Razberry910

how is your darter tank going? I recently received a mix of ten darters. rainbow, greenside, johney and fantail. They seem to be happy but are finicky eaters preferring live snails and endler fry.

I'll have to try that. What I also noticed today was some of my adjustable airstones were opened to far. I tighten them up and that restricted the airflow letting me keep the valves full or nearly full open eliminating the hissing sounds.

I can open up other valves (I drilled 30ish) of course with no airline they blast out air very loud. I could expement with a muffler system but this will get me building the additional racks faster. the pump is located on a shelf near the ceiling I can't say that would be a smelly location.

I have a handful of tanks setup in our guest bath room and plan on adding more in the future. Working up to 16 tanks or so. To expand the fish room I installed a halo of 1 inch pvc with air drops (little Nickle ones from coop), and it's powered by the air pump from coop. Everything went smooth there's a ton of airflow with only 10 airlines being fed. To slow the airflow I adjusted the individual valves. Which works great except they hiss. At first I though it was leaks but I believe it's just the air pressure being force through a small opening. Has anyone experienced this? I believe the hissing will lessen as I place more tanks/airlines on the system. Secondly I noticed the room smells extra fishy now. I'm guessing the extra airflow is doing some crazy gas exchanges in the tanks now. Tomorrow I'm going to do water changes and clean all the sponge filters. Has anyone noticed increase smells when airflow is improved? I assume this is actually a good thing and once the bacteria's balance out it will lessen. On a side note I didn't bother gluing any of the connections they wont come loose with the pipe straps and there isn't any air leaking from the elbows. Thank you.

more info http://neinvasives.com/Mystery Snails.pdf I'm leaning more toward Chinese mystery snail now.

I'll get some more pictures but I did some looking. The smaller snails have three ridges running down their spiral they sort of look like hairs. I found this sheet on banded snails. https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/our-work/focus-areas/ais/invasive-species/invasive-species-fact-sheets/mollusks/banded-mystery-snail/ more info http://www.misin.msu.edu/facts/detail/?project=&id=258&cname=Banded+mystery+snail

will do. I'm taking down totes for the season so I'll have a handful. oh one last thing the Japanese and Chinese snails grow to 70mm or so and some pictures of them almost fill a human hand

interesting points. I'm not sure the teems but the cone of the Japanese snail seems longer/pointer than the banded and Chinese. the Japanese and Chinese seem to have bands going across the shell where the banded have red lines running the length of the wrap. I couldn't see these lines but maybe if I put a bright light on it to cut through the algea.

I'm 95% sure these are Banded Mystery snails but I wanted a second opinion. I used this as a resource guide. https://ohiodnr.gov/static/documents/wildlife/backyard-wildlife/Freshwater+Snails+of+Ohio+Pub+5512.pdf I can take more pictures if needed.

Follow up for the future if I wanted to sell to a wholesaler how do I find them? Google fails me

I have a lot of guppies to sell at a local auction. Maybe somewhere in the range of 100-200 adults plus any juveniles and fry that get netted. I have 10inch x 22bags. How many adult guppies can I/should I put in each bag. The club limits entry's to five of each species. I imagine the fish will be in the bags a minimum of 5 hours and a maximum of 12hours. I was thinking 30 adults per bag. I'm doing daily 40% water changes until the auction and I'll stop feeding the day before. Any information and suggestions are helpful and welcomed.

I recently made a lot of very nice guppies, endlers, ricefish, and flag fish. I'm sitting on around ~200 adult guppies of several varieties. ~100 ricefish juveniles. I took pictures of my fish and sent them to a LFS/online seller via email. The shop loved them and said they would buy everything I have(these are some pretty sweet looking fish) and of course the shop ask how much money I'd want. So question what should I be asking? When I look up high grade guppies online people are selling trios for $15-$30 and I totally know the shop needs to make a living but I don't want to give them away either. Also I look forward to more fish breeding adventures and I'd like to have a good business relationship with this seller. Any advise would be appreciated

