KentFishFanUK

Is this another thing I will need to do when I set up my pea puffer colony? Sounds easy enough!

Amazing pics! Are they annuals?

Good answer! I had almost forgotten about these. They are so cool and definitely a bucket list fish. You could probably argue that they are the most unique fish in the freshwater hobby I reckon. Love @Zenzo's videos on them.

Nice work! The nerm moment I'm (mostly undeservedly) proud of wasn't so much a creation or anything but just doing a couple of people some favours - I met a nice old chap who was closing down his fish room due to health issues and wanted to sell off his old tanks and equipment but wasn't having much luck, I thought I knew someone (my 'fish guy' who imports and breeds/sells fish out of his garage as a side hustle to whatever his day job is) who might be interested and brokered a deal between them to take it all off his hands as a job lot - both were very grateful as my fish guy got a really great deal on a bunch of stuff and the nice old chap said it was a weight off his shoulders at a stressful time and even thanked me with a couple of small tanks he had kept back from the lot he sold! So we all went away happy. It wasn't exactly a big thing to do I was just coincidentally well placed to help a couple of Nerms out a little bit and I like it when a plan comes together! I also occasionally help out when I see reddit posts from newbies asking questions and the replies are either not very helpful/lacking explanation to downright unpleasant, I always try to write a well thought out answer that explains things in a newbie friendly way that points them in the right direction. Again not much but gives me the warm and fuzzies when out of all the replies posted mine is the one that gets the thank you reply - plus I feel like I'm upholding the Nerm/CARE forum values! Not done a whole lot of DIY yet but I have a few plans I've jotted down that when I get around to I will try and remember to take pics and post them here.

You beat me to it! Haha and yay I'm glad I'm not the only one who went down the rabbit hole.

From what I gather from skimming articles the crocodile toothpick (and two other indostomus species that are very similar) are similar to pipefish but much smaller? (Like an inch! I love them). Apparently they have previously been classified as past of the seahorse family of fish (might include pipefish too? I think anyway) related to sticklebacks and possibly other things but are now reclassified as a family(?) of their own and are now considered unrelated. The other photos are the pics people are posting of the fish they've recently discovered/fallen in love with.

Ok I have an idea for a new style of filter which is probably dumb but hear me out: A flexible silicone tube/hose filled the entire length with coarse sponge that attaches to a small inline power head.. and that's basically it! The tube itself is the filter housing and can be put anywhere using suction cups or clips - could be internal, external, hidden around the inside of the lid, under substrate, coiled up in the corner of the tank or behind it wherever! Weather too hot? Just run the tubing outside of the tank through a bowl of ice water. As long as the output is pointed inside the tank and the input is somewhere in the tank water the rest can be anywhere. Want to change water with it? Just point the output at your bucket to drain water and move the input end into the bucket of clean water to refill. When it gets gunked up can just squeeze it out (think getting the last of the toothpaste out the tube) and rinse it through with a bit of clean dechlorinated water. If more filtration is needed then just increase tube length and power head size. Should be simple, cheap, flexible (both literally and figuratively) easy to use and maintain, discrete etc. Could it work? Or is there some physics reason that my brain is too small to realise would make it impossible 😅

They are everywhere in my area! Took me longer to find hillstream loaches. Never seen a crocodile toothpick in an LFS though! Though now every one I pass I will have to pop in and ask if they've ever had them in haha

RIGHT?! I can't believe they aren't everywhere, they have the same sort of appeal to me as pea puffers. If you see any please buy a bunch and post lots of progress pics and vids with them!

