jwcarlson

Well... it's been a minute. I've read: Training Days in Japan - My Journey by Oliver Knott The Hexologist by Josiah Bancroft Blood on the Tracks Volume 1 by Shuzo Oshimi Upgrade by Blake Crouch One Piece Volumes 1-3 by Eiichiro Oda Desert Places by Blake Crouch Locked Doors by Blake Crouch Vinland Saga Books 8-13 by Makota Yakimura Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett The Wheel of Time 6 - Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. Parker Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames

That's a lot of eggs, @Aguinaga! What are you feeding?

This morning little lady had a pile of sand outside of her cave. She's been eating well and seems to be plumping up. Last night it seemed like she came over and flared at the glass when I fed her as well. I've been down there quite a bit, but working on everything else as it's just her in there I've not been paying a ton of attention to her other than her fins seem all healed up and she's eating. I'll have to pay a little more attention to see if she's "nesting". But I think the sand is a good sign.

This is a taller 29, it would be right up your alley. 😄 For this particular purpose, the fry will be perfect eye level for me.

I always liked this picture of my daughter's betta.

Welcome! This is a pretty good place!

I don't think you should be worried, acclimate the way that makes you most comfortable.

Probably asking if it is wild caught. I'm not necessarily suggesting this. But I have gone to get them to temperature and then plop and drop and I don't think I have had any issues since. Going up in pH is typically easier on fish (from what I understand). My pH is 8.3 or so, so things are almost certainly going up in pH when I get fish. So take that for what it's worth.

Before anything else, I just want to be clear that I'm absolutely no sort of fish breeding authority. In fact, I'm the polar opposite if you go looking through my other threads. And I have no intention on breeding a zillion fish. But this seemed like a fun use for a tank that I otherwise would let sit empty or give away. With that out of the way, I've had this 37 gallon aquarium that I bought about two years ago and to be honest, I hated everything about it. It's been sitting empty for most of the last year. I hate the footprint (mainly the height). This is probably the peak of this tank's appearance. I struggled to keep plants going, probably in part due to the height. It's since been relocated to a 40B. It's been ugly and hanging out in my daughter room. As part of a larger basement project (adding two bedrooms to the basement which previously was entirely unfinished), I've been making some improvements to my "fish room" as well. Eventually I think all of my aquariums will end up down there. And maybe eventually it will be in good enough shape to post a picture of what I've got going overall. 😄 So I got it cleaned up and relocated this weekend. I had "duty" at work and it was almost non-stop most of Thanksgiving break (four days), so I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. I watched Dean's fry system talk live in October and I thought it looked interesting. And I'd seen it before in his fish room videos as well. It dawned on me in the middle of his talk that I didn't have to make an excuse to go buy a 20L because I had this 37 which is basically the same footprint AND it doesn't need a lid! Unfortunately all the dimensions and construction are JUST far enough off that you can't use standard lids and whatnot. But I think it's close enough for this. The bowls down below are my two oldest kids "Walstad bowls" that they set up a couple of days ago. They had their own "eco systems" (as they called them) set up in old ice cream buckets and all I could imagine was them picking them up by the handle and having them blow out all over. Still a possibility here, but more permanent this way. Dean's fry system is WAY overkill for what I've got going on, but I'm an engineer and a tinkerer and winter is here with 3-4" of snow Saturday and into Sunday and it's dipping down into single digits already. So time for some (more) indoor projects. I took no pictures of the actual build of the air/water delivery system for some reason. Probably because I was watching Dean's video (or at least parts of it) a zillion times trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. Not too difficult to do if you're relatively handy. I'd suggest clear PVC cement so you can't see how messy you are. This is actually the cleanest PVC gluing job I have every done. I barely got any on my hands! I forgot vinyl tube at Home Depot the other day, so pressure check had to wait until I picked up tube tonight after work. Worked well, no leaks even dead headed with all valves closed. Air also tested and worked well. Finished filling it up and let it all rip. Squeezed some sponges in and will get some cycling going. I still need to put the trays together as I bought ones that are the large and medium instead of the smalls and mediums. They fit, but the biggest one is quite large. Some smaller ones should be here sometime this week. It looks like my reflection is snorkeling! 😄 Thanks for looking. That's all for now. I didn't seal the void around the screw/PVC interfaces yet, but I did seal the threads and holes. I wanted to make sure I didn't need to disassemble before I put a bunch of silicone in there. Parts list: GE Silicone 1 (now called GE all purpose silicone make sure it says 100% silicone) GE Silicone 100% Red Tube - I did not use this. Aluminum Flat Bar 1"x48" 7/32" drill bit 3/16" drill bit 10-32 tap PVC: 5' 1/2" PVC 2x 1/2" Slip/Slip Elbow 2x 1/2" Slip/Thread Elbow 2x 1/2" Caps 2x 1/2" Slip Coupling 1x 1/2" Threaded Plug 1x 5/8"x1/2" Nylon Hose Barb PVC Cement Zip Ties - regular Zip Ties w/ screw/mounting hole Plumbing Joint Compound (I did not use this, teflon tape worked fine on my water valves.) PlastiDip White Spray Coating 1-1/2" 8x32 stainless machine screws 1/2" 10x32 stainless machine screws 8x32 Nyloc Nuts Heat Shrink Tubing

