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And how could we forget The Naked Gun???

Let’s find out together, shall we? My new angelfish laid eggs in quarantine, so we’ll see how this goes. The parents are maaaaad…

This thread has definitely got me looking for tanks in TV and movies now. Watching Men in Black 3 the other day with the kids when I see a familiar face that looks an awful lot like my Amphilophus Sagittae, Casper... Unfortunately, every single tank in this scene meets with a fairly predictable end, so it's probably safe to assume Casper's brother/sister didn't make it. But, there's almost no water spilled compared to how big the tanks are, so I guess that's a plus? On the other end of the spectrum, it got me thinking about another "fish tank in a restaurant explodes" scene in a movie which I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet: Mission Impossible, in which agent Ethan Hunt blows up the world's cloudiest fish tank... ...that is filled with an positively ridiculous amount of water... And if you're fan of the show New Girl, a large (I'm going to say at least a 125), unfiltered and unheated (though, thankfully, empty) tank also meets with an unfortunate end in an apartment on the 4th floor. 😬 Sorry downstairs neighbors...

When, I first got mine, I cut the stems about 1/2"-1" from the rock wool and planted the stems in my display tank. Then, I put the pot with rock wool in another tank. When the pot would grow more, I'd just repeat the process until I had a nice little pearl weed grove on one side of my display...at least until I had algae problems, my platies uprooted a whole bunch while eating the algae and I gave up and pulled it all out.

@ApistoQueenI should also say that I had another 10 gallon tank that also has some hydra problems along with some very young ram fry and one of my really successful breeding pairs. I was too nervous to put the powder into that tank without testing it first. I ended up putting in some (again, overly-abundant) ramshorns from the other tank in and not going so crazy feeding BBS for about a week or two and their numbers are definitely reduced. I'm sure they're not gone, but there definitely aren't as many. I'm still feeding BBS, but I'm really conscious to not just dump them in there (like I do other fry tanks that also have hydra problems) It's easy to just feed feed feed your fry (especially with BBS and smaller foods), but as long as your tank is pretty well established and you have some plant matter for infusoria to utilize, I don't think they'll want for food. They might not grow as quickly, but you won't get a hydra explosion either.

@LizzyduffI did pick all the bigger ramshorns out beforehand. The smaller ones that are still in there are still alive, but seem like they were probably affected in one way or another. They're all bunched up in one area of the tank where I've got some dwarf sag growing and don't seem to move much. They're definitely not dead, but they are sluggish and I would think they will probably die sooner or later. If you're worried about it and if you're planning to do the full three day treatment (I only did one day), I'd definitely save what you want. God knows I have enough ramshorns, though...

I had good luck killing hydra in my 40 gallon ram growout tank with this stuff. They were about a month old at the time. I did the first treatment and the hydra were wiped out by the next morning. HOWEVER, my tank did get really cloudy about 24 hours after treatment. I did a big water change and things were fine, but it was a little concerning. Maybe it was a bacterial bloom to deal with all the dead hydra? I never had any deaths or problems, but it was a relatively small bio load for a large volume of water. So, if you do go that route, I'd make sure to keep an eye on it.

I’m having limited success with hatching ram and angelfish eggs myself, namely getting effective water flow over the eggs. Thought the Ziss Egg Tumbler could be useful. Has anybody ever used it this way? It seems like it could be I’m sure someone smarter than me might have an opinion.

Thanks for the advice, @Colu. I had no idea that multiple treatments should be done. If I decide to go the medicated food route, is that in addition to dosing the water column or in place of it?

I've got a pretty heavily planted 125 community tank with an assortment of about 80 fish. For awhile, I had been seeing flashing and tried not to panic/play doctor. It eventually became clear that something was wrong though as more and more fish started flashing and having white, stringy poop. So, about a month ago, I treated the whole tank with a full round of General Cure (because that's what I had at the time). I even left it in after for a couple days before doing the initial water change and returned to my normal bi-weekly 50% water change schedule. Things seemed to improve, at least for a little bit. However, I recently started seeing the same symptoms again--flashing and white, stringy poop. This time, I went for Paracleanse. As near as I can tell, it's the same as General Cure, but I thought I'd have better luck. I'm on day 6 of treatment (no water change yet) and I'm still seeing white poop and some flashing. What should my next course of action be? I thought about trying to only catch fish that I see flashing or with white poop, but it's hard to differentiate between fish and there's at least 5 or 6 with white poop and catching all of them would be next to impossible in such a heavily-planted tank. Anybody got any bright ideas? Parameters: pH - 7.6 Ammonia - 0ppm Nitrite - 0ppm Nitrate - Who knows? API test kit reads at least 40. Tetra strips read around 20. ACO strips read barely 10. Hardness - 150ppm KH/Buffer - 40ppm Water Temperature - 78

@KaitieGNitrate tests are currently the bane of my existence. Based on the ACO strips, I need to be fertilizing like crazy and my plants are all going to die. Based on my API test kit, I'm a horrible fish keeper who should be ashamed of keeping my fish in such a nitrate-infested tank of sewage runoff.

I've got an army of ramshorn snails in mine. I keep the light on higher than I should so I grow plenty of algae/biofilm and I'll throw in some old sinking wafers maybe once a week just to make sure they're getting fed. I've also got a bunch floating hornwort that I keep in there to help mitigate any major parameter spikes. I hear you, though. It's nice to have a spare tank already going for some unexpected fry or sick fish that I pull out of my main display. Continually setting up and breaking down tanks, especially if it's just a quarantine, sucks.

