Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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On 3/10/2023 at 11:45 AM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
@Chris For sure. I don’t necessarily “breed for profit”. Instead, I keep the fish that I like and if they breed I like to try to raise the fry. The bonus is that the LFS will take them once raised and helps fund new projects. It’s a win win!
In my opinion, you just have to have somewhere to offload the fish or have other fish that will eat the fry. Since Kribs spawn in caves, it’s hard to dispose of eggs to help with population control. All of the sudden you have 50-75 fry that pop out of the cave and those have to go somewhere, one way or another.
What would be a good dither to add to A) Draw the pair out into the open while not spawning and B) eat some of the fry to thin the herd, but not all of them AND not be a disturbance while breeding?
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On 3/10/2023 at 11:05 AM, AllFishNoBrakes said:
Me personally, I would try to sex a male in the store. The only way I would do a group is if the LFS will take back the extras.
Kribs were some of the first fish I ever bred. Started with a group of 5, got a pair, and then they bred like rabbits. So much so that I got stuck with like 50 Kribs for close to two years as I flooded the market and had to wait for the LFS to sell what I traded them before they would take more from me.
In my opinion, you need to be willing to control the population or it gets out of hand quickly. At least that was my experience.
When I finally got rid of all my Kribs I was so relieved. Jokes on me though, they left one more spawn right before I traded them off and I still have 10 juveniles I need to trade.
Thanks for the tips!
Yeah, I'm not really necessarily wanting to raise fry for profit or anything at the moment. It's more that I've never bred any dwarf cichlid, and I feel like standard Kribs are a decent place to start.
I don't think I'd purposefully raise a full spawn - although I will note that the stores in my area rarely, if ever, carry Kribs or Apistos, so I'd either sell colored up juveniles like crazy or not at all. Obviously, selling like crazy is ideal, but I'm really doing this for experiences and funsies.
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Took a pic of the cabbage leather with the built-in moonlights last night.
This morning, he had shriveled up overnight:
And then an hour after lights on, he was back to normal:
Pretty cool reminder that corals are animals, not plants - they move!
Oh, and I spotted the Pom Pom crab this morning, too. I'll try to feed it tonight or tomorrow.
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I don't see a problem. You're solving the biggest issue I've ever had with cinderblock stands - sagging in the middle. Tends to happen even on smaller tanks over time IME.
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Good to know!
Should I go to stores until I find a group and try my hand at sexing them in a store tank (I assume I'd just look for pointy fins and overall larger fish, right?), or should I buy 3-4 and wait until they pair off? I've heard females will kill eachother - will that happen even in a group while waiting for a pair?
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Got some goodies for the little Pico "reef"!
As the last pic showed, item #1 was a Pom-Pom crab. This little one has both anemones still on its claws, and looks nice and healthy.
I also got two nerites to help out with the glass cleaning, and moved the last hermit crab in the tank to the puffer tank to avoid snail murder.
And finally, I picked up a green cabbage leather. The green isn't super obvious with this light, but I'll see if I can't get a better picture. A cool soft coral, regardless.
All said and done, I spent about $60. Not too terribly expensive - this particular store is pretty close to online pricing, really.
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Made the mistake of stopping by a new LFS on lunch. Whoops.
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Hello all, title really says it all. I have a single krib that I'd like to get a mate for, but I'm really not sure if it's male or female. From research, I think it's female because the fins are a bit rounded at the tips, but I'm not sure.
If I wanted to buy a male (or female, if I'm wrong and this is a male), should I just have a store order a bunch and hope they're mature enough to show dimorphism? Or should I buy a small group, add them all to this tank (20 long with several caves), and let them pair off naturally?
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Gorgonian looks WAY better today. Still not 100%, but getting there!
Sorry for the zoomed in pic, but I'm really enjoying filling this Krib tank out. Ive been adding something every day. I threw a teeny crypt lucens in the left foreground, stuck some anubias gold coin in the rocks, and am considering some Val or something behind the rock work. I also need a plant in the center to block the heater and filter... Tiger lotus, maybe?
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Added a handful of new shells for the hermit crabs to the puffer tank this morning. This guy was giving me a look like he really needed a new place. I guess the lease rules in his current shell are pretty strict.
