jwcarlson

Can't help with the CO2 question, but I'm jealous of your moss!

@Odd Duck I hadn't seen your video, but I love how the corys come crashing in like "oh, did she put food over here?" 😄

I got the first decent pencilfish picture so far.

Hopefully they spawn for you soon! 🙂

I'd take a pheasant over seeing a mountain lion where I'm hunting. I totally understand that they're always there and always have been. But the rational part of my brain departs the rails if I see a mountain lion behind me in the dark... or even in broad daylight. Even if the odds are very slim, and yes... they are. That said, I'm a nice, tasty snack for a mountain lion.

Technically this was last night, but it's been less than 24 hours. Four water changes!

I *think* that's what mine look like and it's off scale high.

Ahh, I misunderstood, I thought you meant that you wanted to use the 3.5 gallon for the breeding project. I'd make the argument that breeding shrimp in the 3.5 would net you significantly more money than just selling the tank, but maybe there's a really hot used market for small tanks like that in your area? What are you hoping to breed?

There was a mountain lion roaming the area not too far from our house. The last city we lived in someone had one in their tree in their backyard and shot it. There's been rumors of them around here for 30 years, and we're part of their historic range here in Iowa. But they're getting more prevalent, or at least that's the perception, though it could be bias because of all the cameras everyone had on them at all times basically. Either way, this deer season I have been very jumpy walking to/from in the dark. In fact, the last time I walked in in the dark a hedge apple fell randomly from the tree I had just walked under and I spun around and my heart went crazy. Some of the most frightening things to encounter in the dark is walking through thick grass and stepping close enough to a pheasant that they flush because in the dark you basically need to come in contact with them and they usually fly just about straight into your face.

I can't think of a breeding project that would work well in that small of a tank except for shrimp. 🙂 Now, I'm not sure what your local market would work for selling them. But that's very local and probably even seasonal.

Shrimp!

They are not chill, unfortunately. Well, they're chill most of the time. But sometimes one of the other ones eats a flake in a really scary way off the surface and send the rest of them into an epic fit banging into stuff. 😄 Discus were a fish I wanted to keep 20 years ago, but I decided not to based on my water and the care requirements. I'm glad I waited. I can't say that I really have a fish wish list beyond that. I'd love a pair of apistos that spawns, so I guess that's on the list. 😄 I'm a little prone to impulse buying fish. I just bought six Scleromystax barbatus this weekend, I'd never seen them, but watched some videos fairly recently of them and thought they looked cool. We were walking out of a fish swap on Sunday and I noticed bags of them on a table... I hemmed and haw'd and my wife is was like "just freaking get them". haha $40 of six I thought seemed reasonable considering the pricing I'd seen online. They've got a lot of growing to do and they have been pretty nervous, but tonight after water change they were swimming around a bit more and showing some character. I have plenty of empty tanks, but I was planning on getting a couple of pair of rams to give a shot at spawning them. So now the tank I was going to do that in has these barbatus and some Beckford pencil fish in it. Whoops. I will, eventually, make a swing to native fish at some point.

It was clear and clean tonight. This happens fairly frequently, usually to a lessor extent and not yellow. I didn't feel comfortable pumping it into tanks is all. The tanks seem to be OK using unaged and cooler water. These 4 got changes. 10 gallon CPD jungle 10 qt (currently apisto jail cell) 55 semi qt with new pencil fish and batatta cories 40 breeder community jungle (where plants go to die). What's crazy is I saw my only kuhli loach for the first time in like 8 months. I had 7 of them, but actually had 8. I was just not "vibing" with them so I gave them away. Finished tearing down the tank and found one. Plopped him in the 40 and never saw him again until tonight. He's grown a bit and is plump. You can see him front left. These sterbai seem primed to spawn, been seeing a few eggs this cold water change might jar them into dropping.

I am neck deep into four water changes and pop the top of my aging/preheat barrel and it looks like this. It's frustrating, now I don't have water to pump back and will have to do some rapid heating. Anyone else struggle with this? Pic doesn't do justice for how cloudy and yellow it was. This was 24 hours from filling. What's concerning is I didn't notice any excessive cloudiness last night.

Why would it stop if it gets food when she splashes? 😄 Many years ago I had a big oscar that at some point "learned" to jump out of the water and eat pellets out of my hand. I don't remember how it started, but I typically would not encourage it, just a trick every once in a while. I learned that when I went to college, my dad have him do it a lot and would show guests. haha I've got to stop thinking about oscars or I'm going to end up with them again. Such great fish, but what a shame that they're so freaking big.