At some point in my travels while buying used equipment, I acquired one of these things. It's basically an in-tank brine shrimp hatchery. As near as I can tell, you load it up like you would any brine shrimp hatchery and as the shrimp hatch, they slowly make their way out into the tank. I have two of the Ziss hatcheries, so I have have yet to use it and I'm highly skeptical as to its effectiveness, but it claims its for fresh and saltwater tanks and seems to be fairly well-reviewed. My number one concern would be the brine mixing with the existing tank water, but from some of the reviews, it doesn't sound like a huge problem, but you'd probably want to make sure your fish are at least somewhat salt-tolerant.

Looks like hydra to me as well, especially if you're feeding BBS. I think the test is if they shrink back if you put your finger or something near them, they're hydra. I recently had an outbreak myself in my ram fry growout tanks. The Co-op doesn't seem to like to go the chemical route and recommends a more long-term solution, but I was worried about killing my ram fry that I've put a lot of time into and didn't want them to starve if I cut down on food, so I wanted them gone as soon as possible. I put this stuff in yesterday and they all seem to be gone today. It's made from betel nut extract, so I'm not too concerned about it. Just keep in mind that if you do go this route that it will probably take out your snails so you should remove them an isolate them for awhile if you want to keep them.

I never seem to have great luck with nets in general, so I've been using a turkey baster to suck up/transport ram fry. It might not be the best solution, but it's worked OK for me.

Boesemani Rainbows. I had a group of 4 (3:1 female to male) in quarantine, so I figured I might as well throw a spawning mop in there to see if they'd do anything. I thought I'd see something on the mop and be able to pull a clutch or two of eggs. Turns out, they really get them in there where you can't see them and keep progressively laying them and they keep hatching out. I was pulling at least 10 fry a day out for about two weeks when I finally moved them into my main display tank. They're still growing out and next to impossible to count, but I'd say I've got at least 100 in my two little breeding tubs without even really trying.

@StruggleOh, no. I wasn't offended at all. I meant that was a brilliant idea and one that I hadn't even considered! I've spent the last few days trying to figure out how to make a divider that's small enough for fry not to get through...

You just blew my mind....

I've recently set up a rack for tanks in the garage after deciding to really give some breeding a try (more on that one day...maybe...). After some trial and error, I finally got my first spawn of black rams. It was the first time the parents were able to raise them without eating them, so it's fairly small (about 20 or so). They're currently isolated in the rams' tank in the a breeder box. At some point, I plan to move them to a growout 40 breeder on the rack, but I'm wondering when is a good time to do that? The 20 rams who are a month old would be the only fish in that tank and I would continue to add as more are (hopefully) produced. But I'm wondering, is there a concern about the tank being two big for such small fry? I have a empty 20 high I could put them in, but the little buggers were hard enough to catch once, I kinda don't want to have to move them more than once. Would I run into problems with them not being able to find food? Any other things I should be thinking about?

It looks like you can change your display name if click on your user name in the top right, go to Account Settings, then click on "Display Name" in the left column. It seems like you can only change it once every 30 days.

Sounds like you probably just accidentally cultured some infusoria. I'm currently working on a culture myself in my garage to feed some ram fry. If you're concerned about the "stagnant-ness" of it, you could always through an air stone in there for a bit.

@Hobbit I've been dispensing them into a cup. Then, I take the cup and pour them through this strainer, then I flip the strainer over a yogurt container and rinse with warm water using the sprayer attachment on my sink. Maybe I'm just handling them too much or they're getting beat up by the sprayer?

I keep going back and forth on it. I don’t feel good putting a bunch of extra salt in my tank, so I usually try to strain/rinse with warmish water to make it easier to squirt in with a pipette. But when I do, it seems like it kills 75% of the hatch, which seems to defeat the purpose. Anybody else have this issue?

Judging by how much they go to town on their zucchini, they're pretty well-fed.

Thursday is water change day at my house. Every time before I do a water change, I like to test my nitrate levels to see if/how much I need to fertilize. At some point along the way, I ended up using bottle number 1 of the nitrate test faster than bottle number 2 (messing up tests, spilling the vial halfway through, that sort of thing). Being the frugal (cheap) gentleman that I am, I wanted to use the second bottle up of my original kit before opening it on my new kit. It's not expired, but it's definitely older. So, I did a water test with bottle number 1 from my new kit and bottle number 2 from my old kit. I did the test correctly like I've done hundreds of time before (10 drops from bottle 1, turn vial over a few times, shake bottle two for 30 seconds, 10 drops from bottle 2, shake for a minute, wait five minutes, view results). Nitrates on both tanks came out at over 80ppm plus! Before I panicked and did a 90 percent water change on both tanks, I used some Coop test strips to double check. It's so hard to tell what the level actually is, but I could tell it wasn't anywhere near panic levels from the first test. I decided to do another test with both bottles from the new kit. Same procedure. This time, my one tank registered 10ppm and the other registered 20ppm (much more in normal ranges). I would think that it wouldn't matter which bottle the test came from since they should be essentially the same, but maybe not? Is there something else that I might have done to cause such a crazy high nitrate reading? I did test another tank right before, but I always make sure to rinse the vial and cap thoroughly before testing another tank. Has anybody else had this experience?