Crabby

I’ve got some emerald Moscow’s that look rather similar to yours, just with a slightly more round tail shape. The females have really dark tails as well. I’m looking at putting them in my pond too, once I have enough!

I have sponges on 4 tanks and a spray bar on the 5th, so I don’t see a need for airstones. To be honest, airstones irritate me a bit; they always break when I’m trying to take them off an airline!

I’ve spent a good hour reading this and your betta thread today, and I thoroughly enjoyed them both. Your tangents were either wonderfully helpful or comedic, and occasionally both, and I was smiling through the whole thing. I’m very happy for you that you managed to connect with your wife through your passion in fishkeeping, and I know from experience how rewarding it can be to share this amazing hobby with loved ones. I’m eagerly awaiting the guppies coming to your pond, and I can’t wait to see how incredible it’ll look by then, once the plants have all grown in!

Woah, @Keegis on fire 😂

It's a leopard ramshorn 🙂

Ahhh… well that makes much more sense. Whoops. I definitely want to try that. I use airline tubing for siphons in my nano tanks anyway just to be safe, but a little pantyhose on the end would be perfect.

I use sponge filters. So not super fine, but they’re definitely some of the finer sponges I’ve seen.

Oh crud… well, I haven’t done any water changes yet cuz I was scared I would suck up the fry, and I figured they wouldn’t be mucking up the water too much considering their size and the mass of Java/xmas moss in there. That’s probably why. Thanks so much @Guppysnail

Can’t walk out of my LFS without spending $100. Seriously. Maybe once or twice I’ve managed it. My most recent big spend was $125 on 5 TEENY TINY CPDs. And I didn’t even know if they were sexed correctly! Oh, and I spent another $25 on foods to make sure they breed well. 🤦‍♂️

Okay, first proper post on this thread; it’s a question. So I think I’m losing some of my CPD fry. I’ve seen 3 or 4 floating, dead, and had to catch them out, but I’m also seeing much less swimming in the water column. One that I saw the other day had a little white spot on the end of this tail. I’m wondering if this could be fin rot? It would be easy to tell on a normal sized fish of course, but these are still just a couple millimetres long. I haven’t done any water tests yet cuz I’ve been so busy, but I’ll try to get one in. It’s really worrying. Very glad I didn’t go ahead and start another batch.

I’ve got 3 main reasons, although one is definitely the big one. Firstly, to really start from the start, my mum has told me that she was watching fish swimming on TV when she was going through labour, as a way to stay calm. I don’t know if that had an impact or not, but it’s a pretty funny coincidence. When I was growing up, my parents had a goldfish tank, and looking back on it, I can see why all but one died… it was probably 15 gallons, with at least 6 medium sized goldfish, and I can’t remember anyone ever doing anything with it besides feeding the fish. Slowly they passed away, always when we were on holiday, and we never saw bodies. Maybe they were eating the dead ones? I know most fish will do that but I’m not sure about goldies. Anyway, eventually we had one left. He was white with a red spot on his forehead, and he was pretty huge. He had a name, I’m sure, but I can’t remember. My parents thought he had eaten all the other fish, so they didn’t want to get any more, and we ended up taking him to a pond in the hills beside our house and letting him go. I’m sure he had a jolly old time, because that pond would have been perfect for a hungry fellow like him. To be honest, it’s odd that my parents didn’t do to well with the goldfish, cuz they managed to keep seahorses for a few years before I was born. The thing that really tipped me over was going on a camping trip a few years ago. I found these adorable little ‘red handed shrimp’ in an estuary, and they were so courageous, nibbling at my fingers and toes. I was totally hooked. I spent a few months researching, then got my first planted tank, and it went from there. Now I have 5 tanks and a pond with 4 goldfish, and some day I’m going to go and collect some red handed shrimp for a 10 gallon shrimp-only tank. That’s probably my dream tank, to be honest. Although if I could chuck in some crabs…

Oh mascara barbs are seriously the coolest. They're the sole species of barb that I'm really into. And all puffers are just amazing. @Tihshho if you go with either of these species, please keep us in the loop!

Oh I just watched that, so amazing!!!

