Chris
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Everything posted by Chris
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So, to my mind, this sounds like the ammonia you're experiencing is really from the plant die-off and the biological filter not having the plants there to support it anymore, not necessarily from the snails. If anything, they're helping break all that plant matter down faster. If you siphon out all the dead plant matter you can, and start manually removing a few snails here and there, I'd expect to see things go back to normal pretty quickly. I think the snails are a symptom of the plant die-off and feeder malfunction, not the root cause of your issue.
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Well, from my own experience, essentially any plant you add into the tank can and will be destroyed if your particular fish are determined enough. But, IME, Anubias and Java Fern were both relatively safe bets, and so were large (well-established) crypts. I've heard that Crinums are safe, too, but I've never tried them with goldfish.
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The SAFEST course of action for all the fish involved is to keep the puffers by themselves and just take care of maintenance yourself - using a dimmer light will help, especially if you load the tank up with floating plants. Helps keep the glass clean of algae. But, I've had luck with ottos with some of my DPs. My current little guy doesn't bother the two in his tank, and he also doesn't bother the large ghost shrimp that's been in there for almost a year. He will, however, 100% attack and smaller shrimp or snails. Some of my previous DPs haven't allowed anything else in their tank at all (including other DPs). It's very much an individual basis, and it's why I tend to try and steer people towards keeping them solo anyway! Whatever you end up doing, just have a plan B!
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Really cool video! A lot of the critters we eat from the market are actually temperate (cool-water) species, which makes this a little more difficult. But keeping some of the really large snails you'll find for snail at Asian markets or maybe setting up and a huge beach paludarium for the semi-aquatic crabs you find at the market would be really cool!
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FWIW, I've never experienced any ammonia spikes that I connected with snails. Yes, snails produce waste, but most people aren't feeding their "pest" snails specifically anyway - they're just eating algae, bacteria, and left over food in the tank. So, yes, the algae and bacteria that they ate will contribute to ammonia/dissolved waste a bit, but I can't imagine it's by very much. I'd only expect it to be a problem in the absolute worst of infestations, and in those situations, I'd completely expect there to be a husbandry and/or feeding problem that's a much bigger problem than the snails themselves.
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I'm still alive! I'm actually house hunting - so it hasn't made sense to do any aquarium projects for a while, since they'll all be torn down and moved fairly soon. Excuse the lighting on these pics - I didn't do anything special to get them today. Just let the DSLR do the work for me!
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Nothing too awful exciting to report. New Aiptasia babies are popping up, and I spotted a tiny bristleworm in the pest rock: Most of the hair algae has begun to die off of the cactus caulerpa: And some new growth Mexicana:
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I'd have to order phyto online - I could likely keep it in the fridge, I think, but I'm not sure it's needed right now. Overall most things seem pretty happy. I have done one tiny feeding of reef-roids, and I might do another one soon, just to make sure I don't run too low on nutrients. I admit that I haven't tested this tank much... I may pay for that later, but we'll see. The long-term goal with the cucumber is to move him to a proper tank. This little tank won't provide enough food for him for long, so he'll likely move into a larger FOWLR system whenever I move, I've decided.
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Well, this particular species is supposed to eat micro organisms from the substrate, but I've read they'll eat Nori and such too. I haven't seen this guy take anything I've offered, though! Here's the cucumber and one of the hermits, just chilling on a rock. Here's some new growth on the Caulerpa Mexicana: A baby Aiptasia on the glass: Cactus Caulerpa: And the Button Polyps: I feel I should add that I've not scrubbed algae on this tank in like two weeks - the CUC is doing all of the work.
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It can be really frustrating when tanks just don't seem to line out. But, I find that a lot of the time, all we need to do it step back and let everything settle. Every time you try to fix things and make changes you're adding stress to the fish, and to the ecosystem in the tank. That includes planting new plants, moving stuff around, messing with lighting, just about anything. For an established fish population, it's no big deal. For a species of fish that's known to be shy and finnicky, I would say you may just need to give them some time without any changes.
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Scarlet Badis and Pygmy Sunfish as tank mates?
Chris replied to Wingman12r's topic in General Discussion
I've only ever kept Pygmy Sunfish in species-only tanks, and they were still quite shy. I kept a couple pairs of Okefenokees. I'd expect the constant movement from the white clouds to keep them in hiding, and the scarlet badis to pick a fight. I'd want to have way more cover in the tank for Pygmies, too - mine always kept to the weeds and shade. -
Nice tank! I've been thinking about setting up one of my spare 10's for a Samurai Plakat. Such beautiful fish!