That is HITH. Lots of clean water and metro! I wouldn't worry about him eating at this particular moment. He will let you know when he is ready. Keep us posted,I have a soft spot for oscars and lost one when my care slipped when I left for college. He quit eating for a VERY long time and when he died he still weighed 2.5 pounds. Fish can go a long time without food. Clean water is far more important right now.

Our dog Shade was fairly young here. He is 3 now. Anyway, our pups have pretty good recall and I was taking them for a ride to pick up the kids. We have a small yard and he wouldn't come and I couldn't see him. I was worried he somehow got out of the fence. Then I heard a muffled whimper from behind the shed. He had found the empty chicken feeder and wouldn't move like this.

Male is out of the attached breeder box and into a ten gallon jail cell. Female was out and ate some food. Wound on rear of the dorsal fin looks fuzzy, but maybe just ragged. I will probably drop some salt in tomorrow afternoon if it doesn't look any better. She seemed happy to see me, so hopefully nothing is permanently damaged. @anewbie I really think I blew it by removing her only escape from him he had been totally fine being rejected as long as she hid, but when I took that away I set off a spiral, I think. And that fits perfectly in with the what you're describing of driving her away. I will give her a break and will try again in some time with my other male. I think only getting one female and five males really hamstrung my ability to learn. I do well with being able to compare, which is why I got three pairs to begin with... oh well! I do still have the abacaxis and the female has been very cave oriented recently. I am nervous with soft water as my only experience is extremely hard water and I am taking my time lowering pH. And they haven't spawned yet to the best of my knowledge. I have time. 😉

I wouldn't necessarily want them in there with eggs, but I think once they're fry it's probably fine. I wouldn't rely on snails keeping the fry raising container clean, though. I was doing daily water changes and bottom cleaning, but I still lost the battle (due to overfeeding, I think). I would be tempted to see how well nerites did, though. Those things seem to clean like crazy. But not sure if just that residual would be enough for them. I will say, though, that your water probably gives you more leeway compared to my high pH. Do you have pictures of your ram fry? I'm thinking of getting some Rams hoping they're easier than Apistos that I'm failing at.

Interesting, I'll have to go look at their previous spawns because this seems to look really similar, but honestly there's so many subtle differences that it's tough to know since I don't speak the language! The part the doesn't make sense (and I cut it from the video) is she is hidden in the cave until he rounds the corner and then she comes out and does this. And then she's back in the cave until he is back for the next lap. Again, I don't know all the queues. I've certainly seen belly rolling in relation to her trying to curb aggression and it's usually not happening anywhere near a cave and doesn't look so... inviting? Usually, she's dark and she presents more vertically and will rotate to show her belly that way. I thought (or read or watched) that the rolling and going into a cave is a sign of spawning desire or openess. Fully agree that I'm a lummox and should never have removed her cave either way though! She's got other places to escape him, but maybe she forgot about them! 🤪 Here's an actual spawn from eight months ago, for what it's worth: Certainly, some differences here, particularly her fin/fin twitching vs just rolling into the cave. Learning (hopefully)! Thanks for you input, @Guppysnail! I do wonder how different each individual species might be.

I've had six sterbai for going on two years. They're spawning, so I think it's safe to say they're mature. That said, I think the biggest one is 2" or so. The trouble is, I've got no idea their history. I bought them smallish from the LFS, but who knows how old they are when you buy them and what their care was like leading up to that. I've never really heavily target fed them until recently, but mostly relied on just feeding a lot. I don't think I starved them, but probably could have done a better job feeding them when they were younger. Mine are at least fattening up now, I'm feeding them two freeze dried tubifex worm cubes daily. As well as a lot of the other stuff you feed, but not all of that either. I stick the tubifex to a small pebble and sink them and the corys go nuts for them. I have no idea if mine are the right size or not, I think sterbai are supposed to get up to 2.5"? So I'm not sure they'll be as big as your ram. But I've never kept rams. As far as why yours aren't growing like you think they should... have you wormed them? It looks a bit like maybe their bellies are a bit sunken in, but it could just be the pictures. Does that seem accurate to you when you view them in person?

