RogueAquarium

Removed. Do they do well alone? I've only seen the one.

I thought I had watched closely for eggs, and was planning on transferring any lotus stems that had eggs on them to their own grow out tank to protect from the parents, but apparently I missed the eggs, because I have at least 1 fry hanging out at the top of the tank..... Should I just leave it and see what happens, or try to fish the little guy out with a net and raise him in it's own small grow out tank?

Good guess on name being inspired by the Rogue River, but alas no. I'm in a far more sad, brown, hot and desolate place, lol. The name is actually because I also own a business by that same name in a very different business sector and I just wanted to carry the name over. I DID spend several years crawling all up and down that and other Oregon rivers though. Beautiful place. I'd take the Rogue over the Willamette any day of the week.

Hey, sorry, would have answered faster but was on vacation. That is just a plane ole wire rack shelf from a big box store. I used some precut shelving wood to spread out the weight of the tank evenly across the whole shelf, but apart from that it's stock. If I was to do it again, I would probably go with another of the much larger/black one I got from Costco a number of years ago. The selves are rated for MUCH more weight, and are a solid plank already so weight distribution is much less of a thing to worry about.

So....Not a fish, but Neo-Cardinia shrimp mothers are pretty parental towards their shrimplets even for a little while after they detach from her tail. I've always found that endearing, cute, and fun to watch.

Hello and welcome!

Actually, to be super fair, I paid 20 each for my first pair, and a bit less for the school for 4 I got at (Un-Named online US fish retailer) I was seeing them for up to 35$ over here as well. Also not too sure about Dollerydoo to US-Monopoly money exchange at moment, but it could be that we are not too far off on price. From what I understand, they are thought to be currently extinct in the wild. They come from a single stream in Papua New Guiney, and that stream has been heavily polluted by run off from a gold mine. I suspect this, and their relative rarity in the hobby, make them a pricey specimen. I think if they got more popular the price would come down though, and they have EVERY REASON to become SUPER popular. They are probably my favorite thing in my tanks right now. Between their shockingly beautiful colors, unique sexually dimorphism, doofy and strange fins, fun behavior and relative ease of care and breeding they could be one of the next "things." then again, I am fairly new to the hobby and probably not fit to judge such things, I am just REALLY passionate about these awesome fish!!! *Edited for clarity and humor*

Bag trick?

I would ABSOLUTELY Defer to Huck on this, as I JUST started trying, but the literature I read had me believe it would likely be best to do it like guppies with 2 females to a male so that the male doesn't over pester the female. I personally plan to just let my 5 stay together and then transfer them to a new tank when I notice a few eggs around the tank to keep them from eating it.

Pretty sure I've got all Luminatus, but I am not sure though. First pair I got was labeled as "Paski's red" but the male passed, and I ordered a school of others to replace him. Doing research nearly everywhere I read said that "Paski's red" and "Neon Red" are all Luminatus, so that's what I ordered. (Wasn't even able to find anybody selling Paski's red by that name, so makes sense) HOWEVER, as you can see from the video, the on female I still have left from that pair is MUCH darker than the others that came in. IDK if that's just that I feed a lot of red foods, or if maybe they are a different species. Also the old male had white "pom-poms" on his fins, but the new boys have Orange.

Video of the Pseudomugil schooling around their tank about an hour after I got them acclimated with some chill music.

I got a membership for a month to say "Thank You" to Cory for hosting this community (which in turn saved my now beloved BB puffer), but I have a deep and abiding hatred for Alphabet and all their companies, so unless Cory offers another way to become a member that will ALSO host the members only video's then I will not be doing it again. I have never looked at any Alphabet company the same way ever again after working at an AI startup. That is a company humanity would be better without.

I live in a place that is almost entirely COVERED with lava rock. The only places that are not are the fields farmers have spent generations slowly removing the lava rocks in order to be able to use it as a field. I have found several colors, consistencies ECT. What would I need to do to make this abundant and free resource that people are LITTERALLY tossing into giant piles and trying to get rid of into a resource for my aquariums? Are only specific kinds of lava rock usable for aquariums? What kind of sterilization could I do, considering the usual methods are unsafe with lava rocks? (boiling or oven heating can cause explosions of water trapped in the pours turning into steam)

I just posted a video where I show off my new fish room and talk about all my breeding projects. Already posted it under my photo journal so I feel a bit silly posting it here as well, but it's a cool look into what I'm doing and what progress I've made. For a quick run down: I am working on a new kind of guppy. I want to make "Koi Guppy" that look like actual koi. those are in the pond in the video. I have got the orange spots on white body, but want to go for calico. I'm also trying to get "Santa Clause" guppy's. I started with one and random females, and what I have now is the 3rd tank. Then there is my newest fish, the Pseudomugil Luminatus (blue eye neon red rainbow fish) Just got the males 2 days ago. Super excited about this. I am likely to start a 3rd guppy breeding program with some of my culls who have got this BEAUTIFUL emerald green color to them now. We have a pea puffer trio who we someday hope will have babies someday I will be doing a Pygmy cory breeding tank in the next month or so and I have several neo-Caridinia breeding programs revolving around my Main line of blue diamonds.

