Nordlys Fish Room

@Colu I did try some of that Expel P a couple weeks ago. The progress is slow but the fish is putting on weight now. Still boney but the hard edges are softening and I think he’s growing a bit. That one probably just needed multiple types of dewormer to flush him clean. Update video via iCloud link

I have been considering a more aggressive dewormer. He’s picky but I have been able to directly feed him with tweezers so I know he’s eating.

8 second video - fish in question is roughly centered in the frame Sorry for the iCloud link but For some reason I got an error message when I tried to attach a video from my phone. I picked these young black-banded sunfish up in early September. This is the only one that has stayed thin and maybe even gotten worse as time passed. I’ve treated with a couple rounds of ParaCleanse but there hasn’t been the recovery I was hoping for if it were normal tapeworms. He does eat but only frozen food (the rest of the sunfish do take the Xtream nano pellets readily). In the video he has just eaten (I specifically target feed him) and his belly is full and you can see some of his siblings that are much thicker than him. Yet he still stays skinnier than ever. Does anyone have any ideas? tank parameters are: temp: 69-70 F ph: 7.6 nitrate: approx 25 ppm

My late Grandfather had a camp on the Kenai river since before it was popular. He would save the previous year's roe as bait for the current salmon season. When my brother and I were preschoolers and way to small to do actual fishing, my grandfather keep us out of the way and out of trouble by tying a chunk of that roe to a bit of fishing line. We would play on the bank and feed the baby salmonoids and other tiny fish with those bait chunks. I still have vivid memories of interacting with all those baby fish and it created a lifelong love for fish in general. So naturally, aquariums are a logical conclusion for me. And even now I take my kids to the tiny stream in our backyard and we feed the baby grayling sometimes (after feeding the fish inside the house of course).

Yep I keep an extra sponge filter running on my 40 gallon goodeid tank. If I set up a new tank or need a hospital tank, I just pull the filter out and use it (and replace it with a new filter for next time). In my opinion, it’s the easiest way to instantly cycle another tank and I’ve never run into ammonia issues that way.

I would have a hard time leaving without some loaches. I’ve had my eye on their “pigmy striped loach”, “batik loach”, and “serpent loach” for a while. They’re frequently in stock there. They also have some metallicus livebearers that I like. Or maybe some sparkling gouramis. I’d go nuts if I could actually visit sometime. I have a hard enough time saying “no, not yet, not this time” when I read their stock list every Friday night.

I occasionally catch wild scuds from an (mostly) unused gravel mine at work. I also sometimes scoop caddisfly larvae out of the creek bordering my backyard and I’ve gotten some fairy shrimp and mosquito larvae out of some temporal pools that show up in my backyard in the springtime. Every mosquito I swat in the house ends up in a fish tank as well. I avoid putting anything in a tank that looks like it could fly away later. I've failed at a daphnia culture before. There’s a few things I’ll try differently next time I attempt it.

I’ve done a little bit of everything but my last two tanks have been just rinsed pea gravel. It’s really cheap and I think it looks nice with large river rocks.

Yeah I’ve bought multiple batches. The ones at the three year mark are starting to look kind of ratty (color is still good though) and I’ve started to get some losses from that first batch. The tank I keep them in is unheated but over the hwbb heater so it stays about 74 degrees - they might last longer at cooler temps. I’ve always kept them in 4’ tanks unless I’m growing them out. They’re very high strung and easily startled so that entire 4 feet gets used. A tight/heavy lid is a must as well. I found some crispy shiners last year when I thought my lid was fine and now I’ve taped the entire plastic backstrip down to the tank frame. They do spar with themselves quite a bit but seem to leave other fish alone. They’re unfussy eaters. They seem like to hang in the current while angled up towards the surface (presumably looking for food drifting downstream). If you blow the jet from a powerhead across the front pane of the tank, you can keep your school front and center most of the time. as far as my favorite NA native fish: Bluespotted sunfish

This is Genghis, he was rescued from the local Petco adoption bin but we’ve had him several years now. This February he had a health scare. healthy Genghis I noticed he hadn’t been coming out for dinner for a few days in a row so I became concerned and began poking around the rock pile that the dojos like to nap in. He reluctantly popped out and I noticed that he’s lost quite a bit of weight and his skin is all red and inflamed. I did some googling and noticed that it’s likely a bacterial infection. So I set up a hospital tank and add some maracyn (thanks aquarium coop - I had it on hand). He was just a listless, limp noodle at this point and didn’t fight me when I picked him up to move him. Genghis in quarantine- don’t know why it’s upside down sorry Eventually after marinating a few days, the inflamed skin healed up and I noticed him finally searching for food. That was encouraging because he had been ignoring food for so long. We worked up to an entire cube of blood worms and a small chunk of repashy daily. I kept him in the tank solo for about a month so he didn’t have to compete for food. He started to look restless and cramped in a 20 gallon tank so I considered him healed and reunited him with his buddies. present day Genghis enjoying some repashy He still has some scarring (the super inflamed areas are now pale) and a little more weight to put on but he’s been pretty much recovered for 3-4 months now and does all his normal activities - sleeping, eating, moving plants around, rolling rocks, draping himself on objects, shredding all the watersprite in the tank, splattering duckweed all over the wall when I open the lid, etc.

I’ve bought fish from Sachs Aquaculture, the Wet Spot, Imperial Tropicals, and Get Gills. I’ve never had anything go wrong from any of those places. My mom (lives in the same general region) has ordered from Wet Spot and Aquatic Arts and has had things go smoothly as well. You’ll definitely get some horror stories, but in my experience ordering online is easy and reliable. edit: I guess maybe talking about other stores is a no-go per above comment? I have no issue with this being deleted.

I’m assuming your completed rack would be 3000 pounds or so. Put it up against a load bearing wall and span as many floor joists as you can. That way your joists (2x6 probably) are mostly in shear stress where lumber is pretty solid. According to this properties of materials website, you can expect white pine to hold almost 900 lbs/in^2 in shear before rupture. http://www.matweb.com/search/datasheet_print.aspx?matguid=1bec7114d2524b63826044c3cc6c344c A single 2x6 cross section is 8.25 square inches. Now obviously there are MANY other loads associated with your floor and we haven’t touched on torque/moments but the shear strength of lumber is the main reason the area by load bearing walls is so sturdy. As a safety precaution to help with any extra torque generated (the farther away from the wall, the greater the torque) you should go ahead and add a vertical support underneath some of the joists carrying your future racks. I’m assuming in this scenario that you’re on the ground floor above a crawl space. Disclaimer: I think you’d be fine with your rack, but I’m not a structural engineer, just an internet idiot. And you asked the internet, not an engineer.

Hard to pick, but maybe my school of blackline loaches.

Stand for a recent 75 gallon based on Joey’s videos. After the first CAD drawing it’s pretty easy to shrink/stretch the dimensions to whatever sized tank is next. I like my stands a hair taller so I can more comfortably watch the fish while standing.

Yeah I know what you mean. I’ve even had killifish that enjoyed picking at the hikari algae wafers.