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Irene

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Everything posted by Irene

  1. Irene
    Welcome to the family! Normally, I would recommend floating plants with really long roots (like frogbit or dwarf water lettuce), but I'm afraid your goldfish would make a quick meal out of them What if you got a taller piece of driftwood and attached java fern on the wood at different heights to help with line of sight?
  2. Irene
    How fun! I've never bred neon tetras before, but I heard their eggs can be light-sensitive. Here is an interesting article I found on the topic: https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/how-to-breed-neon-tetras/
  3. Irene
    Your nano tank sounds absolutely adorable! Welcome to the forum, and hope to see pictures of your setup in the future. 🙂
  4. Irene
    @CoryThanks for the heads up! Some of these may work better as a FAQ entry since the answer is fairly short, but we can talk about that offline. @DanielThank you for the information! Who knew this was such a pressing question from the internet?
  5. Irene
    Maybe ask @Bob about it? I noticed he's sold them on his website before, so he might have some insight about them.
  6. Irene
    So beautiful! Thank you for sharing. I might have to do a partially out-of-water setup someday.
  7. Irene
    @Ben EllisonMy otos seem to mostly eat softer, flat algae that cover surfaces. Their favorite is brown diatom algae on plant leaves.
  8. Irene
    My otos eat Repashy Soilent Green, canned green beans, and zucchini. It took them a little while to get used to Repashy at first, but once they got a taste of it, they definitely prefer Repashy the most. You can tell if they're eating well because their bellies will look like a round pearl when they're clinging on the glass. Because they're grazers, I don't always see them eating, but one time I put my phone on a tripod and caught them in action.
  9. Irene
    I've never treated velvet before, but I've also heard that copper-based meds work. (However, I'm not sure if scaleless fish like loaches are super sensitive to them.) Just curious, but does velvet only affect fish and not invertebrates? If so, you could... Option A: Catch all the fish and treat them with copper meds or salt in a separate hospital tank. Raise the temperature in the main tank (with the plants and invertebrates) to speed the parasite's life cycle and leave the main tank empty of fish for x number of weeks so that the parasite will die out without any fish hosts to feed off. (You'd have to do more research to find out how many weeks is enough.) Option B: Catch all the invertebrates and put them in a separate tank. Treat the main tank with the fish using copper medications. (However, some sites seem to say that copper meds are not safe for certain plants.) This is purely an educated guess since I've never tried any of this before, but those are the steps I would consider taking if my aquarium was affected. Best of luck to you, and let me know what happens.
  10. Irene
    Congrats on the thriving bulb! I don't really have any concrete suggestions... I just gently dig up the surrounding substrate and try to keep all the roots intact if possible. If the roots have wrapped themselves around bits of substrate, I don't bother trying to pick them off, even if the new substrate is going to be different. Good luck with the upgraded tank. 🙂
  11. Irene
    I'm sorry to hear that! I've heard whisker loss is often a result of poor water quality, but it can also be caused by abrasion against rough substrate (if the food keeps getting buried deep in the substrate), nipping from other fish, etc. If it were my fish, I would probably focus on healing the ich, feeding the catfish a wide variety of fish foods to help it to recover faster, and making sure the water quality stays high. Let us know what happens!
  12. Irene
    To find out PAR for a light, I usually a) look online to see if someone else has measured the PAR or b) borrow the PAR meter from my local fish club. Not sure how accurate this site is, but looks like someone's already done the hard work! 🙂 https://aquariumpardata.com/fixtures/92shKZhhf/NICREW-SkyLED
  13. Irene
    Ah, I did this with a dwarf aquarium lily bulb that I got from Aquarium Co-Op, which didn't come with any leaves or roots on it at all. Just followed these directions here: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/dwarf-aquarium-lily-bulb-only Previously, I also got a red tiger lotus bulb, which did come with leaves and roots. The leaves and roots promptly fell off and died, but the bulb ended up growing new ones. I pretty much followed the same directions from the above link.
  14. Irene
    How cool! Congrats on the fry. Did they hatch out okay?
  15. Irene
    Looks great! I can't really tell from here, but it looks like the bulb is fine. I just placed my bulb on top of the substrate, waited for it to sprout, and then pushed it a little bit into the substrate (without covering up the shoots) so it wouldn't roll around as much. 👍
  16. Irene
    Seems like a great setup! I recommend feeding plenty of good foods to condition them for breeding (and of course water changes to keep up with the increased bioload). I've had great luck with Repashy gel food and frozen foods like bloodworms. Once you start seeing eggs, remove them with your fingers and put them in a separate breeding box or something to prevent the adults from eating them. Hope that helps!
  17. Irene