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First things first - lots of swordtail fry! Or, rather, about 7. I saw the adults fighting over a tiny corpse, which was disturbing. Happy thoughts, though, right?
I snapped a couple pics of my orange Neos in the Ginga guppy tank
And finally, the Pico saltwater tank. The palys are closed up, I think because that hermit crab to the left was disturbing them
The gorgonian has better polyp extension today, but still not great. Maybe like 60% there?
Finally, the Caulerpa is loving life. Note the new, white growth at the tips
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I don't think there really is a light on the market that will be great for both a planted tank And a tradition reef tank. It's possible to use daylight Spectrum lighting for some corals, but you'll miss out on a lot of the fluorescent colors. Maybe a fully controllable kessil or a Chinese black box led would be able to do both, but I wouldn't expect them to excel at planted tanks if it's targeted at reefing, and vice versa.
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I've found written DOA policies to almost always be harsher than how the companies handle the situation, at least for places I've ordered from. I think most people can usually tell when something is a genuine shipping issue and not "You left them on your front porch for two days after delivery."
Sorry it happened! It's a bummer.
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Saw some green poop in the 20 long - means the goldfish is cleaning house like want him to!
I also just happened to see two fry out at once in the swordtail tank. I think one of them is newborn - a bit smaller and no color on that one.
And here's the other, older one:
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Are you sure the tank cloudiness is just particulates and not a small bacterial bloom? Usually mechanical filtration will pull most particulates out within a day or less.
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On 3/6/2023 at 8:23 PM, Theplatymaster said:
@Chrisi think its pretty cool you have freshwater and saltwater, when often the 2 hobbies are divided.
Can you please explain to me ( someone that knows practically nothing on saltwater) the major differences between the 2?
There really isn't much of a difference, especially if you're just talking about fish. The same basic principles apply to both - good water quality, good food, and keep disease to a minimum.
I mean there ARE differences - but there's nothing in the saltwater world that doesn't have a direct comparison in freshwater.
Picking lighting for corals isn't all that different from complex planted tank lighting. You test for the same compounds in the nitrogen cycle, albeit you're typically shooting for much lower values with nitrate and phosphate. If you keep hard corals, you'll probably need to dose minerals to keep their skeletons growing, much like some plans require extra iron, potassium, etc.
Treating disease is a different ballgame. QT tanks are almost a 100% must. You can't treat most diseases in a tank with inverts, because most medicines that treat marine parasites and such will also kill coral and other inverts.
But, really, it's not harder, and it's not usually all that much more expensive.
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Did a couple of small things in the fish room today.
Added a heater to the Ginga guppy tank - I'm realizing that without the heat on (it's getting too warm to run it), this particular tank gets down into the low 60's. Brrrr! No wonder I'm not seeing any shrimplets. I also switched out the light with an LED bar I salvaged from a Top Fin kit years ago. It's an ugly spectrum, but it works! Much brighter, too. Trying to breathe life back into the hornwort I've got left.
I've also taken over the tank my girlfriend wanted for our kitchen, a little 1.5 gallon Deep Blue tank. She had an emerald crab and some hermit crabs in there, but the emerald crab died during a molt, so she was pretty much done with the tank. I did a 100% water change (common with pico reef tanks, no biggie), cleaned up some of the algae, and added a heater. I added a photosynthetic gorgonian and a couple ugly, cheap palys, too. Pretty much just going for something "good enough" to play with some cheap corals. I don't really have the time or funds to set up a bonafide reef tank like I want right now, so maybe this will scratch the itch till we move and I can splurge on a 20 high reef tank or something.
I still need to take care of the algae on the back and sides, but that'll have to wait till the next water change. This tank has no mechanical filtration, so it'll turn to soup if I stir the algae up without removing water!
There's some polyp extension on the gorgonian, but not much - they can be cranky after a move.
Palys look decently happy, actually. They have a really dark green that's actually kinda nice, in a way.
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I really think the only safe solution would be to remove anything living, even if it's just a chemical treatment. You can never be 100% sure chemicals won't find a way into the tank, even when they're wrapped in plastic and "protected". A heat treatment would be essentially impossible to protect against - even with a chiller, I think. At 122, that's pretty much 40 degrees before a tropical tank becomes comfortable. Most chillers are designed to drop temps by 10/20 or maybe 30 degrees, as far as what I've seen.
