Aaron Hanson

Moving some super red bristlenose fry to my fry tank, and trimmed some of my Madagascar lace plant leaves. Prior to trimming, the leaves go to the surface and drape down to the substrate.

This is a future set up I’d like to do as this type of habitat and group of fishes are my favorite. Very cool set up, and I’m very jealous!

@ApolloJoe is your main piece of driftwood all one piece? It looks great! The Val and Pogo should take off in no time. I love your fish selection too. All are classic, super cool species.

@Tomdobbins I remember when I started getting into aquariums I would watch hours and hours of YouTube videos. It’s quite a powerful resource indeed. welcome to the forum by the way!

Welcome to the forum @JamieB513! I really like the mossy tube structures on the right. Are those something you bought or something you made yourself?

Other than the lift tube, I would add bags of peat, crushed coral, carbon, or bio rings/ cycling media behind to keep out of sight, but still reap the benefits. Finding the right balance of space behind the filter to house the equipment and unsightly things, but minimizing it’s footprint in the aquarium proved to be a challenge for me when I used them. They do make photography and video easier for tanks that are end-on-end, however. Always pros and cons😅

I’ve never tried adding water after the initial mix, but you could always try! No sense throwing it away if you could possibly fix it. The worst thing that could happen is if something goes wrong, and you have to throw the batch away. I was thinking you could just add a bit more boiling water to your mixture, but microwaving it could work too (I honestly have no idea). let us know how it turns out if you try a little experiment because I would love to learn!

This is one piece of advice that I’ve implemented that’s helped me a lot with raising fry. Keep the food as close as possible to the fry. I’ve found sera micron will get the fry to a big enough size to take newly hatched baby brine shrimp (typically 3-5 days in my experience). I use a small measuring cap filled with tank water and a pipette to mix the sera micron together with the water. Then, I’ll disperse the solution near the fry to graze on.

I agree with @Anjum. 1:3 repashy to water ratio seems to work the best for me in terms of the consistency once the mixture has cooled. If you don’t need a lot of food, I would also recommend measuring with tablespoons rather than cups, as previously mentioned. I also bought separate utinsils like a cheap sauce pan, whisk and measuring devices for “fish food cooking” only, but don’t feel like this is necessary. Keep experimenting with small batches, and you’ll have it down in no time. good luck!!

I have an LFS that constantly has these in stock. I bought a group of 8 two years ago, but I lost two along the way due to stressful moves. They are great beginner Cory that are a bit different/ unusual. I’ve primarily used community plus, bottom scratcher, soilent green. The catfish will kick up a bunch of food particulates that the smaller tetras and pencilfish will swoop in and pick off. I typically feed in the morning before I leave for work, and I may feed again at night before bed. I find this super helpful for the grazing aspect— fish are held over for a longer period of time. pictures are of my super reds feeding on soilent green, various corys feeding on bottom scratcher, and a female apisto with fry feeding on community plus fry powder.

Wow what an awesome piece! +1 to leaving out to dry, scrubbing down thoroughly with soap (animal safe of course lol) and water, and wrapping in multiple trash bags on the way home. It’s A quick, short term solution that should work just fine. for me, I just collected three pieces and taking them through my “sterilization” method (these were all collected from a freshwater source). I let them sit in the sun to dry. I’ll scrub with dawn dish soap and warm water to get off all the surface remnants and let dry again. After the wood is dried, I’ll dilute hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle, then spray it all over making sure I get it in all the cracks/ crevices. I’ll spray the pieces down with a garden hose after. I repeat the spray and rinse, so I’ve done it three times total. No real science behind doing it three times, I just find that this is what has worked for me in the past. I also spray and rinse in a black tote I bought from lowes for like $10-20. Good luck getting your treasure home!

