jwcarlson

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! 😄 😄

I'm no expert, but after six weeks I'm not sure vinegar eels and paramecia are going to be enough to sustain them? Vinegar eels in particular are usually a bridge to get to bigger foods like BBS. Truthfully, I don't know about honey gourami fry in particular, so take this for what it's worth. How many did you start with and how many are there now? How many are left?

What are you raising them in (breeder box or regular tank) and what type of fry are they?

Seem to have stabilized and I think I was certainly overfeeding early on. 16 sterbai still going strong, everyones eating and haven't had a loss in a few days.

My only affected aquariums are sub 55 gallons. I haven't noticed an issue and everything has at least a sponge filter and the area around the place that bubbles up is always exchanging gas. I don't worry about it, but it's annoying.

I wouldn't say I'm "battling it" on a couple tanks. But I have a couple that have this going on. I don't really understand how or why. It's basically like an algae slime. I've tried netting it out or swirling a tweezers in there and balling it up. It just comes back basically instantly. I'm hoping it's a flow issue and when I get the new uplift tubes I can prevent it by directing some flow around the surface.

I made a little siphon out of rigid tubing and airline. The 3/16" stuff slips inside the air line. I have some 1/4" that the standard airline tubing slips inside of which is a bit faster draining. That said, it drains "too fast" really.

We're in so deep getting excited over a plastic tube. 😄

I just got a daphnia magna and paramecium culture yesterday myself. I'd love to be able to feed daphnia daily, the adult ones in my culture were freaking huge (compared to BBS). I'm actually kind of excited for some meatier options for my fish as it seems like they need to eat a million BBS for a meal. Thinking I need a bigger container to culture in, though. I've got a couple of seed shrimp cultures going as well. What I REALLY need to do is come up with somewhere to put all of these, honestly. 😄

I bought several to upgrade my ACO sponge filters. I'm looking forward to being able to hopefully better manage the funky stuff that collects on top of some of my tanks. Or at least better manage it. Also hoping it's a nice flow somewhere between nothing and a power head, which I almost always think is too much. Plus, I thought I had a couple of spare large sponge filters and when I checked last night I learned that I only had one spare medium and two empty large boxes. 😄 Last night I was relocating a seeded large sponge from one tank to another and the air stone fell off 67 times. Be gone, air stone, BE GONE!

I hope someone can help us. My first batch of sterbai eggs almost all hatched. Second batch of about 40, all infertile. Got another 30 or so the last couple days and look infertile as well. I don't understand.

I bought one Ziss hatcher and then I bought a second one. 😄 I'm not hatching much, but to keep up with what I'm doing having two makes sense. I don't think I need a 3rd one, but what if I do?! I can kill plants for free and hardscape is pretty easy to come by.

I think I'd put an actual level on it if you've got one. I can't even get mine to rotate the screen all the time. 😄

Another vote for shrimp from me!

How level is your desk?

I usually get a couple of days before I get concerned with the sponge backing up, but in almost every circumstance I'm doing a bottom vac in the box anyway, so it takes a couple seconds to squeeze the sponge out. I'm curious how often Dean needs to clean the trays in his system. I guess I'll see what it's like when I get mine up and running. I should have fry in my copy of his system within the next couple of days.

The gate would actually be pretty good if it was somehow farther toward the tank and you could just use it as a backing for a small sponge.

I think the consensus is more females than males. Have you watched this video? And

Guppysnail helped quite a bit with troubleshooting (see my CPD thread in signature). Mine have made a few extra community spawning, but I think I have 2 females and about 8 males. Once I am done spawning sterbai corys, I will give the CPDs another try. I don't understand how it could go bad like it did for me. But it was about the same time our youngest squirted flea and tick meds into their tank. Maybe that had something to do with it.

I had the first spawn with my CPDs and almost all of them were fertile. All of several subsequent spawns were total failures. I wish I had an answer. It might help to know your setup and how you spawn them. And how many males vs females.