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On 3/5/2023 at 11:05 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
Did you see the second show on the same topic!!!???? (The OA)
Very cool little series'
I was watching the mockinjay part 2 and the historian from travelers is a character, really awesome to see him pop up.
I didn't even know it existed! I think I may have seen it while scrolling through Netflix, but I didn't realize what it was. I'll have to check it out!
Travelers was definitely one of my favorite shows that I watched in the past couple years - I was disappointed by the ending, but the meat of the show was pretty great.
I ended up reading through the thread, and so happy to see they're alive! The only Neos I have ATM are some low-grade orange shrimp, and I'm having trouble getting them to put the moves on eachother... I cranked up the heat last week, hoping that room temp was just too low, but no luck so far.
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I'd imagine it'd be fine as long as there are no additives. Let us know how it goes - may be interesting to use down the road!
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On 1/10/2023 at 2:04 AM, nabokovfan87 said:
I will start by saying that if you haven't seen travelers in netflix, please go ahead and bookmark that!
Secondly, let's take a nice long breath here and exhale slowly.....
For months now I have been interested in something extremely specific and adding that to my fish tank. I realized that parameters fit, that I had the space, and I realized that it was something that could easily turn into a "breeding for profit" project. My last one took 2 years to get a fry, and 3 to get enough to actually sell a batch, so let's all hope things work a bit smoother this time!
I am at a crossroads and without divulging too much I do want to poll those here and ask for some help. I did make a "guidance please!" thread, but I want to, obscurely so, start a bit of a record and dive into what I really need some help deciding. I'll keep things brief for now, obtuse, but I will eventually reveal what is going on, if that happens and when it makes sense to do so.
Hopefully you enjoy the journey and fingers crossed that everything works out in the end....
First question, Would you choose quantity or quality? The choice I have right now is to decide to get less species in the tank of the one in question, or do I go with a less reliable, lower quality source, but I have better overall genetics? Do I order from both and mix the strains? (visually they do look like extremely different quality. One of them I would call an A++ genetic strain and the other appears to be a D- at best.... not remotely close.
Lastly, would you follow the common guidance from others around you, or would you trust your own skill and technique moreso? Do I trust that I truly have experience with this species and understand what they need to thrive.... or do I follow the warnings from friends who may have cautioned a very, very different approach? Should I risk it, or is the risk simply that I don't do what I think is best? Again, this really ties into the first choice. Losing 1 or 2 when you buy in 5-6 is very different than losing that qty when you purchase 10-20 of a species.
Decisions Decisions.....
As for a clue as to what this is, It involved my Mopani tank. Grace the Shark, and hopefully a secondary breeding project that is far less work to accomplish some results.Haven't read through the thread yet, but I second the Netflix recommendation! Other than the very end... Felt a little rushed for what was otherwise such a good story. I wanted more detail, but it felt to me like they ran out of money and just had to have it all narrated instead of filmed.
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Oscars are really fun - I'd recommend a Flowerhorn, if you want a wet pet but maybe want something a bit different. A 75 will be comfortable for life (for most strains) and they tend to be incredibly interactive, IME.
Here's mine:
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I essentially reset the 20 long today. As mentioned previously, the Purple Emperor Tetras went into the Musk Turtle tank for now,(which is kind of becoming a "catch-all"), and I actually considered rehoming the Krib and tearing the tank down for now. But decided it really isn't too much work to keep the tank going until I'm 100 percent positive I do or don't want to purse breeding Kribs, so I scaped the tank specifically for the krib (each rock structure has a cave underneath), manually removed a bunch of GHA, and moved in a comet goldfish from one of my other tanks to finish the algae off. I took this pic pre-filling, but I figured I'd snap it while I could see both fish.
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Pulled out my camera and managed to get a slightly better picture of the swordtail fry. Unfortunately the tank is dimly lit, and he's tiny - so even with editing and such, this was as good as I could get. Oh well!
Palys look decently happy, actually. They have a really dark green that's actually kinda nice, in a way.
Help me sex this Krib!
in Fish Breeding
Posted
Maybe a medium-sized tetra would be good. Tank is a 20 long, so nothing too big. A group of Black Skirt Tetras, or something similar in size and temperament, maybe.