Okesa

In a different thread, @Fish Folksuggested I make a post about what a LFS is like in Japan. I'm thinking about trying to go to mine this weekend. It's there anything in particular y'all are interested in seeing? If there are any specific fish or products you'd like to see, let me know and I'll do my best to get some pictures.

I love animals, but got into aquarium within the last 6-ish months kind of on accident. The school where I work had quite a few tanks that were pretty neglected, and I started asking around to get permission to do some upgrades. There is so much information out there on setup/care and it is definitely a lot to go through, but between Aquarium Co-Op, Girl Talks Fish, The Turtle Girl, and several other YouTube channels and websites it was easy to compare different ways of raising fish/turtles and get an idea of what the average requirements were for the different species they had at the school. I live in Japan, so having so much information accessable on the internet was incredibly helpful, since even speaking Japanese I don't have the technical vocabulary to really have in-depth discussions with anyone at my LFS. I think the fact that the fish/turtle/eel/axolotl at school were already there and anything I did was an improvement on the conditions they were in maybe took away some of the pressure of being completely new to aquariums. It has been so rewarding seeing the kids get much more engaged with the animals, and seeing the animals enjoy their improved homes. I definitely still have a lot to learn, but when I move somewhere with more space I am seriously considering getting a tank of my own.

He doesn't have a name yet, but I think this guy I got for the community tank I set up at school is pretty good looking.

My high school math teacher had a massive fish tank in the classroom with discus and an arowana. The discus were definitely the much more attractive fish, IMO. Whenever we didn't want to do AP statistics first period in the morning we would ask him fish questions. 😂

I just got this one because it was rated for the biggest tank size. The actual heating unit is also replaceable if it dies. My smaller tank heater is less fancy. It has a controller, but no external probe. It does still have some kind of sensor that kicks the heater on if the temp falls below what is set on the dial. For reference, the big heater was around $48 and the small one was around $32. Not sure if that makes them a good deal or expensive.

I think that might be them. They are apparently the most common Japanese freshwater snail, so if they really did come free with the free river sand, this species would make sense! Thank you for the ID! 🙂

Having had no prior experience with heaters before moving to Japan, I just kind of assumed they all looked like this, but based on the comments/pictures in this thread, maybe they don't? Is it uncommon to have a temperature control knob / temperature probe as part of the unit? This is what I have in the Red Eared Slider tank. (GEX Safe Cover NaviPack 300)

All this snail talk has me wondering, does anyone have a guess as to what kind of snails these might be? I live in Japan, and as far as I know they were in the gravel that a science teacher scooped out of the river for the fish tanks. They are quite good at reproducing - we definitely have multiple generations happening.

@laritheloudI live in Japan, so there's an extra layer of confusion. Sometimes things have the same name, and sometimes they are completely different.

@Keegthe illustrations are from a Japanese website that makes free clip art. I just photoshopped them all together and added the text. (thank you for the nice compliment, though. 🙂) I've actually made posters of all the fish introducing themselves and fact sheets that are on the walls next to the tanks.

Checked the water quality again, and while the nitrates are still high, they are slowly falling. I did another partial water change - this is either the 4th or 5th. I had hoped the water changes would be making a more dramatic difference. Is nitrate something that can hang around in the substrate? The bottom of the tank has around 2 inches of sand. I know for a fact that the tank was without a working filter (and I'm pretty sure was just having water periodically added, but not changed) for at least a year and a half, but more than likely a lot longer than that. In slightly better news, we have a new leaf on the pothos, and it is also starting to send some more roots down! Hopefully it will help to improve the water quality a lot. I also made a cute poster explaining the nitrogen cycle, because if we are going to have fish tanks in the school they might as well be educational!

@laritheloud the tank I just set up at school has a male gourami that my LFS had labeled as a "sunset dwarf gourami." Is he also a thick lipped?

