KentFishFanUK

Story of my life! 😂 Good to hear from you, congrats on getting the right help that's a big step! Wishing you all the best on your recovery

Thanks @Odd Duck! I haven't been active on the forum in a little while, my ADD brain makes me go hard on things like the forum/hobby in general for a while then other life gets in the way and I 'forget' about it for a time before I'm back in hard haha - but I admit it has given me the warm and fuzzies to be tagged even though I've not been around! Few bits going on in the hobby for me, my breeding programme for a few different types of Japanese ricefish in outdoor ponds is getting off the ground nicely but running out of time this year before the weather gets too cold for breeding. Hopefully next spring I'll be in a place to start spreading them around! Still struggling to breed my panda corydoras' but my wild type Endlers are doing well. Got a couple new live food cultures, a high density vinegar eel culture and moina in green water which is a nice addition to hatching bbs. Bought a new 4' tank and stand which will be my main display in my living room, it's around 280 litres so roughly the same as a 75 Gallon? Won't seem like a lot for most of you guys but in the UK that's considered a pretty large tank. Also quite an upgrade to my current 20 Gallon display on a repurposed baby change unit! I plan to do a nice aquascape in a roughly 'south american' (inspired) biotope. Still in its box at the moment though as need to get the right substrate and wood and lighting etc in (cue my wife's "what's wrong with all the bits of wood and stuff you have in the shed already?" 😂). Still I'm excited to eventually get around to setting it all up! I'm gonna tag @laritheloud your turn! (Don't think you've been tagged yet!)

Thank you! I will definitely give it a go then. I have my vinegar eels split between four small cultures that I rotate so have plenty to work with. I'm starting to get more and more fry to feed so would definitely help. Haven't tried it yet but the lady who told me about this method did an experiment for me, she put a bunch in some water in a glass and she's just sent me a video (about 24 hours later) of them all swimming around near the surface, none appear to have died or anything so looks good!

Hi guys! I'm currently getting more and more into live food culturing (other than hatching baby brine shrimp which I also do of course) for my fish and fry (infusoria, green water, moina, vinegar eels etc) and I've recently discovered a new method for culturing vinegar eels and I was wondering if anyone else had heard or tried it? So I have my vinegar eels in the usual raw cider vinegar/water and apple slices mix that all the guides suggest. The method I've seen recently is more like the typical micro/banana/walter culturing, done in a wet oats or mash potato medium only instead of using water you use the cider vinegar/water mix that we normally use for vinegar eels. The results I've seen pictures of seems good, much much higher culture density than the usual method and they start crawling up the sides just like the other worms making it really easy to harvest. Now I know it loses some of the advantages of the usual method - it's more maintenance, more prone to crashing, maybe more smell etc however the main reason I like vinegar eels is because of their size and the way they congregate at the surface of the water (for my ricefish fry) and the fact they can live a fairly long time in an aquarium so it's harder to overfeed and pollute the water. Has anyone else tried this method? If so what I'd love to know is do the vinegar eels, once fed to a tank, still swim near the surface of the water and most importantly - do they still survive a long time? Slightly concerned that using this method could mean the vinegar eels are acclimated to 'terrestial' life and won't survive long in the water thus losing their main benefit (for me anyway). Obviously I'm no biologist and have no idea if it even works that way or if I'm worried for no reason. Anyone have any thoughts or insight? Edit: pic for reference

Thanks! Do you know the best way to add some calcium without increasing hardness too much? i.e. adding only calcium and not magnesium or something or is it more complicated than that?

Old growth I'm pretty sure

I have a big pink ramshorn snail colony in my jungle tank, recently a bunch seem to have died off and the rest seem to be getting white patches on their shells - my water tested 7.2 pH so I don't think it's erosion from acid, and the GH is 7°dH so it shouldn't be a calcium issue should it? Or could my general hardness be made of magnesium etc but still be calcium deficient? Or do snails need calcium rich foods even if there's calcium in the water? Anyone have any advice? @Guppysnail (sorry)

