KentFishFanUK

Thanks, that makes me sad I've only recently become a member and now I won't really get to join in any of them live 🙁hopefully they change it back one day

Haven't got anything helpful to add but wanted to say a big congratulations!! Also find it interesting that a 1920s built house is considered old in the US! My house is 1920s too but it's small and not considered that old here really. Even Victorian built houses (1800s) aren't old. My parents house (well the original part of it, it's been extended and added to many times over the years) was built in the 1600s and even that isn't particularly remarkable. On the other hand you talk about your 135 gallon tank like it's no big deal, over here that size tank is almost unheard of! Well maybe not completely unheard of but would be considered huge! Then the really *big* tanks like Cory's 800 I don't think even exist over here. Can't even imagine how hard it would be to move your 135 gallon. Interesting lesson in perspective I guess. Good luck with the move!

Does anyone know if the live stream earlier is planned to be a regular time/day now and does it replace the usual time on Sunday? It was at 1am here so couldn't watch it as had to be up for work at 4am. 😞

I did, never tried it without seachem stability so maybe it would have worked either way but it doesn't hurt! Plants are fun (sometimes frustrating but still a fun challenge) as well as helping out. Post pics once you have it all planted up!

Agreed! It even seems like reasonably priced shipping.

Looks like it's being done in Thailand: https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/greenwaterfarm https://greenwaterfarmthailand.com/ They ship worldwide as well.

Good point! That makes sense. Definitely do a posting on it - I'll do the same when I can. Hopefully others might be interested enough to try too and it can be a bit of a collaborative effort to figure them out! Maybe one day someone like aquarium co-op will pick them up and they will be the next big thing haha.

Noted! Will do, thanks again 😀 🌿 Edit: oh look at that I got more likes again, timer must have reset!

Yeah BBS are much more available and cheap - but I'm sure a cost effective way of growing large numbers of eggs to sell could be done by anyone with the resources to do the same with brine shrimp? Seems like you hatch a bunch, let them lay as many eggs as possible for 8 weeks until they die, then collect and dry the eggs and store them until you need them (or sell them). Would need experimenting with food and conditions to get the largest number of viable eggs but at some point the same must have been done for brine shrimp right? Perhaps brine shrimp/live food hatcheries have tried and you simply can't get a comparable yield from them as you can brine shrimp for the same amount of resources? Even in that case there must be a niche for them surely?

Thanks @Odd Duck! That's how I will do it then, hopefully I can trigger roots from the far end to grow so I can place it vertically in the water without getting the leaves wet

Hope that sort of shows it? Thanks for your help guys! I've run out of reactions for today which is the only reason I'm not 'liking' your replies 🤦‍♂️ but I am grateful!

In my uneducated opinion - I agree! Maybe @Cory should get on it haha. Or maybe explain why it's not worth it anyhow?

I read the same article! And one other with the same result. It does look promising but surely there's a reason everyone uses BBS instead? I wasn't really sure about checking eBay, especially from another country, I don't know what the rules are for importing things like this. I did find one UK seller which I will try first anyway I was more pointing out the disparity between availability of artemia cysts and fairy shrimp eggs, maybe they are harder to produce? Some information I saw said they breed easily and prolifically so they shouldn't be buy then I don't really know. Ah you Americans get all the luck lol. That was my thought, might not be replacing brine shrimp but its definitely worth trying. I like the idea of providing live fish food in tank - micro predators or fish fry that couldn't eat the adults could be provided a constant supply of nauplii plus they can add to the ecosystem in general, or at least not foul the water if they die uneaten. Also I like the idea that it could be marginally closer to what our fish eat in the wild purely because it's freshwater (not for any reason I could explain, just like the idea - it would appeal to biotope enthusiasts maybe). When I have my fish room (how many times have I said that already?!) I will give them a go and report back!

Pretty thin like a thread I think - I'll add a couple pics of it soon

I've just found out today about fairy shrimp - Streptocephalus siamensis. They seem similar to brine shrimp only freshwater, with highly nutritious nauplii just like BBS. Is there any reason noone seems to talk about them as an option for live food? Brine shrimp and BBS/their eggs are everywhere for use as live foods but I can only find one place to order fairy shrimp eggs from in the UK but I'm not sure why, it seems they would work just the same with the dry eggs lasting for years and years until they are wet etc only with the advantage of them surviving longer in freshwater tanks. What am I missing?

To echo some of what @laritheloud said, when I was setting up my tank earlier this year I started trying to do it with pinches of fish food as per guides I had read online and I never managed to get much of an ammonia reading from it so it never really got going - I highly recommend using actual ammonia straight from a bottle, I gave up with the fish food method and ordered Dr Tim's ammonia solution from Amazon and it worked like a charm.

Most of the roots look ok except where it joins the stem, about an inch or so has gone brown and shrivelled and I expect the rest will follow so I think I will cut them off and cut the stem and just start over!

If I do that should I recut a little off of the stem part I'm placing in the water? The very end of it is brown and dry where it's healed over so not sure it would take up much water!

Haha! Oh well at least it's not just me then. Don't know whether to give it another go or not, it did briefly look beautiful to the point of being the centrepiece plant in the tank... until it disintegrated! My other stem plants aren't going so well either but my java fern, anubias, crypts and another couple I can't never remember the names of are doing ok.

Not the exact same spot but close together and the roots are coming out between two of the leaf stems (I did say it was a rubbish sketch haha - when I get home tonight I'll try and remember to take a picture and post it and you can judge just how bad my sketch was!). Not sure why that section of roots is shrivelling up then if they don't need to be completely submerged. What you suggested was what I hoped would work but wasn't sure, if I do that will new roots start to grow out the long section on the left that would be placed in the water?

@Jeeperscreepersmyth I think @Samanthabea might be on to something You said you've been keeping them a year? Isn't a year roughly about right for their lifespan? If it's just the original ones dying maybe it's that? Unless it's juveniles as well then maybe not.

I intentionally left a bunch of my substrate open for my corys for that exact reason - and of course they spend at least as much time and probably more surfing through plants and over drift wood snuffling around for snacks like they do, typical! Lovely scape! I think some corydoras for the bottom, some chili rasboras swimming about, a few otocinclus to keep the plants clean (also for looking super cute resting on leaves) and some blue cherry shrimp for a pop of blue colour would look great together in this scape.

I had some AR mini that started doing really well in my tank and looked gorgeous then very quickly started dying off and is now gone completely, any tips? I want to get some more but not sure where I went wrong. Until it died it was putting out new leaves and had a great colour, then just melted. At the time it might have been a little bit shaded by some floating plants (though not completely) and all my plants had some algae on (have oto's now that seem to do a great job keeping leaves clear) so would that be enough or do you think it's something else?

Ok so I have a small jade pothos cutting I bought for probably too much money to grow in my tank to help with filtration. It seems to be growing a bit strange so it's hard to work out how best to place it. Currently I have it sitting on top of my internal filter (out of the water) with the roots trailing in the water, however a small section of roots between the stem and the rest of the roots (this section of roots is above the water line) has gone all brown and shrivelled and I'm assuming the whole lot will come off at some point. I did an awful little sketch to show what I mean: The red arrow points to the dying section. Does the whole length of roots need to be underwater? As you can see the roots are growing in a weird place between the leaf offshoots so I can't get it all in the water without submerging some of the stem and leaves. Is there anyway to encourage roots to grow out of the cut end of the stem? Would make it a lot easier. Thanks in advance!

I am apparently the same!