jwcarlson

Well, I do believe the hongsloi pair might have spawned today. The male is just cruising around like a dope eating BBS and the female is no where to be seen. I caught her tail poking out of her cave. Either yesterday or the day before I added another cave and rearranged the others. And turned the lights down. Not sure if any of that had anything to do with it. But she went into a cave this morning which seems to be a pretty rare thing unless she's going to spawn. She was in it for over 20 minutes while I was watching for her before I caught her tail. Guess I'll skip water change tomorrow. 🤫

I had a brand new 10 gallon tank, cleaned it out, put a discus for quaratine in it. It pooped, I pulled the sample and there were detritus worms on the poop under microscope. The tank she came from gets weekly 100% wipe downs and filter cleanings, 90% water change every night. I never see them in my tanks and I do not vac substrate or clean sponges out very often. Now, they might be dead from whatever you dosed with, but even if that is the case they will probably reestablish when the water allows. The only time I see them is if I stir up too much with water changes then there will be a bunch swimming around. I see small fish eat them when I do stir some up, so suspect that they're pretty heavily predated.

The three fry got plopped into the parent tank a few days ago. They're doing well, they started pal-ing around with the adults right away and they're not being harassed. So far so good. Female is by herself in the a separate ten gallon, will give her a week or so and see if they breed again. Thanks for the support the other night. I do not get "depressed" even if things go poorly, but I do not like... Failing. I don't mind the failed spawns, but losing the fry has really bothered me. Though, I think I have learned a bunch and the Ich-X knowledge bomb will be very helpful should I ever need it.

I'm not trying to be a clown, but you've already got detritus worms. I wouldn't "introduce" anything additional, I don't think.

My apistos have become my favorite fish to watch. They're really interesting, relatively active, and curious little things. They're not quite as 'beggy' as other cichlids I've had like oscars and discus. But they do seem to get used to you being around. Good looking fish! 🙂

I ABSOLUTELY overfed at one point and lost a good number kind of all at once. I hadn't thought that those effects would still be "shaking out". So that actually makes a lot of sense. It's really hard for me to know how much to feed with the fry powder. Appreciate the reply! My failing usually makes me more determined. It really bugs me when I "senselessly" kill a bunch of creatures and that makes me want to make amends for my mistakes, if that makes any sense.

In the main tank it's no good. Four males and one female. I don't know that she really lays in the main tank, though it doesn't seem hectic for her. But I can't watch it every hour, obviously 🙂 That might be a good point though... everything is cloudy at this point, but I do think I initially gave the female the tank to herself for a day or maybe even a couple days before I put a male in with her. But I might be confusing attempts. It wouldn't be a bad idea for me to put her in alone for a week and then see what happens when I drop a male in after some stretch. I think I'll give that a shot. Maybe she's not receptive to the male and she might be laying in spite of him, but not... spawning with him. That's certainly worth a shot, thank you!

I'm really at a loss here and cannot for the life of me figure out what's going on. I haven't had a free swimmer since my first batch and that's now been hundreds of eggs. I'm also down to three fry and another that will be dead within a couple of days probably. They're just stopping eating. I think tomorrow I will put them in with the parents and see what happens at this point. I'm tired of having dead fish, honestly. I've still been doing nightly bottom siphons and swapping containers every few days to a week. Doing 50% water changes on the main tank (with aged, preheated water) once every few days. Testing water 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, <5 nitrate. Though this is concerning, I also can barely get eggs to hatch. The last batch of about 20 that I had got maybe 2-3 to hatch into the clear tadpole looking stage and then it's like the vaporize. There's nothing in the container with them that's visible with the naked eye. Though perhaps something microscopic is killing them. But even then, the fertility rate of the eggs is near zero. I don't understand what caused the switch to flip. I spawned a pair again a few days ago, left them in the main tank for three days. Didn't mess with the egg container, but I have zero feeling that anything viable will come out of it. I only saw an egg or two, but I didn't move any of the moss around to look in it. Logically this won't make a difference. I just cannot figure out what the deal is. Part of me wants to say it's a genetic issue, but that's extremely lazy. I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong. I've got some guppy grass and a few MTS in the box with them... maybe that's a big no-no? The snails keep the bottom very clean. Perhaps they've also vectored parasites? I don't think that answers the issue with the eggs, though. Guess I'm just bummed. I went from "what am I going to do with all these?" to "well, I'll double my adult numbers" to "not a single one is going to survive"... kinda stinks. Anyone have any bright ideas?

I can't get over how much more 'social' these two have gotten in the last week. Perhaps because there's more pairing/mating behavior going on which draws the male out more. But today he was in the open, let me walk over, open the lid, squirt some BBS in, he came over and started eating, and let me pull my phone out and take pictures. Wild. Oh nice, he put more food in. Gulp Oh man, she was RIGHT there... embarrassing. Get it together. Alright... give her your good side.

Solenoid leaking by, maybe? Depending on the solenoid design, they have a max differential pressure (think of it as how much it can hold back) and the valve can actually lift and leak through. Usually this is an issue in the opposite direction of flow, but could conceivably be a concern for you, though these systems are low pressure. We have an application that has about 200 psi gas on input side and something like 10 psi on output, but when input gas is isolated, 80 psi purge gas (nitrogen) will actually lift the valve and nitrogen enters the input manifold in the reverse direction. I would guess the solenoid is leaking if it just keeps going indefinitely.

I'm going to start counting how many successful spawns you have before I get one. 😂 Darn about the mom attacking. 😞

I age my water 24 hours unless I am just topping off or something. PH shifts from 7 out of tap to 8.2-8.3. You can test this on a small scale like a quart jar. Just aerate overnight and test the pH before and after. I don't think this was what caused your problems, but it's good information to have. I also always dose Prime for the whole tank volume when I do a water change.

