KittenFishMom

@Cinnebuns Try putting the hooks outside the aquarium with the hook going up. Then make a thread or plain dental floss or whatever with a loop on each end. Put one loop over the coral, the other loop over the hook. Fiddle with hook placement to adjust tension. Or take the hook off the suction cup. Make a circle of thread/dental floss. Make a larks head knot (if you tat, it is a full tat) around the knob on the suction cup (or any knot you like) and put the coral through the loop. That keeps the cup on the inside and out of sight. Or use clear fishing line and a hot darning needle (or thickish wire or twisted doubled thin wire) to make a hole through the knob. (Note hold needle, wire with vice grips while heating with a lighter or candle, don't burn your fingers !)

I wrote to the company. They said the mats are pieces of Styrofoam to help distribute the weight of the rocks to prevent pressure points that could cause the bottom of the tank to crack and break. Very interesting !

@FlumpweeselI may start with a narrow moss wall, then when it fills in, rotate it 90 degrees so it will start growing upward and lower it as it grows. I haven't started, so the possibilities are endless.

I'm thinking about making a triangle or rectangle wooden frame, lined with window screen and polyester batting to hold my growth substrate in one part of my tank, and hide it with rocks and put sand or pebbles in front of it. What sort of wooden boards would you recommend? Do I need to boil them first? I would think pine and oak would be bad. I have been watching lots of videos and wonder why so make people use lava rocks instead of stream cobble stones? It it the weight or the texture or the chemical make up of the lava stones or something else? I am interested in having a moss wall up the back of the tank. I would assume it would get more even light if the bottom of the wall is set out into the tank an inch of so from the top of the wall. (Like trimming a hedge so the top does not shade the bottom.) How do you keep fish from getting trapped behind the moss wall? What to you recommend to the base material of the moss wall? hardware cloth or netting or plastic needle point canvas? or mesh fencing? Do you put your wall on a wooden or plastic pipe frame? Do you have it stop below the water line, or go to the top of the tank, above the waterline? Do you need to move your HOB to hang on the side of the tank? Feel free to pick and choose the questions you want to answer, if any. Also, feel free to answer question that I did not know enough to ask. Thanks KittenFiskMom

Roughly, where do you live? Maybe there is a forum member that could send you cell phone photos of fish at the fish store, and you could do a curb side pick up purchase. You wouldn't need to meet the forum person face to face. I know someone who has a great deal of health problems when she is around perfume. The person wearing the perfume might have left, but the invisible perfume cloud is still there. It makes it very hard for her to go out in public. She can not see if there is a perfume cloud, until she walks into it. Best of luck. I hope you can enjoy new fish very soon.

@AndEEss I am so glad you encouraged me to get more corys. I almost never saw the single cory. I was starting to think he was nocturnal. I added 2 more yesterday and the 3 of them are happily swimming all over the tank, gabbling everything in sight. It is so fun to see him happy !!!

@eatyourpeasI have made a ring out of air hose, maybe I can get it to stay in the ring in a quiet end of the tank. poo does not tend to be in short supply in my tanks. Did you see my "Turnip Triumphs" photos, in General Discussions? My turnip loves the poo in the water.

@eatyourpeas How do you get the duck weed to grow so well? Mine is not multiplying. I have it in a tank with HOB and another tank with just a sponge filters, Also a few buckets.

I was watching a video on YouTube.com called "Layout 74 by Tropica" at 18-19 seconds they put some sort of mat or pad in the tank before they add anything else. Does anyone know what this is, and what function it preforms? I looked around on their web site, but could not find it. I would like something under my big stone to keep them from shifting. This might do that. I hope to start a planted tank next week. It would be impossible to add this after I get started. Also, I looking for advice on how to keep fish from getting trapped behind a moss wall.

@Seattle_Aquarist My husband will be picking up a bag of the Safe-t-sorb tomorrow. I ordered osmocote plus 8 lbs bag on Amazon for $11, It is normally close to $28.9, and 1,000 empty 00 capsules. Filling the capsules should prove interesting with a cat and a kitten trying to be helpful. I have never planted a tank before. Do I need to soak the Sate-T-Sorb, or do anything special before I add plants and or water to the tank? How long should it sit with water before I can add snail or scuds or fish? I think I will be using a sponge filter, or 2. Thank you so much for getting me started.