Had so much fun doing this post I decided to do a video tour as well. here ya go!

Oh boy, I'm SO glad somebody asked this, because I just setup 2 2.5 gal shrimp tanks for a breeding project (I want to observe what offspring come from what female, and to do see need a MUCH smaller observation area with much fewer shrimp) and in doing so developed what I think is a very good DIY filtration system for a 2.5 with shrimp. I came up with it at (Un-named big box store) where they do not stock my regular round sponges I use for everything. I found they DID have these smaller round sponges for about 3$ a piece made be fluvial, intended to be an intake filter sponge. It's EXATLY the right size to drop an air stone down it without having to tear or cut it. I put a small rock in the bottoms to weight it down, then the airstone, and took a small bit of different sponge , cut a hole in it, and threaded it on the air hose and used it to cap the whole assembly and hold the airstone in. The sponge I ended up using for capping was just a spare "ammonia absorbent" sponge additive thing because it was course enough to easily punch a hole through it and stiff enough to hold the airstone in well (Also I got them free with a used tank/filter set I bought from somebody) here are pics of it torn apart and together inside one of the tanks.

I would react with hearts to both of these, but I am apparently out of reactions for the day? She is SUPER awesome, and I appreciate you bringing it up, because I had completely forgot about the pupfish!

You got it! Here ya go!

Thanks guys!

That's the "Devils Hole" pupfish, isn't it? very cool species. Youtuber I watch did a video about it, let me see if I can link it.

These are AMAZING!!! They are DEFINITELY going on the list!!!! I've caught the larger version of them before, didn't realize how charismatic they could be, particularly in pygmy form!!!!