Here are the stands that I made with 2x4’s. 6x10g’s and a double 20g long stand, as well. In my experience, DIY wood stands are a bit cheaper monetarily, but will take longer to plan, acquire materials, and assemble, versus fabricated stands you can assemble in about 15 minutes. Another consideration is the dimensions of the stand. Obviously, you can customize the dimensions of a wood stand when designing it, but with the fabricated stands, you may be a bit limited in dimensions. Also, I just found this out, so I thought I would share: most fabricated stands include the upright posts in the length dimension. So, if the stand says 48”, the length that you have to work with to put tanks on may actually 45”. One thing I’ve done is rewatch all of the fish room tours of breeders. Look at the design of the stands they use and try to figure out which one(s) would work best for your application. For example, a stand that’s a little more heavy duty, maybe a DIY stand for King of DIY or a gladiator fabricated steel rack. If you need one that saves on space with less tanks, maybe one using 2x4’s and bolts to support the sides of the tank. Aquarium Co-Op retail store uses this stand design, and one of Dean’s walls has a similar, but also different, design to this. Again, it’s all up to you in finding a design that works best for your application, but have fun experimenting and designing. Don’t settle on a design for the sake of having it up sooner. I found this process very rewarding when I finished. Good luck!

Thank you for your experience because this was my exact question… I was wondering if the length measurement was taken for the actual shelving space or if it included the extra length with the legs/posts. I wanted to get the 48 inch to fit four 20 gallons, but I was unsure about the length measurement. I have been searching the internet for a long time trying to figure this out. Very helpful, thank you!

You are in a bit of a bind with the other two tanks. If you aren’t too hard pressed to get them breeding, you could just wait to see what happens. Some sort of dither fish sounds like a great avenue to go; I really enjoy pencil fish as an alternative to tetras, but tetras are an obvious choice, as well.

If you have another tank on hand, you could separate the two from each other. Take the presumed male out and put him in his own tank and keep the presumed female in the tank you want to keep them in long term. This has helped me with two things: identifying “sneaker males” and allowing the female to establish herself in the tank before the male. For the first point, when you remove the dominant male, he is no longer suppressing the less dominant fish in the tank. So, if your presumed female is in fact female, she should start displaying female coloration naturally as she settles into the tank without the pressure of the male. If your female is actually a male, when you remove the dominant male, the less dominant male will start to show it’s male characteristics because it no longer being suppressed by the presence of the other more dominant male. If she is a female, she will establish her own territories within the tank, so when you do add the male back into the tank, she has the “advantage” of the tank being her territory. I’ve found this helps balance aggression between pairs I’ve selected in the past, but this idea is also purely antidotal experience and no actual science backs this theory. With all that being said, this does hinge on you having another tank to temporarily house the dominant male😅. But, This has been the easiest and most definitive way for me to select male and female apistos from a group without physically watching a female lay eggs or buying a big, boisterous male etc. In reality, less dominant males can suppress their male characteristics as long as there’s a more dominant male in their environment. Hopefully this helps, or at least I’ve entertained some thought into adding another tank to your current situation!

I have also diluted and sprayed rocks with hydrogen peroxide as an alternative to the boiling method. This would be a precaution as boiling rocks can be dangerous. Hard scape collecting is one of my favorite parts of the hobby, so good luck!

You’ll definitely get some great photos! If you have a hard time finding a mirror, I think I just bought a cheapish ($5-$8 it looks like now) on amazon. I had a really aggressive male who would constantly beat on my female regardless if I had dithers in the tank, added extra hiding places, etc. I tried “mirror therapy” once per day for 20-30 minutes (that seemed to be about the time they became disinterested in the reflection), and I ended up with a spawn at the end of the week.

Great looking tank Marcia! Just curious, what was the cause of getting your first aquarium back in 2020 and why did you choose the fish you chose? If you listen to the Aquarist Podcast at all by @Randy, my favorite part of any episode he does with a new guest is their origin story, and how they got into the aquarium hobby.

I suppose I should’ve explained the method of “mirror therapy.” You are trying to simulate another pair of Rams in the tank and in the pair’s territory. The pair you have will flare and flash in front of the mirror, and this will promote behaviors to establish, or maybe in your case strengthen, a pair bond. In regards to the reflections from the aquarium, I’m assuming there’s not enough reflection on the glass the pair can see or recognize the reflection to be another pair. Ted Judy has a really good video talking about what he does when setting up a tank to breed wild apistos which he explains in more detail his method behind “mirror therapy.” Not all the information is needed to spawn domestic rams, but it does have some good general information for spawning dwarf cichlids that I’ve used with great success. He talks about the mirror at 8:30 for a time stamp.

