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drewzero1

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Everything posted by drewzero1

  1. drewzero1
    I'm trying to read them all before I volunteer! I hope I haven't missed any. So far I've got: Andy's Fish Den Atitagain BettaBabe94 Drewzero1 (in progress!) Flumpweesel FlyingFishKeeper Jeff modified lung OnlyGenusCaps Wrencher_Scott Link 'em here if there are some I didn't see!
  2. drewzero1
    I so wish I could legally go collecting in my area. There are so many great native fish around here, but you can't legally possess any of them unless you get them from a hatchery! 😡 Day 2 of Operation Salad Farm is going well. I can't believe this much dwarf water lettuce grew from a small baggie I bought in June! There's no way this is going to eliminate the duckweed, but a week or two of picking it out every night should set it back a week or two. 😂😢 (I've got a few other mystery floaters in there, probably giant duckweed and some kind of frogbit, so I'm saving those too.)
  3. drewzero1
    I spent way too long last night rearranging dwarf water lettuce so I could scoop duckweed more aggressively. I'm not trying to completely remove it, but at least make some room for other floaters and let some light through to the plants below. I've been struggling to keep my val planted with all the critters shuffling around in the substrate. This weekend I was out for a run and noticed a bunch of it floating in the lake, so I guess it's natural to see it uprooted a little. 🤷 On Saturday I visited a new LFS that I expected to be too rich for my blood (huge beautiful marine display, fancy modern high-tech store setup) but was pleasantly surprised that I can actually afford some things there. The owner came over to talk to us and seemed very nice, very welcoming to beginners. If/when I get my SW setup ready for corals, I know where to get frags now. 👍
  4. drewzero1
    Personally I've found I like mollies for exactly those reasons: they're very curious and check everything out, nibbling algae on plants and picking bits of food off of the substrate, and it's fun to watch them bumbling around all levels of the tank. (I have cories in with mine and have realized they're probably not necessary, the mollies pick food off the bottom just fine.) Schooling fish just don't have as much personality, and many will only eat food when it's in the top or middle of the water column. In my initial molly adventure I was able to finger-train them at feeding time so the adults would swim right into my hand. I've never had a friendlier species of fish. I'm into my second attempt at mollies and if I found myself with too many males, I'd probably catch a few males and give them away to even out the ratio.
  5. drewzero1
    Two very cloudy tanks in the science fair on this episode of Monk:
  6. drewzero1
    I stopped using glass thermometers in my tanks after one broke and gave me a stinky red oil slick on the water. Now I use a digital readout on my main tank and stick-ons on the rest, plus feeling the glass and/or water with my hand whenever I pass by. I trust the hand method about as much as the stick-on ones, which is not a whole lot.
  7. drewzero1
    Me too! I'm grateful to be a part of it. I love seeing everyone's interesting projects. An innocent bystander in the house saw my post as I was writing it and commented "That's really long...people are going to read all that? I'm glad you found your people." 😊
  8. drewzero1
    I've had a busy summer so my aquatic interests have taken the back burner a bit, but after thinking about it I still have a lot to show off. This year has been all about the low-effort breeding projects, and this summer there are babies everywhere! (Except my patio pond, but I'll get to that in a bit.) I've had a few opportunities this summer to pick up some plants I can't usually get in my area: dwarf water lettuce (probably?), jungle val (probably), and another mystery plant that the molly fry really love. Last week my LFS had some Monoselenium tenerum come in by mistake and I jumped on it; I've been looking for sußwassertang for ages and this is close enough to give it a shot. First baby endler in my work tank, along with dozens of tiny ramshorn snails. (I tried endlers before but I don't think I gave them the best chance.) The patio pond was a qualified success in that some of the fish survived (put in 6 white cloud minnows, got 5 out). No fry and no signs of spawning. I had to pull the plug early to get the pond out of the way for some patio renovations, but I've got the green light to put in a bigger more permanent outdoor pond next year. For now the pond inhabitants are mingling happily with my other white clouds in my unheated 20 long. Finally, I've been working on a top-secret project for the last few months... a 5 gallon pico marine tank. The current stocking is a blue-legged hermit crab, plus Caulerpa mexicana macroalgae and whatever's in the live rock. This is kind of a test to see if I can handle keeping saltwater. Eventually if it works I'd like to upgrade the tank, lighting, etc. to accommodate clownfish, corals, and additional inverts in a slightly larger reef setting. I'm going to tag @JettsPapa because he really helped me out with my past (and future) gourami aspirations, and I'm curious what he's up to now.
  9. drewzero1
    Rainbow shiners and hillstream loaches are both on my list for a high flow, lower temp setup. I don't think either of them care about snails though.
  10. drewzero1
    Can't go wrong with black mollies. I had a pair in my 40 and impulse bought two female gold speckled mollies... thought the 3:1 gender ratio would spread out the male's aggression. It did, and now my tank is absolutely swimming in molly fry! Which (for now) is not a bad problem to have.
