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jwcarlson

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Everything posted by jwcarlson

  1. jwcarlson
    Interesting. Planaria wouldn't be tough to bend. Do you have even an out of focus picture?
  2. jwcarlson
    Might also be a leech, I suppose. But they're pretty beefy usually. How "thick" was the creature, @KALgxh?
  3. jwcarlson
    Planaria would be my guess, but 1 CM would be a big one. Like real big.
  4. jwcarlson
    Yeah, I noticed that. And I kept them suspended, but it did take A LOT more air than I normally would use. It's also not in my normal hatchers because I can't really "afford" a bad hatch at the moment. I mean, I have frozen BBS that I hatched, but it's not ideal. Thanks for the tips, I will give them another shot tonight. By the time I get it sorted out they'll be big enough to eat the ACO ones. 😄
  5. jwcarlson
    Small or big ones? I normally just use rigid tubing, but I can add an air stone if smaller bubbles is the way to go. I didn't see babies this morning, but some of the eggs had hatched, I changed out the methylene blue. There was a ton of snail poop stuck to these eggs and I removed as much as I could a few times, but it just seems like I couldn't get rid of it. I saw no fungus, but I'm not happy with the cleanliness of the eggs... hard to separate such small items that have such similar buoyancy.
  6. jwcarlson
    My vinegar eels crashed when I ignored them for months. When I vacuumed the gunk out of the bottom of their fry tray last night, there was a lot of little critters in the bucket. Assuming it was left over paramecium from my feedings. Either way, it was down on the bottom and I'm not sure CPDs ever eat off the bottom of the tank even if it's only an inch or so down. I never witnessed one eating a vinegar eel when I spawned them months ago. The leaf thing isn't a bad idea. I think generally that microscopic life in our tanks is a lot more common than we might normally think. I wondered that. Maybe my 63 degree start basically "ruined" this batch. I'll start a new batch in the bain marie tonight and see how it goes.
  7. jwcarlson
    Big nothing from my SF strain brine shrimp eggs. That's disappointing. I put a bit of them in with the new ACO batch I set up today to see if they seem to hatch. I don't see why my setup wouldn't have worked. These things grow so slow. Maybe I am under feeding them, but I am gunshy.
  8. jwcarlson
    @Juancho this is not HITH, but some kind of bacterial infection. Glad yours recovered! This wound is nearly closed.
  9. jwcarlson

    Columnaris?

    jwcarlson replied to jwcarlson's topic in Diseases

    This has fallen off. I am not sure if he has any additional spots but where this was coming out of looks pretty good. He is still fighting equilibrium a lot.
  10. jwcarlson
    'High Peeper Bogknot sends salutations and implores you do something about this duckweed.'
  11. jwcarlson

    Columnaris?

    jwcarlson replied to jwcarlson's topic in Diseases

    He's still alive, his equilibrium is all messed up as it has been. But he seemed to be a little different even if I wouldn't say better. I'll probably do a water change tonight and then dose IchX and salt... or maybe just give him clean water and then do another direct application of either IchX or methylene blue tomorrow afternoon. The fuzz was still dyed dark this morning, so I can't really get a good look at it. I will say that I thought his color looked a little better this morning. He's been very dark, but he had a bit more brightness to him. I keep expecting him to be dead every morning, and perhaps that would be a mercy for him. But as long as he's willing to keep fighting I'll pull out whatever stops I can for him.
  12. jwcarlson
    Well, she's back out and wagging her tail at the male this morning. She's driving me nuts. 😄 I'm thinking about dumping a garbage bag of oak leaves in there and seeing how they look in June. 🤣
  13. jwcarlson
    She hasn't left the cave entrance and the male is just drifting around leaving her alone.
  14. jwcarlson
    Has the gill inflammation/pinkness gone away?
  15. jwcarlson
    Holy cow, she is a bus!
  16. jwcarlson
    So this gal is still alive. She seems fine, but has obviously lost her ability to use her swim bladder. She will not survive or at least not thrive in the main tank as she will only be able to fight to perch in the floating plants and hornwort. What about making her at fry mascot and let her live in a fry tray with a suitably sized batch of fry? My theory is she was wounded in a freak spine'ing by one of the barbatus corys as they have really started aggressively glass surfing and they're fast and don't care what they hit.
  17. jwcarlson
    I could drop the heater in. They have been in for 14ish hours now. Low 60s temp. I have a little heater that would probably get some hatched when I feed at 530. I'll give it a shot. I failed to mention that I also have viable paramecium cultures and am feeding a bit of that before I use fry powder, but I don't have much. I can't tell if they're eating it, but am assuming they are on account of how big of a pain it is for their "dad". Haha Going with the bain marie.
  18. jwcarlson

