Torrey
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Posts posted by Torrey
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On 7/26/2023 at 8:51 AM, Lennie said:
She still seems to have waay more time ahead to get rid of bad care and stress effects imo. Hard to tell.
only your good care and time may tell. She probably looks peach because she is very pale due to bad care and stress.
Maybe this helps you in the future
Excellent color map!!!
On 8/1/2023 at 8:48 PM, Epiphanaea said:almond leaves made the water much darker
Good! She's going to be so much happier and healthier with those tannins (there are other studies that show indian almond leaves/catappa leave also boost the bettas' natural immune system response).
From what I can see, you have a copper metallic betta with black "lace" (a black edge to the scales and finnage). If this was only on the fins, it could indicate disease, but it looks like the edge of each scale also has it, which would make it a "lace" pattern on the betta. I'm not a judge though, so I could be mistaken.
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On 7/31/2023 at 4:26 PM, KittenFishMom said:
I don't want the Eco-complete to clog up the UGF. Should I cover the areas of the UGF with stiff plastic (say a cut down deli container) where I plan to put the eco-complete, or will that negate the value of the UGF for the plant roots?
Dr. Diana Walstad shared this method with my BiL, and it seems to improve the efficiency of the UGF, and it also makes it easier to rearrange the tank/change out plants if you decide you want to make changes. Put your UGF in the tank, and set your uplift tubes.
Put the black trays in between the uplift tubes to give you an idea of how to scape. Remove the trays to put in a thin layer of gravel.
Use a sautering iron to put a few small holes (pin prick holes) in the bottom of the trays and fill the trays with the Eco-Complete.
Place the full trays on top of the thin layer of gravel, between the uplift tubes.
Add the rest of the gravel, so it's thinnest near the front of the tank, and deepest in the back, covering the trays.
Plant in the trays.
There will be some water movement through the trays, but not as much as at the front of the tank where the gravel is thinnest. You don't need to heavily gravel vac the trays, you will want to occasionally gravel vac the front/center of the tank.
The mulm that gathers under the UGF is ideal for plants, eventually there roots will make it down there. If you notice you are losing suction at the front of the tank (extra flake food should be sucked to the gravel in the front and accelerate as it gets closer to the gravel) you can lift up the trays, pull roots out of the UGF, trim the roots, and put the trays back in.
Seriously, this makes it so much easier to move plants around.
In larger tanks, I leave areas with no UGF (~30% to 50% of the tank), but in smaller tanks you get more effective filtration with the UGF under the trays. Just don't cover more than the back 30% of the tank. (Hexagonal tank you can put a tray in the back middle, and one tray to either side, for example)
Hope this helps!
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You are the best accidental breeder I have ever known!!!
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26C may be too warm for them, and as Guppysnail said... they eat. They graze on the film in the tank, and they eat microorganisms that thrive in benthic algae.
Best care information I know of from a friend who bred for a while ( I wanted to get some, still debating whether I'm going to keep waiting for the NANF I want, or add these to the tank) is this Australian publication.
My friend quit breeding them, or even keeping them, because he lost over half his stock in a power outage. With no A/C the tanks went from 68 F (20C) to 75 F (23.9C) over 4 days. He used battery pumps to keep plenty of air in the tank, and was pretty confident the heat either killed them outright, or reduced the microfauna population. He smeared rocks with Repashy, and placed the Repashy rocks in direct flow to encourage the Sewellia lineolata to congregate on the rocks. They needed highest protein Repashy for successful breeding. He would add frozen bbs to the Repashy sometimes.
Hope this helps!
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On 7/28/2023 at 6:50 PM, MarTeeNez said:
Hi, folks. I have a small tank that I put non-alum dipped plants, and not only did it get weird little sideways rams horns (look like mini danishes), but it also got [shudder] LEECHES!! [skinny, red, move like inch-worms] It's my pygmy cory breeding tank, so I moved everybody out, pulled all the removable rocks, plants, and anything to go into an alum dip for 4 hours. Since leeches were hanging out in the substrate, I loaded enough alum to handle it's 15 gallons, put the sponge in, stirred up the substrate during the 4 hours. It was gross. I did get a few pissed off leeches, lots of dead snails, but I don't think I'll ever get the substrate clean.