Spent most of today making updates to my office/fish room and wanted to share it with people who might appreciate. lets start with the completely new rack (or rather, cleaned off of junk and repurposed.) Every tank on this rack is new! I was aiming for a Yin/Yang thing with the layout of the top display shelves, where as the bottom are pure utility tanks for my guppy breeding program, and a hospital tank I keep empty till needed. (I keep several extra cycled sponge filters around, just in case) The 5 gal has a pour spout for easy water changes (thank Dean!) and the 3 gal plastic containers are light enough I can pick them up for water changes. Now to the top tanks individually. The two smaller 2.5 gal are for neo's (I love and breed them. A local shop is opening and asked me to breed a steady supply of my Blue Diamonds for him, so I got the 2.5's to separate particularly high quality shrimp for closer monitored breeding, and I REALLY like the look of them together like this) (Please pardon the NTS in the white tank, just got done planting so there are a lot of fine sand particles still floating around.) Then on the top right we have our new 10g Pea Puffer tank! Some of you may remember the saga of my ailing pea puffer that brought me here in the first place! We got them re-homed to a new 10g (only planned on 1 originally, long story you can find in the "disease" section. Was my first post) We also added what we HOPE is a 2nd female today, but only time will tell because this one is TINY. IF it turns out to be a boy he can take the 5 gal on my desk and we will re-shuffle around tanks and look to adopt another female. Finally we have my "Mutt" guppy tank. I have 2 guppy breeding programs up and running, and this is where the COOL looking mutant male from both projects go. I may be trying to make my own line soon with the green guppies from this tank. Like a "Santa-Clause" but green and maybe with black swirls. TBH though, I have another empty 10 waiting in the wings, I think I may it with black sand, move the Mutt tank to my wife's desk in the living room, and use that space to breed pygmy Cory. We will see what my wife wants to do with that 10 though. (The one fake plant is because I can't currently afford real plants to fill that space, and I still wanted to give the little guys cover... I hate them and will be getting probably something like pogo ASAP.) So, that's it for the new rack. Now for my desk! Here I have the 5.5 Rimless that was my first, a rinky dink tiny .75 gal thing that they advertised as a "beta habitat" which I have repurposed as a GREAT black worm farm, as well as a good snail gut loading chamber. The worms and snails don't bother each other, and I feed them both spirulina, which is GREAT for fish, but but most fish wont eat it. Also happens to be great for the worms and snails as well. Lastly I have a little 1.5 gal I got for free (also probably meant to be a beta torture device) that I use for a tiny shrimp breeding project (Some of my blue diamonds throw off PAINTED FIRE RED offspring. The under shell is still SUPER dark blue, but the over shell has patches of "painted" fire red... I want to see what comes of breeding them together for a few gen.) Everything has a sponge filter, even the worm farm. The 1.5 gal also has some kind of xs mechanical filter I've never seen before, so extra filt for those shrimp I guess? Close up on my 5.5, currently my most recent grow out set of baby gupps. Lastly, the 2nd to bottom shelf of the shelf my computer tower, fish room fridge, and little storage cabinmate I use for fish supplies goes. Also what I now know is called "deck pond" but I called "micro pond" when I was thinking up the idea while standing in the gardening section at Costco.. Each tank individually, this is my MAIN neo breeding tank. It also has some Pygmy Cory who are just chillin here till I get the new 10 setup and shuffle the guppy's out to the main room, and a loan female rainbow fish who is waiting for her new friends to come in the mail.... (seriously un-named online fish retailer... I ordered Tuesday of last week, and you cant blame the weather I have been checking every day and picked "next day" shipping at checkout and payed more than the fish to get it.............) who will go to my 5.5 as a species only tank once they get here. The baby guppies are just there because I wanted to watch them instead of an empty tank) Next over to the right is the main guppy breeding colony. I'm trying for "Santa Claus" and I'm getting closer every gen. I also use this to collect my cull shrimp before I send them off. Need to bag some up soon, getting to be WAY too many of them now. This next ten is just kind of an "over flow" tank at the moment. I have maybe the worlds friendliest betta in there who GENUINELY seems to like to hang out with other fish. Found this out by accident when I had to float a bag in his tank for a bit while dealing with other stuff and he didn't flare at them at all, I sometime swims with the guppy's we have in there (male breeding stock for my next gen in the pond, ill explain when we get there) oh, also this is kind of the main bladder snail farm of the puffers now as well. Jet (the Betta) does occasionally eat a small one, but I dont begrudge him a few and I think they are good for him. He used to live alone in the 5.5, he seems to have more energy and be happier in the 10 with other fish, the main guppy colony next door in visual range. He flairs at the males in the OTHER tank occasionally, so I may have to consider moving HIM back to the 5.5 and putting the rainbow fish alone in the 10. Time will tell. And last my "deck pond", which I am using for my main Koi Guppy breeding program. I may have said this before, but I don't like what are generally called "Koi Guppy" because, to me, they don't look anything like the koi I like. I like the Calico spotted ones the best, So, I am 3 Generations deep in this project, and ALREADY I have orange spots on white bodies!!! Next I will try for black and spots as well, then to stabilize the colors and the spots and let the patterns to WILD!!! I'm breeding them to be viewed from above like koi, so this format works out best I think. Not sure why, but we seem to be hung up at gen 3. I haven't lost any fish, and everything SEEMs fine, but I haven't got any new babies in about 2 months now. Well, i guess that's it now... My office has been transformed into a REAL fish room and I'm tickled pink about it. It's been slowly been gaining this "Ghetto Gallery" feel about it, and it's one hell of a place to drink coffee in the morning or work on my "mindfulness meditation" Thanks for joining me on this little photo tour. Ill probably try to update it from time to time like a photo journal I suppose. Would love to hear what anybody else thinks or has to say about it.

You can add Hawaii or any other US state or territory in there if you like.

SUPER cool project, will be following with interest. Thanks for showing me a new species I had never heard of before! this just adds to my obsession of eventually doing a "Patriotic" themed fish room featuring ONLY species endemic to US states/territories. Sadly, this would very likely mostly be several species from the everglades, and then a couple from Hawaii, and then probably a LARGE cold water tank for the vast majority of the rest of the states that largely have the same 8 ish species.

Well, I generally try to stay away from chemicals or meds when I can, but if you have tried all the safe mechanical methods you have then it's time to move into chemical methods. IMO, hit it with some "AlgaeFix" or similar and then go at it with the credit card after that has softened it up some. Alternatively, you could try hitting it with some targeted hydrogen peroxide like some do when they have a blue green algae takeover. I've seen it done by using a syringe with air hosing on it so you can REALLY target where it goes. Should chew up the cell walls enough to kill it and make it sluff off easier. I think the AlgaeFix is probably safer, but it's another way you could go if you don't want to use that for whatever reason (shrimp and snails for instance)