I would guess that algae eaters might eat them as they break down. Scuds to help keep tanks tidy. I have them in 2 tanks. (unless the bullheads wiped them out.). I have several scud colonies right now because I wasn't having good luck in the beginning. I feed them hornwort and microwave sliced pumpkin. We sliced and froze the fresh pumpkin around Halloween. I also toss in bits of fish food. They really seem to do well in my slope buckets I use for cleaning sponge filters and vacuuming the bottom of the tank. I keep a sunken air hose with light air going. Also a bit of banana now and then. They hide in the bottom. so I put small pebbles in the corners of the tanks, covered with larger flat stones to protect the scuds from the fish. The fish like snacking on them as a live food supplement. The scuds learn to hide very quickly, I don't know how they know it is safe to swim around in the buckets and not in the tanks with the fish.

@HydraSlayer Scuds LOVE hornwort. They will clean up the leaves that drop.

@Guppysnail Maybe you could rig up some SCUB gear for your fish and have them wonder your garden? @Guppysnail Don't laugh ! Think of how enriching it would be for your fish.... Maybe a water tight hamsters ball sort of thing? Your are creative, I'm sure you can come up with something!

Last night I was looking at some white ceramic rings that came out of a filter. I found I could carefully stuff an air hose through the ones with wider holes for my scud and brine shrimp tanks. I also pushed stems from floating plants through the rings with smaller holes, and now have a forest of hornwort and other plants growing from the bare bottom tank. They will look much better once I cover them with soil.

I have found that water slows a bit near plant stems and rocks etc. causing more things to settle out of the water, including fish food, and it settles next to the objects. Your fish might be nibbling at food around the plants and loosening the soil covering the roots. You might try feeding the fish in an area farther from the plants. or put a few heavier pebbles next to the stems. to keep the food off the soil and keep the soil packed in place. Another possibility is that the water flow from a filter is slowly but steadily move the soil away from the roots? An approach that would be more effort but might help would be to cut a square or circle of fine netting and put a slice in to the center. Put the plant in the center and over edges of the slice then cover the netting with soil completely. If you see the netting being uncovered, add a few pebbles over the soil where the netting starts showing. Good luck

@Cory If you have half a moment, check out my "TURNIP TRIUMPHS !!!!" and my "the pre-history of "nerm"" I watched Cory's video on hanging mangrove seedlings from the sides of tanks. I now have them in all my tanks, even my scud tanks.

Well, my turnip in my HOB waterfall filter is out preforming my pathos and lucky bamboo! It is growing like crazy. The roots that have escapes down the waterfall have reached the bottom of the tank. The leaves are not as dark as they were. I either need to over feed the fish a bit more or fertilize the water. Or maybe it needs some iron? I also like the splash of purple and white above the water. I have hung a bunch of red mangrove seedlings in the tank as well. I'm going to look for some organic carrot next time I am in Ithaca. I have another filter like this on the other side of the tank with lucky bamboo in it to put some carrots in. Any other fun/funny plant ideas? Here is the current photo, and below if a photo from Dec 21, just 9 days ago

I bought 10 blue neon teras today. According the to store owner they are very young. I am wondering if very young, growing fish should go through the quarantine trio without food for 5 days? When I was raising my bullhead fry I feed them at least 3 times a day, and often 4 or 5 times, in small amounts. The though of not feeding these little tetras seems like it will stress them a lot, and the trio on top of that could be hard on them. I'm going to call the store tomorrow and ask if they can tell me how old the tetras are. I don't think the 10 of them would fill a teaspoon, maybe not half a teaspoon. Thanks

Well the first article I read on neon tertas and the first one I read on corydoras said that neither should be placed in a new aquarium. Oh well, please wish me and them luck. It is a 12 gallon tote ant the 3 corys and 10 tera are tiny. If we are lucky, there won't be much bio load. Now does it make sense to not feed very young fish for a week in a quarantine tank? Would it be better to feed them for a few weeks and then do the Quarantine trio? I am in no rush to move them into a different tank. So maybe postponing the med trio would be in their best interest. What do you think? Right now I have a towel over both tanks that have new fish in them, so they can rest and get settled.

