Shadow_Arbor
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Posts posted by Shadow_Arbor
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Hi everyone,
Thought I'd upload a quick post about how I'm slowly fazing out all purchased fish foods and am transitioning too DIY dried fish food.
My first attempt at this was replacing the food I use for dwarf crayfish (Cambarellus sp.). I currently have two different tanks with two different dwarf crayfish species and was running low on food. After a lot of research I discovered the analytical constituents and composition I deemed best for my dwarf crayfish. After doing all the fun math, calculating dry weights of different ingredients, percentage of protein fiber and calcium each component added too the food I finally had my recipe. Some of the ingredients I used were: Spinach, Spirulina, Moringa, Krill, Bee Pollen etc. The analytical constituents are Protein 43.5%, Fiber 7.2%, Available Calcium 0.5%. The food also contains all trace minerals the crayfish needs to molt.
A lot of the credit for how too make this video comes from Mark's Shrimp Tanks. He has a nice video about a three ingredient dried food (not sure if it's ok if I link this video). I used this video as a guiding light, but heavily tweaked the recipe as I wanted many more different ingredients and much less filler.
Here are some images of the process and finished product:
Overall I'm very pleased with the results as the crayfish are devouring this food. I will need to test it long term and make sure I don't see any deficiencies and my breeding rates don't decrease. The next dry food I will be attempting is going to be for my Super Red Ancistrus. Later down the road I will also be making a Mineral food for my inverts, as well as a snail food.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments!
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This is a growth deformity. Usually the result of a lack of minerals, including calcium, iodine, magnesium, etc. either in the water, the snails diet, or both. I recommend feeding a food either for shrimp or snails that contains minerals. Also if you have soft water or many snails in a small volume of water, adding wondershells.
Seeing as the snail is living in your aquarium there are likely no predators that will try to eat it. The flesh in contact with water under those cracks will calcify and the snail should be fine as long as you fix whatever issues there are with it's diet or water parameters.
Good Luck!
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13 hours ago, crashnburn55 said:
If the rock dries quickly, I guess it would be thought of as a pretty porous rock? Is the quick drying, likely porous, rock, better or worse to put in the freshwater aquarium? Or does it matter?
The porosity of the rock might slightly effect the rate that the rock dries at. The best way to tell is by feeling and looking at it. If it's smooth looking and feels smooth not rough it most likely isn't very porous. Shouldn't really matter if it's porous or not. More porous rock will hold more denitrifying bacteria and bio film.
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This might be pretty tough if impossible without a picture. Can you better describe the worms? Shape, width, length? Also did it look like the worms had eaten the fish from the inside out or outside in? Sorry for the gruesome question.
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My C. Nurii var. Rosen Maiden flowered underwater today! Love this plant.
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5 hours ago, crashnburn55 said:
I read a number of blogs advising against boiling rocks to "sterilize" them because of risk of air pockets exploding the rocks under heat and pressure. I also read that bleach soaks are pretty iffy, I guess some having success others not. However, I still want to make sure no parasites or other unwanted organic live material finds its way into a freshwater aquarium. I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts or experience with using hydrogen peroxide soak to clean rocks collected from an ocean shore? Would just soaking the rocks in straight 3% hydrogen peroxide be adequate?
Seeing as these rocks were collected outside it might be a good idea to sterilize them. I don't usually sterilize any rocks I put in my aquariums. I usually only give them a scrub under the tap. If they're from the beach I doubt there are any parasites that can be transferred from salt too fresh. If it was from freshwater, drying them in the sun for a few days is also a good method to sterilize them (UV rays from the sun take care of everything...including us).
Sterilizing with H2O2 - I would recommend putting the H2O2 in a spray bottle and spraying down the rocks until they're soaked in the stuff. Let the rocks dry naturally. H2O2 turns into oxygen and water so no worries there.
Another method you could try is spraying or soaking (spraying is cheaper and probably just as effective) with a 70% alcohol solution. Alcohol evaporates and doesn't leave any residue and pretty much kills everything (you can rinse the rocks after if worried). If you have access to a lab like me you can use 100% alcohol too, but 70% is plenty. If you soak, soak the rock for a minute then take it out and leave it to dry. Take into account that I haven't tried this alcohol method so this is all "in theory". As long as all the alcohol has dried off it should be absolutely harmless. I clean my aquarium tools with alcohol consistently and have no issues, just haven't done that too hardscape as I don't sterilize mine/
Good Luck!
