laritheloud

@Sal luckily, only the speckled sussex had a couple of bouts of pasty butt. She's over a week old now and I'm pretty sure she's done with the pasties. Fingers crossed! You will quickly fall in love with them, though. I'm so excited to see how the Easter Eggers will feather out, because I know it'll be a total surprise. They both look to be on the grayer spectrum but it's hard to predict!

Truthfully, it's a lot simpler than I was worried about. I'm the queen of anxiety about my pets, but it's straightforward. Heat, Water, Food. No Grit or Treats until 2 weeks. Adjust temperature of the brooder once a week. I'm working on hand-taming them with food and they're still a bit skittish and nervous but coming around. Of course, I do worry about one of them (she had pasty butt a couple of times and now her poos are a bit on the liquidy side, though this is still normal and every other indication is perfect) because I always find something to fret about, but for all intents and purposes she is totally fine, super active, and adorable. They grow fast and they love to kick bedding out of the brooder, so prepare for that!

https://streamable.com/c11agw One week old yesterday, and they're all named! Our Australorp is Betsy Ann, our Speckles Sussex is Eleanor, the lighter-colored Easter Egger is June (or Junie) and the last little girl, more chipmunky-grey, is Gertrude (or Gertie). We love them so, so much!

I've only named our Australorp right now! She looks like a Betsy Ann to me. 😆 The rest are TBD, but they're already showing their personalities a little bit. Very adorable!

They don't do the loud ones now! Only soft content cheeps. That was just on initial arrival, but they've settled and they're having a sweet chickie naptime now.

https://streamable.com/2nnwli We ended up with 2 eggers, an australorp, and a speckled sussex! They are all eating and drinking. This video is from when I just unpacked them!

NEVERMIND! Extraction efforts were successful this morning! She ate a stem of some plant or another and it was too big for her throat. It was hollow so we managed to pull it out; we held her under the water the whole time so she could keep breathing. All is well and now we let her mouth and throat recover.

I keep going back and forth on whether they're a male or female, but I suppose time will tell. The side-whiskers are very impressive when they flare! And I'm super pleased with how peaceful it is, I was surprised that the cichlids were completely chilled out and hung out together immediately when I moved them to the 55 gallon. They were kind of the 'bosses' of the 20 during quarantine and pushed the small thicklip around, but now that they're in the community it's totally fine! It makes me SO happy. Thank you so much!

So my ruby barbs are amazing but utterly dumb. So dumb, in fact, that one of them has something stuck in her mouth that she can't dislodge. She can suck it partway down to the back of her mouth, and then try to spit it out and it gets.... stuck. I have attempted to net her and get it out with tweezers but she sucks it too far back for me to pull out. I have no idea what it is. How can I help this fish? I can try to get my husband to give it a go tomorrow, but it's definitely stressing me out. Edit to Elaborate: The fish is small, about 1.5 inches or so. The mouth is very small and she clamps it shut when I try to pull her out to take a look.

I worked in nonprofits and then for the federal government as a survey statistician for awhile. I moved to live closer to my family and became a technical writer after that. Mental health has prevented me from taking on full-time work again ever since my kids were born, so I end up taking on a lot of intense hobbies to occupy me; I'm privileged that I'm able to do so. Writing is still one of my top hobbies, followed by fishkeeping and now indoor gardening.

My full-grown thicklips are twice the size of my honeys, so yes, they will get larger.

@Cinnebuns The yellow fish is a golden female honey gourami. The "red honey" gourami is a thicklip, and judging by the color and body shape, a young male. Watch the dorsal fin. If it stays rounded, it's female. If grows to be pointed and the fish darkens up a lot, it's male.

An update in video form! https://streamable.com/b093oy This is my 55 gallon with barbs, pleco, and butterfly cichlids added. 5 thicklip gouramis, 9 black ruby barbs, 2 butterfly cichlids, 1 bristlenose pleco (sex TBD, looks female for now but IDK when bristles show up), 4 synodontis lucipinnis, a bunch of snails, and only 1 pseudomugil still left https://streamable.com/vv5fwg and here is my little EBA in quarantine! And a pleco close-up for any sexing experts. Thinking female unless this surprises me with enormous bristles later on. (S)he does flare their cheek bristles at the barbs OFTEN to chase them away from green beans and zucchini!

You freak out over a new-to-you baby Electric Blue Acara because you think it might have a prolapse or worms Go nuts trying to figure out if you have to treat all your tanks again for camallanus worms despite this fish being in a quarantine all by himself Spend hours staring at a fish butt and wondering if you're looking at worms Realize that it was just a massive poop that literally took him all day to pass and now he looks fine 🤪🤪 Any ridiculously embarrassing moments for you this week? How's fishkeeping going?

I don't have experience with threadfins, but if you do choose to buy them, I think you really need to buy at least six to eight. They're schooling fish and it's not enough to get only two or three.