Can an activated carbon filter pull out leftover alum from the water column? I've already put full clean water and swished around all the substrate. Twice. But I don't want to risk my pygmy cory babies and best breeders! Kudos to @Irene for her detailed scientific method! I've had horrible experiences with plants through my local aquarium society, and live by the alum dip for any plants transferring from tank to tank inside my own house!
Congratulations! Before I knew about RR (Reverse Respiration) I did this as a last ditch effort to nuke the planaria and leeches out of a tank😅
Glad you moved the fish out, sad you lost the little snails and didn't save any...they are phenomenal and I've been looking for some.
Dasaltemelosguy touched on the chemical (add crushed coral to bind it and make it easier to remove)
1. remove any aeration
2. let it sit for 24 - 48 hours. If there are any leeches or anything else left, this will generally take care of them
3. Thoroughly gravel vac until there's no water left in the tank. Refill
4. Wait 24 hours and gravel vac again, until no water left. Check your water to see if there are any living leeches left. If not proceed with carbon and daily gravel vacs that completely drain the tank. After a week of daily gravel vacs I had no hitchhikers, the cleanest gravel since I set it up, and water that the pH stayed stable in for 24 hours. I still did 2 more 100% gravel vac water changes.
5. Add a snail, see how it does for 3 days. If you don't have a snail, add a fish that isn't your favorite. Monitor for 72 hours. If no changes in behavior proceed to next step
6. Since I had effectively removed most of the BB, I slowly restocked my tank, moving one group of fish/snails/shrimp at a time from Q/T back to the tank (my tank was bigger...by a lot. I had 3 large groups of schooling fish... plus shrimp, snails, and a center piece ghost/lace half-black angel. Leeches squick me. This was my first nuking event, but not my last)
Now I know about RR, and I have also made peace with hitchhikers (except leeches). You don't have to wait as long to learn a trick that will keep you from **ever** having to do this again.
If at step 4, you still have leeches, may as well take advantage of everything being out of the tank. Copper is the most effective, and will be removed with the 100% water changes, just like the alum.
In about 2 decades, you will be able to look back on this, share the story with other fishkeepers, and laugh hysterically. Right now, I'm sorry you are going through this. I can tell you that I considered tossing everything and starting over...
Oh wait, I **did** do that the second time I found a leech. That method took longer to re-establish beneficial bacteria and I lost my centerpiece fish. Back in the 80s and 90s we ddin't have as much good information on how to Q/T plants, pretty much all plants were grown outside, and hitchhikers were common.
And we didn't have a forum like this to help us out, so we made far more iterations of the same mistake, before we learned better... or met people in here to save us from ourselves.
😉
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On 8/1/2023 at 5:54 PM, OfficialThomas said:
Has anyone ordered cherry shrimp online? Any website recommendations?
*Also I can't order from Aqua Huna because I live in Washington State.
Thanks!
If I still lived in Washington state, I would be driving down from the Canadian border and buying my fish and shrimp from ACO. A battery pump airstone, seeded sponge filters, and enough coolers to safely transport what my budget would allow me to buy would totally be worth an overnight trip to Seattle/Edmonds. Would probably plan a 3 day weekend trip, hit the Peace, Love & Happiness Plant store, the Butterfly Pavilion, meet up with friends in the University District and Capital Hill to see my cousin-in-law, and then ACO on the last day and drive home.
That's just me, though. I regularly took the mass transit and bussed down to Seattle on Thursday and came back up to the border on Monday. I don't even know if the busses still have county line stops like they did then.
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On 8/1/2023 at 6:34 PM, CJhilljack said:
To all of you who have done ponds already - have you had any problems with frogs predating on your fish? I just put my platinum medaka fry in the pond yesterday evening & today, I saw something big swimming in their pond. I'm sure it's a frog - although I didn't get a very good look. How worried do I need to be?
pond video linkIt depends on what kind of frog you have. Our natives aren't really a threat, but the invasive bullfrog tadpoles can clear a summer tub pond almost overnight.