Interesting! Definitely could be something to do with flow, didn't someone say after they hatch they are sensitive to flow? Maybe it's related. (Thought I have to ask, canister was low, hob was off.. ugf was on? How many filters do you have 😂) I have an internal power filter that provides quite a bit of flow pointed at/across the surface but the flow is much lower (going by the movement of particles and swaying of leaves) at the bottom of the tank. It's a bit of a jungle so I think all the plants slow it down quite a lot and it's a standard/high tank rather than a long - still yet to see an egg on the glass. Of course they could just be getting eaten before I see them

Ok so on Wednesday I collected a bunch of hair algae* and put it in the tank... I tried to weight it down with some ceramic rings which seemed to work for a while but after a day or two half of it was spilling out, typical! Anyway checked it each morning and this morning (Saturday) I got home from my night shift to this... And there are quite a lot of eggs in it, at least a dozen but I suspect closer to two dozen. So I pulled it all (not easy as it had become entangled with the java moss) and stuck them in an empty tank to see if I can raise them. So the hair algae definitely seems to work as a spawning media! But I need a way to keep it contained as for all I know they might have only used it because it was in the way of the java moss haha and if possible find a way to stop snails getting all over it (had to pull like a dozen ramshorn snails out of it as I'm pretty sure they munch on the eggs when they can). Any suggestions?

"Interesting you do have me down a rabbit hole here" - yay my plan worked haha. Thanks! I really appreciate you taking a look, great to get a scientific opinion! When you say it works best at <1% dissolved oxygen, what's a normal % in our aquarium? I'm not sure if it's like our aquariums (assuming they are well oxygenated) are at 100% or what the normal range is (I did try googling but I can only find explanations talking about PPM of d.o.) so not sure if there would be areas in that range within our aquariums or if that's unrealistic without a plenum or something. TIA!

Well I didn't want it really but decided to capitalise and try to make a green water culture out of it haha Of course now I'm trying to keep it going it will probably disappear!

Out of all the great speakers you have had or have lined up, this is literally my most looked forward to meeting! Can't wait, hoping to catch it live with pen and notebook in hand haha but so far I've only managed to watch them all after the fact (stupid shift work/time zones 😑). Side note, really enjoyed your last few videos about stocking ideas etc (on the 'more' channel? Can't remember) keep up the good work! I love that you have some more non-typical ideas compared with other tubers! I have heard that moina are just as good (and same process) as daphnia but much more hardy/tolerant of stocking density, temperature and varying water parameters. I didn't have any luck with my first daphnia attempt either so going to try moina as soon as I got some more green water going!

@Biotope Biologist as a biologist if you are interested and have the time I'd really appreciate you having a look at those studies and see if I'm understanding it wrong. My friend is enthusiastic about it to say the least, passionate even (he has been using it for many years and swears by it, he's even gone so far as creating his own culture 'recipe' which he uses by the gallon in his facility) so it's hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm and I find myself really wanting it to be a thing so unbiased thoughts would be great!

Ok so here are the things I read: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262785273_Effect_of_photosynthetic_bacteria_on_water_quality_and_microbiota_in_grass_carp_culture https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://kb.psu.ac.th/psukb/bitstream/2016/11737/1/420149.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjenIKH6J_4AhUST8AKHfbkAVQ4ChAWegQIDRAB&usg=AOvVaw2j51EXBqME0vWTHKmXKvij There were quite a few others as well that I disregarded either because they seemed to also be selling PSB probiotic products, or they were regarding saltwater aquaculture, or they were talking about using it as aquaculture/agriculture feed rather than probiotic. There were also results coming from Asian Facebook groups/forums which does seem to suggest its use is more common in Asia. I'm going to try it out and will report back anything I notice, though without setting up even more tanks to perform real experiments I'm not sure how I can really judge if it's doing anything! Maybe I'll encourage my breeder friend to set up some real side by side experiments as he has the facility more capable than my 40ish gallon total tank volume 🤣

Well that's what I thought but (according to Wikipedia 😅) purple non sulphur bacteria "can be mixotrophs, capable of anaerobic and aerobic respiration or fermentation" depending on the concentration of oxygen and light. I've read two summaries of studies which tests their usefulness which do seem to suggest there is something in it... let me go find them, one was about how it changed the structure of the microbial community and improved water quality and the other was about it's effectiveness in a shrimp aquaculture (preventing disease and improving hatch and growth rates or something along those lines).

Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with PSB use in aquatics? By that I mean photosynthetic bacteria. Particularly purple non sulfur bacteria like rhodobacter? I have a friend who spent many years in Asia where he fell in love with aquatics (particularly Japanese Medaka) and is now a breeder here in the UK. He swears by using it in all his set ups and the list of things he claims it helps with is borderline too good to be true. However from reading up about it the science does sort of seem to add up. He says it's common practice in much of Asia to use it but it's practically unheard of here in the UK, I know most here are US based so wondered if you guys had any thoughts or experience of it?

Keep us posted! I've not had any success past getting them to hatch either, except one - I pulled maybe 4 or 5 eggs a little while ago and wasn't sure what to do with them (my breeder box attempts were fails) so just chucked them into a 3 gallon tank that was quite established that I was mostly using to hold/grow out some plants (I don't like throwing trimmings away 😅) and didn't think any had made it but then randomly saw a super cute little fry in there a few days ago, probably half an inch long maybe slightly more and not really Cory shaped yet but does have the black band across its face already! Not sure what size it would be safe to add it back to my display tank with its parents though? The eggs I pulled recently which have just hatched are in a plastic jug that I normally use for water changes haha but with some moss and a whole lot of infusoria so once I know they are all hatched I'm going to pour them into the plant tank and hopefully some will make it. Might have to reduce the bubbles on the sponge filter if they don't like flow. There also happens to be quite a lot of thread algae in there which I will remove a bit of but leave a bunch too. Fingers crossed! I do have a vinegar eel culture which I've been using to feed ricefish fry that I will probably feed to the panda fry too as though the other fry survived off of the infusoria and aufwuch or whatever in such a small tank I'm not sure there would be enough to supply a dozen or so hatchlings. I like the VE because they should survive at least a week (possibly indefinitely if some reports are to be believed) in the tank so less chance of overfeeding and fouling the water. Only problem is the VE mostly seem to congregate at the surface so not sure how easily the fry will find them, hopefully there is just enough flow to keep them moving around in the rest of the water column.

Same I've never seen eggs on driftwood, crpyts, anubias, java ferns only on java moss, BBA, thread algae and on the mass of pothos roots hanging into the tank - though this only before I added the java moss and had any of those algae's showing up. So you'd think spawning mops would be attractive to them if they are green and suspended but @nabokovfan87 didn't get any spawning on his mops. So maybe it's a location and texture thing combined? The location of my thread algae looks to me to be much more exposed (to like the tetras etc) but maybe the pandas in the wild live mostly alongside other benthic fish and less pelagic(?) ones? Maybe someone with more knowledge on fishes distribution could answer haha which could explain why they like to suspend the eggs away from the floor/broad leaves of plants

Agreed! When I manage to test it out I'll be post back here with some pics and the results! Its a fun experiment anyway. Plus I just love my pandas, I think they might be my favourite fish haha. Side note, that batch of eggs I pulled has now mostly hatched! When do I start feeding them? Is the little 'bubble' looking thing on them the yolk sac?

I don't think the spot the algae was in was more protected, it was way more in the open and right under the light than the java moss is, completely exposed to the open area my neon tetras hang out suspended across some PSO leaves - but there may be something about the algae itself that protects them, maybe the other fish don't like swimming through it? Also I have a bit of a.... let's say 'healthy' pink ramshorn snail population 🤣 and I'm pretty sure they eat the eggs too, maybe being suspended like it was (rather than on the substrate or something) kept it up and away from the snails and maybe the pandas instinctively know this? I might have to not only try diy-ing some sort of algae mop but also try a few in different areas of the tank and see if that makes much difference?

Amazing thanks! Glad to know you've had the same experience. I find it super interesting and I've googled a bunch about breeding corydoras and pandas in particular and have never seen it mentioned before. Do you think that the pandas are just choosing it as a spawning site or do you think that having their preferred spawning site triggers more egg laying? The algae seems to grow quite well in my water so I will see if I can find a way to use it but keeping it contained so I can easily pull it to try and hatch the eggs in a separate container. The last batch of eggs I pulled I picked them out of most of the algae as I was worried that when they hatch they might get stuck in it, do you think it would be better to just leave them in it?

