anewbie
-
Posts
2,681 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1 -
Feedback
0%
Content Type
Forums
Downloads
Store
Events
Blogs
Gallery
Profiles
Posts posted by anewbie
-
-
800 eques cory would be my bet for the bottom and 800 cardinals for the middle and 800 hatchet fishes for the top - and a lone pair of angels 😉
-
1
-
-
I don't think there is a problem with swordtails with regards to behavior but they are a hardwater fish while the other fishes are softwater. Also the hatchet fishes are jumpers so make sure you have zero cracks in your lid. The red pencil will fight a lot - not an issue just be aware.
-
1
-
-
btw you should only feed them bloodworm very rarely - as it is not all that healthy for them. Too fatty and frequently even frozen/store purchased bloodworm have dieases. freeze dry stuff is at least for the most part better with regards to disease but still not the best food.
-
1
-
-
There was a thread somewhere about an older lady (mid 50?) building a 4000 gallon tank for her beloved 20+ years old pacu....
-
1
-
-
The only problem with producing that many frys is it is shorten their life ;(
-
1
-
-
On 7/9/2023 at 11:19 AM, tolstoy21 said:
I use 3mil poly bags I get through Jehmco --> https://www.jehmco.com/html/plastic_bags.html
Not sure if these are the "best", but I've not yet had any issues with them. I double bag my fish, fill the bags with O2, close with an impulse sealer, the use tape to round off the corners on both the top and bottom of the bag.
However you can achieve the same results with rubber bands and air from the atmosphere.
I use Long Life breather bags for shipping shrimp. I have never had a leak shipping shrimp in these, but for some reason I've had some leaks when shipping fish. Not sure if I had defective bags, or if I just didn't tie them off well enough because I had too many orders to fulfill and got sloppy.
My personal preference poly bags (except for shipping shrimp) because I find them easy to use, I can achieve a greater packing density, they have yet to fail on me, and they are much less expensive than breather bags over the long-term.
Example of how I bag below. (You can find inexpensive impulse sealers on Amazon, which is where I got mine).
I've used the jehmco bags without issue - i don't sell my fishes but from time to time i give a few away.
Btw (and the reason for this post) the type of bag you use depends on the type of fish you are shipping. For example cat fishes will frequently puncture bags so it is critical to use thick bags and double bag (of course you should always double bag). Small cichild won't puncture bags (they lack the spikes that catfishes have) so it is not as critical to use thick bags. Btw most (all?) catfishes can breath air and as long as they stay moist are fine.
-
2
-
-
I would not keep an angel in a 20 high or 29 long term - but people do it - an adult male is quite large - when i had to sep one of my platinum males i put him in a 29 for a couple of months when i moved him back to the 120 and the female rejected him again i had to give him away - he was miserable in the 29.
You can temporarily raise young angels in a 20 long or 20 high but as they get larger they need to be moved to a larger aquarium.
You can keep a female in a 29 or temporarily breed them in a 29 as long as you can move them to a larger aquarium after a period of time.
Angels behavior are unpredictable - almost impossible to sex when young and wide variance in size but males are generally larger and can quite quite large.
Just remember your experience with 1 or even 10 angels will not always prepare you for the behavior of the next - they can be quite tame or quite vicious but the female will make the decisions esp around mates and will be the aggressor in most cases. Males will bicker with males to determine pecking order but this bickering is rarely harmful - females don't bicker - and they have no problem killing if that is their decision.
-
Orange is not a natural colour for angels (even koi) they turn orange/red if they eat a lot of carotene in their diet which is generally safe for them though like most thing there is probably a limit. So the trick is to feed them quality food that contain some carotene and you will get more red/orange in your koi. Btw if they stop eating carotene the colour will slowly revert. So if you pay for that $1000 red koi and dont' feed it the right diet you end up with a $10 koi. Conversely if you feed that $10 koi the right diet you end up with $1000 red koi 😉
-
Three plants i like that have grown well include
a) various vals (jungle/italia/sprial)
b) various crypts - esp nurii rosen/jacobi rosen/pink jacobii/silver something or other/and esp the cordata var siamensis (not very common plant) not to mention the stunning red and tiger spiralis
c) various Echinodorus esp the purple aflame, parviflorus (an extremely nice plant) and (my favorite by far) Iguazu (have several of these).
