anewbie
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Posts posted by anewbie
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One of my favorite plants is a prinz kleiner sword. It has deep purple but easier to grow than purple aflame sword. It is also fairly small at 6 to 8 inch tall - not one of your monster sword plants. Another plant i like quite a bit is aponogeton boivinianus. This is a deep (dark) green plant that does get moderately tall - maybe 18 inches so would be a nice background plant. If you don't mind trimming routinely two stem plants that are low maint are mexican oak and pogostemon stellatus octopus - both will grow quite tall - but can be easily snipped. If you let pogostemon break teh surface it will produce a pleasing purple flower.
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However for floating plant I would consider banana plant, red root floaters or frogbit - for carpet plant one my favorite (but it takes a long time) is Echinodorus Parviflorus Tropica - this is a sword plant but it doens't look like 'grass' like micro sword or dwarf stag and it stays lower than dwarf stag but has larger leaves and rich green colour. For myself as this plant begins to spread i've been pulling the dwarf stag (which i'm not a big fan of). Another interesting carpeting plant is monte-carlo (but monte carlo is easily disturbed).
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One thing to keep in mind about floating plants is they can create a food trap which can reduce water quality.
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I also have both laser and sterbai (two different tanks); like @MN-AQUARISTI would agree the sterbai tend to be more out going but i wouldn't call them out going. My orange lasers mostly come out during feeding time but during the day i never see them (but i know where to find them). The other thing is the sterbai are more tolerant of warmer temps. You didn't mention the tank condition or temp but sterbai are a favorite of people with fishes that require warmer temps (rams, discus, ...) since they can tolerate these conditions better. I would never keep my orange lasers at 82 or 84....
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I would add one (of many) additional information to @gardenmananswer. When water flows down the stream it has the substance of what is upstream (fish, bacteria, ...., and unfortunately pollution when polluted) which is very different than when we siphon water out of a tank and add treated water. Don't take me wrong I think changing water is useful for the fish health but ...
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2 hours ago, MJV Aquatics said:
Since there's no test kit I know of that measures down to 1ppm, I question the results. But the point I was making is we tend to think that aquarium pollution is nitrates alone and that's just not the case. Besides, if we look at nature, fresh water is renewed by rains and snow melt ALL the time...creeks, streams, and rivers that run constantly to the sea! The output of the Amazon river is so great that fresh water can be collected 12 miles out at sea. Our confined aquarium creatures live in varying degrees of polluted water and the hobbyist needs to act like nature and make the rain to provide the highest possible water quality. Fast growing plants and deep sand, or anoxic facultative bacteria can all assist....but nothing beats diluting the pollution with fresh, clean water!
Have you ever used the Salfifert test kit ? Look I might be a newbie but i'm not totally clueless. The argument you make is one repeated by many verbatium. There is some fallacy in the argument and some accuracy. I never said water changes were bad or pointless or should be avoided - just that under certain circumstances the nitrate will stay very low despite high fish load - most likely due to bacteria eating the nitrate. Also while there are benefits to water changes it is a mistake to suggest that water changes somehow imitates nature - this is simply not the case.
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Well i cheated. What I did was this - when the parents moved the wrigglers to a leaf - i stole the leaf and put it in a fry container and hung it off another tank. I then waited till they started swimming I waited 24 hours (at the same time started hatching bbs) and then i fed them bbs 4 or 5 times a day - with a new hatching ever 48 hours. After a week i moved to an in tank container and slowly weened them to powder food. I think i lost 6 or 7 the first week and 3 after that and the rest made it (35? 45?). I gave a bucket of them to the lfs and kept 8. The most important part is during that first week - before each feeding i used a turkey blaster to siphon out any uneaten food or deaths and replace water with fresh water - it is critical that nothing is allowed to decay in their container as that will kill them and was the cause of most of my deaths. My angels can now get them to free swimming but they are in a community tank and don't have much of a chance and quite frankly i'm out of space so i don't any more fishes of any sort (quietly ignores the 30 frys he found this morning in his 40B).
