KittenFishMom

@Theplatymaster Oh, once she saw how many fry I really had, she said she would sell most after a quarantine. She plans to pick 7 males and 3 females for breeding. I had told her I have only been keeping fish a little over a year and didn't know what I was doing. She assume I was over estimating, not underestimating. I knew my estimate was off, but I didn't know how much or in which direction. I told her I thought 40 to 50, and a friend guessed 70. She wasn't expecting 83.

It's funny. The hill stream loach move a bit like a remote control toy. They stop and turn and then zip forward and stop and back up, then zip in another direction. Maybe this stop and go instead of gliding like the other fish caught the bettas attention. The betta was fully flared when I netted him. The hill stream loaches are much smaller than the betta. Nothing flashy about their color. Who knows? @Theplatymaster The breeder kept telling me she did not plan to sell my fish, just breed them. I told her I thought there were too many to breed, but they swam so fast, I could not get a good count. When she looked in the bucket she said "That is a cary amount of fish!"

I have had this mellow plakat betta for ages. he patrols the 55 tank like a general doing inspections. He is top to bottom and end to end and never bothers anyone. Today the breeder gave me some hill stream loaches that she said would not breed. The betta ignored them for a while and then started chasing them all over the tank. The betta is now in the 15 gallon tank. The breeder has also promised to bring red cherry shrimp next time.

@Cinnebuns I love the corys, but could not see driving over an hour each way to rehome them. I was sad to be parting with them, but I could not face a never end stream of fry. I thought corys were hard to breed. I had no idea they would procude so many so fast, if I did not collect the eggs. I did nothing except move 2 males and a female to a different tank for a few weeks and KA BOOM ! 100 fry. It was going to be too much work to rehome them. Then I reached out the the man that had owned the LFS when it closed in December and he gave me this breeders name. She and I are both very excited and happy. I can enjoy watching the little guys grow, knowing she is happy to take them. She is getting free healthy fry and my breeding equipment that I never used. I gave her 3 jars of repashy because my fish won't eat it. I made a batch Wednesday, exactly like the web site said and thhe only thing that would touch it was the snails. She looked at and sniffed my batch and we put some in the tank. The fish swam right by it. She said it looked and smelled right and had never seen a fish turn up their nose at Reapashy. I think maybe my fish like my brine shrimp better. This is working out great for the breeder and for myself. I can pamper my fish, and then she gets the fry for driving over to pick them up.

I have a new game plan. I has decided to stay in the hobby for now. The breeder came and got 83 cory long fin hi fin peppered corys today. There are still more in the 2 tanks that I haven't been able to catch. I also have some mixed fry in the 55 tank where fry were not suppose to be able to make it. The breeder said she would be happy to take all the future fry off my hands and was very pleased with their condition. I had hoped for 6-8 fry max when I put the fish in a tank that was pretty safe for fry for a few weeks. The breeder photographed them in batches in buckets and countede 83. Aside from water problems, my biggest problem has been finding any easy way to rehome the fry. Now that she will take the fry, keeping the fish is not so stressful. We will see how it goes. Thanks for all your help and support !!!

I am doing water changes and was getting mixed up. Chlorine bleach will not produce ammonia. I was thinking that chlorine burns gills and ammonia burn gills and you test for both. And chlorine stays in pipes a long time after a well is shocked. We have ammonia in our well. I think it is from the decaying plant matter that has been gathering at this end of the lake. It can also come from farm run off contaminating your well. If you don't know why your well has high ammonia, FIND OUT WHY. Call the county board of health.

P.S. I want to use a hot water line for the toilet to recue condenastion. The toilets are low water usage, so the water is room temp until the toilet tank is full. Just haven't gotten that far.

My father helped us with the plumbing at our house. We have soft hot water and hard cold water lines running to the kitchen sink. The soft hot water cleans better, the hard cold water is better to drink. The cold water comes from the water line before it gets to the softener. The line then goes to the softenr and the hot water heater. Most of the hot and cold in the house is soft, but we ran cold hard water to the outside in places and the kitchen sink. We are not "by pass" or swtiching the softener off. we just have a lot of pipes in the basment. We can water plants and the lawn with hard cold water and wash the car with hot and cold soft water. It depends on what we are using the water for as to which tap we use.

