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PineSong

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Everything posted by PineSong

  1. They are all male, so no. I only gave my coworker male fish as he did not want to deal with population increases. I kept females from the same batches of fry, and I sold a bunch. The ones I kept are full size for females who have never been bred. They aren't as big as mom platies who have bred a lot, but they are a fraction smaller, not 50% smaller. I discontinued breeding my platies because the blue ones I was trying to breed more of appear to have the black cancer gene and many of them died from tumors before they were 2 years old. I only have one male and about six females left, and they live separately to prevent breeding.
  2. I suppose there could be, but his tank does have a heater on it and I probably set it to 78 when the tank was being set up, which is where I keep mine. Also, would the swordtail get full size if the water was so cold it kept platies miniature?
  3. @GoofyGarra's recent post about platies not breeding (linked below) reminded me of this situation I'm curious about. Nearly two years ago I gave my coworker some of my juvenile male platies and guppies for a new tank he was setting up at the office. Summer 2022 I have him some male swordtails for it as well. I feed his fish when he's away and I've noticed his platies never grew. They are well fed with high quality foods, have direct sunlight as well as LEDs and lots of plants. The guppies and swordtail all reached normal size. The platies have remained miniature. Unlike dwarf platies, they are normally proportioned or actually a bit slender--no chunky torso. Due to office renovations, I am currently boarding his tank at my house so I seized the opportunity to photograph 2 of his males with my last remaining male, Bacon, who is either their father or their brother. I'm not sure what would cause this size difference. All my females are normal chubby platy ladies of typical size, and most of them must be these guys' sisters. Here are photos of Bacon and just two of the miniature fellas.
  4. Sorry to hear of Murphy's passing. He was a charmer, for sure. Not sure if he knew he was 'famous', but I am sure he knew he had people looking out for him and that he was loved. He was a great mascot.
  5. It looks like you are doing everything right. Good lord, people who are brand new to the hobby have boatloads of platy babies in tanks with two plastic plants, so I don't think your setup is at fault. How many males do you have? I am wondering if you have an infertile male, or if either your males or females have passed breeding age.
  6. I just watched the trailer for Never Say Never --super! I will find a way to watch it!
  7. Welcome to the world of platies 🙂 One of my favorite fish! And baby platies are about as baby fish get, in my opinion. Any female platy should be considered pregnant at all times, if she has been in a tank with a male in the past several months. They can store enough sperm packets to produce babies every month for 6-8 months after just being with a male for a day or so. Sometimes the stress of moving to a new tank will cause babies to be born prematurely or even be re-absorbed by the mother. But usually a female platy will have new babies every 30-ish days. Often the first batch will be small, like five or ten babies. Each batch is likely to be larger and batches of 40 or more are not uncommon. Each baby can start having her own babies when she is 4 to 5 months old. If you want to raise a few hundred baby platies, you will need to provide plenty of places for them to hide for the first few days so the parents will not eat them. If you don't have a lot of plants growing in your tank you can use fake plants like these: https://www.amazon.com/Lantian-Cluster-Aquarium-Plastic-Plants/dp/B077CSSSW9/ref=sr_1_9?c=ts&keywords=Aquarium+Décor+Plastic+Plants&qid=1705713370&s=pet-supplies&sr=1-9&ts_id=2975453011 If you do not want to raise hundreds of baby platies, don't give them hiding places and the parents will likely reduce the population of fry to manageable numbers. If you do not want to raise ANY baby platies, return all your females to the store and enjoy a peaceful tank of male platies. It's the only way to not be knee deep in platies!