Look up what kind of frogs you have in your area, their diet, and their tadpoles' diet, to determine what kind of a threat you are looking at. Here, the bullfrogs typically get served up, and the rest of the frogs (and tis summer, birds and any other wildlife that needs water) are left alone.
I do have a shallower pond for the native inhabitants to get their needs met, typically they leave my summer tubs alone as long as they have their needs met **somewhere**
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It's gonna be a Mo'Ju kinda night....
@Beardedbillygoat1975 that sounds awesome!!! The only radio not bought out by corporate conglomerates here is the radio station from the college, and they keep getting their budget cut. 😕
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I'm feeling homesick.....
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Who's going to be in the livestream today?
Remember to smash that like button!
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Update for Leon;
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This weekend's update!
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On 6/3/2023 at 7:40 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:
Everyone likes the new Snello.
She has scutariella japonica. This is in the 29g. 😩
Salt dipped, it was 10 sec based on her behavior. Then she was added to shrimp qt. She was lethargic for a few sec so I held the airstone next to her. Then she walked over to the media and started eating. So another success story, it seems. I have another I pulled from the tank TWICE today, because I thought I saw wiggling on his head. But he is not staying still for me to closer analyze. It could be his wild pattern throwing me off. I’m not sure. I’m calling him Sir RaceAround, because he’s doing laps in a Tupperware.
Dead flatworms in the salt dip container. The worms that had been living in her head…
I thought today was going to be pretty chill. 😞
Anyone who has shrimp, this parasite is subtle. Periodically use a magnifying glass on your shrimp! Often hard to see!
If one has it... there's a very good chance it's living in your tank now.
I've dealt with it ...once.
Then I got religious about Q/T and properly treating shrimp proactively.
Shrimp don't seem to be fond of a lot of medications, but PraziPro at proper dosage levels (1 tsp/20 gallons... 5 cc = 1 tsp ==> 1 cc per 4 gallons) and for the full duration (1 whole week! Water change after 1 full week! Wait a week for eggs to hatch, and water change & treat again. Then a week later, water change. Wait a week, water change and treat again. 3 total treatments) seems to prevent this, and other worm related problems.
Definitely remove shells of sheds as fast as possible, until you have completed the 5 weeks of treatments, so you 1. Don't keep perpetuating the cycle, and 2. Don't develop resistant population
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On 6/3/2023 at 5:23 PM, schmofam said:
can sell any babies to the fish store. I'm willing to do whatever is best to make a peaceful tank. If All males, what do you think then would be the max amount of fish for this tank?
I wouldn't get females for a 10 gallon scaped tank...unless you are willing to take it apart and rescape every 4 to 6 months.
That picture I posted of the water lettuce roots? That's a 10 gallon tank😅
I currently have 6 platinum endler/guppy cross bachelors in a 3 gallon tank, so heavily planted I rarely get to see all of them at once (I need to trim again, I am slowly recuperating from pneumonia)
Originally there were a dozen in there, but I sold 3 and the 3 best went to breed with my new platinum female. The remaining 6 didn't keep the pure platinum color I was going for.
With plants, and how small the bioload is off of male endler/guppy hybrids, 3 males/ gallon is very reasonable.
Platies are a bit bigger, and have a wider size range and appetite, in my experience.
As long as you don't accidentally add a female, and don't overfeed for the amount of fish and plants, your tank should be okay with 2 - 3 male guppies/ guppy gallon and 1 - 2 platies/platy gallon. And good amount of plants.
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On 6/3/2023 at 7:07 PM, Odd Duck said:
don’t know if duckweed keeps pulling out nitrates if there’s no light getting to the plant. Maybe someone can answer that, but I can’t. In the dark, duckweed isn’t going to be producing any oxygen, it will take in O2 and produce CO2 when in the dark. It will start producing O2 and taking up CO2 once light hits it again, but it’s reversed in the dark.
I need to test ship to someone who can test oxygen saturation in the water!