If you shocked the well with bleach, you might be getting ammonia reading. It takes using the water for a while to get all of it out of all the pipes. We put an RO/DI system in for drinking and tank water at the cottage. We have a salt based softener at our house. we have hard water outdoor taps for watering plants. We also have out door hot and cold soft water tapes for cleaning things, like grungy stuff, like a dog that went swimming in a gross pond. RO/DI water is like distilled water. You could use bottled RO or distilled water on a temporary bases to see if you like it. I also think you can get the ammonia to drop by storing it in a big tub with a heater and and air bubbler and air cirulating over the surface. This also helps with sulfur water. No one in our cottages neighborhood drinks their well water. You either carry it in, or get an RO system for drinking water.

@Guppysnail Sometime the shrimp do melt off the pebbles and float up for the higher fish. In that case, I just drop in another weighted cube. I have sand subsrtate, so I have to retrive the pebbles, but if you use what is in the tank there is not clean up. It is extremely free.

@Guppysnail Well nothing sinks like a rock more than well, a rock.😉 I bet plecos would like this.

@Lycramosa I have frozen them with and with out rinsing them. I haven't notice much difference, there isn't that much water in them. I use a tray that frozen bloodworms came in. When I want the shrimp to sink for corys, I put a few substrate pebbles in easy cube before adding the shrimp. That makes them sink like a rock. I recently got a nice deep strainer and use tap water rinse thethem into the center of the stainer. If the mixture gets too thick to pippette them I add a bit more wateraround the edge of the strainer to push them into the middle.

Do you have any photos on the forum? Did you have them bare root in the aquarium? or in a pot in the aquarium tank. or did you hve them out of the aquarium, watering them with tank water.

@Expectorating_Aubergine sounds interesting. Where do I find them?

@Dtolb15 I sent a photo to the eBay seller today. They added my photo to their post and have added a "make an offer" option. Thought you might like to take a look. https://www.ebay.com/itm/255992634675?hash=item3b9a599d33:g:noYAAOSw16JiwzGQ&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4Povw7mTldbsip2ERINcDRu3IYS56Knv%2BkOwd%2FucwDKZj0ghmDPWBckS7YBX%2ByZfCNkG5H8EGlVI7mRmzMSPsxk5KyyehKDeZ9Dx2SPXJiCUZqZaxfaIa%2FzDCJfwDBTmbnSo80QQeE%2BWUvmvzlXNIHhWHYg5c3AIclJdm2loeKVRYqcp07EvSOhzURmm1lMqCvGsDYR2UmgPh42fHr%2FpBnPwv2HN385HCcsVgtdCzztQiWinYAgdfYU%2BZBXnOCNaFAiJadhyOOAWXjT2EQlvG44robMKFv4LiKm5G8VCusKU|tkp%3ABFBM5qnDk9Jh

oh, I have an air stone picked out already 8-)

@Colu It looks like wood "dry rot" to me. If it won't harm the fish, I can trim the plants without uprooting them and get better flow in that area. I don't mind if takes awhile to go away, aas long as my fish are safe.. There might have been a stick or something in the potting soil, or a spot of dry rot in the drift wood, that the snails opened up.

Great News ! I wrote to the owner of the LFS that closed in Dec. He gave me the name of a local breeder who will take all the corys, adults and fries. I'll keep everyone posted !