Well I’ve never heard Cory talk about fertiliser cycling, but now I’m interested! I would assume you pick the light back up to 8ish hours after a month or two. Two would be a better choice to avoid algae growth. Water parameters depend on the plant. There will be nitrates if you’re also cycling it for fish, or if you’re using a soil/active substrate, so you can’t really avoid that. Nitrates are good for some plants, but can be a pain with others (like species of rotala) that will present better colour with a lower nitrate content. I’m not sure how much you’re going into this all though. Generally pH is best when it’s just below neutral, but that’s also plant dependent. Same with temp. Can’t really answer your other questions as I don’t know the whole fertiliser cycling concept. Good luck though!

From the photo it looks like it’s probably a species of algae called ‘staghorn algae’. Your sword is probably one of the taller plants in your tank, right? If so, the staghorn algae will receive more light when on the sword, as it is closer to the light source and receives more intense light.

I believe they’re actually two different strains that both go under the same common name. The one I found is Azolla rubra, which is also called red Azolla and pacific Azolla. It’s native to NZ and Aus. Very similar though!

First round of photos. Just realised I haven’t taken a pic of the entire 29 gallon in 6 months, so I won’t include one of those, but you can have a look at most of my fish, a couple tanks, and a work-in-progress tank. Grow-out Collecting CPD fry Some teeny CPD fry Some more teeny CPD fry CPDs Iwagumi tank (w/ CPDs) Ember tetras BN fry in cave (through Java moss) Tess Tess + Bear (failed breeding project) Ran + Ægir Ran trying to impress Ægir (with Watson trying to get in on the action 😂) Apisto fry The Rack (pre-algae farm) (Not so secret) secret work-in-progress shrimp tank that I’m creating with one of my mates. Can’t wait to stock it properly once we’re out of lockdown. And that’s all! For now at least. I’m considering that if I make too many posts here I might have to start a journal specifically for the rack, since I’ve seen people do that, but I’d prefer to keep it centralised. All my tanks seep into each other eventually (also kind of literally - all my water-change water comes from the 29 gallon).

Hey all! I have a really bad tendency of creating lots of topics when I use forums, with the intent of keeping them going, and I just suck at it. So I thought a journal would be a good idea. I probably won't get as many people seeing my posts here, but that's alright. Maybe I can inspire someone, or give some advice to someone else, or get some advice from another person! Hopefully all three, but I'd bet it'll mostly be the latter 😄 So for a bit of an introduction to the journal, so you can get a bit of an idea what I do and where I'm at: I'm an Australian fish keeper, who is really into nano fish and shrimp, and getting into breeding. I've kept fish for the last year and a bit, but I feel like I've been in the hobby for almost 2 years because I spent months and months doing research, so I could hit the ground running with my first tank. The Aquarium Co-Op YouTube channel was very useful during that time for me, as I'm sure it was for many people here. Thanks to ACO, I definitely hit the ground running, albeit with a few stumbles. Within the last year I've grown from my single original planted & scaped 29 gallon tank, to 5 tanks, including a rack of planted 5 gallon algae farms and a 5 gallon tank that I originally had as an endler & shrimp breeder, which has since become a grow-out for fry. I'll get some photos of all of my tanks in a few days, after I've cleaned them all. For a quick run-down of my tanks: 29 Gallon planted: Breeding trio of calico BNs (Chip, Mango and Jimmy), breeding pair of apistogramma nijsseni (Aegir & Ran), 10 remaining apisto fry, 15x ember tetras, 1 female pseudomugil luminatus (named Khamun - my male who has passed away was named Tut, so they were Tut 'n Khamun), 1 SAE (Watson), and a whole lot of calico bristlenose fry. 5 gallon grow-out: 40 or so CPD fry. 5 gallon rack: Top tank has my male HMPK betta (named Bear) and 4 emerald moscow guppy juveniles. Middle tank is a W.I.P. iwagumi scape, with a breeding group of 5 Celestial Pearl Danios. Bottom tank has my female HMPK betta (Tessa) and my single blue dream shrimp. Honestly, he needs a name at this point. Once I'm out of lockdown I am immediately going around to some local shrimp breeders to get some shrimp. Caridina for the iwagumi, blue dreams for the bottom tank, bloody mary's for the top one, and maybe even some oranges or yellows for the fry grow-out. To quickly summarise what I've done for breeding - I've spawned my apistos many times, and raised the fry all up in their tank. I'm one of the only nijsseni breeders in Melbourne, which is pretty cool. I did a bunch of endler and guppy breeding last year, but unfortunately lost over 100 fish due to a mass die-off. Through my endler breeding, I discovered the power of plants. Without a HEAVILY planted tank, there's no way I could've kept over 50 endlers in a 5 gallon. With shrimp and snails too. It would be madness! But with the help of plants, it was a breeze, and they bred like crazy! Unfortunately I never got the shrimp going well, but I think that was due to my roughly fortnightly 25%+ water changes. Hence the singular blue dream. I've attempted breeding pseudomugils and bettas with no success. I definitely want to try both again. I've recently succeeded in breeding BNs, as well as CPDs. Very different stories with those though. I got my calico BNs as possibly my first fish. They've spent the last year growing out, and they finally spawned a couple weeks ago. On the other hand, I got some CPDs less that a month ago, after a conversation with a bloke at my LFS who told me they have a lot of trouble getting them in and could do with a local breeder as a supplier. They spawned within a week of me getting them, and I currently have a bunch of free-swimming fry in the grow-out. They actually became free-swimming today, which was very exciting. I guess I'll start feeding in a couple days, when they're all swimming. There's enough microfauna in there for a while. A couple more things that I forgot to mention - due to my reliance on plants, I don't really water change unless I need to clean algae or poop. Nor do I regularly water test. I don't exactly aim for parameters anymore either. My tap water comes out with a very low TDS, so it's very soft, and luckily the pH is neutral, which is really handy for me. Also, in case you haven't realised yet, I have a problem with typing. I say way too much. It is impossible for me to be concise, because I like to be expressive, and I've always got so much to say! Anyways, that's about all for now. I'll definitely keep updating this with whatever comes up, and share some photos soon. If you made it all the way through this post, I congratulate you.

