jwcarlson

Salt and water ratio should stay the same and you can put any amount of eggs in (within reason, don't put a tablespoon in that little hatcher). Once you get the hang of it, it's easy. I have found that hatcher cleanliness is very important to hatch rate.

The problem is that almost anything you're breeding will end up needing some sort of grow out space, typically. Other than shrimp, perhaps.

Upgraded from the tray to a 10 gallon where they'll get daily 50-100% water changes. There's so many of these things. Very light colored, but they've been in an all white tray, so I am interested if they color up. They have the pattern, just washed out.

I'd probably do it sooner. Parasite live cycles aren't waiting! If he is growing that's a good sign. He isn't going to reach his full potential, but he will eventually put on weight if the care stays up. Needs lots of new water while growing too. That's an easy one to skimp on. Glad to hear he's doing well!

Now, live BBS twice a day. When they're first hatched, Sera Micron twice a day. Maybe three times a day on the weekends or days I'm at home, but I wiped a ton of them out when I did that on my first batch. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but I bet I was feeding ten times the fry powder compared to what I feed now.

Yes, I think the same guy gave the talk to ACO club.

He certainly looks better, I wouldn't be afraid to do another round.

How has Pod been, @PluckyD?

Does it kill bladder snails? If it doesn't at regular dose, does it kill them at a higher dose?

I listened to a cory expert give a talk to the Minnesota Aquarium Society a couple of months ago about cory toxin and the description of what it took for them to reliably get the toxin released, I feel, is unlikely to happen during most normal handling. Including at a store and the drive home. And maybe even relatively unlikely to happen during shipment. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I don't think I would necessarily hang my hat on that being the cause.

🥳 Can't wait!

The kasa ones are so much easier and you can schedule basically everything for it. On/off, you can set up basically feeding timer type function. For example, I have my tanks turn their filters and heaters on every night at 9:30 because *sometimes* I forget to turn them back on after the nightly water change on my discus tank. So it just automatically does it. It's surprising how many things you use them for once you have a few of them. Highly recommend.

I just trim the roots back and it's doesn't seem to be an issue. But I also don't have a huge plant, mine is in my discus tank and there's basically no nitrates in there for it, so it doesn't grow very fast.

EL, I think is "end of life" and I'm assuming 76 is the temp you have it set at?

No major die offs, one got sucked up my little tray siphon and there was a snail shell and it got pinched. Otherwise I think there's still 50-60 (hard to count). They're still in the fry tray, actually. I really need to get them into a bigger tank, but I've been moving fish all over the place and they're just taking a back seat for relocation. There's still a 37 gallon reservoir pumping water into their tray continuously, so I'm fairly confident it's just a space issue, not water quality. Doing at least three 90% water changes on the fry system every week. My first batch experienced die offs like you're experiencing and my take on it looking back on it is that I was WILDLY over feeding fry powder. Which I think is extremely easy to do. I need to spawn mine again and get another batch going, but a few weeks ago I had a massive die off of plants in the parent's tank, then a huge amount of hydra (never seen them in this tank before), and then about a week ago my biggest female was floating dead. No testable water quality issues in the tank and I have no idea what to make of it, unfortunately. I don't think it would be old age, but perhaps it's a set-up issue that's causing her stress overtime. She was the only mature female for about a year, so it could be related to that. If you go back through this thread there was some chat about nitrite poisoning and it's long term effects. Might be worth reviewing (posted by Lowell's Fish Lab). At least I think it was this thread.

Some of us don't even worry about the algae on the glass. 😎

I think it looks awesome the way it is!

I just got my first rams a few weeks ago. So no opinions yet. 😄

My discus are in my tap water. pH 8.3, GH and KH are each like 18+ degrees. Not breeding in this, just keeping. Edit to add my actual GH/KH, which I haven't checked for awhile. This is from a couple years ago... KH was 16 drops = 286 ppm, GH was 18 drops = 322 ppm

Everything I have ends up in my tap water unless I am trying to breed it. And the stuff that actually breeds just does it in my tap water and I've failed miserably at breeding anything in tailored water. 😄 And it's a pain in the butt to manage the different types of water.

Kasa WiFi timers. I use a few of the smart strips that have individually controlled outlets. And several of the cubes that are just one outlet. They're really easy to use and even switching phones and stuff is pretty seemless. It actually has a functional app for your phone and in my experience that hasn't been an issue at all. It just works. Which is refreshing considering apps these days.

You probably need to change another 150 gallons of water. If you don't have fish in it and the plants allow, you could drain it mostly empty and slowly fill it up with the water you want (assuming you are making batches of water) as it's available. You probably don't need to go full RODI, can probably get away with just RO. But I'm not a plant expert. I, too, have exceedingly hard water and I've just embraced whatever grows in the water I have and if it dies, it dies. Of course that all depends on your goals.

Being more colored up and less hiding would be the more dominant fish, typically. I don't think the other is defending the skull as a spawning location, but probably just using it to hide from the other.

Beautiful fish!