I tried to give you all the relivent info. @Colu, this might belong under "Deases", but I put it here because the fish don't seem to being any signs of problem. THE FACTS: 55 Gallon semi-Walstad tank with organic potting soil under a large grain sand cap. Lots of large drift wood, some small drift wood and cholla wood. 5 or 6 IALs I think I got the tank set up in Dec 2022. Livestock Peppered corys (about 11 adults unknown number of hiding fry) Neon Tetras (9) Kuhli Loaches That I almost never see (5) Male Plakat Betta (1) Mystery snails, and a wide variety of other snails. A few leeches Scuds that I never see Plants: Lots and lots. There are lily and lotus that are putting up lily pads, philodendrons, lots of smallish plants I cannot remember the names of, and a lot of java moss carpeting most of the bottom and mingling here and there with pre-filters and drift wood. There is a banana plant and java fern that is hidden there somewhere. Water Parms from ACO dip sticks: Ammonia: 0 Nitrate: < 10 Nitrite: 0 HG: < 300 KH: 0 pH: < 6.4 Cl:0 Temp: 70 Problem: I have something white spreading under some plants moved to cover a relatively bare spot. It was rather slap-dash. Now the plants are thriving and dense. I think they have slowed the flow in that area of the tank. There is some webby white stuff spreading under these plants. I don’t want to rip them out for fear of releasing this stuff into the rest of the tank. I added several alder cones in that area, hope the natural anti-fungal tannins would clear things up. This may have surfaced form the potting soil, or was in the water and the slow flow let it take hold. Not sure of the best way to treat it. I will be doing a water change this evening. The daily changes on the shrimp cory fry tank have caused me to get behind with the big tank. Thanks for your help KittenFishMom (My cory kittenfish are SO cute) White stuff under Java moss and other small plants: rim of below surface bowl for moon light on a pond after dark and cholla wood: Alder cone having no effect: More white stuff on black sand under Java moss:

@Ken Burke I may keep active on the forum. At this point I need the support of the forum more than the worries about the fish. The corys won't stop laying eggs. It is hard to rehome fish where I live. I was hoping for less than 10 cory fry, and I think I have around 50 in the fry tank. I am seeing more all the time in the adult tank, where I thought the eggs and the fry would be eaten. I was sure they would not survive there. Also, a year ago, I had 2 cory die when I chased them with a net in muddy water, so I believe in cory toxins. I am worried about trying to catch and transport the corys without them getting frightened to death. I fought with the well water for months, then bought spring water for months, I'm now trying to get RO/DI water to work right in the tanks. I'm testing water once or twice a day and doing a lot of water changes in the shrimp/cory fry tank to try to get the GH and KH right for the shrimp.

@Dtolb15 The fish love swimming around the roots too. Snails haven't bothered them at all. I over feed the fish a bit, and use some Easy Green. There is organic potting soil under the sand cap. The Red Emerald stems go about a quarter of the way down to the bottom. Note: rooting a whole turnup from the grocery store in the outflow of an HOB gives you beautiful flowing roots that gobble up nitrogen and put out nice deep green leaves. Only a gardener would notice the white bulb with the purple top 😉

I wish the photos were better. I bought these 2 un rooted cutting on ebay, organic, from the sellers yard. I loved the underwater roots, so I wanted to share. The lower photo was the day I got them in the mail. The upper one is the roots that grew in the tank. It was resting on the driftwood snaking in the lower photo. ( I think the driftwood looks like a sea serpant.)

If the scuds like the shrimp food, put some in the bottom of a long clear glass, at an angle on the bottom with the mouth a bit off the floor. When there are a good number of scuds in the glass. clamp your net or hand over the mouth of the glass and lift ot out of the tank. Then sort as Guppy snail recommends. I found scuds liked grabbing strips of plastic craft canvas dripped in muddy water. They wasn't anything else for them on to grab. It was how I got most of them out of the bucket of stream water. Might not work in a planted tank, but you could give it a try.

Dear CARE Forum folks, Thank you so much for all your help and support. I never could have gotten through the last year and a half without all your time, effort, and patients. I have finally decided after a lot of thought that the aquarium hobby is not the right fit for me at this point in my life. We have so much on our plate here, it is just too much for me. I may come back to it in the future. I want to rehome my adult peppered corys and my 40 to 50 cory fry first, then decide about the dream blue shrimp, adult neon tetras and adult male betta. I also plan to greatly reduce the amount of equipment and supplies I have. If any of you can recommend fish stores, or fish keeper in the Syracuse, NY, Auburn, NY, or Ithaca,NY area that would be interested in my corys, please send me private mail. If any of you are interested in doing a local pick up in those areas, please send me private mail. I am also interested in suggestions for places that might want donations of equipment and / or supplies. Thanks so much !! KittenFishMom

@nabokovfan87 I'm seeing more fry every time I look in both tanks. I hope to get the adults rehomed this week. I'm waiting to hear from the person who bought my 120 tank. She is a trauma nurse with 12 hour shifts, so it won't be for a few days.