This is a really touching, wonderful story, and you have a really wonderful fish there keegs. He looks like a very happy little fellow, that Bob. And I’m sorry for your loss, it sounds like Hutch was a really kind man. Your bettas are really beautiful too. That male is fantastic. I’m not big on single-coloured bettas, but a good red on a plakat or halfmoon plakat? That’s awesome. I’ve also tried breeding bettas and failed, so you’ve got my respect for succeeding 😂

Those biotoecus are amazing! So unique!

I’d like a lot of fish to become more common, but particularly pseudomugils (especially mellis), cool killies, L-number plecos and CW-number cories, and apistogrammas. OOH and apistogrammoides PLEASE! I agree with those above who think the hard-to-keep-well fish should be more rare. And I’d like the majority of uncommon but not rare fish to stay that way. It feels good to be able to breed a fish that isn’t super normal and popular.

Ooh fun! I like the detail on the tail of the male, not sure about the shape though. I did some endler guppy crossing a while back as well, and ended up getting a really cool dorsal fin on some males that I loved. Unfortunately I lost the line due to a HUGE die-off (100-200 fish, it was terrible). Very excited to see how it goes for you. I think the thing with endler females not being able to push out guppy fry is a bit of a myth, I never experienced any problems with that. That being said, my endler females were HUGE. Later generations were smaller, but the males were also smaller. So it could be true, and maybe you stick to breeding guppy females with hybrid or endler males, but I don’t think it should be necessary. I kind of skimmed over everyone else’s posts so I don’t know if someone has answered this yet, but the fry of guppies and endlers will not be sterile. They're far from it. Those things breed faster than rabbits. Definitely following this thread. Looking forward to seeing the fish you get.

This looks great! What a cool idea! But… what’s this jet everyone keeps talking about?

Congrats! I don’t think the pygmies will eat them, they’re usually a pretty gentle fish. There are a few really good white cloud breeding threads on this forum, so see if you can find any. They’ll include info on raising the fry. @WhitecloudDynasty is incredibly knowledgeable on white clouds from what I’ve seen, so maybe check out their profile to see what white cloud threads they’ve participated in, to save some time finding a thread. Good luck!

As most have already said, chances are they’re all fine. Shrimp hide, that’s just what they do when there are fish in the tank. Unfortunately if you got them for algae, you probably got the wrong ones. But shrimp are amazing, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy them nonetheless. Even if they are not all fine, though, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND putting a sponge on your filter intake. Just reduce that risk. There’s no harm in getting one; they’re cheap and easy to install. If you’re in America, I’m sure your LFS has some, or the co-op.