Update: Everything is coming around nicely. I drilled and added the rest of the over flows and set them to allow about an inch of tote side above the water to keep fish and plants in. In the shebunkin and rainbow shiner totes I went about 2-3 inches as maybe they can jump? The Shebunkins are growing FAST and eating alot now and I counted all 9 that I bought so that's nice. I finally spotted a couple of the sunburst platies up high under a log/spawning mop/floating plants. I think the platies might be feeding on frog eggs and tadpoles that are in the mop. I added my Black Bar endlers to tote 1. Speaking of frogs they've moved in there are frog eggs everywhere. I'm not sure if frogs pose a threat to the fish eggs, fry, or adult fish but there's not much I can do about it. Also a friend gave me some large snails from his pond a few weeks back that I added to the totes and sorta forgot about. If you know the identity of the snails in the picture let me know. The snails are either POINTED CAMPELOMA, BANDED MYSTERYSNAIL, JAPANESE MYSTERYSNAIL, or CHINESE MYSTERYSNAIL. I found this PDF to help with snail ID https://ohiodnr.gov/static/documents/wildlife/backyard-wildlife/Freshwater+Snails+of+Ohio+Pub+5512.pdf I'll try to get some fish and plant pictures in the next few days.

A huge storm rolled through and preformed a water change for me.

I originally made an overflow for the Rainbow shiner tote since I was worried about them jumping out. As the water was over flowing from the other totes I think I would lose fish, fry, and floating plants so I installed an overflow on the Shebunkin tote and installed a large intake sponge over the drain. Version 2 works really well. I ordered another ten bulkhead kits and sponge intakes to do all the totes. The elbow on the outside of the tote can be rotated and that lets me adjust the water level by about 3 inches. I did notice that my garden hose on full flow was adding more water than the overflow could handle. Orange ricefish fleeing from me. The orange ricefish hang out on top of the water and the platinum ricefish are almost always in the midwater or near the bottom of their tote. Tote 12 with the golden white clouds had a very brow/red tint. I did dirt the pots that the water iris are in and I wonder if a ton of nutrients are feeding out those pots. If anyone has an idea of what it might be let me know. So far the white clouds seem happy.

The Shebunkins In tote 7 are coming up and feeding on pellet's, flakes and probably duckweed.

I have the ziss brine shrimp hatcher and made up a batch. Room temperature is 68-70 after 24 hours I don't think they hatched. At 48 hours I defiantly had wiggling brine shrimp. Anyway. Question: Is there any harm in poring the shrimp, water, and egg husks into tanks? I know the water would add salt water to the fresh water tanks but I imagine splinting the water up over 3000 or so gallons wouldn't effect the salinity that much and would dilute with water changes. The reason I'd do this is simply for speed and to make sure every brine shrimp ended up on the dinner table.

Inside the house my 65 has the rainbow shiners, white clouds, sunburst platies, and some floating plants to move out in a couple days. They floating plants came from Amazon and I'll have to really study them to make sure I identify them and put separate species in individual totes. In these pictures is velvet water water spangle, riccia water spangle, floating bamboo, giant duckweed, frogbit, water lettuce, spangles, and red root floater. The floating bamboo and red root floater are easy to identify the others will take some work.

Tote Setup West #6 #12 #5 #11 South #4 Pavilion #10 North #3 Roof flows # 9 #2 <-------------> #8 #1 #7 East Tote Setup all totes have water, "driftwood", and sponge filters going water temps fluctuating 40-60F Fish Plants Notes #1 N Class Endlers to be added in 2-4 weeks Giant water lettuce, Giant Water Hyacinth #2 Florida Flag Fish water lettuce, water hyacinth #3 pink flamingo guppies to be added in 2-4 weeks #4 Sunburst Platy to be added in 2-4 weeks water poppy snowball #5 Black Mosco guppies to be added in 2-4 weeks frogbit #6 ~ 6 Rosy red adults and juveniles water iris watercress watercress is blowing up #7 9 shebunkins water hyacinth I'll add more duckweed green water haven't seen shebunkins yet #8 White Clouds to be added in 1-2 weeks water lettuce, water hyacinth #9 7 Platinum ricefish water lettuce, water hyacinth They tend to hang out near the bottom and mid level #10 Rainbow shiners to be added in 1-2 weeks water hyacinth Added an over flow in case the shiners are jumpers #11 six orange ricefish water lettuce, water hyacinth orange ricefish have been hanging out near the top water #12 Golden White Clouds water iris water hyacinth this tote has very dark water possible from soil in iris pot.

