jwcarlson

'High Peeper Bogknot sends salutations and implores you do something about this duckweed.'

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.

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. 🤣

She hasn't left the cave entrance and the male is just drifting around leaving her alone.

Has the gill inflammation/pinkness gone away?

Holy cow, she is a bus!

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.

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.

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?

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How big are those festivum? They look beautiful!

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.

I assure you that I am not trying to be argumentative. But they don't find basically any of the stuff that Weiss was talking about in the digestive tracts of wild fishes either... lab grown algae... wheat gluten... It's difficult to start talking about doing things "by nature" when what we're doing to these pieces of nature we own is not natural at all. Weiss also talked about mussels being one of the best fish foods... how much clam meat is your average wild discus eating? Beefheart certainly fouls water quickly, but feeding any food at appropriate levels for growing discus fouls the water which is why water changes are so important. I think a good number of people buy adult more or less fully grown discus and keep them some way and then assume that tracks for that fish from fry to adult, but no one reallly thinks that about any other fish because we typically don't buy many fish that need to grow for 18-24 months. And discus are kind of in this in between where they're not "monster fish", but they're also not your typical nano/community fish. But their appearance draws people who want them to fill that planted community tank role and for the vast majority of people, they cannot just be kept that way successfully long-term. If we want to get down to brass tacks, there's not really any plants where a lot of the fish in the hobby come from either, but that doesn't and shouldn't stop us from keeping them that way. I think we get a bit into of a weird place where we draw boxes around things like "I want to feed my fish naturally" and then ignore that every single thing we do to them is not natural at all. We can, in some ways, try our best to mimic that, but as a rule it's either impossible, impractical, or in a lot of cases irresponsible because we cannot mimic all of the other things occuring in nature and that might put our fish at risk. I am also a beekeeper and there's plenty of round-and-round about "natural" beekeeping at least here in the US. Animals requirements change when we domesticate them, full stop. I mean, we have domesticated and selected some animals so much that they aren't even able to reproduce without our intervention anymore. Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread anymore, so I'll be quiet. 😄

Jurrasic Park might be my favorite Crichton. The Andromeda Strain is also pretty good. I think I've also ready Prey and State of Fear. I'm not super well read in his stuff and some of them are pretty plodding in my experience. For Blake Crouch - Dark Matter is my favorite. But I haven't read a Crouch book that I didn't get was very very good. They're fast paced and (in my opinion) more enjoyable than Crichton books. Recursion is another great one. Upgrade is good as well in SciFi. I just read the first in his Wayward Pines trilogy book 1 is called Pines. Also good. He has also written some more books that are strictly "thrillers" a series starting with Desert Places then Locked Doors. I liked those, but they're far more violent and not SciFi related at all. Overall, I think the best jumping in point for Crouch is Dark Matter and if you don't like that he's probably just not for you. It was my first and I've just been working backwards though his stuff. He hasn't had a miss yet for me.

Michael Crichton is, in my opinion, grossly underrated as an author. Blake Crouch feels a bit like his successor in a lot of ways. Jurassic Park is solid.

Just saw that I said my FISH got into and ate a jar of fish food when I meant my CAT did. 😆🤣 I thought this was a picture I had posted and I was only seeing the bottom half. Saw that duckweed under the lotus leaf and thought I was going to have to go home and burn down my house. You scared me a bit.

I'm no authority. But I don't even look at my crypts anymore for fear they will melt back the last inch of their height. I haven't killed a lot of them, but they get to a nice three leaf plant and then sit there for two years.

Looks marginally better this morning, the fuzz spot seemed smaller and maybe less fuzzy. Agree that a dip might put him over the edge. Will see what it's like this afternoon.

Looking at some pictures, it does look quite a bit like that. Can I spot treat with methylene blue? Or do a dip? I would guess IchX might be effective against it, but didn't see any improvement after 24 hours with that in the tank. I'll go add some more salt for the night and see how things look in the AM. Thanks, Colu!

Setup tonight. Two nice fat females and a beautiful male. Hoping this works OK for egg protection as well as not putting the adults at risk of getting stuck in something. It's a nice tight fit.

@Colu It isn't spreading, but it does seem to be getting longer. I initially thought this could have been anchor worms because there are individual strands coming out from the white spot. But now it's gotten more dense at the base.