  11. drewzero1
    I've looked into them as a potential oddball shrimp or as a pet on their own. They ended up being just a little more weird than I was comfortable with, and hard to tell for sure whether they'd be community safe or try to eat things once they got big.
  12. drewzero1
    Auto top-off. I've seen them a lot more on marine systems where they're needed to keep the salinity consistent with evaporation, but some people use them in freshwater too.
  13. drewzero1
    I believe the moss ball is technically a kind of algae, but from what I've heard it shouldn't spread around the tank. I've never had one myself but they seem all right. The people who have them seem to like them, especially with shrimp. You do have to roll them periodically to make sure they don't get a dead spot on the bottom.
  14. drewzero1
    By far the most power-hungry piece of equipment in my tanks are the heaters. Everything else is a drop in the proverbial bucket. The room temp in my fish room gets down to 50°F in the dead of winter, so I've been working on improving the insulation both for the room and for the individual tanks.
  15. drewzero1
    Welcome! I've been on the forum for just over a year, and found the interactions to be overwhelmingly positive. I keep pothos in a HOB flow-through breeder box, mostly because I was already trying to root some cuttings in jars and kept forgetting to change/fill the water. Now they're growing great and taking up excess nutrients from my tank... win-win!
  16. drewzero1
    I have java moss in all of my tanks as well, and can confirm that it is super easy to keep alive (and super hard to remove algae from). Same with guppy grass. (Don't worry too much about the algae though; some tanks have it bad, some don't. It really varies based on nutrients, lighting, and temperature. Snails help too.) Floating plants are also good bang for the buck effort-wise. Many dislike duckweed and it is near impossible to get rid of if you eventually decide you agree, but there are other similar plants with less invasive reputations: salvinia, frogbit, and dwarf water lettuce for example. I'd never heard of phoenix rasboras and had to look them up... they're beautiful fish! Micro rasboras like that should be a great choice for a 5 gallon. I agree that they will like the water wisteria and any plant they can feel like they're hiding in/behind. I've noticed my espei rasboras can be very skittish and like to be able to swim around things when they perceive a threat.
  17. drewzero1
    There's also a 12 gallon long which is about 36x9x10. It blew my mind a little the first time I saw one, it's so long and skinny!
  18. drewzero1
    There's not usually a lot of love for blue gravel, but this stocking really makes it work! Wow!
  19. drewzero1
    I picked up some val (pretty sure) at a local swap, and it came with these long thick stems (with algae fuzz) and tiny, bright green leaves on top. Some kind of rotala maybe? The stems are similar to the hygrophilia in the foreground, but very different leaves. There's an uprooted stem of the mystery plant right in front of the sponge filter, in case it helps to see the root structure.
  20. drewzero1
    I've seen this with my ramshorns, but nerites are even better 😆😍
  21. drewzero1
    I won two heaters in a $2 raffle once, which came in handy a week later when the heater in my 40 failed. The best deals for me have always been at my local aquarium club's expos. I can't get there early enough for the popular stuff (shrimp sold out before I got to the last one) but people are often really nice about giving extra deals so they don't have to take stuff home with them.
  22. drewzero1
    Looks like a great new home for them! I just had to bring some fish home from work because they've been stressed from people walking past them all the time. So much easier to take care of them at home as well.
  23. drewzero1
    I moved my espei rasboras home from my work tank yesterday. They got scary pale during the move, but this morning they're settling in and back in (orange and) black. I'm a bit nervous putting them in with bigger fish like mollies, pearl danios, and banjo cats, but I think they'll like the heavier planting and lighter foot traffic of my home tank. They'll be replaced on Monday by some new endlers' livebearers I picked up at the local swap last week. (Thanks Keith!) Hopefully those guys will be less scared than the espeis were every time somebody walks past my desk.
  24. drewzero1
    I had been hoping to keep my patio pond going another month or two, but we're doing some work on the patio so the pond needed to move. I figured that would be easier without all the fish and moved them to their winter home indoors with my standard white clouds. Started with 6 golden white clouds, ended with 5. No fry spotted, but also no mosquito larvae, so I'll call it a qualified success. I'm very pleased with their reddish gold color, compared to how pale they were at the store. (Pictures taken while I was giving the last one time to find the net.) Part of the patio plans include a bigger pond with more plants for cover, so I'm really looking forward to trying this again next year!
  25. drewzero1
    Could be a lot of things with that volume of fish. How's the ammonia? Nitrite and nitrate? What and how much do you feed? How long has the system been running? How, and how often, do you clean the filter? Then, all environmental factors being fine, they could just be coming in stressed or sick from your supplier. I don't have much experience with bait fish, but feeder minnows often don't seem to last long in the pet store tanks or after bringing them home.
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