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Daniel

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Everything posted by Daniel

  1. Daniel
    Exactly, I definitely underestimated how small they start
  2. Daniel
    I don't use GFCI in the fishroom so I suppose I could shock the snot out of myself, but in 51 years of keeping fish I have yet to shock myself with something aquarium related. But if I suddenly stop posting tomorrow, it will be because I jinxed it and went to that big aquarium in the sky due to electrocution. On the other hand, although not exactly surge protection, I have do have 2 APC 3000VA's that all my aquarium stuff is hooked into. I think this suppresses surges, but I have it just cover times when the power is out. I don't have squat on the big tank because I think it would be fine for months if not indefinitely without power. When we have had extended outages, we use the water from the big tank to flush toilets and cook with. But I think the ultimate back up plan would be just a whole bunch of the USB Nano air pumps running off battery backup. I bet that would run forever.
  3. Daniel
    Hi Kim, welcome! What kind of fish do you keep?
  4. Daniel
    Yeah, I think guppies swim around tasting everything going 'is this food...is this food'. They were my first tropical fish when I was 9 or 10. I kept them in quart mayonnaise jars. When that first pregnant female dropped her babies, I was hooked!
  5. Daniel
    I think flake food (maybe). They were pretty curious and tended to wander in. My memory was they would be in the trap in the mornings. I wish I had those Endlers back now. Sometimes when something is working well you don't appreciate what you've got. The other way to catch the Endler females was to net them at night when they were sleeping, but that wasn't effective enough to eradicate them.
  6. Daniel
    I once put Endler's in my big tank and they bred like guppies! I regretted it but there was no way to get them out again short of draining all 500 gallons. I got one of these minnow traps and within a few days I had captured the last female, which put an end to the endless Endler's population explosion.
  7. Daniel
    The video dropped right as @Cathee Turner was asking about about pH and KH. As @ForestJenn says, perfect timing!
  8. Daniel
    This video might have the answer: *The most expensive way possible to increase pH and decrease your water hardness at the same time apparently is to move to Seattle, WA ☺️
  9. Daniel
    Oooh! I want that too!. Don't think it would make my tanks any better, but oh the possibilities of playing with a new toy like that! We could probably hack it to make it work in freshwater. There is a guy named Harry who shows how to make the Neptune stuff do anything you want it to do. The Neptune stuff is infinitely hackable.
  10. Daniel
    @Bill Smith, if anyone could make my 4k streaming camera submarine, I expected it would be you. Let me know when you are ready, and I will help you test out the prototype.
  11. Daniel
    Sometimes you have a special fish. Sometimes it is because of your history with the fish. Grumpy now has a history and a story that will always make him special. Sometimes you bond with a fish like Cory does with Murphy because Murphy has a personality, a look in the eye that lets you know something is going on in there. I have never felt that with a neon tetra, lovely as they are. Good for Grumpy and his gumption!
  12. Daniel
    No, no, no on tracking prices for stuff! I have agreed with my wife to only spend $150 a month on aquarium stuff and at this point I think I have spent every months budget out to November.
  13. Daniel
    I wish there was an underwater remote controlled submarine 4k camera that would swim in my aquarium and stream the results back to my phone. I could watch fish breed and check on fry from anywhere. And if I were in a boring meeting, I could get out my phone and watch my fish instead.
  14. Daniel
    I always feel like I am doing my part when I see the orange bellies!
  15. Daniel
    A lot of accidental breeding seems to involve hornwort! Like @Lynze who has a love/hate relationship with java moss, I have a love/hate relationship with hornwort, probably more on the love side. As @H.K.Luterman notes above it makes great cover for tanks without lids, helps with water quality, and is a good hiding place for so many kinds of fry. It is where my pygmy sunfish always like to nest. The only downside is that is grows like crazy in all kinds of water in all kinds of lighting conditions! I have composted my fair share. Now, if I could only start a business based on hornwort production I would have a very sweet retirement plan.
  16. Daniel
    I am watching the baby discus eat Vibra bites this morning and I am still in shock how quickly they took to it. They look like a little herd of grazing cattle and moving across the bottom of the tank just gobbling it all up. And it is not just that they are eating it, I think they actually like it.
  17. Daniel
    I store them in the fridge. I try not to buy too much at once. I would rather go through the eggs quickly and have a good hatch rate than ordering in bulk to get a better price
  18. Daniel
    Wow, that's good to know! What gave you the idea to try that?
  19. Daniel
    Just this week on the forum we have had several posts about unexpected fry. @Sliceofnature found hill stream loach fry, @Dawn had surprise babies (either danios or rainbow fish), and @Hamaquatics had guppy babies sooner than expected. My guess is our fish breed more often than we are aware of. And you don’t see what you don’t expect to see. Yesterday, when @Brandy and I were messaging, I said that I wished my Apistogramma would spawn. At the time I said that, it is likely they already had and I hadn’t even noticed. Probably what kept me from noticing was just the assumption that they had not spawned. One of the lessons is to assume less about what is going on in your tank. When something is different, don’t blow it off, figure out what the cause might be. And realize that the fish don’t read the books. My Apistogramma nijsseni are said to prefer to spawn at a pH of 6 – 6.5. The source of this information (the ichthyologist Uwe Römer) is impeccable, yet my pH was 7.38 at time they spawned. Fish don’t read the books. So maybe the default assumption should be that fry might show up at anytime. This is good a reason to keep planted tanks and even a bit of a floating plant like hornwort as this provides cover and first food (infusoria). It also is another reason to have a brine shrimp hatchery ready to go at 24 hours notice.
  20. Daniel
    This is the best part of the hobby, babies. Now the fun begins, get the baby brine shrimp ready, get another tank ready....and sit by the tank and watch for hours!
  21. Daniel
    I get it now. Dave, you seem so hi-tech, I thought it automatically did the testing somehow and I just didn't understand it! I bet @Bill Smith is working on a solar powered automated system as we speak. 🙂
  22. Daniel
    How does it work?
  23. Daniel
    I use Fusion 360 too. I hadn't (up to this point) thought of using it for Aquarium stuff. I haven't done any additive, my stuff is mostly machining.
  24. Daniel
    Very impressive. Post more photos as the tank matures.
  25. Daniel
    I harvest from the bottom with a piece of airline tubing. It is pure swimming baby brine shrimp with no unhatched eggshells. I don't rinse, in fact, I squirt the baby brine shrimp, saltwater and all into each tank. I don't think this is recommended but it has never caused a problem for me. I feed baby discus, pygmy sunfish, and apistos this way several times a day. I am not that concerned about a fraction of a milliliter of saltwater going in to a freshwater aquarium. If I never did water changes I am sure it would build up eventually, but I do do water changes frequently. At this point I have convinced myself this is actually beneficial to each tank, but I haven't a scintilla evidence and am very possibly delusional on this.
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