Ok a good update. About two weeks ago we had a cold spell right after I bought some really nice aquatic plants. With a week of 40 degree days and near freezing nights the plants wilted back but I think they are all going to pull through. With 70-80 days with lows in the 50's on the extended forecast we made a trip to a couple fish shops and picked up Shebunkins, Florida Flag Fish, Golden white clouds, orange ricefish, and platinum ricefish. I water temps are ranging from mid 50s to mid 60s throughout the day. I was a bit nervous that the water was to cold for the flag fish so I tossed a heater in the tote set to 68 that tote was 65 this morning and about 71 this afternoon. Some tote have clear water and some have rather green water. We haven't seen the flag fish or Shebunkins since releasing them on Saturday but I have no reason to think they perished. I'm not sure if I can comment on each picture but I'll post a couple more pictures and update the table I have.

Quick update. About 2 weeks ago we had a string of 80 degree days the totes warmed up nicely. I moved a few guppies out side and they were loving it. I also locally bought some great floating water plants. Welllll then the weather changed for a week we had 40 degree days and nearly freezing nights. The guppies were looking good with the water down to the 50's but water temps in the 30-40 was to cold for them. Also my floating plants don't look great I'm hoping they pull through do that the weather is swinging back up. In the house I have some WCMM and rainbow shiners that should be going out in a week or two.

I'm going to be adding progress pictures and information on my tote setup throughout this summer and ask questions as I go. For anyone wanting to see my setup they are under this forum post. Currently all 12 totes are full of water with sponge filters bubbling away, and random branches/logs from the yard partially sunk. One tote we'll call it tote #6 has 6 or so Rosy Red minnows that I netted from the goldfish pond(also they are the biggest most colorful Rosys I've ever seen). I added a small bit of duckweed to Totes #7 and #8 these two totes will have Shubunkin goldfish so the duckweed can go crazy. I added some homemade spawning mops to tanks #6, #7, and #8. Fun fact the one set of spawning mops will not saturate and hand in the water even after soaking for a week or so now. The other mops I put in saturated and hung down within an hour of being in the tanks. I want to get a variety of floating plants water lettuce, water hyacinth, frogbit, red root floaters, spangles, and who knows what else. Questions. What should my water temp or air temps be before putting the floating plants outside? Also since most of these tanks don't have any fish in them yet should I fert the water for the plants. If yes what should I use? Keep in mind these totes are 300 gallons for squirting easy green in would be rather expensive I could toss a handful of compost into each. Tote Setup West #6 #12 #5 #11 South #4 Pavilion #10 North #3 Roof flows # 9 #2 <-------------> #8 #1 #7 East Tote Setup all totes have water, "driftwood", and sponge filters going water temps fluctuating 40-60F #1 Empty #2 Empty #3 Empty #4 Empty #5 Empty #6 ~ 6 Rosy red adults and spawning mops #7 Empty #8 Empty #9 Empty #10 Empty #11 Duckweed #12 Duckweed

How many years do these units normally last? Do they get loud when it's time to change the piston?

Wow that is supper interesting! I'd love to see two identical pump running one with say 20 tanks and one with 40 tanks. In theory the energy savings should be measurable even if it's over a months time. And would both pumps last just as long?

Thank you. The ball valve isn't supper fin at all but I can nudge it slightly and it's quiet when bleeding off air. I can put more of the metal valves in the pvc but they are rather loud when they are open and don't have anything connected. Below is the video/guy that got me concerned with the pressure to begin with. His valve might allow for a finer adjustment and that air stone on the bottom probably muffles the sound and creates a slight back pressure. I could always add a second sponge filter and airline drop to each tote/pond but that seems unnecessary.