-
honorable mention to myriopyllum roraima and rotal blood red sg
-
I don't really have 5 favorites but some fishes i've kept that i like a lot for various reasons ranging from looks to behavior to this or that include:
L208 (one of 100s of interesting pleco)
Eques Cory (Sterbai tend to be a bit shy as are aeneus (orange laser, green laser, ...) but these guys are not - of course they are easily upstaged by 40 pygmy cory.... but that is a whole flock and you didn't ask for flocks)
Gold Rams (just plain attractive; though borelli are nice and more robust as are a dozen other species of dwarf cichild many more spectacular)
Clown Loaches (best in a large group in huge aquarium)
Nannacara anomala- not the prettiest fish but has that special behavior that makes you want to watch them for hours
And i guess special mention to domestic angelfishes - the adults never get along e no matter how tightly you cross your fingers but as youngsters they got it all.
There are a couple of less common fishes i've kept but not much reason to mention them. I guess two fishes i always end up with no matter how much i try to avoid them are cardinal tetra and serpae tetra as well as kubotai rasbora but that doesn't mean they are my favorite. It just mean they won't stay away. Then again i have more guppies than any other species - and the more i try to get rid of them the more i end up with. I was going to post some pictures but i haven't really mentioned any thing unique or interesting so ...
--
I've never been a big fan of discus - though they have the advantage of being tamer than angels. One of the reason is their special requirement esp as it relates to temp and plants but another is i never found them that interesting. I suppose if i could keep them at 78 or 80 i might try them one day but at 86 it create limited options.
-
So.... i did the usual sunday water change on the 40b. As usual i had to clear out the top (which is a weekly exercise). One of the really painful effect is what these plants do to the light below and how swampy they make the aquarium by the end of the week. Conversely the 100 or so guppy fry love surfing around in this swampy mess. This is the picture prior to water change:
and a close up - was trying to show the guppies but i don't think they are visible for the most part:
Of course one interesting effect is the pso and rotala both break the surface in this mess and quickly convert to emersed form - the pso in particular love to bloom once it converts. This is not true of all aquatic plants - for example the val in my 120 which has 8 feet long leaves will sometime get a portion of the leaf stuck out of the water due to density of other leaves and the portion out of water will quickly die killing the leave from that point on ward (however the leaf keeps growing so eventually it will reach 8ft again).
-
This is after the water has been removed:
The tank needs major thinning and re-organization but i'm moving in 4 weeks so i'll wait till when i move and have to tear it down - the replacement is 72x30 so nearly 4 times more area for all these plants.
-
This is after it has been refilled and i can now wait till next Sunday to repeat:
And yes all those plants i moved will quickly regrow in a week.
-
1
-
-
aqua-huna is a cheap place for tetra - given their low shipping cost they make sense if you are buying more than just a couple of fishes. Mind you i don't like them for loaches or cichild but for rasbora and tetra... as good as most local stores - though not as good as the better stores that carry wc tetra.
-
They might get beat up (killed) once the a. Erythrura start breeding. Some species are more shy than others - my D50 show no shyness in both male and female; but my a. pucallpaensis have remained shy after 18 months (well just the male - the female are not); It can also make a difference if they are tanked raised or wc. You should check your water tds also be aware that trifasciata lean on the aggressive side of things at time.