No problem! 🙂 I'm such a trainwreck with other fry I can't imagine what discus would be like.

Discus fry will feed off the parents slime. I am unsure if any other fish do, but I don't think any other do. These are sterbai corydoras and they're just a handful of days old. Yes removed from the parents as eggs and hatched in an internal breeder box then external when they hatched.

That certainly helps put things in perspective, thank you! I've got a few fry powders that (I think) increase in size. Or otherwise I bought multiples of the same thing. I've got to scale it to the size of the spawn, of course. When you overfed BBS, what do you notice? Greater mortality? Any symptoms? Is just seeing a belly with any orange in it "good enough"? Just trying to get a feel, I guess I could take a video and maybe it would be really obvious to someone else. Regarding the heater in the external box. I don't mind the idea, but frankly, I'm tired of dealing with hose and cords. I've got a small submersible pump in my sterbai spawning setup and that stinking cord is in the way so often. 😄 I've actually been doing quite a bit of work in my "fish room" the last month or so. I've built two bedrooms in a previously unfinished basement and I'm working on getting my fish room area better setup. Including a better fry rearing situation as I'm tired of crouching or sitting on the floor to observe fry. I'm only 39, but I'm old enough that I don't want to do that.

It's external for now, @Guppysnail. We're at a weird time of year when my basement is warmer than the rest of the house which is currently probably in the upper 50s. We're trying to make it through November without turning on the heater (we're in Iowa). Basement is closer to 70. I'm currently working on a better fry system, in part because I feel like I have little control over the environment of the fry when I'm connected to a community tank for instance. I certainly squirted it right on them. And I won't lie, I thought that could certainly be an issue. I didn't notice any issues directly, but it's impossible to know. I do still think I'm feeding too much, I will have to internalize that. The BBS I am sure can eventually cause an issue. But I don't see much waste at all other than some of the BBS might still be left over.

Does that keep the eggs clean? I had the air stone in this batch down pretty low and didn't really think about it until yesterday to turn it up when I saw quite a few were white. Maybe I suffocated them. 😞 I can see the advantage to changing water in the egg container, I don't know where all the "gunk" in my breeder box comes from with the eggs. I fill it with tank water, it seems relatively clean, but some scum stuff is always all over everything by the time the eggs get close to hatching. I'll have to look at a tumbler. I have zero luck getting my cory eggs to stick even if I pull them off the mop a couple minutes after they are laid. Thanks for your thoughts!