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Anyway this is what they look like when i 'kidnapped' them from the parents:
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1 hour ago, MJV Aquatics said:
It strikes me a bit 'funny' that there's this ongoing quest for the dentrification holy grail...when fast growing plants and sufficient volume and frequency of partial water changes are all we really need. And I often have pondered if the focus on nitrates misses the fact that they keep bad company with other pollutant element types.
Now having written the above, I do have a couple of anoxic biocenosis clarification baskets in the 45g sump on my 110g stock tank (colony breeding red swordtails). But since the sump is full of growing water sprite and I do routine partial water changes, I can't really offer any conclusion regarding effectiveness. I also have another experiment that I've documented using a 4L loc 'n loc container with a Tom Aqualifter pump on my 60g. Again, I simply can't offer any testimonial (but again, I have floating plants and do routine weekly water changes)... I'm more interested in on-going high water quality rather than skimping on partial water changes. 🙂
I don' tthink this is true. My 20L stayed at 1ppm nitrate with no water changes for 4 months my 29 stayed at 20 nitrate even with 50% water changes twice a week. I wonder which tank had more fishes and plants....
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Breed your angles and then you will have more angels ! This is my 120 - i started with 3 angels and now .....
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Check the stand if it is MDF you will likely not want to use them. If they get even a little wet they can fail and with an aquarium of that size it would be quite a mess. The key thing about a 'little' wet is the stand likely has a protective coating but if it penetrates the coating than MDF quickly breaks down with the smallest amount of water. You really want a hardwood stand (oak, maple most common) or metal. RJ enterprise sells solid wood stand as well glasscages but they are not cheap and of course those handy with a hammer can make their own (though a lot of folks seem to use pine which is not the best choice but far far superior to MDF. glasscages i think is a bit less expensive but petsmart and petco will sell RJ enterprise stands and they have sales (online sites - never seen them in store).
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The tank itself I can't answer - i've had two smaller aqueon fail in the past 24 months (a 29 and 40B). I currently ahve 3 aqueon (29,29 and 40B) and one marineland (120) all of them are around 16 months old which is not a very good sample period but i have read horror stories of marine-land and aqueon larger tanks failing. The warranty on these are worthless because the water damage is far more expensive than the tank itself if the tank is in a main room (like living room or similar). For those with concrete basement of course water damage is not so terrible.
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These are my two jungles. Maybe they should be sep. posts but whatever. I actually have a third jungle but i think i'll not post that one today:
120:
40B:
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A bit depends on the fish. Some fishes are more shy or skittish under bright lights and will seek shady or less well lit areas of the tank. Others are less sensitive or prefer the warmth of a bright sun.
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You can have as many filters you wish to have in a tank. There is no limit other than space. As to what is optimal depends on a lot o factor. In my case having an extra sponge filter in a tank allows for easy cycling of new tanks because they are so easy to remove 😉
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I recommend you skip duckweed - it can be very difficult to remove if you dislike. Frogbit, red root floaters, water lettuce - dwarf lily banana plants are all options. Even jungle val. One issue I frequently run into is that feeding fishes can be a pia with too many floaters - the issue isn't the fish getting food - the problem is the food gets trapped in the plant and then decay. Of course it depends a bit on your stocking - in at least one of my tanks the snails and cory know where to go looking for food if they get hungry 😉
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Most algae eaters won't eat diatoms (which is brown algae). Certainly bn and such won't touch the stuff. It is normal for a newly setup tank and should just go away in a month.
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Btw my java fern put out lots of baby ferns and lots of new leaves. The leaves are now close to 16 inches tall. I'm not sure baby ferns is a sign of dying.
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People say that using an Alum treatment will work. I've only tried once but to be honest I always put my fish first and kind of chicken that anything that kills isn't great for the fishes. If you want to try alum powder google it - i'd go that route before bleach.
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You have babies !!! Well baby java....