I do know that the test shipping my friends in NC have been testing with me, they said no ammonia when the fish got there, and what they shipped me didn't show any ammonia.
I drove out, and drove back with WCMM in April (fish spent 2 weeks in their bag) and I put a battery operated LED light taped to the lid of the cooler.
4 hours off, 4 hours on, and I opened the bag when we were at a friend's for 3 days to test water quality (0 ppm ammonia, nitrites & nitrates) and see if I needed to do a partial water change (didn't). Water was still in great shape when we finally got home, however I had pneumonia 😔
Not only did we not lose a single fish, they bred during transport and I had eyelash sized fry with shiny, electric blue eyes😳
If we could develop packaging that included non heat producing lights, didn't leak, and included live plants with fish, shipping would be *so much less stressful* for fish!
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On 6/3/2023 at 12:12 AM, nabokovfan87 said:
work on a video when it comes time to clean Riddick's tank if I can get the phone to sit well enough.
$30 solution to get phone to sit well
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On 6/3/2023 at 12:09 AM, evonner said:
The only local groups in my area are on Facebook and you cant sell or anything like it according to Facebook rules. The only LFS I have are PetSmart and Petco and I don't think they will trade. I have read about platies changing their sex but I haven't found anything to actually prove that but maybe I will see.
Facebook doesn't allow for the sale of animals.
Our local (covers the entire state) group has the same rules.
We meet once a month, and at the end of each meeting we hold a mini auction if more than one person wants to buy what is brought, people use Messenger to get each other's email and set up arrangements to trade at the monthly meetings, or exchange phone numbers at the meetings themselves.
I have driven 3 hours to meet up with members to swap plants, fish, and shrimp.
We have members who drive 4 hours to make the 4 big meetings each year (elect president and board, the big auction that raises funds for the club, and the 2 holiday meets)
Local (meaning statewide, or sometimes tristate area) fish clubs are the best way to safely find new homes for fish and swap out for different kinds of fish, that I have found
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On 5/31/2023 at 8:39 PM, Shadow said:
Just seems like they are going to harass the poor girls to death. Haven't gotten the outside cull pond going yet, will be a month or so more I think. I might start a small tank for the males in my room maybe...thoughts?
If you are long term breeding, it's not a bad idea to have a bachelor's tank.
Luckily, it's very easy to see which line a male is, so you can combine males from different lines, let them grow out, and then select the best looking males to put back with females.
This makes it much easier to control the ratios and also keep genetic diversity (males in the bachelor tanks aren't getting everyone pregnant, so genes are "held in reserve" so to speak.
Better to breed a great uncle back to 5th gen removed nieces, than have siblings breeding.
If you aren't long term breed, I would follow Guppysnail's advice since you're going to have a pond soon.
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@Minifish my daughter used duckweed to keep nutrients down, in addition to endlers eating algae, in their horse troughs on the farm.
They are outside, temp changes of up to 10° each day in the top 10" of water, and there was ice on the trough this winter. Endlers staid warm in the pump area.
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On 5/31/2023 at 12:20 PM, Lennie said:
Cherry shrimp algae eating potential is,,, very low tho imo. I've kept 4 neocaridina colors until today mainly as cleanup crew and as a part of tank ecosystem, but I feel like they are not good at algae eating by any means.
Cleaning up extra food? sure.
Also I'm not sure if they would even breed in those temps, if they even survive.
They will survive, and live longer.
So will hillstream loaches, but they need good aeration or strong water flow (which aerated water), but they do stay smaller and didn't bother my eggs or fry.
I need to look up the name, maybe @Fish Folk will know, but there's a small bottom cleaner/herbivore fish that's native to north America, and lives in cooler waters (50s and 60s, can do okay in low 70s, upper 70s are too warm). Sorry my brain is drawing a blank on the name.
My dwarf hyacinth does well in those temps, is easy to limit so it doesn't take over the surface, and would reduce the algae growth.
My endlers also grow well in those temps, and will keep algae mostly controlled (limit to where it already is) but won't do much about established growth.
Scuds will eat algae, but they also eat eggs, so....