  8. Last weekend, I got a lesson in both pros and cons of too many plants. I noticed my 20g tall tank looked 'off' and couldn't figure out why. I sat there wondering what could cause the conditions I was looking at: the water looked 'thick' somehow. The normal sparse layer of duckweed on the top of the tank was very dense and when I disturbed it by moving a net around, it didn't immediately float back up. It rose slowly-- more like the tank was full of baby oil than water. There were a lot of dead and decaying leaves from my aponogeton drifting around like rotten seaweed. The four fish in the tank looked okay and were behaving normally; I really could not understand how, because the tank looked so grisly and the pH was high. Worried that so much duckweed might be preventing air exchange, I decided to check the airflow into the tank. The airstone was bubbling along as usual. But the filter was not 😞 Between a giant anubias and dense corkscrew val blocking the view, the sponge filter was not visible from the front or side of this tank. I had been turning lights on and feeding every day but honestly could not say when I had last observed the filter. My guess from the Armageddon look of the tank is that the filter had not been running for a couple of weeks or more. With decreased surface motion, the duckweed layer thickened up and choked out light and air, despite a large goldfish living in the tank! So: too many plants was bad because I couldn't see the filter to notice there was no air moving through it. But too many plants was also good because with two large fish (and two small ones) in only 20g, the fish were still alive and appeared unbothered by lack of airflow and devastation all around, because (I assume) all the plants were also putting out some oxygen and consuming some of the waste created by all the rotting leaves. I apologized to the fish, got the filter running, removed the duckweed as much as I could, removed the anubias and a lot of valisneria, added an Aquaclear full of crushed coral to help with pH and catching floating crud, gravel vac'd and did a couple of water changes. It's still an example of Armageddon Lite, but at least the water looks like liquid now. The moral of the story is: don't let plants block your view of your air sources, but if you have a filter failure, having a lot of plants may be a great advantage. No photo of the tank because it's too humiliating!
  9. That tank does look lovely, I can see why you want to keep the plants at their best.
  10. The problem with adjustments made by baking soda, I believe, is that they are pretty unstable. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using it (like safety of the fish) may not happen if there are big changes in pH. Also, I think it's impossible to predict how soon the crushed coral will start to make a noticeable difference in the pH. I noticed unusually high pH (for my tanks) in my 20g tall over the weekend--it looked like an 8 on the Co-op test strip and my tanks are usually around 6.8-7.2. The tank already had crushed coral added to the substrate, and I added another cup or so in the filter basket of an Aquaclear filter I had on hand and started running it. So far, it's hasn't made a great difference. So, if I was using baking soda thinking that by the time the baking soda wears off the coral will have started working, I'd have been wrong. I think it's important to know why the pH of the water is so high--is that the pH of your tap water, or something that is happening once it gets into your tank? And what is the pH of the water the guppies are coming from? If that's your local tap water and they are locally bred, they may be fine with it.
  11. I use powdered food (Repashy Soilent Green) sprinkled in the tank to supplement my otos. The tank sits directly in an east facing window and has a light on for 6-9 hours a day and still doesn't grow a lot of algae because of the density of plants. A tiny spoon of Soilent Green spreads out and coats plant leaves, rocks and wood and the otos can come along and hoover it up. Also good for feeding baby shrimp.
  12. I have cherry shrimp in with mine and the white clouds do not bother them. Cherry shrimp will breed and you'll have a lot of them, but they don't overcrowd the tank. Something to think about: cherry shrimp often do better in a well-established tank. The major changes in water parameters that can happen in new tanks as well as the fact that all the surfaces in the tank are new and clean make it harder for shrimp to survive. So if you are setting up a new tank, I would wait a month or three before adding shrimp unless I had some old wood, plants, or other tank decor from an older tank that I could pop in there for them.
  13. I've had mine for around 2-3 years. They eat flake food and small pellets or crushed pellets. I have krill flake, freeze dried brine shrimp, veggie pellets and bug bites and they will eat all of them. In winter, mine are in a tank with guppies and platies. These guys would outcompete the WCMMs for food if I only used big pellets that sank to the bottom. Guppies etc. will scrounge around and pick at stuff on the bottom but the WCMMs will not. So I use foods that will stay in the top 2/3 of the tank long enough for the minnows to eat them. In summer, my WCMMs go out into a stock tank pond. I feed them the same foods to start with but as summer bugs and microfauna build up in warm weather, they eat those. At the end of the summer they come back in as fat as cows. They love it outside and they look great in a pond. I hope you enjoy yours as much as I have enjoyed mine!