Ok so I know many corydoras lay eggs on glass and other people will probably use spawning mops so this won't be of use to many other than myself but might be interesting anyway! So recently I've observed a few interesting things with my panda corydoras in my community tank. There is always breeding activity going on and eggs being laid but no fry appearing without pulling the eggs. My pandas never lay eggs on the glass, they occasionally lay eggs on roots of pothos hanging in the tank but mostly they use the java moss. At one point I had a small tuft of black beard algae (like maybe less than an inch in diameter/length) right next to my java moss and one day I noticed eggs in it from the corydoras, more than I had ever seen in the java moss at one time and in a much smaller area (I found at least 6 eggs in that small tuft of BBA). Now I know most fish hate the taste of BBA so I assumed it was just because the taste protected the eggs from being eaten by the other fish or snails etc and that's why it appeared that way - a survivorship bias so to speak, rather than the corydoras specifically preferring it to the java moss. The small tuft died off after a little while and I've not had any since and haven't thought much on it. Then even more recently I had a but of a filamentous/blanket weed type algae bloom and I was being lax with removing it (my tanks are hardly designer aquascapes so I pretty much don't mind a bit of algae unless it seems to be causing problems with the plants) and there was a good bush of it going, maybe 6 inches long by a couple inches wide suspended across some plant leaves. One morning I turned the light on to discover it absolutely full of corydoras eggs, I think I counted at least 15 which is more than I've ever seen my cories lay at one time (I only have two females and four males). I have no idea if the 'spawning media' triggered more spawning than usual, or somehow protected the eggs from being eaten (not sure how as you can see right through it much easier than the java moss) or if it was simply a coincidence. So anyway my plan to experiment is to cultivate a bunch of blanket weed type algae in a spare tank, then DIY some sort of mop with it (I was thinking a small plastic Tupperware container full of the stuff) and put it in my community tank and see what happens. My hope is to find out if; a) the corydoras do actually prefer it as a spawning media and it wasn't just a fluke b) this 'media' is somehow useful in protecting the eggs from the rest of the community c) if having their preferred choice of spawning media actually encourages/triggers more spawning than would have occured otherwise (not sure how I will really determine this part) Any thoughts or tips/advice? Not sure how to contain the blanket weed in the container without restricting access but hopefully it will just sort of stay put.

Awesome! Let me know when you are ready, if you feel like treating yourself and splurging on some very fancy strains let me know! Recently made friends with a UK based breeder who is just starting to sell some of his lines, they are costly but amazing strains that you can't get hold of in shops over here. Just trying to get the word out to other interested UK nerms!

Are any UK members here interested in Medaka??

Hi guys me again, been a while, back with more questions for you wonderful people. This time I'm trying to understand GH specifically. So I get that like mostly calcium and magnesium right? And technically it's separate from KH and it doesn't affect pH right? I know that with most fish stable parameters are more important than specifics and they will acclimatise to whatever. I also know fish and shrimp, plants etc will all need at least some calcium and magnesium to live. That being said my tap water is over 21°dH or 375 ppm which is quite high already but add to that some of my tanks require quite regular top offs due to evaporation (even with lids) and I am worried it's going to go up even more? I don't have access to RO or distilled water and the tanks in question are just small fry grow out tanks (or even egg hatching Tupperware containers) so only running small sponge filters so can't add a water softening pillow or peat moss to them (to be honest I'd rather not anyway as in such small tanks I'd imagine it could change parameters very quickly if I like forgot to take it out for a while). Do I have to worry? What affect could too much hardness have on eggs/fry/fish/shrimp? Would moving eggs from a tank with medium hardness and putting them in my super hard treated tap water affect them? I'm sure I heard it said that they will adapt to conditions better if they hatch into them. My panda corydoras keep laying eggs in my community aquarium (pH/KH and GH all much more in the middle or parameters) but they keep getting eaten so was considering pulling some and hatching them out in Tupperware. I saw one article that said Cattappa leaves are 'proven' to reduce GH as well as KH but didn't cite any references or explain how. Another article parroted that and then went on to explain it does this by releasing acids as it breaks down - I thought that acids only affected KH/pH though? Do botanicals like drift wood and leaves etc reduce GH as well as KH somehow? Could plants theoretically take up enough out of the water to lower it? Even my fry grow out tanks have quite a lot of plants (and algae). Thanks in advance all!