I believe there's an "Australian amano" that eats almost as much algae as Caridina japonica/multidentata, but I don't remember how low they can handle: upper 50s might be exceeding their threshold
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On 6/1/2023 at 11:13 AM, Guppysnail said:
This is impressive. Kudos 👏 Most days I’m thrilled I can form an articulate English sentence 🤣
Adorable babies.
I speak potato.
Before my TBI and stroke, I spoke passable "travel" (be polite, find the bathroom, ask for directions, don't starve) in several languages.
Took Spanish in elementary, Spanish and French in middle, and Mandarin in highschool.
Learned Vietnamese from school friends, as well as a little Thai. Smattering of Diné, Tsalagi, and Salish.
Learned Russian and Kazakh from a college kid I tutored.
I'm still regaining my English skills, and have to regularly search for "the right word" when I am talking.
Speech to text is pretty hilarious from me sometimes.
On 6/2/2023 at 1:35 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:My LFS has just informed me that a large shipment of splash tetras has arrived. Should I give them another try?
Absolutely!!!!
On 6/1/2023 at 11:58 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:Come visit if you like. 🙃🤣
That's a dream vacation, I hope to get through all of Europe and Asia before I die.
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On 6/1/2023 at 1:44 PM, dasaltemelosguy said:
Hope this helps.
You are always finding new solutions to old problems, and easy to implement inexpensively to boot!
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On 5/28/2023 at 8:35 AM, Tanked said:
60-90 degree seasonal temperature swings might be an issue.
The shrimp will need well oxygenated water, and will breed faster/live faster/die faster at the elevated temps. I don't know how Caridina would handle it, neocaridina are okay as long as it's a gradual change, and P paludosus enjoy those swings in their natural environment... But will die if it happens too fast, and need increased flow with higher temps.
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On 6/2/2023 at 8:57 AM, Tanked said:
you want to keep a lake, dredging will be needed.
Or, reestablish the plants and animals that help keep wild rivers clean and healthy.
Our (lack of) hubris keeps creating problems:
Bugs are pests!!! ==> Chemical assault, or introduction of invasive species as population control, or some other quick fix that causes long term problems
Dam river for lakes, electricity, and control flooding down stream so we can build more houses==> water not being returned to aquifers, beavers not being allowed to do their jobs of shaping rivers, wetlands and lakes....
An overgrowth of duckweed in nature indicates imbalance.
Duckweed will grow up to 4" deep in an aquarium, before the bottom layer starts breaking down and returning nutrients to the soil.
The mat in one of my tanks is thick enough to support riparian plants, but proper water movement keeps the duckweed, dwarf water lettuce, and dwarf hyacinth to a 10" × 4" × 4" chunk. (Some hyacinth roots are 18" long, but fish and shrimp easily navigate through the roots)
I'm watching nature try to heal herself in my tank, and watching (and learning) that everything has a purpose... even if I don't understand it yet.
So what's in the lake causing the duckweed to feel like it needs to choke out what's underneath, and attempt a restart?
Duckweed is FABULOUS at phytoremediation.
What is it cleaning up?
Is it a good idea to disturb it, whatever "it" is?
The water ways that are being rewilded under the supervision of various First Nations in Canada, as well as Indigenous supervision in the Pacific Northwest, the coastal areas of Maine & NY, and I believe the wild rice in Montana and the Dakotas are performing better than the Army Corps of Engineers remediation projects.
Maybe find out who is overseeing this project @Tanked and you'll have a better idea at the likelihood of success based on the most recently published papers.
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A Sinking Feeling: The Perils of Pangea
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
@Shadow as long as you don't get Heckel discus, they can be acclimated to cooler temps (~78 was the coolest to not get stress sick). If you breed a few generations, and keep each generation in progressively cooler water, they are more forgiving than adapting adult fish to cooler waters. The rivers can drop a good 2- 5 C over the course of 2 weeks during monsoon season.
Nothing to apologize for, and this is amazing!!!
Guppysnail and I could hang out on the couch indefinitely, lol
How often do you have to gravel vac to keep everything looking so phenomenal?
(Serious compersion joy, here!!!!)