Jump to content

anewbie

Members
  • Posts

    2,585
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1
  • Feedback

    0%

Everything posted by anewbie

  1. For the pygmy I'd try a drip acclimination. Basically take a 5 galllon (or even 1 gallon) pail which has never been used for cleaning; put the pygmy in there with their water and then slowly drip water via an air-tube hose with a knot into the pail - I'd do that for an hour or so at 1/2 gallon per hour drip rate (the numbers don't have to be exact). RO water is closer to their native environment than hard-water. You are at a cross here because if you make the water super hard like 180 ppm the pygmy won't like that much; so you will have to compromise. I'd suggest something closer to 60-80 which is more favorable to the pygmy. KH isn't super important but the molly will want some calcium. Also if you add kh the ph will rise and that will impact the cycle and bacteria in the aquarium.
  2. It is unusual for tap water to have 0 gh; do you know the tds or ec? This water would not be suitable for molly if the parameters are correct but of course very good for the pygmy. As to the death - how long has the aquarium been running; a mature aquarium should have 0 ammonia and very small amount of ammonia can be deadly to many species of fishes but yes the tiny pygmy are going to be more sensitive to it. However acidic water will reduce the impact of ammonia. You can add a few drops of something like prime to help neutralize the impact of traces of ammonia but the bigger question is why does the aquairum have ammonia in the first case. Pygmy are definitely a more 'fragile' species though once established they are hardy. I would not add salt to the aquarium esp if you plan on growing live plants. Having said that the molly will jump for joy with you add a bit of salt.
  3. My green wavy (buce) is about to bloom. Expect another picture if the flower is something special or for me to forget the whole thing if it turns out to be a dud (i find buce submerse blooms less exciting). I should probably have planted something a bit more exciting in the buce family but green wavy certainly grows easy enough emersed. Maybe recommend something 😉 I'm really happy with how my discus aquarium is doing (even if it is a spare basement aquarium that gets little attention); the plants are growing very well: (the weird fish to the left of the sponge filter but before the cardinal and bit below is the male a. lineta and the female is near the bottom in front of the leaf). I discus have really settled in and behaving very calmly as a group with only very minor bickering among themselves (remember these are wild caught). The plant with slight purple colouring growing in front and behind the leaf is a a. cripus (actually two plants). In person it is a very nice plant with lots of structure in the leaf. Not sure why this aquarium has such a high reflective index (to the eye the reflection isn't really visible); one of these days i'll order a mirror less thingy and polarizer but it is super low on my list of things to do; mostly because a bit unsure which system to use - either a newer body on one i have (fuji or olympus) or bite the bullet and get a sony. Pity i can't put a polarizer on my phone camera as ultra wides are a bit pricey.
  4. ro water is very cheap. You can setup ro water for under $200 easily and make that back on the first set of frys. I can't tell you what breeders do; but i can tell you that most species of apistogramma are unable to breed in very hard water. As i said earlier there are very nice central america dwarf cichild that are often over looked that do well in their native hard water environment. In fact i don't keep these fishes because my water is too soft. Apistogramma get a lot of press but beyond that there is nothing that special about most of the species esp when it comes to interesting behavior. In fact most species of Apistogramma are a pain to keep due to their polygamous behavior and aggression pattern. Most fish keepers are better off with pair forming cichild esp if they intend to breed them as a hobby (as oppose to a business). Last but least because the term 'apistogramma' is thrown out there so much many fish keepers confuse the genus with individual species. This is esp important because there is a wide variance in behavior among different species.
  5. I am very surprise that silicon does not stick to Acrylic; but havent' researched it myself. You could of course make the horizontal bars out of glass. swisstropical sells corner matten filters (very similar to your filter) with pre-cut glass bars. Of course there is probably a certain joy in doing it yourself.
  6. First you are not building a blackwater aquarium with hardwater. I realize you said dark water but blackwater is not a reflection of the colour of the water but the mineral content. Apisto is a genus not a species. Many domestic species of apisto will 'survive' for a short period in hard water; but they won't live 4+ years. There will be no point in buying a female as nearly no species will be able to breed successfully with water that hard. -- There are many very nice central american cichild that will do a lot better in hardwater; rather than focus on a genus that is not suitable for your water i'd look for one that works well.
  7. Well today was a very long day - and a heck of a lot of work but we replaced the sump on my ~600 gallon aquarium. @xXInkedPhoenixX might find this interesting since they are about to setup the same type of aquarium: This is what it used to look like (picture from 8x4): And this is what it looks like now - minus some cleanup work:
  8. Male tails are distinctly different than females; but i can't tell a thing from your pictures.
  9. My favorite type are wc dwarf cichild. Those with their natural colouring. Some species i have or will soon have include a. winkelfleck, b. cupido, i. bimaculata, a. ortega, m. ramirezi, a. cacatuoides (mean suckers), a. lineta, ... I guess we are suppose to post a picture so this is my male a. winkelfleck: and a. bitatina and laetacara dorsigera and ... well was going to do b. cupido but don't you think this is enough pictures ? I mean how many pictures do you all want ? Oh well we will do the cupido family and that is it: All photos are fishes i actually currently own; i have excluded pictures of fishes i owned in the past like this one:
  10. A couple of updated pictures posted elsewhere just adding them here for time lapse: First the discus aquarium after adding a black background: And a couple from the 4ftx30 inch blackwater: The picture below is side to side where you can actually see the full dimensions - from the glass to opposite side is 48 inches and from front to back is 30 inches; so nominally 90 to 100 gallons or think 4 29 glued together. Population is a bunch of hatchet fishes, some emerald eye rasbora, a few pencil fishes left and 5 to 8 apisto (8 were put in but i don't actually know all 8 are doing well though i did see 4 yesterday - normally i see at most 2).