    New angels - dying

    Irene replied to mtooke's topic in Diseases

    I'm sorry to hear that! I know you said you tested your water and everything seemed fine. I'm not sure which parameters you've tested, but environment problems (e.g. chlorine in the water, pH crash, ammonia spike, low oxygen) can often result in sudden deaths like you're seeing. Have you tried doing a water change and seeing if anything improves? If you're pretty certain it's a disease and not the aquarium conditions, then here's an article I wrote on how to treat mystery diseases when you're not sure what is wrong: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/how-to-treat-sick-aquarium-fish If those medications don't work, you can try treating with aquarium salt next: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish Hope that helps. It can be really hard to diagnose fish diseases, which is why I recommend taking a broad-spectrum shotgun approach.
  18. Irene
    I can attest to the fact that red root floaters hated surface agitation and melted even though I was using a sponge filter. I ended up downsizing my Aquatop AP-50 air pump to the USB nano air pump to lessen bubbling, and then the red root floaters grew back just fine. You can also use an air valve to decrease the air flow as well. My red root floaters that melted because of a strong air pump: //content.invisioncic.com/b300999/monthly_2020_09/1642344196_20190403_220627Meltingredrootfloaters.jpg.d086dfd179bb4b5a8edc3ccb6e552e40.jpg
  19. Irene
    Hmm, I've never owned Crinum calamistratum, but most bulb plant care sheets recommend that you rest the bulb on the substrate surface or only partially bury it to avoid bulb rot. If it keeps growing well, I would just leave it be since it looks pretty well-rooted. Great job with it!
  20. Irene
    Oh interesting! Now I have no idea what those fine, green strands are. Almost looks like a green staghorn algae? Whereas the thicker, green fronds on the right side of the picture look more like java moss (or some other kind of moss).
  21. Irene
    Could be! I'm definitely not a moss expert by any means. Maybe try to post a closer shot of it?
  22. Irene
    I think it's java moss growing on the roots of your java fern? Couldn't expand your picture enough to really see...
  23. Irene
    Spot treatment with liquid carbon (e.g. Easy Carbon, Flourish Excel) in a pipette worked well for me! I treated the plants while they were submerged underwater, and turned off the filter for a few minutes to let it soak. I usually have to wait 4-7 days before I see any effect on the algae. Highly recommend. 👍 Bolbitis before treatment: Bolbitis after 2 liquid carbon spot treatments (about 2 weeks apart):
  24. Irene
    I believe crypts much prefer substrate to grow in since they tend to feed from their roots. Mosses and bolbitis fern are what came to mind for me as well.
  25. Irene
    I've never purchased the Top Fin bulbs before, but here are the instructions I used to plant my dwarf aquarium lily bulb: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/dwarf-aquarium-lily-bulb-only I just rested my bulb on top of the substrate (no burying, completely submerged underwater) and waited for it to sprout. Once the shoots started coming out, I slightly pushed the bulb into the Eco-Complete substrate (while making sure not to cover the area where the shoots emerged from) so that the bulb wouldn't roll around as much. As you can see, most of the bulb is still above ground, but now it's grown roots into the substrate and has firmly anchored itself. Hope that helps! Day 1: Week 1: Week 2: Week 4:
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