I’ve drained and rinsed mine always, but I have never done it differently, so I can’t say the benefits and drawbacks of the different methods. I watched a video recently from Tom at TM_Aquatics talk about his method of shining his light in the middle of the bottle rather than the bottom. His reasoning is separate the hatched shrimp from the unmatched eggs. If you drain from the bottom (which is what I’ve always done) you get both hatched shrimp and unmatched eggs at the bottom, but if you cut the air and shine your little in the middle of the bottle, you’ll only suck out the shrimp once everything is settled. He does this because he has had issues feeding baby plecos the baby’s brine shrimp, but they have problems digesting and passing the unmatched brine shrimp eggs. Kind of an interesting take and thought process , but it makes sense in my head. I might need to experiment more with this in the future.

Alternatively, you could try adding a small mirror to the tank for 30 or so minutes once every other day. I’ve bought a small hand held mirror for make-up or one barbers use to show you the back of your head when you get a hair cut. I like this method compared to adding another female because I normally won’t have tank space to house a spare female or I won’t run a tank hot enough to house it (I always kept my rams at 84 degrees). Reading through your thread, you seem to have all the points checked for breeding: water quality, Male and Female, quality feeding regiment, spawning site. I do recall reading you have Corydoras in the tank, so just a bit of food for thought: If you are planning to raise the fry, I would think about removing the spawning site. I have had issues with cories harassing my rams to get at the eggs, and either they get to the eggs or the parents are stressed out enough to the point they eat their eggs themselves. I hope you can crack the code on the pair you have, they are very beautiful!

Hello all members, lurkers, and anyone in between; Unfortunately, I am not typing this from sunny San Diego (I don’t mean to stereotype, I just don’t have the motivational drive to open my phone and ask what the weather is like in San Diego). I am typing from humble Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I formerly lived in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN, but moved to Sioux Falls for school where I anticipate being for the foreseeable future. My origin story, as Mr. Aquarist Podcast Randy likes to ask, begins on a bus ride my freshman year of high school (2012). Two of my best buddies were talking about their fish and aquariums, while I was left out of the conversation as I had no meaningful input. I don’t remember what fish they were discussing at the time, but I knew I had to get an aquarium for myself. Soon after that fateful day, I went to Petsmart with my mom to purchase my first aquarium which was a standard twenty gallon aquarium package. At this point, I unlocked Pandora’s box. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was getting into a life long hobby I know I will be a part of forever. In the years to come, I would inherit tanks from both the two friends who’s parents were sick of their fish. I received a 55 gallon and a 10 gallon with the standard thunder dome mix of cichlids and other oddballs. I would eventually give away all of the fish I had inherited to start my journey in African Cichlids which was my hobby until I moved for college. In my high school years (2012-2016) I consumed content from Dustin at Dustin’s Fish Tanks and @Cory. I enjoyed Dustin’s shorter videos and high energy, but I also enjoyed Cory’s long, conversational style Daily-dose videos. In my college years, I would range from having a single 10 gallon to building my own aquarium racks, breeding fish in outdoor tubs, and doing other experiments with live foods. All of this is due to my first two years being in a small dorm room versus my last two years renting a house from my college baseball coach who literally could not kick us out, so I took full advantage of the opportunity to expand. I found myself cementing my passion in breeding fish when I bred German Blue Rams for the first time. I would go on to breed several other species, but I enjoyed observing behaviors like social hierarchy, territorial disputes, courtship and spawn preparation in all of the species I kept. I am now in a transitional phase in my hobby. I am renting an apartment with my significant other, consolidating tanks, and trying to find a configuration I like ascetically while being functional for my needs. Ultimately, I would like to experiment more with breeding species, but for now, space is at a premium. So, for now, trying to enjoy and breed a few species to keep my name in the hat at the local fish store. I am excited to learn from all the other members as I continue my journey. I also hope I can be a source of knowledge, all be it limited, to other members on the forum, as well. I will sign off with a few pictures from my extensive picture archives of successes, failures, and things I have learned along the way. Peace.