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Cambarellus Shufeldtii
Neocaridina davidi "Painted Fire Red"
Pomacea diffusa "Mystery Snail"
Caridina multidentata
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9 hours ago, aquachris said:
beautiful.. love the tanks and squares of everything... makes my OCD smile LOL... except you got to balance your lower 2 shelves left side with more tanks
Yes, I agree, I've already got the glass for them, just need to find the time to build them.
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9 hours ago, Streetwise said:
Nice stuff! You built your own tanks?
Yes, small tanks I feel comfortable building as I am using 6mm glass and glass bracing on the top. I'll need to find my calculations, but the safety factor is between 10-20 if I'm correct. Will make a journal about how I built them soon.
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I'm going to use this Journal to record the building of my fish rack (named by a friend as my Crustacean Station lol). Every tank on this rack will have it's separate Journal. I will include links at the end for each tanks Journal and will update accordingly.
BACKGROUND
I've been in the hobby for around four years now. I started off with a 250 liter planted tank, eventually adding a 100 liter planted tank that housed a ton of neocaradina and a single Procambarus clarkii.
Later that 100 liter tank would become a Super red Ancistrus, tiger endler, and mystery snail breeding tank. Around the same time I built myself a low boy, 30 liter, for Cambarellus Shufeldtii breeding. At this stage both the 100 liter and 30 liter (which was built to fit the stand exactly) are sitting on a heavy wooden shelving unit I bought, second hand, from someone who brought them to my country from Mexico (he had two, the second one is being used as a bookcase). I will include pictures of the entire stand a bit lower down in this post which will help this mess of a paragraph make sense.
About 6 months ago, in the middle of the night, my 250 liter tank cracked and almost flooded my house. After cleaning up the mess and almost giving up on the hobby I decided to focus on small tanks, 60 liters and less.
Twin Aquariums
I replaced the 100 liter tank that had previously sat on top of the aforementioned shelving unit with two 60 liter tanks, custom built perfectly to size.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
The only tank with water in this picture is my 30 liter Cambarellus Shufeldtii and white Pomacea diffusa breeding tank. Here's a close up:
The aquarium on the top left is currently a high tech tank while the one on the right is my Super Red Ancistrus breeding tank. Both tanks are the same dimensions (L45, W34, H40 cm).
Up to date picture of both tanks:
Recently I've built a new 30 liter tank which will be used as a bare bottom tank for raising batches of Super Red Ancistrus fry from wrigglers too 4 cm long fish (selling size). This tank contains a piece of driftwood with tons of Anubias plants glued on for extra grazing area. Sadly the wood is still floating. I'll post a journal on how I built it in the future.
Here is how the entire racking system looks right now:
In the near future I will be adding two more tanks and redoing the existing Cambarellus tank. More on that in a future post, I hope to update you all soon!
Tank Journals:
High Tech tank (update coming soon I promise):
Ancistrus tank (this isn't a journal on this tank, I"ll link the journal when I make it):
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On 8/15/2020 at 5:09 AM, RovingGinger said:
I have a 10g that has a crack curving through one of the long side panels. It’s all the way through but clean. The tank was about $5 used so I’m not tied to it, but waste not want not.
One thought I had was re-siliconing the whole thing including the crack, and then using foam and concrete directly on the back panel to build a faux stone background directly on the broken glass panel. However I don’t know if this is impractical.
The other thought was a shallow paludarium. The third thought was installing a sheet of acrylic over the broken panel and seeing if it could be a sump for a 20g if I got very adventurous (I have a laser cutter so the cutting acrylic would be simple, but I’m sure the overall project would be a large learning experience).
What have you done? What would work best?The best option if you want to use the tank, is to replace the entire cracked panel. Most likely that will cost the same as a new ten gallon tank though.
I use old/cracked tanks as lids. Take them apart and keep the glass for new tank builds in the future or glass lids.
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4 hours ago, MickS77 said:
I use a heater controller but not that brand. I think its worth the cost for safety and ease of use. They can require a bit of calibration to see where it actually holds the temperature. The one I have has replaceable temp probes which is nice.
I like using it to control two smaller heaters in the tank instead of a single large one. Reason being if one heater fails in the ON position it will heat up the tank slower but also the controller would shut it off too. I wonder if @Cory has ever considered bring a heater controller to the market?