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, because Amano shrimp do come from Japan, but the price difference is crazy! I paid the equivalent of around $1.50 each for mine.

When one aquarium creature with a shell loves another aquarium creature with a shell very much... 😂

I think that might traumatize some elementary school children.

Thank goodness! My coworkers and I were worried he had decided to try escargot. 😂 I tried to give him some toys to play with when he was constantly removing his thermometer from the wall of the tank, but he didn't seem interested. Apparently the snails are more fun. Maybe I need to find some things that sink to the bottom rather than ones that float.

Caught Jimmy, the school's red eared slider seemingly harassing the nerite snails that have been cleaning his tank for probably close to 6 months with no issues. Is he just bored? Is he trying to eat them in spite of the fact that he is stupidly well fed? Link to video.

The school I work at has several aquariums that had been kind of neglected. I am slowly replacing broken equipment and doing upgrades. There are currently two heated tanks, and two that are unheated. In the heated tanks, I added some nerite snails to keep the glass clean. So far they have done a pretty great job. I would like to add nerite snails to the unheated tanks, but I am concerned that the water temperature in the winter (possibly as cold as around 15°C) will be too cold for them, as everything I've seen online says they prefer temperatures in the 20s. Some websites seem to suggest that they will just become less active in colder water, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Will nerite snails be ok? If not, does anyone have any recommendations for snails who will eat algae on the tank glass and that can tolerate cold water? (Alternatively, should I just try to convince the school to purchase some additional heaters? One tank has a Gnathopogon elongatus that was caught from the local river, 6 amano shrimp, and some snails that came with the river sand someone used as substrate who aren't really doing much to keep the glass clean. The other has the eel that I posted about here).

The pothos is in! Hopefully all the nitrate helps it grow well.

@eatyourpeas the Japanese teachers have just called it 水草, which translates to "water weed." Elodea definitely looks like what it is! It seems to grow pretty well in all of the tanks except the one with the turtle, because he eats it all. I'll have to take my cutting down to the tank this afternoon to try to see if I can figure out a way to secure it.

Your medaka are much more colorful than ours! We do have this guy, who got pulled out of a pond along with the medaka the 5th graders used in science class. The teacher saw his interesting coloring and pulled him out of the science class fish in order to keep him in one of the school tanks.

Update: Last Friday I added a sponge filter and tested the water parameters. The Nitrate was off the charts, so I changed about 75% of the water. I came in today and did another parameter check - the level is still high, but it did seem to have gone down some. (It's a little hard to see the difference in the photo, but it was much less dark today than it was last week.) I did a 50% water change and added some water plants to hopefully use up the excess nitrate. I also got a cutting off of the pothos in the nurses' room that I'm rooting and planning to add to the tank as soon as possible. Any other suggestions for lowering the nitrate?

Just got to work and took a picture of one of the medaka buckets. Everyone was enjoying their breakfast.

The school I work at also has a RES. His name is Jimmy. He was initially living in a small rectangular plastic tub with no lighting, heat, or ability to swim. The school also had a 65 gallon with a single fish and no filtration, so I got permission to move the fish out and move the turtle in. Jimmy currently has a GEX canister filter rated for a 120-150 centimeter tank (his is a 120, but it's only about half full). I built him a basking platform with PVC and a plastic shelf from the dollar store, and topped it with some fake turf to make it look a little more natural. He has a UV light and a heat lamp. In the tank there is sand, a few rocks, and a piece of wood. I tried plants, but he eats them all. We have waterweed growing in other fish tanks, and when it gets to be too much I thin it out and give it to Jimmy to snack on. He has a water heater because the tank is in a hallway and Japanese schools don't have heating or cooling outside of the classrooms, so in winter the water temp got down to below 15°C.

Japanese elementary school kids raise medaka in around 5th grade for science class. They seem to do well in what are essentially buckets with some gravel and waterweed. The kids usually pull the eggs out of the buckets in order to ensure they survive and to be able to watch their development.