That makes sense. I have a bigger tube that works well, but the suction is pretty small and can be tough to avoid the fry. But I'm going into a bucket so they're easy enough to get out if I get them accidentally. I have the 3/16" rigid tube as well. The one I currently use, the standard air hose goes *inside* the ID of the tube, so it must be 1/4". It's what I had and it works as long as I am careful. I pinch the air line to regulate flow a bit.

I have a few pond snails in the box (to keep it cleaner). And I clean the bottom nightly. Plus spot cleaning if I see anything out of whack. I wonder, though, how much my high pH/hard water might effect the viability of fry. Mainly that the water is more conducive to bacterial growth compared to something softer and more acidic. I've thought about running a UV sterilizer, but also want to try a more dedicated fry rearing setup. Maybe that first and then think about UV. This is outside of the scope of this thread, but I collected a bunch more sterbai eggs a couple of days ago and the VAST majority turned white. Not sure if it's fungus, they don't look fuzzy. Just white inside, so maybe just infertile? What worries me is this is exactly what happened with CPDs. The first spawn was good and the second and every other time after has been a total failure. I think of the ~50 eggs maybe 10 of them seem to be developing still. I cleaned out the infertile ones today. And yes, I use methylene blue.

I struggle immensely with fry powder. I have no idea how much I should be feeding and no clue how to tell if the fry are eating it. I've got a batch of sterbai corys that started with about 40 eggs, around 30 hatched, and I think I've got around 20 left. A handful of them have been found sideways or upside down. Not sure why they died. The rest look good and are eating baby brine shrimp. But I put some BBS in on a "whim" because they seemed big enough to eat least chew on them. They fed on it readily. Is it possible the others starved? When you feed fry powder do you cut flow temporarily? It seems like it disperses quickly when the flow is on. I mix it with a tiny bit of water and gently squirt it right in the piles of fry and I've not really noticed any sort of obvious eating behavior. But with BBS they seem to start hunting it immediately. There might be a handful of them that aren't big enough, but with the absolute mess that fry powder is, I might be better off letting the little ones starve anyway instead of possibly polluting the breeder box. Does anyone struggle with this? The powder I'm just feeding a couple of times a day and I don't feel like it's all that much. I do think that I lost the majority of a CPD batch some time ago to overfeeding fry powder. Anyone else struggle with this? Do you notice little green bellies when you're feeding the powder? How soon after feeding should I suck the extra out? I know that this depends a lot on the fry size, but can you substitute SF strain BBS for fry powder for a bit in lieu of the powder for some species? I'm sure I've got other questions, but that's all for now.

I've been toning down my lights, but I think maybe I will drop them a bit more and leave them on longer. I'm nervous to just jump into it and end up battling an algae farm. I kind of just got the apisto tanks under control in that regard.

Could also be nerve damage. Discus sometimes experience the same thing.

Pull the parents and see if the fry raise up in there, maybe?

Since it's "freshly aquascaped"... is it cycled?

I think the hold out sterbai finally broke down and spawned today. 40 or so eggs, I think.

Regular airline. Sometimes it helps to run the flexible stuff under hot water, that usually helps it slip over it. Less chances of clogging and gets down deeper into the cone is my understanding. One other thing that might be happening is over mixing and breaking the swimmerettes off of the shrimp? Overall, it seems like they take a pretty good beating, but it's something to think about. On the flip side, I think I went down too low at one point and it basically wasn't helping to jiggle them out of the eggs.

For what it's worth. I started scrubbing with brush after each hatch and I haven't had another issue after making that post. My temperatures and setup take about 36 hours to get decent first hatch, I take most of what I can and then pull two more feeds over the next day. If that makes sense. So hour 0 start hatch, hour 36 pull first feed, hour 48 pull second feed, hour 60 pull third feed, rinse/scrub, and start a new hatch. The third feed is really small. A lot of times I scrap after the 2nd pull because there's little/none left. You can ditch that diffuser. Edit to add: you can ditch it and cut a small piece of air tubing to length between the lid and the rigid tube so that it gets the bubbler location right down in the bottom of the hatcher.

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