jwcarlson

Some have hatched, more look viable. I am once again in awe that something this small can survive.

I don't have any recommendations, but I'm thinking that you might mean 7-10 liters per hour not per minute? This is the one that Cory recommends: Linear Piston Air Pump for Aquarium Fish Rooms and Fish Stores – Aquarium Co-Op (aquariumcoop.com)

I think I would have expected to see something hatched this morning, but I did not see anything hatched. Also not sure the eggs are developing or not. I thought the eggs hatched after something like a day, but it's been a bit longer now. If I don't have some hatched tonight I have no idea what is going on with lack of fertility. If I don't see any fry, I think I'll probably spawn them again, but in a bigger 10 gallon tank instead of the box. I cut some plastic canvas to put in the breeder box because I'm sure they are eating at least a few of them. Additionally, the coarse sponge is too coarse and could easily ensnare these tiny little adults because they really like to burrow in when they start spawning. Any bright ideas about infertility? Or perhaps general egg care? It looked to me like the inner circle inside the egg (embryo?) becomes whitish instead of clear and then almost like it slumps or slouches. Nothing looked fuzzy or fungus covered at this point, though. I have a decent microscope. I think I'll pull an egg and take a look at it tonight if nothing else. Not sure what I'll see, but worth a shot and maybe I'll learn something.

I haven't had one of these, yet. But I can't imagine it wouldn't considering it's doing basically the same thing.

I don't have a ton of experience with aqua soil, but I'd imagine that the corys will fluff up a lot of stuff into the water column with substrate like that. I don't think that ruins anything, but you might have cloudy water periodically. I've got one tank with bare Fluval Stratum. No corys in there, but everytime I disrupt the water at all there's a little bit wafted up into the water column. My tanks with corys are bare bottom (for spawning) or sand (play sand or pool filter sand) capped Fluval Stratum. Have had them on gravel before as well and it seemed to be fine.

Waste is a wildly broad term. I don't disagree with the idea that if you want to buy a product and pay the shipping that you should be able to. But I think that's a difficult business to manage. I appreciate the speed with which I can order on most ecommerce sites these days. I don't hate the slower places like Jehmco, but I find it excruciating that I have to call or email someone, wait for a reply, wait for an invoice, pay the invoice, and have them ship it. Jehmco is responsive and ships quickly in my experience. But how much easier would it be if I could just do it. in 24 seconds instead of 24 hours? The greatest news is that there's a spectrum of businesses available to choose from. I've ordered two or three times from ACO (with order totals around $100) since they went to UPS and the shipping (to me) is very VERY much slower. I'm almost never ordering something that I need "right now", but sometimes I'm doing something that I would at least like to schedule the work I'm doing around (like the powerhead for my fry tank). The UPS orders have taken six or seven days to arrive. Truthfully, it probably pushes me to just take a trip to my LFS that is a retail partner, but that's about an hour drive and I usually end up with something I need to acclimate! haha Frankly, we're all spoiled by how quickly things move around the country anymore and as that keeps getting more and more massive in scope, things are going to slow down and/or get more expensive. It's economics. The new sponge filter kits still haven't shipped for me, which is fine. I just hope that doesn't mean something occurred and mucked up the works!

Yes, this is hardneck. I ferment it in honey and also make some black garlic.

That's really too bad, @Guppysnail. 😞 I don't knead my sourdough, just stretch it a few times before I put it in the banneton. Could do the initial mixing in a mixer and stretch it after, I suppose. Bread machine is absolutely nowhere near as good as hand made. I have a buddy who was making all sorts of bread with a bread machine, which is perfectly fine. But I told him he was born with the only two bread machines he needed and he was shocked at the difference. I grow my own garlic too! Focusing mainly on clove and bulb size/density. I think this is comsidered German red or purple.

I need to get the pork butt on the smoker, so about 10 hours. Does your wrist injury prevent baking? Or just grow out of it a bit? I am fairly seasonal.

A couple sourdough loaves this morning. Overnight ferment. Normal loaf with bread flour 50/50 whole wheat/bread flour Anyone else bake?

I've enjoyed my apistos and observing them. You could do a pair of those and maybe some top water dither fish.

Newer set of sterbai. Still a few in eggs.

Ok, it's been a long time. Female looking huge. Another female that I raised up seemed big enough to spawn. Netted the two gals out and one male. Put them in spawning setup over a square of course sponge with some suswassertang. Put on a privacy cover so they're more calm (this worked awesome, actually). And got some eggs that as of now look fertile. Bleach cleaned the laying and holding containers to see if that has contributed in the past. Here's hoping it goes better!

Sterbai cory fry have made the move to the fry system. Another set of sterbai eggs I thought were a loss have hatched about double digits of fry. So we'll see how that goes. I suppose I can get a try set up for them as well. CPD trio have been in a hang on egg laying setup since yesterday evening. I have like 10 CPDs and only 2 are female........

It's certainly been slower, but it doesn't bother me personally. If I'm making a trip to the local partner store I just get what I need there. If I am getting just a general resupply then I have it shipped. It's only moderately annoying when it's something I am reasonably excited to try like the new uplift tubes.

If you can move the fish or maybe even just put some sort of a divider up, my experience (with different apistos) is that the colors can change quite rapidly and he/she might tell you quite quickly.

I can't imagine any normal aquarium or fish room is simply an hour loss of aeration short of any sort of real issue. If it's easier to do it one way vs. the other, I'd do it that way.

These little things are so fascinating! Keep us posted, hopefully it works out!

Beautiful! What are you feeding them, @Guppysnail? My female apistos don't seem to put on weight like yours.

I'm wondering if I'm not cleaning out my egg hatching boxes well enough and causing problems that way. I'm far from experienced, but to my eyes the eggs from subsequent spawns seem to look fertile and then the embryos seem to die when they're very small (and still inside the egg). I think that's what is happening, once I got my CPD spawning setup tweaked a bit, I got a huge flush of eggs. Something like 60 or 80. They looked like they had the fertile look and then typically they just end up looking melty or maybe even disintegrating. When I clean the boxes I get them in the sink and with lots of hot water scrub it out with my nylon brush. I'm wondering if there's not some bacterial/fungal carry over (even with methylene blue) that wipes out the next batch before they can hatch. And I also wonder how much that might be because of my relatively high pH (8.2-8.3) being more apt to allow for rampant bacterial growth. I think today is the day that this next batch of sterbai eggs should hatch. I glanced at them this morning and a few looked viable still. I'm thinking that I'll probably find that none of them look good tonight. So I'll tear down that box. I might even clean it with dilute bleach soak and then rinse the snot out of it. I cannot for the life of me come up with another reason that a first spawn will be good, but the subsequent spawns are total losses with no viable fry whatsoever.

Hey, we've got to be frustrated by something. 😄 It's a little more "gluggy" without an airstone, but honestly that excuse doesn't hold up at all considering all the other gluggy stuff in the fish room.

How do you "know" when to feed your daphnia cultures?

Oh yeah? Some of my two year old anubias haven't died yet! 😄 😄