Plunging has turned to plodding. The place I bought my first fish at said they would have more endlers Wednesday afternoon. Like a fool, I did not call ahead. Their shipment had been delayed a day. I bought their last 2 corys of my variety, and a lone flag fish because he was the last fish in the cory tank. I asked what flag fish were like. She said "oh, they are just normal fish". I also got the last 2 guppies in the guppy/endler tank. I put them all in with the Betta and 2 endlers and 1 cory that I had and will start the paracleanse tomorrow morning. I also added a lot more hornwort in hopes that the fish could escape the betta if he started chasing one. I felt so bad for the fish at that store. I am not going back to that store, even if they are the only place around here that carries endlers. I went to the Mom and Pop local fish store and got 3 more corys and 10 blue neon tetras. I put them in my new QT tank, that I quickly set up when I got home. If the fish look good in the morning, I will start the trio on them in the morning. Everything at the local pet store looked so much better than at the chain store. They even took my name and number and will try to find some endlers to order for me. Setting up the new QT tank, I put small rounded pebbles and some flat stones over them and 4 large flat stones, stacked in a bridge in the middle. I added a used sponge filter and a dose of Fritz 7 and a bunch of scuds with some of their seaweed and some fresher hornwort. I will test the water a least once a day. If the ammonia goes up, do I do a water change? If yes, how does that effect the quarantine meds? When I bought the teras I was impressed at how small they looked, so I got 10. At checkout, I asked the store owner if they were adults. She gave me a friendly laugh and said they were less that half the size of adults. I probably should have gotten 6 instead of 10. Oh well. They are very pretty.

Update: I put the Betta mirror in the tank today and my betta went into full display. I took it out after 4 minutes when he started slamming the mirror. I know he is feeling much better than that droopy little fish that never left the bottom of his cup at the store. Sadly, I found the one endler dead on the bottom of the tank. Now I fear the other 2 might get killed before the new ones are out of QT. I am very tempted to get the new endlers and put them in the QT with the remaining 2 and do the paracleanse now and repeat the other 2 meds in a few weeks. I know this is rather backwards, but I don't have anyplace to put the betta or the 2 endler to keep them separate while I QT the new fish. I also plan to get some of the same corys because the one in the tank hides all the time.

I am a daughter of a daughter of the Depression. We try not to let anything go to waste. After Christmas, We drive around looking for big dense Christmas trees on the side of the road and toss several in the back of the truck. Then we bring them home and arrange them in ways that the birds find tasteful near the birdfeeders. It give the birds a place to hang out and chat as well as cover from the winter winds and weather. And if a eagle or hawk flies by, all the birds melt into the trees without a trace. In the spring we chain the trees to the seawall at the front of the lawn. this gives small fish shelter from big fish and a great place for fish to spawn. The birds still like hanging out in the branches as they slowly lose their needles. The water snakes also like to sun them selves while hunting small fish and frogs. In the fall they are sometimes used in bon fires, or cut up into kindling. It makes Christmas last all year round.

@1moretankI told my husband you found my tanks/ fish very interesting. he smile and and gently shook his head. He doesn't know why my tanks and fish are interesting, but he listens none the less. Did you read my "pre-history of Nerm" in off topic? It is silly, but true.

@1moretank Today my endler decided they were bettas. They kept swimming throught the betta log. very silly of those very small fish

I raise a 10 gallon tank of brine shrimp to adult and breeding age this summer. I use lake water, bits of lake seaweed and random dashes of fish food and over the summer about 1/4 of an 8 oz bottle of Spirulina powder. It was teaming with brine shrimp. Then I decided not to try to do fish inside over the winter and let it collapse. Now I have a new colony under way. It is so funny to watch the young bullhead catfish go nuts when I put some baby brine shrimp in the tank now. I raised them on brine shrimp mixed with A CoOp easy fry food. They can taste the salty brine shrimp water, but can't find anything big enough to bite. They were a day old when I netted them. They are about 3 inches now. They know that taste the brine shrimp, but the just can't find it. (Their entire body is covered in taste buds, you should see them change direction if you drop a night crawler on their back). The minnows and killifish hunt and eat the baby shrimp for 2 or 3 days, until they die out. A trick I discovered was that on cool days, the shrimp hatched slower. After the first 24 hours, I added some spirulina powder to the hatchery to feed the early hatchers, while waiting for the majority to hatch. It seemed to help get more out of the slow batches. After I collected the bulk of the hatched shrimp I put the water below the shells in the colony tank to finish hatching. It didn't take long to get a strong colony going. Now I have fewer fish, so I feed half the hatched shrimp, and the rest go in the colony.