  11. I feed my discus (10 5 inch); 2 cube of freeze dried black worms (one in the morning and 1 at night) with some other stuff with lots of green. In the wild discus like many cicihld eat mostly plant matters and so i try to limit the amoutn of fat and meat they get. They do go after the worms first and i worry they aren't eating enough green but all the food vanishes between feedings so i presume they are grazing during the day which is normal behavior.
  12. I'm confused - they look about the size of angelfishes - maybe 3 inch? Mine are nearly twice that size - or am i missing something ?
  13. Just a few leaves and driftwood; nothing special. It will get a little lighter over time as i do water changes; though i tend to add more leaves overtime.
  14. I put a black background on the discus aquarium. One of the discus kept getting spooked so i hope this calm him down. Unfortunately the a. lineta can catch a reflection of himself in the glass and starts to flare. Not sure what to do about that. This is actually a spare aquarium in the basement but then i thought i'd try some wild caught discus.... oh well gotta learn self control. Anyways it doesn't get a whole lot of attention... but i do feed them twice a day. There are 40 or so cardinals in there but they don't much care for the discus - here the school got split in two with a small group on the left where you can see them and the rest are on the right.
  15. Ok a couple of pictures: The phone is compensating for the extreme darkness but it makes the image a bit grainy. Yep there is a window behind this aquarium. The 2nd picture shows you how dark it really is as the lights from above try to make it to the bottom but seems to fail. There are quite a few fishes in here if you can find them 😉
  16. My newest setup looks like a black box. I suppose i could post a picture and i think i will in about an hour. Would be nice to see if the fishes in it are doing well but kind of hard to see in a black box.... Guess i added one too many leaf.
  17. Just an fyi; the new ai blade are programmed to handle day-light savings time 😉 I have the following lights: fluval plant 3.0 (5 in service); ai blade freshwater (6 in service); hygger (957 in service); chihiros wrgb 2 (2 in service); ghl Lx700[4,6] (serveral in service); so i am in a position to compare these lights - i will say that i did not experience any sort of y2k issue with my fluval the past week but i did of course have to connect to adjust for daylight savings time. I will also say i rather use an ap then the funky onboard setting thing for the hygger any day of the week (i run android in-case there is a difference between apple and android ap). Mind you most of these lights cost $$$; so while the hygger doesn't have an ap and it is a bit annoying to setup it only cost $ - and it has the ability to gently turn on in the morning something many more expensive lights lack.
  18. @Jaspyjasp I'd remove him but a lot depends on how the tank is setup (scaped). Trifasciata like cockatoo are not pair forming; the male just wants to breed and in a crude sense provides a safe environment for the female to raise her frys but he does not help in fry raising and if the area is small he might keep trying to breed with her even if she has fry. It is the problem with a small glass box. Also Triasciata m/f aggression can be quite high. - If she can't find a safe haven for raising the fry - in some cases the female will kill the male but in this case it sounds like he is too much for her to handle. If you want pair forming species of apistogramma look for panduro or nijjensi. They don't necessarily mate for life but the male and female will bond and both will care for the fry and there is not so much aggression between them when it comes to raising frys. -- The way it works with polygamous species of apistogramma is the male defines a territory. This territory can be quite large but it depends on the species. If a female wants to breed with that male she will enter his territory and find an area to be her territory to raise the frys; signal the male and lay eggs. The male guards the larger parameter. With small glass boxes we can run into a number of issues: First the female has no choice she can't leave his territory; 2nd tanks are frequently scaped with inadequate hiding locations for the female; third if the female doesn't want to breed she has no place to go and last there is a limit number of available females for the male to breed with which means he focus too much attention on fewer females. - The female is the sole provider to the frys in this case and the male only interest is in guarding the larger area and checking on females to see if they want to breed or driving them away from his territory. In the case of my wc cockatoo they have pretty much claim most of a 40B so we can see that their area can be fairly large. I could probably have gotten away with a 2nd female in there but certainly no other male or other species of cichild. There is another problem that these fishes use complex signals to 'talk' to each other and with domestic fishes often the process of producing enhance colouring has also made it much more difficult for them to signal their intention to each other and other fishes. - For example domestic angelfishes you rarely see strong changes in colouring base on mood; but with wild angelfishes (altum); you will see their strips get much darker and their fins raise showing obvious intention of aggression. Fishes around them will take these signals serious and give them some space. I see this all the time with my festivum - when angry they get very very dark very quickly and the other cichild immediately respond by giving him some space rather than obtaining a nasty bite.
  19. We identified them as 4 g. dicrozoster and 3 g. abailos. So mix batches - but definitely wasn't what they were sold as.
  20. I've been using this paper: https://www.gbif.org/species/119600283 I believe if the stress marks are reliable there are at least 3 species in the bag of 7 fishes. I personally would prefer a single species.
  21. This is my newest mistake: I purchased these 7 fishes (you can't see all 7 clearly) as one species. However, when i look at them closely i believe even in these poor pictures there are at least 3 different species. Look at the right side of the 2nd picture you see a fish with no mark on the gill plate. That is species 1. The fish next to it seems to have 7 bars and a mark on the gill plate that is species 2. And if you look at the top fish it has a striped tail but the one below it has a dotted tail (both have marks on the gill plate).
  22. I've not seen any issues with them caring invasive clams; but i have another problem with them growing over everything in the aquairum.
  23. It won't go that low due to room temp but what do you expect to happen; which plant will it help ? For the fishes in that aquarium i should keep it at least 74; but if there is a specific plant it might help i could move it to another water box.
×
×
  • Create New...