  14. Six months later, it's now January and I've lost 3 or 4 neons. Currently, there is one with visible white lumps and a ragged caudal fin, the others look okay visually but I can tell from how they are tilted in the water a bit that they aren't 100%. The two guppies in the tank are doing well. When I set up this hospice tank I did not think it would still be here a year later.
  15. I'm making progress through the episodes but finding it kind of scary. I'm immune to husband-kills-wife drama on Dateline but these chimps hunting monkeys and baby chimps being in danger has me uncomfy for sure.
  16. I have bought many of them on eBay, and on Etsy. I use the search terms: made in Japan, vintage aquarium decor, or vintage aquarium ornament , castle or pagoda. I love them so much and I don’t just have them in fish tanks, I have them a few different places in my house :-).
  17. I've bred Endlers and guppies for a couple of years now, and the strains I have raised have shown gonopodium development or coloration as early as yours--I think that is due to variations in strains, because a breeder I watch on YT (Kaimuki Backyard) has easily sexed guppies at 2 months, due to the coloration in his strain. I usually don't rule out that some of my 'females' might actually be males for at least 4-5 months. As for 'sneaker' males, I have had swordtail and platy 'females' develop into males as late as 8 months, but I'm not sure about my guppies and Endlers. I've never seen a fish that looks fully female (has a gravid spot) turn into a male in my tanks. I do have "male-ish?" guppies that develop male coloration but no gonopodium and no gravid spot and do not get pregnant in a tank of all males.
  18. Hooray for getting things worked out! The thing that has helped me most to have healthy tank conditions is plants, plants, plants. I have enough plants growing that I can't keep nitrates in my water even with 2x week fertilizer so I know for sure my tank can absorb "everyday" fish waste.
  19. Okay, gang. I've pondered long enough and my choice for December is Chimp Empire, which is playing now on Netflix. I'm very interested in watching it myself because I'm interested in all kinds of creatures, but also because one of the directors was involved in the production of My Octopus Teacher, which was one of my favorite documentaries of the past several years. I know chimps are not going to be as peaceful as octopi, but hopefully Chimp Empire will be just as immersive and thought-provoking. Enjoy!
  20. Oh gosh. I just saw this! I will give it some thought and be back to post a selection before Dec. 1.
  21. Not to hijack this thread, but I wonder if that's what is happening in my tanks. I do water changes but not as often due to never having any nitrates because of plant volume. I have low numbers of snails, and lots of dead snail shells all the time. I would expect more snails than I have. Is there a way to test for copper?
  22. With five female mollies, I would expect that you will soon be knee-deep in mollies. Sometimes it takes fish a while to settle in before they start delivering 50+ offspring every 30 days, but in my experience with livebearers, they always get there eventually!
  23. Good for you. Having someone with the same water and some experience show you what to do is a gift. I hope they will accept the knowledge and use it, and pass it on in turn. I am happy every time I see my adult child's plant and algae-filled tank--her fish enjoy direct sunlight and she values the natural vibes over having an Instagrammable tank ❤️
  24. Wow, that was a nice film. Sweet that Mr. Crow got to see the development of programs to return the lampreys in his lifetime. Another example of what small groups of people can do with determination, and I hope the program will prosper. The lamprey is not going to win any beauty pageants but is a great example of how one species can play important roles in multiple environments across the lifespan--from being a filter feeder in the river to hanging on to larger fish in the ocean. What a dramatic life system they've had for millions of years, silently going about their business.
  25. This YT channel has lots of videos that show the results of crossing different colors of guppies and Endlers. You might find they've used some of the same types as yours, or you might just enjoy seeing the results 🙂
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