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That was a good read! I love how big all of their bellies are - I'm a heavy feeder, so it's nice to see some other fishkeepers who keep their fish fed like they can't say no!
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I'm digging the tank! I think once I upgrade my Flowerhorn to a 120 I may have to do a little bit of copy and paste action 🙂
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Seems as if most of the images on this page aren't loading for me anymore 🤔 wonder if it's a forum issue? My internet is working normally. Anyway, saw the sailfin pleco out today: He's been getting a roughly 3"x3" sheet of Nori every night, along with some green beans and Repashy. Nanaue eats some of it, but I only throw it in there whenever the room is completely dark, so I don't think he gets much before he settles down. I can tell he's getting some of it though - he really is becoming a chunk!
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All is well in the tank! One cool thing I've noticed about this tank is how quickly it's digesting nutrients. Algae is obviously growing, and so is the red slime, but compare today's FTS to the one I took on Monday: Obviously the CUC will help a ton with the diatoms I'm seeing, but I'm not sure they're helping quite that much. I haven't done much testing on the tank, but most everything looks very happy. The polyps are big and open, and all the feather dusters are breeding and building bigger tubes. The macros have yet to really catch onto growth, but I'm betting they're just establishing and recovering from shipping stress. The cucumber is still okay, too - hiding away underneath the rock in the middle.
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Got a water change done on my flowerhorn tank and my brackish tank, today. Also laid down in the floor to look into my Cherry Shrimp/Mystery Snail tub, and while I didn't see any Mystery Snail eggs or shrimplets, I did see a bunch of pods and such in this tank. Pretty cool how life appears so quickly without fish to eat them 🙂
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You're correct - about .002 per week is supposed to be safe. From what I understand, you're not actually acclimating the different nitrifiers to a higher salinity, but are killing off the less salt-tolerant strains slow enough for salt-tolerants ones to take their place without too much disruption. The Crypt Wendtii I put into this tank has begun to quickly deteriorate - it was doing okay, and begun to turn yellow a couple days ago before beginning to rot today. Unfortunate, but so far the Jungle Val seems to living. The Pothos is actually growing, albeit with some old leaves showing die-off. Hm. You can see the shriveled up leaf at the bottom. That unfurling leaf on the pothos has made progress, though. And, while this isn't the best photo for it, the puffer's beak does look a bit better. Still long on one side, but much improved.
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Two did!
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You'd be surprised what manages to hitchhike and survive! Mantis shrimp, pistol shrimp, large serpent stars, eunice worms, bobbit worms, all kinds of things. I think I actually did see this guy at one point, whenever the aiptasia who was in the front moved the first time. I looked in, and saw something brownish-yellow. I thought it was just the Aiptasia's foot, but it totally could have been him wrapped up in there! I topped this tank off for the first time today - just 1 liter, which really isn't so bad for a pico. The tank had evaporated up to 1.027-1.028, which is a bit higher than what I like to run - I mixed the tank at 1.026. I was aiming for 1.025. Whenever I decide to do a water change, I'll be correcting that to 1.025. For now, I'll maintain the 1.026. Everything is doing well, I think. We've definitely hit diatom-time, but I knew that was going to happen when I dosed that Iron. Oh well! The Cactus Caulerpa I put into the back of the tank has some hair algae on it, but only part of it - makes me think that bit may be dead. Otherwise, while I've not seen any obvious growth on any macro, I've not seen rapid deterioration, which is relatively common after shipping. It's been successful, I think! Oh, and the Button Polyps seem to be loving life, too. If you look closely, the polyp on the bottom left actually has more speckling around the mouth than the others do. Looks like a slightly different morph! Cool. Definitely worth like $6. Cell phone pics, but you get the idea.
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You'll have to make a thread! I haven't really tried marine snails - I feed crushed MTS every now and then, though, which are probably a similar hardness to most small marine snails. I don't have easy enough access to small marine snails to really do a ton of those - I can order some, but shipping is still expensive on them!
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IME, GSPs are very likely to kill the mollies. It may be alright for a while if you get the puffer small, but I'd plan on moving them out fairly quickly. They can be little terrors!
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Believe it or not, the puffer doesn't eat the fry! The mollies I have in there now were born with the puffer in the tank, and I had to rehome plenty of them. Mollies are beautiful!
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Alrighty, so I've noticed the puffer hiding a lot since I introduced the killis. I've also seen the male killi getting more and more aggressive towards the female, but usually just during feeding time - and she hits him right back. Makes me think that maybe these guys are going to be suited to a different tank where they're the focus, not the puffer. I might need a second brackish tank.
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I'm glad you're enjoying it! I love my freshwater tanks, but I have lots of fun with my salty tanks too. They're just different :)