-
On 7/5/2023 at 5:07 PM, Seattle_Aquarist said:
Hi @JoeQ,
It appears to be very similar to the Fluval Plant 3.0 in design and construction but with differences. The ACO unit is rated at 50 watts vs 59 watts for Fluval. The ACO has no bluetooth. ACO has no ramping of brightness or programmability. ACO has fixed output percentages on all color channels vs adjustable on Fluval. ACO has 340 LED's vs Fluval with 336 LED' sand ACO output is 4500 lumens vs Fluval at 4250 lumens. Both ACO and Fluval are sealed units per IP67 and come with a three (3) year warranty. Best price I can find on the Fuval 48" - 60" is $227.99 and the ACO unit is $149.00. No information as to how far the brackets extend beyond the 48" nominal length. on the ACO units. The ACO unit is about 2/3 the price for similar specifications on maximum output but it does lack the adjustable spectrum, automatic ramp-ability, and programmability.Did you measure the actual wattage usage? I have found 'stated' wattage to frequently be off a bit. The ACO unit has a very nice price and decent par for a deep aquarium; BUT that inability to ramp up/down evening/night I find problematic for my fishes.
-
1
-
-
In a 29 i would not keep adult 29s just not large enough for swimming et all. You can breed a pair in a 29 but it really isn't large enough (imho) for their entire life. Having said that a single female can work as they are smaller and less active than the males. However you cannot sex young angelfishes.
Having said that you could easily keep 4 or 6 young ones (dime to a bit over quarter); but plan on removing them or giving them away when they get larger. As adults angels fight constantly among themselves - depending on their sexes - and i won't describe all the combinations but it gets messy. In a 120 i'm lucky to have long term tranquility with 3 or 4 (4 foot long 2 foot wide); unless they are all the same sex or esp mild during breeding cycle (and i have had some excellent parents that didn't go on a terror; but conversely I've had parents who tried to claim the entire tank - so there is a huge amount of variance depending on specific fishes). Prior to maturity you can easily keep 10-12 in a 120 (near adult size but not yet fighting over who gets which mate et all).
-
On the more expensive side i recommend the ai blade. They come in various length - if you have a standard 75 then you would want one or two 48 inch. They are a bit stronger than the fluval 3.0 and much more neutral but they aren't cheap - still cheaper than other premium lights like wrgb 2 pro and twinstar. On the lower end there are quite a few options - fluval which has a lot going for it despite the slight color cast; hygar, beamstar, finnex all make reasonable lights with various trade offs.
Here is a picture of my 29 with fluval 3.0 and later with the blade - if you look at the substrate you can see it is a bit more neutral:
(fluval)
(blade)
Note that neither the fluval 3.0 or the blade are cheap and you can get adequate lighting for a lot less money....
(this is what the blade looks like)
-
1
-
1
-
-
On 7/4/2023 at 1:17 AM, Odd Duck said:
Some clown loaches just love to flop over and sleep on their sides. They’re goofy that way. Just like some plecos will sleep upside down, just laying on the substrate. Usually they’re under something and it’s like they were hanging onto whatever was above them and they got so tired / sleepy they just let go and flop down on the substrate. One of my blue-eyed lemons will do that in my 100 G nanofish - just forget he was hanging on to his favorite wood piece and just flop down. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve stared at him to make sure his gills were moving!
Yea my pleco does it all the time; but the thing about this loach is he doesn't sleep out there - they come out from their caves to play and eat and he immediately comes out and plop. Guess he isn't sleeping well at night 😉
-
1
-
-
Sigh. My clown loach died again. I swear he must have died at least 20 times this month:
Context - my 120 is next to my desk and i have 10 clown loaches and one particular fellow likes to come near my side promptly roll over and die so when i look over i see a bunch of happy loaches and one dead one - nearly every day.....
Sigh.
-
3
-
1
-
-
Yea it will take around 2 years or so to reach absolute max growth - if it is around 3 inches you should or begin to see bristles if male - depending on actual age. I have some young ones that took around 9 or 12 months before they started to show bristles. My first one was a brown - the one that got into a fight over food. One of my lemon (a male) got into a fight with a clown loach and he didn't put up with it and that was that (for the pleco).
-
What type of bn is it - i mean is it brown, yellow, red, starlight. Also is it male or female. I find that frequently (but not always) colour morphs will stay a bit smaller - as well as females but there are exceptions. I've had lemons from 3 to 6 inches - but most tend to be on the smaller size. Likewise most of the females are a bit smaller but i do have one large lemon female.
