jwcarlson

I don't click links in any texts even if I "know" where they're coming from. In other words... if you're going to order something from ACO, just go to the website. I'm guessing the text is legit. But from a self preservation standpoint that's the way I would handle it.

Left over fish food, algae, probably biofilm. They're not fast enough to eat your fish (unless the fish die). The shrimp should be safe. I've heard people say they eat shrimplets, I suppose it's possible, but I don't see a shrimplet sitting there letting them eat them.

In a 7 gallon I'd do two or maybe three. They're also a pretty interesting snail to watch and they don't eat ONLY snails.

I have assassins and nerites in the same tanks. I've not seen them kill a bigger snail. They don't even really seem to eat MTS, in my experience. At least not in large numbers. As far as how many assassins. Depends on your tank. In a 75 I've had 4-6 and that seems to keep the snail numbers down. In my fry tanks, I have a few of them in tanks 29-40 gallons. They work pretty well. Oddly, I've never had assassins reproduce. Which I don't understand. But I've never seen a baby one.

I've found that assassin snails help keep the bladder snails in check. Nerites also seem to keep the smaller snails in check, I think, because they eat a lot and do not breed in freshwater. In most of my tanks with nerites there's very few bladder snails.

I don't change water for any of the things I can measure (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). I change it because there's a million variables that I have absolutely no way of knowing anything about. There are tanks that get less water changed because the fish are adult, less sensitive, etc. But there's zero doubt in my mind that large, frequent water changes make for better, healthier fish for me.

That's hilarious. 😄

I had some sterbai eat seemingly millions of planaria when I put them into a tank that had a lot of planaria within it. Like almost overnight. I've never been worried about them and bringing one in isn't going to upset the apple cart. There's probably hundreds of planaria in your tank and you just never see them because they exist within the little ecosystem. Fish will eat them when they find them. The only tanks I've noticed get way too many in them are tanks I'm heavily feeding BBS. Then they're nice bright orange planaria.

"Starvation" is a great motivator for fish. For instance, I feed my CPDs live BBS twice a day. If I drop pellets or flake in... there's very little interest and they're not going to go to the bottom to eat something sunken. I will say that my CPDs seem to go where the cover is. In my 29 with about 50 of them, they are in the floating mat of hornwort. Normally I don't even see any of them. But when I feed them they come out of the woodwork. In the 10 gallon with my original colony + a handful of babies they've had they're near the bottom because that's where most of the cover is. Get them hungry and "train" them to eat what you want them to eat. Even though I feed BBS twice a day to pretty much everything, I still mix in some flake and pellets because there are times when I get a bit bored with fishkeeping and it's easier to start paring down work, even though BBS is a very minimal time commitment to hatch/feed. It also helps to have other fish that eat "anything" to help with the training. My discus were fairly picky eaters in their tank alone. I recently moved them into a 125 with like 50 sterbai and a single gold ram and guess what... the discus eat EVERYTHING now and they'll chase the corys off to get at things they wouldn't even sniff before.

I hope it works out for you, @Zeaqua! Are you already in the lab/research field or coming in from elsewhere?

You stir them up when you refill and suddenly they're everywhere. Small fish do eat them as noted above.

Just let it drain into the sink. Making and using this much RO is going to be a royal pain and you're probably going to want to quit within a month. I'm not saying that to be mean or anything, but relaying personal experience. It's A LOT easier to deal with if you haven't modified a bunch of permanent plumbing that's going to introduce leak points, etc. If you're still going hard on making 50 gallons of RO every day after six months, then maybe consider something more permanent? The actual act of changing water and making the RO (Where are you going to store it? How are you going to shut it off when the barrel is full? Where's the water inevitably going to overflow to when you forget to shut it off or the float switch fails? etc...) are 100x bigger of a deal than where the RO waste water drains. If you're worried that the drain needs to be BELOW the RO membrane - it doesn't. Water pressure is pushing everything through the membrane, it doesn't need to drain like a siphon. In other words... the RO unit can be under the sink hidden and the little drain hose can be coiled up and you can pop it up and into the sink as needed.

I'd do it as a temporary thing and just put the waste water line in the sink above. Then when you're done, put it all under the sink. Wouldn't drill in your drain line, that's probably asking for trouble.

Yeah, it strips out the salt and just makes "RO". Same as if you'd do it with regular tap or softened water. I've kept apistos and rams in straight RO without issue. Water changes about once a week. I'm sure there's some trace hardness that keeps the pH from crashing. But I've never seen the pH lower much below 7.4 with straight RO.

I have only raised mine in trays in a fry "system" like Dean's. With a 37 gallon aquarium as the base for the trays. Had as many as 60+ corys in the trays with a tray of CPDs. Was changing like 90% of water every day or every other. Water can foul pretty darn easily. What was their first food? What are you feeding them now? I've never had that big of size difference unless I felt there was some other problem (deformity, swim bladder issue, or something like that). If they haven't grown much since getting rid of the bigger ones, they're probably not going to reach their potential. Kind of strange situation. I'd think they would take off if they were going to.

You could cover the hole with net that's big enough for the food to fall through, but small enough that the fish won't get through. As mentioned above, the humidity might cause an issue for the food, but you could probably avoid that a bit by only putting a small amount in. But if you're wanting to load it up for a month that might not work well. Could also vent your little box and help alleviate that.

I'd guess that it might have been water quality at least at some point. My understanding is that nitrite poisoning can appear fine in the near term, but have long lasting effects. That's a current picture of a 90 day old fry? Do you have pictures of them near the ones that you sold to the LFS?

Correct... it doesn't much matter. Let it rip. One other consideration, though, is the splashing. The bubbles are going to fling a little water up/out when they burst at the surface. So, take that into account. If you've got a lid this isn't too big of a deal. If you don't, it can look like your tank is leaking depending how it's located. 😄 Ask me how I know!

Depends on the setup. If you've got a betta plastered against the wall because you've got so much turbulence... it's too much. If you've got a tank full of corys you probably can't get enough flow to be too much for them. Hopefully that makes sense. I typically have the flows fairly low, you don't need to have massive flow through the sponge.

The plastic cylinder helps with uplift/flow by forcing the water being pulled up by the bubbles to come through the tube (and thus through the sponge). Without the cylinder, water will be drawn from least resistance which will be from the side without the cylinder. That said... I don't think it probably matters all that much. Your flow looks fine, if anything maybe a little too much. Get an inline flow valve so you can fine tune it. The smaller the bubbles the better, usually. But it is, by no means, "rocket science". If you've got bubbles, you'll be fine.

To the other issue: I've never had an issue with blood worms hurting fish (to my knowledge). But the smallest fish I've fed them to are full grown sterbai corydoras. The freeze dried blood worms from Hikari seem quite a bit smaller than the frozen Hikari ones. Which I think makes sense because the water has been removed. I've fed the freed dried ones to a variety of smaller fish like tetras. They'll really stuff themselves. Fish don't have much of an off switch.

I think you'll find that nitrogen availability is a bigger deal than water hardness. I have very hard water and I keep my nitrates pretty low. I've had good luck with salvina, dwarf water lettuce, hornwort, anubias, dwarf water lily, anacharis, guppy grass... But if your nitrates are at or near zero all the time, you're going to struggle.

Congrats, baby shrimp are awesome!

Change water.

Maybe Alligator flag or Pickerelweed. Do they ever flower?