This is the first forum I've been a part of but I have looked through many different forums posts whilst researching various fish or aspects of the hobby (plus other hobbies). It's so nice to have a forum that when someone asks about care of a fish the first 5 responses are actually helpful, not just "in future do your research before purchasing a live animal please" (like come on get off your high horse already) half the time they don't even add anything constructive to it so they literally only replied to put someone else down and it irks me even though it's not aimed at me and I'm reading it years later haha I feel like sticking up for the poster then I see the thread is 3 years old and the moment had probably past. So yeah not to hate on other internet spaces but this is by far my favourite place. In addition to it being a nice place in general there are a select few people who always seem to take the time to reply to me and others in such a nice and helpful way it's the same names always popping up for me, won't mention who here but I'm sure they know who they are, it's very much appreciated guys! 😄

Yeah I only meant new to me not actually new! Everyone else is probably already familiar haha they just hadn't come up in any videos etc that I had seen yet. I wonder what fish is going to be the next 'hot item'? What's the most recent one you've noticed?

Thanks and yeah I'm not going to attempt it any time soon. Actually I plan to cultivate my own live foods anyway so once I've got that figured out maybe I'll think about trying them!

Great answer! I'm the same, still in love with my neon tetras haha

Thanks for replying! Sounds good, looking forward to seeing your progress with it and the eventual final product. Might give it a go one day myself!

Ok so not real discoveries - but seeing/finding out about a new fish for you. I'm new to the hobby and haven't kept a whole lot, but I'm the kind of person who likes to do lots of research and make notes and lists etc and have a list of all the fish that really interest me that I hope to keep 'one day'. Whilst watching a bunch of older co op and more co op YouTube videos last night I heard about 'crocodile toothpicks' for the first time in an unboxing video and immediately fell in love and added it to the list. No idea how I'm only hearing about them now - they are everything I love about fish haha but makes me excited to wonder what other fish are out there that I can fall in love with. What fish have you recently seen and fell in love with?

Excited to see more of these fish and learn about them, some really cool looking fish there. Was the bag that Dean couldn't show because it was a doa or because it was a secret?

Hi I have nothing to add as way out of my depth here but following with interest! If I may ask some questions though? First, I can't picture how the tank will look, will the planter go inside the tank or will the mangrove trees be moved and planted straight into the tank? If the former, will the planter be hidden? Secondly, how big will the mangrove grow? Can you keep it low with pruning etc? Lastly, and this is probably a longshot, do mangroves also grow in freshwater?

Thought of a couple products I'd like to see, though not exciting enough to call them 'dream' products. One is a modular tank cover set - just lots of small cheap plastic hexagons that can clip together in any shape or size to create a cover for any tank, leaving space for pipework or whatever is required and get reused as necessary. The other is something thin and flexible that would hold its shape (like tin foil) that would be aquarium and fish safe that I could use to cover areas inside a tank afflicted by blue green algae - like a targeted black out

Oh fair enough, I thought it looked all exotic full of plants haha

Nice! What's going on with the dry tank on the left and the one below it?

Thank you, some very good ideas here I will be referring back to this thread when the time comes! Plastic storage bins etc is a great idea. Funnel system is probably how I'd do it I think. No trees and no particulary heavy snow load so if it's a lot more expensive then I'll stick to flat roof, otherwise pitched for more space. Thanks!

Noo he can't take him back until we know the results of the experiment! 😂

Purely out of interest, what if the politics being discussed was fish related? Like different countries laws on environmental or habitat preservation, or certain plants/fish/medicines being banned etc? I mean I assume as long as it was a practical discussion and not highly opinionated etc then it's unlikely to get heated or cause strife and is relevant to the hobby so would generally be ok but was just a thought, it is sort of political after all For example, on another thread we were discussing a nitrate removing set up with live plants - one of the best plants for this would probably be water hyacinth, which whilst doing some reading I saw that apparently it used to be banned for sale or shipment in the US because of its potential to be invasive, but according to Wikipedia late last year the law was repealed so now presumably you guys in the US could sell/buy it now?

Yeah I've checked, there's a few sources I can order it from but it's anywhere from £40ish ($50ish) for a small 4" size tub (doesn't even say the weight) to like £140 for a big 10" tub because they are shipping it from the US.

I'm in the UK, I don't think I can get it here yet 😞