of the other nutrient salts explains it

[plant ID? rotalla sp.]

I checked my desk lamp and it's 8000lux so about 6x my fish light!  That's probably why it likes growing there so much

[why don't we ever talk about sulfur and plant nutrition ?]

Thanks Roy!

 

I just assumed S would be on the "elemental analysis".  Why is it left off?  I use equilibrium which apparently has plenty of -sulfates but doesnt list it in their analysis, so I guess I'm all good.

Edit: thanks everyone!  My phone showed me only roys reply at first for some reason. 

[Quarantining pea puffers]

I've heard the young ones aren't so aggressive.  Is that true?  If they're young is it easier?

[why don't we ever talk about sulfur and plant nutrition ?]

of course NPK get a lot of attention and next to calcium and magnesium sulfur is the next most abundant nutrient.  But I don't see it in any plant deficiency chart and I don't see it in easy green either. 

 

Is fish food so loaded with sulfur that it never matters?

[Scarlett Temple]

I've got mine growing (with algae) with co2 injection (lowish) and a cheap nicrew light set on one of the lower intensities.  the stems melted on me at first.  they stopped melting when I let it float until there were roots at the nodes. 

 

I think the secret is to not plant it until you see roots.  the secret may also be CO2 but my light is pretty low so I'm not sure it would out pace "natural" co2 assuming your ph was below 7.5-8ish.

 

I've got inert gravel from a big box store and easy green.

[Was there a special fish you always wanted but never got?]

I've always wanted an octopus.  But salt water is too crazy for me and even if I had a salt water setup I hear they're really sensitive and hard to keep and they only live a year and come to you a few months old.  Plus there's a dozen other reasons why its a bad idea.  But if they ever discover a fresh water octopus that I can keep in my water then I'm all over that.

[plant ID? rotalla sp.]

high maintenance like it grows too fast or you need something special?

[plant ID? rotalla sp.]

it was just sold as "bunch plant 3.99$" 😉 in the lower light plants tank at my LFS

looking at google photos wallichii looks closer.  but its hard to say especially when judging by color where growth conditions matter.

 

I'm not running CO2 in my shrimp tank or my random tub of plants and the internet says they both need CO2 and high light.  but its doing really well in my random tub so maybe there's hope!

 

In anycase, thanks for the input guys! 

 

 

 

 

[has anyone ever undersized their (bio) filtration?]

I run a tidal 35.  I'm not really suggesting anyone throw out their sponge, and mine is full of sponge with a top layer of floss.  But I just have this nagging feeling that it all doesn't really matter, and its just flow and mixing that matters unless you're running a bare tank.

 

I'm too afraid to try it but I'm wondering if anyone else has on purpose or by accident.

[plant ID? rotalla sp.]

I'm pretty sure this is a rotalla.  at first i thought it was rotundifolia, but the leaves seem more fine than photos i've seen, they're more like fine pine needles in size. 

EDIT: Side note this photo is the bottom of the trimmings.  I bought the bunch planted just the healthy tops and they all died.  the ugly bottoms i threw in a shoebox full of water and easy green and they grew like this under my desk lamp that I turn on and off whenever i feel like.

[has anyone ever undersized their (bio) filtration?]

By that I mean, have you ran a filter and had it be unable to keep up with the ammonia or nitrite, and then upgraded your filter/media and had it keep up?  I'm just wondering how much is really needed.  Part of me thinks that all you need is a power head/airstone to mix the water.  Assuming you're not running a bare tank.

 

To me my HOB is really just for mechanical "polishing" and I put sponge in there too because I'm too afraid to be wrong.