    Columnaris?

    jwcarlson replied to jwcarlson's topic in Diseases

    He has survived a few hours. The fungus or mold must be dyed blue because I can no longer see it. Would repeating this process be advantageous daily or should I just let things play out?
  19. jwcarlson
    I think there is less fat in properly prepared beefheart than you might imagine. When done correctly there is zero visible fat remaining in the mix. The meat of the heart is extemely lean, which is one of the reasons it is cheap. It works a lot and is therefore lean and tough. Beef heart is about 4% fat. Bloodworms about 3%. Black worms 7%.
  20. jwcarlson
    Worked well. The vast majority of the eggs were under the grate. If I can get these to hatch I will feel fairly comfortable saying the issue was my cleanliness. And that opens a host of thoughts, honestly. The first batch is doing very well, I think I have only noticeablely lost one or two fry. They all seem to get bellies from the fry food. They will bite BBS but cannot get pieces off yet. Have SF strain in a hatcher should be ready tomorrow evening, hopefully. Even if they can only get a nibble it will be worth it.
  21. jwcarlson
    I feel like the joke about the cabinets growing through the floor from the Easy Green didn't land. I'll keep trying. What's hilarious is I whacked my head on that bucket three times a day until yesterday when I finally relocated it out of the walking area.
  22. jwcarlson

    Columnaris?

    jwcarlson replied to jwcarlson's topic in Diseases

    He looked rough this afternoon, thought he might be dead. Netted him and he seemed to be fairly lively. I did exactly like @Odd Duck suggested, but I used methylene blue (this was about an hour ago so I hadn't read this). Maybe that was the wrong call. It was not too stressful and got him right back in. I didn't think to use IchX which is the next bottle over. 😞 dang.
  23. jwcarlson
    Those algae wafers are probably driving a lot of the population of extra critters, honestly and at some point it becomes a vicious cycle of overfeeding. I think your oto looks like he's eating plenty well, but I've never kept them so someone else might be able to tell you for sure.
  24. jwcarlson
    How big are those festivum? They look beautiful!
  25. jwcarlson
    The base of my discus feed now that mine are mature is freeze dried blackworms. I would be broke if I tried to do that during grow out. Blackworms feed out WAY cleaner than beefheart for sure, perhaps mainly because there's so much less tiny pieces of waste. There was a discus breeder that used frozen, solid beefheart and then used a salad shooter or cheese grater type of thing that would shave little pieces of the BH into the tank, pieces probably a bit bigger than a VibraBite, but similar shape and would be able to be eaten in one "bite". Typically, beefheart becomes a paste almost. I did a double course grind for mine and I fed it straight with absolutely no additives during grow out. Very little supplemental feed otherwise. And, yes, domestic discus are so far removed from wild (for the most part, but there are some that are more wild-adjacent to get back to that "look"). I agree that finding a fish biologist who specializes in nutrition is probably rare, indeed. 😄 I will say that we kind of want to default to the idea that the natural diet is ideal, but I think that ignores a lot of things. I might be ideal for a few months per year and then fish might be more or less starving for a few months opposite of that. Additionally, that in-and-of itself might lead to fish being significantly less long lived in the wild. That said, perhaps there's some level of benefit that could be gained by putting the fish through those stresses. I don't know of a lot of people who are doing things like that to their fish except for a few corydora breeders who are way deep trying to simulate the natural stresses of seasonal fluctuation to spawn fish that no one else has spawned in captivity.
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