I'll be curious to know how long your peltier module lasts. They are the technology that heated/cooled the old Reptipro incubators (RIP to that company, as they were great incubators and I think went out of business in large part to wildly inexpensive knock offs that suck). My original Reptipro unit worked well for years for anything from chicken eggs to queen bee cells to liquifying honey and even as a dough proofing machine. Eventually the peltier went out and tore apart the unit to figure out what the problem was, ordered another unit and that one only lasted like two uses. Hopefully yours run more on the longer life end! Very good idea, though, they're very cool little modules and I was shocked (or... burned rather) by how quickly the heat up! Forgot to add that I use quite a few of those Inkbird modules as well, they're really great units!

Looking for ideas/thoughts on my Hongsloi pair. Yesterday the male turned pretty nasty. They seem "lovey-dovey" basically always. Unless the female is (what I believe) trying hard to get him into her cave. He basically does slow loops around the tank taking pecks and stuff and seeming fairly uninterested. When he gets to her cave she'll come out and tail wag and tip/roll slowly slipping into a cave. And he almost always just completely ignores her other than he'll usually do a little display and occasionally return tail waving. This goes on basically as long as I observe. She seems to want to get him into this tiny little cave and he cannot fit. He will go in and out of the bigger cave (and she occasionally goes in there, sometimes together). And sometimes he'll seem to try to get her into that bigger cave kind of edging her that way. Awhile back I removed the smaller cave and the male seemed to get more aggressive. So I put it back. Yesterday, I pulled that cave again because of their behavior (described above). Additionally, yesterday I rehomed three extra males. They were living in a 55 a couple of feet away from the 29 that this pair shares. I never saw any behavior that would suggest that the males "saw" or acknowledged each other ever. But will put that out there as possibly an aggravating factor. So the sequence of events just to be clear. I pulled the males around 11 AM and went to a local fish swap. I didn't notice anything off in the morning with the pair, but I can't say that I spent much time looking. It's been business as usual for these two for months. We got back from the swap around 2 or 3 PM, I'd purchased a couple of larger caves and I replaced the little one with a new one then. I didn't see the female when I did this other than checking that she wasn't in the small cave when I removed it. Tank lights come on around 4 and by the time I went down to feed everything it was probably 6 PM and the male was heavily harassing the female and he had bitten off a lot of the rear of her dorsal fin. So I put her small cave back in and killed the tank lights (but the other tanks in the room provide quite a bit of ambient lighting). Eventually she settled into the small cave. This morning I removed the male and put him in a hang-on breeder box. Tonight I'm going to do some relocation and will put him in a 10 gallon by himself. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I don't know if I am misreading their behavior? The previous time when I removed the smaller cave I thought that the aggression might have been because she wasn't ready for breeding, but their behavior has seemed like "we're going to spawn" based on previous observation and what I've read. To be clear, this pair has never raised fry successfully, but have been in my care for about 10 months and in the first six months or so, spawned several times together. Some of that saga can be seen previously in the thread. Perhaps they were not sexually mature previously? Other than light chasing the male has never been anything near aggressive to her outside of me removing that cave a few weeks ago. I was really kind of shocked to see. Thinking more about this now, I wonder if I'm removing her favorite cave and turning off her desire to spawn and that's triggering the male to drive her from his territory? She's never seemed tied to a cave before, in fact she spawned in two separate locations once previously... partially in a hole in the driftwood and then finishing in a cave. The male seems to want to spawn in a cave that he can enter. I'm not sure what I'm really asking here other than... reporting, I guess. Video below is the last one I have of them. This more/less exact sequence would go on for... hours every couple of minutes. The variations of this would be him seeming to try to get her to go into the other cave or him totally snubbing her and just pecking at sand nearby to eat something and just cruising by. Am I confusing her behavior? To me it looks like she's desperately trying to get him to go in the cave with her. She'll go so far as to turn almost completely upside down like she's going in to do a pass of egg laying. Sorry about the 'dirty' glass, I only scrape it off once every few water changes. My current plan is to keep him out of the tank. She'll have the place to herself until she recovers and I can treat whatever damage might be done. I didn't want to disturb her this morning trying to see what she looked like, but she was out briefly before I removed the male, but she's all clamped up and hiding so I didn't really see her. I don't plan on putting this male back in with her. I have another male in "reserve" in a community tank. I think he'll get the next whack at breeding. Initially I thought this female was "crazy", but over the last few months this male just doesn't seem... "in" to her at all and to me it really appears to be unidirectional as (unless I am mistaken) the female seems eager to breed to me. Thoughts?

Caught this lady holding an egg. But didn't catch the "t-pose".

Any wet gravel should work. I usually pull several out and leave them sitting and use them as needed. My "gravel" is just Home Depot pebbles. Which isn't much different than any other gravel. It doesn't take much to get them to sink.