-
as for aggression; yea bn are aggressive when it comes to feeding. I put in some shrimp pellets one day (which they love) and the upside down cat and the bn were each eating one but then the bn decided the one the cat had was better and the cat was not willing to give up his so they faught for about 5 minutes until the bn gave up - he never tried that again with the cat. Both were on the younger side when that incident happened and there was plenty of food - the bn was just - well being a bn. So yea they will try to take food from other bottom fishes even if there is plenty available after all if another fish is eating it it must be good.
-
On 7/2/2023 at 9:14 PM, Dork Fish said:
@anewbie To add to that, I know generally speaking most fish in the hobby enjoy a pH somewhere around 6-8 (depending on the fish), 7 of course being neutral pH. The 7.8 from my tap would be fine with some wood to lower pH, while plants would raise pH. I would hope that this would balance each other out and make my water at least remain at 7.8.
However, I am not sure if the above would balance out or if one would factor would dominate the other (between raising and lowering pH). My concern is that the stone would definitely raise the pH and make my already slightly basic pH even more basic.
I would love to get down to a stable 7.2 or so. which would theoretically open the door a bit as to the type of fish I could keep.
A side note is that due to limestone in the area, our water is naturally on the basic side, even at my LFSs.
@nabokovfan87 @Lennie Would love your input also: Am I on the right track with my logic above, or if I am missing something? 🙂Again I would ignore ph and focus on kh/gh. Also tap normally has an additive that raises the ph and if you let tap sit out overnight the ph will usually drop a bit. This is to protect older pipes which will react to lower ph water.
-
On 7/3/2023 at 12:53 AM, gjcarew said:
@Mmiller2001 gave me his old 120cm WRGB2 and wow! I'm not sure if the pictures show it off but the difference in color saturation is outstanding.
Thanks @Mmiller2001!
That was very kind of him - but what i think you are seeing is the blue tint of the light. I have a couple of them and after a while i've become less fond for this reason - visually it looks great but all the pictures end up cold/blue. I've found the blade much more neutral so i've been slowly migrating in that direction.
-
On 7/2/2023 at 2:20 PM, Dork Fish said:
@nabokovfan87 Is Lennie's observation above, about KH, correct?
@anewbie I am new to fish keeping, so I don't even know what kind yet LOL
Since I will most likely make a mistake or five at first, I would prefer: cheapish, easy to keep, but still cool looking fish.Well if this is your first aquarium skip the ro and skip mucking with the water - just pick a fish that like your enviornment. If it is hard then live bearers (swordtails, platies, guppies) or some species of african rift lake - but you should figure out just how hard your water will be. A lot of people put wonder shells and stones like yours in the water to make it harder for these sort of fishes....
-
1
-
-
On 6/29/2023 at 12:46 PM, Dork Fish said:
I have been reading up on RODI systems and it appears that you have to dose minerals back into the water if you use an RODI.
Is there any real advantage to a RODI over just using, for example, a Brita filter?
I am on city water and chlorine is used (which is easy enough to remove).This depends on the tap and the type of fish you keep. Some fishes require very hard water and some fishes require very soft water - there is no right decision here without knowing the species you intend to keep. While some sa wc require very soft water - some tank raised (bred in aquariums) sa fishes also require very soft water - it all depends on the species. Most live bearers for example require medium to hard water and putting them in pure ro water would be extremely unhealthy. Conversely Licorice Gourami need very pure water. Some fishes require very soft but mineral rich water - it all depend son the species.
---
Don't focus on ph focus on kh/gh.
Planning my new tank - I need more experienced help!
in General Discussion
Posted
Fyi: tap water is usually higher ph initially but if you let it sit out for 24 hours in a pail or something and remeasure it will lower. The reason is the water company typically put in an additive to protect pipes and it will dissipate. Also it is a good idea to test a aquarium a couple of times the first few weeks in case you add something that leach (tyipcally some rocks or substrates). Last but least kh is far more useful value than actual ph. Likewise when you select your fish gh is also a useful number.