If @Cory brings one to the market I'll have to get a friend from the states to ship me one!
I live in a relatively hot climate. During Winter, temperature rarely drops below freezing. In rare cases that it does it's only really late at night and by a degree or two. My house is heated in the winter anyway so I under size heaters. That way it takes them longer to heat my tank period. In theory this will also extend their life as they have less on off cycles.
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Update!
The eggs are hatching!
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I intend on buying a heater controller for every one of my tanks. The idea is that the controller shuts of the electricity to the socket when it detects a set temperature. Does anyone have any experience with these? Are they worth the cost?
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7 hours ago, Solidus1833 said:
Very neat photos! Have you been successful with the fry? Or is this the first batch of eggs?
This is my fourth or fifth batch with this couple (I've bred other types of ancistrus in the past). The first batch was successful and the next three or four after got eaten by Planaria in a Planaria infested tank. They hitchhiked in on some plants and bred out of control because of over feeding. I've since torn down that tank and transferred this pair to their new tank (all plants have had planaria treatment).
In the new tank it's easier to photograph the eggs as the cave is placed close to the glass.
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I'm really jealous! These guys are illegal to import into my country. They're super rare especially since they don't breed in salt water!
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Love your tank! Can't wait to make one myself!
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I always quarantine plants. I have a ten liter bucket with a light and an air stone that I use for this purpose. I quarantine for four days with No Planaria. This is done by adding the plants, turning on the light, adding some fertilizer and the airstone. Then I add a X5 dose of no planaria every day for three days. Then I rinse the plants really well, soak them for another day in clean water, then add them to my tank.
This works great for me with all types of plants, even high tech plants.
Edit: for fish pathogens, because I soak my plants for three days then rinse them really well, then soak them again and rinse once more before adding to the tank, I believe that the chance of a pathogen getting in my tank is very low as the original water on the plant has been heavily diluted
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So here are some pictures of my Super Red pair. Male is short fin and female is long fin. I usually get about 75% long fins which leads me to believe that my female is Aa for the long fin gene, assuming that the long fin is a dominant Mendelian trait (the male is aa recessive for short fin).
I've been photographing the eggs for the past few days:
This photo is 12 hours after fertilization.
This photo is 4 days after fertilization.
You can see their eyes and tiny heads attached to the yolk sack inside the egg!!!
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You could try No Planaria or dog dewormer. Those both murder snails and planaria pretty well. They're both fish safe in theory. I write "in theory" because I have never used them in a tank, only in a bucket on planaria infested plants. I know from experience that just the residue from No Planaria can kill Mystery snails in a few days.
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I really like pool filter sand as it's sand, but it's grains are really large so you don't get much compaction, if at all. Its got the best of both worlds!
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For me it would be Cambarellus sp. (dwarf crayfish). Fantastic little critters, get along really well with planted tanks compared to other crayfish species. They're a ton of fun in general.
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On 7/24/2020 at 5:53 AM, Lizzie Block said:
@Shadow_Arbor I've had no problems growing anubias in a high tech setup and your aquascape sounds exactly like mine lol. Spider wood ftw! I would recommend to definitely keep ferts in the water column though. Since you'll be injecting CO2 and using a powerful light, you'll also need to add plenty of fertilizer to maintain balance of all three. If not, plant health could suffer and you risk algae growing on weak plants and taking advantage. That's just my experience though, more fertilizers = better plant health = less algae. I know many people would disagree, but I've never had an issue. But do keep an eye on your nitrate level.
Anubias is awesome in high tech scapes, because it can actually grow decently quick and looks nice and clean, requires almost zero maintenance. Keep us updated on how your aquascape is coming along!
Algae eaters help keep anubias clean too 😉
Thanks, I'll be giving it a try soon. Spider wood is honestly amazing.
Are there any specific algae eaters youd recommend for nano tanks (30 liter). I'll have Amano shrimp for sure, but I think it might be to small for Oto's, especially with all the Cambarellus about.
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On 7/17/2020 at 5:24 PM, Chandra said:
What your favorite aquarium tank thats rimless or frameless?
I'm assuming you mean the company?
Nano wise I prefer the tanks I build myself. For larger tanks, most likely ADA those look amazing.
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Making Dried Crayfish Food
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
Sadly that is not an option unless you currently live in Israel. I am currently living here and do not have the permits for export, sorry!