813aquatics

I had my female betta raised from baby in a tank with a few mollies. She clearly doesn’t like them as the mollies are food hogs and get pushy when fed. If you can isolate the feeding times they’ll probably be ok, but my girl became very timid.

At least at my plant, yes. Otherwise it may end up stuck in a truck at a station until Monday morning dispatch. Your results by plant may differ so I can only speak anecdotally.

Hey I’m the guy that handles my local plants priority express mail that comes through. We hold any Live mail in the plant that arrives Saturday night until tonight (Sunday) for Monday morning dispatch and delivery.

I collected some stunning melanistic male eastern mosquistofish but they ravaged the non-MF tails in the tank. And I’ve seen the videos of females charging fish to burst their swim bladders. Crazy little guys.

If your ph is stable at 6.5-6.8 I wouldn’t do a thing if your goal is to be near neutral. Your shrimp may even thank you for it. You’ll probably cause more stress chasing a ph that your tank won’t stabilize at. If you are desperate to buffer/raise ph you can try adding a quantity of crushed coral to your filter.

Glad I’m not the only one with this experience. Had two mollies with bacterial infection, moved them in saltwater QT, bam instantly had babies. Three weeks later moved one into a separate tank to keep her away from Dad’s relentless love and bam she had 50 babies. 😆 You may find that slowly adding in water from home tank into LFS bag helps reduce the stress a bit. This allows them to slowly adjust to the difference in ph.

Yes I reached out to him but I think the desire is to source locally. The LKs are truly everywhere here, not surprised they tagalong some guppies. We have those eastern mosquitofish here (gambusia holbrooki) which I guess can be bred with guppies but they are little demon fish, there’s a video floating around of a female eastern mosquitofish that murders a guys entire tank.

Was doing some 3AM tank maintenance after the stream and caught some baby least killifish hanging out 🙂 https://youtu.be/OS7aavFh5I4

Please delete this duplicate pls!

I have these mollies, least killifish, and eastern mosquitofish (plenty of melanistic males) in the drainage ditch 15 feet from my front door, truly blessed from a fish perspective. Yes and he’s the largest I’ve pulled out by at least a x2 factor. My wife thinks I found their king lol.

Sorry for duplicate

You can dip them out of most drainage here by the hundreds, but this guy was exceptionally pretty 🙂

Collected this handsome guy in west Fl today. My phone freaked out and triple posted can someone please delete this duplicate? Sorry!

Collected this handsome guy in west Fl today.

Collected this handsome guy in west Fl today.

You can try plain room temperature oatmeal too if you can stand the odor. My walter worms are thriving.

Had an awesome time today at Aquashella too. The co-op booth was great and definitely was a lot of peoples’ first stop as evident from solid lines for shirts, sweatpants and the opportunity to meet @Cory, @Irene, and @Zenzo. No other booth drew those crowds so hats off to ya’ll. The gameshow was also packed and I lucked out (who knew having a spongebob decor would one day come in handy) getting the last giveaway murphy hat . Between the sweatpants, shirt and hat, my wife asked me to let you know she, “thanks you for dressing me.” Besides the coop I got to meet a great number of hobbyists and companies local to us in FL - Got some christmas moss from Badfish, A sexed pair of wildcaught Everglades Pygmy Sunfish (Elassoma evergladei) and microworm culture from Ryan at Wild Fish Tanks (pls take me collecting), some wood pieces, and went a bit crazy gathering as many freebie stickers as I could…I may have gone overboard It was pretty cool getting to attend a 30-min George Farmer aquascaping workshop, the dude is a machine….they gave the entire scaped tank away for free at the end, only about 30 ppl were in attendance so heck of a chance for a great prize. Lastly, thanks for the pizza, I think I ate more than I’d care to admit, but at least I got my steps in today. The Q&A was really great. Cory’s passion to educate while being entertaining was on full display. (you may need to work on reducing your pond squirrel murder though!)

They are a “problem” only in the sense that their populations can explode very quickly under certain conditions, and some find hundreds of snails to look unappealing. Managing a healthy population comes down mostly to controlling how much you feed your fish. They can only populate to amount of available (excess) food left over. Over time you may see them laying transparent egg pods on surfaces/plants. Some hobbyists use assassin snails curb overpopulation but my assassin snails either don’t care about them or have joined their snaily ranks as allies. I’ve learned to embrace the extra biodiversity, because imo it will take a lot of labor to fully eliminate them and they have caused no harm that I can see. If you do decide you want to evict them, stick some blanched zucchini on a fork or in a water bottle overnight and you can remove them once they’ve started chowing down. Just an extra note, they may or may not be invasive depending on where you live so keep that in mind before disposing of them.

Just a little real world context to my earlier post. I’m here at the plant tonight covering Express mail and wanted to show how an individual live piece is handled. This is a small package that came through noted as “Live Snails” from a fish seller. No matter how small it will get it’s own tub with distinct placard so it isn’t missed. Often I see and appreciate customers who put on bright stickers to indicate live creatures such as these that came through tonight. This is especially useful if you *arent* shipping express as clerks/mailhandlers will see the stickers and pull them from non-live mail. Here’s someone about to enjoy their new betta friends 🙂

What do you think is the best publicly available source for layman like myself to easily access information on native species? I have had an itch to collect many of the prolific pygmy sunfish and mollies we have here in FL but have always been unsure as to the legalities, despite it being extremely commonly done.

I think it’s really hard to answer this objectively as a hobbyist but I do think it’s an extremely important and sobering conversation to have, especially in light of potential new legislative action in this realm. You framed the question really well in the context of your tarantulas and have given me a lot to think about.

https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail-express.htm

Graveyard shift life

I am a USPS Mail Processing Clerk (I work in distribution plants instead of local stations) and can maybe give some insight. I would say the most surefire way to guarantee live animal success is through shipping Priority Express. Yes this is expensive but this mail is highly segregated internally. I am our plant’s clerk in charge of handling all of the Priority Express that comes through. Things like live chickens, bugs, exotic fresh fruit, live fish, you name it. I am always seeing live fish come through. This mail comes to us only with other live animals / express mail and is handled extremely carefully, separately scanned and much more carefully tracked. Each live animal that makes it to me this way is placed in an individual tub with live animal placard, and loaded last onto dispatch trucks so that they are unloaded first. Express is also given top priority, so even if a piece arrives at a station after a carrier has started their route they must still delivery that express mail. Yes it is expensive, but it is certainly better than risking your expensive/rare live fish somehow getting buried amongst lesser priority parcels. Trust me it happens. I also recommend putting bright yellow/lime sticker on your packages indicating they are live animals. At the end of the day, we really do care. I take great pride in knowing I made sure my local hobbyists fish are handled with utmost care. I can’t speak for other logisitics companies but I am sorry you had a bad experience.

Use the HOB with polyfiber. Sponge filter won’t polish the water nearly as well/quickly.