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I've gotten a bit of the stuff in my 2 1/2 inch substrate. My nitrate in a fish density tank stayed around 2ppm for 8 months (i changed the 20L for a 40B). Another common area is on sponges in a sump - if you have such an arragement.
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I was unaware that slight disturbance can caused an ammonia spike.
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1 hour ago, Colu said:
It sound like the larger water change shocked them and might have caused your pH to crash or it could chlorine poisoning did you treat you water with a dechlorinator
@RyanU is suggesting the ozone attachment to the filter killed the fishes. This seems more plausible as regular water changes had been performed without issues and well water is being used. Naturally for us who use city water we have to be concern about the city injecting something into the water that might hurt the fishes but well water is often more stable unless you live in one of those locations where they like to contaminate ground water.
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Pity we don't have a quality LFS in our town. Maybe one day you will ship....
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I personally don't think there is any truth of it but a lot depends on your source of the fish. Since most people buy from LFS it boils down to the source for the LFS....
Of the 12 wild cardinals i purchased this year only 1 died and it was 'defective'. In my group of 27 cardinals the oldest one is now 3+ years.
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I'd skip the angles in this tank for a number of reasons - i think you would be better off with bolvian ramsk, checker chiliid or apisto. For aspito i like honglosi and borelli but would avoid cockatoo (they are easy enough to raise but kind of boring).
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I have an fx6 on my 120 - i think for a 90 i might consider an fx4 - and definitely add a few sponge filters as suggested by Dawyn Brown - i have 2 in my 120 in the back corners. In my 120 i have 11 angels (started with 3 and did a round of breeding so now 11) and 27 cardinals - i keep the angels well fed and the cardinals get kind of nervous when the angels start moving - they mostly just sit around and bicker with each other.
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You could also add an interesting pleco - i like L204 but there are more exotic pleco out there.
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If you do add a canister filter i'd highly recommend a prefilter like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000255OZ4/
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aquariumcoop has a prefilter but i don't know if it fits the funky input for the fx4/fx6.
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A bit depends on the quality of your water. If you are limited to faucet water I'd start by measuring it. There are fishes way more intersting than guppies to breed. Cory are always an option as they seem to breed pretty readily - the biggest issue is keeping them from eating their own eggs. A really easy to breed fish are kribs. They are particularly easy because the parents will take care of feeding and guarding the frys but after a bit you will be over run with kribs 😉
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Two more difficult options are rams (i esp like golden rams (german blue rams with gold colouring)) and various aspito - hongsloi and boreli but they tend to require softer water than some folks have so you have to either mix your water with ro or live some where with soft water. TDS 50 is probably a decent point but borelli might do ok at TDS 100+. Anyway swordtails and guppies are easy to breed but kind of boring - the one thing about guppies is if you get several different types then you can at least get random frys and make your own fancy tails.
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Most people i know who breed pleco kind of regret it because they are proficient and frequent at breeding creating 100's of frys that kind be a pain to raise. There are exceptions when you look at the more exotic pleco like zebra which are very difficult to breed and when they do they only lay a few eggs at a time.
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I tried looking up ottos once - i think there are like 10+ species. I know of my collection i have at least 3 distinct patterns - but i'm a newbie and have no clue if patterns are variation of the same species or different species 😉
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I'd really like if aquarium-coop carried the chihiros wrgb 2 light. I picked one up for my 120 to use with the fluval 3.0 and it really seems quite superior. The only downside is short warranty which is worrisome and the app requires location service/registration which is inappropriate.
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I'd go with lemon or super red bn - for some reason they lean to the smaller size - the plain bn can get quite large. kuhli are great but it is a random shot if you will see them - i have them in 3 tanks - and in one they never hide but in the other two ..... do i really have kuhli in them ?
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Here is a picture of my largest male lemon - the females are about 1/2 to 2/3 the size:
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Anyone else’s bristle nose go down your sponge filter?
in General Discussion
Posted
I had one that got stuck down there for about a month before i found her. She seems to be doing fine (that was 3 months ago) but she was happy to get out 😉