I didn't notice any big differences between 3 and 4 honey gouramis. I'd get 3. Also, the yellow ones on Aqua Huna are definitely honeys, so don't worry!

The red honey gouramis on Aqua Huna's page are thicklipped gouramis. My first thicklipped was purchased as a honey and it was a mistake, but I ended up loving her best of all. I initially kept her in a 29 gallon tank with honey gouramis. Long-term, honey gouramis and thicklipped gouramis can be rough to keep together. My thicklipped female terrorized my honey gourami male by chasing him all over the tank. There was no outright violence but a lot of stress on the honey. She never bothered my female honeys-- ever. I would strongly suggest sticking with the same gourami species in one tank. In a 29 gallon tank, you can fit 4 to 6 honey gouramis. I have 4 honeys in mine.

@Cinnebuns, this is a gold-type honey gourami and she is a female. Adding a couple more will be just fine, but be aware that males can be feisty little turds sometimes and like to chase females around the tank. It's not violent, but it might make you look twice. What size is your tank? If it is 20 gallons or more I'd feel totally comfortable adding two more honey gouramis. EDIT to add: Red Honey Gouramis tend to be 'trichogaster labiosa' (thick-lipped gouramis; they grow to look like the fish in my profile photo). If the fish in the shop has a CLEAR tail and not a colored tail, that's a tell that you're looking at a thicklip and not a real honey gourami.

"Gold Honey Gourami" refers to the yellowy gold morph. It's slightly less intense than the "Sunset Honey Gourami" but when fired up, very beautiful. Wild types are the more drab honeys when they're not in full breeding dress. In truth, though? LFSs and different shops will call them whatever the heck they want in terms of color morph. They'll use all kinds of buzzwords. One of my wild types was called a Sunset Honey Gourami, and the other wild type was called a Dwarf Honey Gourami. The gold honey type has been called both Gold Honey Gourami and just plain Honey Gourami. All came from the same LFS. Sigh....

I only have a bristlenose pleco, but their personalities are amazing. They're not shy at all and very industrious. I really enjoy having a pleco! I love my shrimp, too, but they're just entirely different creatures and shrimp need a bit more specialized care to really see them thrive.

@jwcarlson thank you so much for your insight and experience! We were all set to adopt a stray so I think we're good to go for our babies next week. Our run is completely covered with a weather-proof tarp and the coop/run were all set up completely over the winter. It stayed nice and dry and virtually untouched inside the coup and inside the run all season long; we even had food sitting out there for a few weeks and nothing broke in. We're reasonably confident we have a secure place for our new pets. We chose to bury hardware cloth beneath the run, attach it to an apron that encloses the run, and fill the run area with a mix of straw and sand. We intend to keep them in the run and coop most of the time with supervised 'free-ranging' time when we're out with them. We live along a state road and we've seen what can happen to a chicken that isn't hand-trained, so we have full intention of hand-feeding and coddling the baby chicks to make them friendly to human contact. I'm so relieved to have people on this wonderful forum to share this experience with. Thanks for starting this thread, @Sal!

I totally will! And we're aiming for a flock of 4 to 6 hens (we're in a suburban town center in the middle of farm country; lots of people have backyard chickens but we don't have an enormous amount of land). We are getting a mix of Speckled Sussex, Australorp, and Easter Eggers!

Oooooh this is a tough one. The second picture, I'd be tempted to say MIGHT be male because I can't clearly see orange on the rims of the dorsal fin, but the body shape and paleness look extremely female. Since none of the fish have colored to a 'male' coloration when they were placed in a group, I suspect all three of them are female. Keep an eye on them and if none of them color up in the 'male' gold colorway, then yes, all females. @Henry Li I purchased all of my gouramis from my LFS. I'm lucky to have one with a very extensive fish selection.

We set up a coop and completely enclosed run (hardware cloth buried underneath, too) in the fall because we had adopted a stray chicken and attempted to coax her into the run/coop for safety. Unfortunately our stray did not make it (she was struck by a car when she attempted to return to our garden after a flight across the street), and we were unable to catch her in time... but we still had a prepared coop and run. So next week we're expecting our first small brood of chicks to raise. ❤️ Your coop and run setup looks fantastic. Can't wait to start on this journey along with you!

Hi there! I wanted to share the experience I had with pseudomugils (mine were signifers) in case you're headed in the same direction. Mine have consistently died off one at a time for the 8 months I've had them. I've treated them with several antibiotics (in food) plus all the major dewormers and antiparasitic meds. They still died off. I am down to the last three, and my last female is on her way out judging by her behavior. I have since found out that these fish are not very long lived and there's a possibility that they're fairly genetically weak. I haven't been able to come up with an explanation for why they slowly died off, but nothing they have suffered from has spread to my other fish. It is confined only to the pseudomugils. What I would do is give treatment a try with antibiotics as Colu suggested. If they continue to ail afterwards, just focus on giving them the best life possible; you can try a dewormer, too, if you want to cover your bases. So long as symptoms don't spread to your healthy fish it will probably be okay.