I put a few alder cones in the 20 gallon tank and I basically couldn't see anything in the tank. 😄

How often is the peat exhausted? And can you see anything in tanks with this many tannins? I've got peat, but haven't used it yet. Also... when you change water are you just changing in straight RO? Or are you also lowing pH of the WC water? Sorry to veer this off topic.

I might not be a great example of this, but I just use my straight tap water for everything that I'm not trying to breed. My discus are in my GH of 22, KH of 18, pH of 8.2 tap water. I've successfully kept a ton of fish in this water over the years (discus, oscars, various tetras, corys, etc). More recently I've had some apistos in the straight tap as well, but that's on the order of months not years, so I cannot comment on longevity or anything. They've spawned in it and extra males in community tanks seem to be fine in it. I personally think that hardness and pH are quite overblown for just standard community tank fish keeping. That's not to say that there are not drawbacks or potential drawbacks. I'm sure there are. The exception to this (for me) would be fish I'm trying to breed. So my apistos are in mostly straight RO with some tap mixed in a bit. I have not targeted lowering pH and am just letting the RO be lower pH than my standard water is. For me, this seems to settle somewhere in the mid-7s. 7.4-7.6 pH. I have purchased a "nice" pH meter assuming that at some point I will have to artificially lower the pH and to do that I'm going to have to add something. Be it muriatic acid or peat or something like that. I struggle so much with the liquid tests, I decided to invest in something that I *think* I can trust. Especially if I'm going to start dropping down into the 5s. I don't have ANY experience below about 7.4 or so. So I'm nervous because I haven't been there... In any event, the other exception would be wild caught fish. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a wild caught fish to get tossed into tap water and thrive (unless your tap water is close to what they're in naturally).

In the video Cory says "we get an outbreak when we feed a lot of baby brine". I think that very much fits the bill for me. 😄 I'll have to look in my other apisto tanks, they're way overfed with BBS.

She's a cute little thing! I wouldn't say that she's excited to see me, but she doesn't head for the hills. Good to see her out eating BBS. I didn't notice it when I was looking at her, but sure looks like a ton of hydra in the picture. I don't think I've ever had it before. I suppose I should do some reading about it. I don't even know if it's bad. Here's a video of them. They're not lovey-dovey yet, but they're interacting more and more it seems like. She sees him at a distance and kind of reorients and flares a bit when he's still way off. Doesn't seem very receptive yet, but she's making placating gestures that may or may not show up on the video. Slight roll to show the belly. Guess I should have scraped the glass when I did a water change a couple days ago. I didn't know they were going to start putting on shows! *shrug* Also... some plants pearling even covered in algae. Or is the algae pearling? 😄

🫠 @TheSwissAquarist Everything is fine.

Look at this handsome gentleman.

@Shadow There's the regular Kasa plugs, I think ACO sells those. Or if you search Kasa Smart Strip, you can find what I've got. I also use the plugs, though. They're really great products. Even when changing my router or adding/removing plugs... it's pretty seamless. Surprisingly so, actually. Regarding cooling it down, make sure your Inkbird is dual control (heat/cool). The aquarium ones that I have are just for heating. The little rectangle ones like I use for my barrels (mounted above the outlets in the picture) have heat/cool capability. As do some of the other Inkbirds, but they're usually the kind with a temp probe not made for water. I don't have the cooling problem, but I think a fan across the water can help cool it off evaporatively. But not sure how well that would work in a barrel vs something with more surface area. Could you partially bury the barrel?

I'm starting to get a sneaking suspicion that I've got five male Hongsloi and one female. At this point every fish is twice (or more) bigger than the known female. 😕 Since I removed the divider and let the three fish mingle in the 55, the female coloring has been entirely absent from either of the smaller fish. Additionally, the obvious male more-or-less ignores both of the other fish. Something I do not think he would do if the other two were one male and one female. After some initial tussling, they have basically left each other alone. Sometimes they kind of pal around together, but there's been basically zero courtship behavior. Kind of disappointing. And the one known female seems like an absolute basket case. 😄 It's been about seven weeks since they last spawned. But perhaps they are easing into it this time instead of going from zero to laying eggs without any flirting. The female is pretty frequently wafting air at him and he's been doing some seizure-type moves back at her. Going with a big, cool water change again tomorrow to see what happens. Anyone want some male Hongsloi? 😄

You can age your water in a quart jar and it will be a good representative sample. I have a roughly 65 gallon barrel that I have been using for about a year and then a big submersible pump to pump it from the barrel to the tanks. Actually have two barrels, the other is a 32 gallon trash can. I need to go pickup another old pickle barrel as 32 gallons isn't quite enough RO capacity for me. Get an air pump, air stone, and some sort of heater/controller and you will be good to go. This has evolved quite a bit as there's two brine shrimp hatchers and two 10 gallon tanks in this room as well now. And an RO unit. But here's my setup. Semi automated with the Kasa strip. It works really well for me. Very happy I did it.

Best views I have had of them so far! Some courtship activities and they're displaying for each other. Male's colors heaps different since I got them. Getting that deep red/purple mouth. 🙂

I have good enough eggs that I can tell they largely do not look the same. There's an "egg" inside the egg. Two spheres that are visible on viable eggs and most of mine have a tiny little white line at the bottom like that inner egg is collapsed (perhaps because not fertile). I, too, keep it at 75. I should maybe give them several days? Perhaps the fertility is a function of their comfort in the tank? Though I will say, the male seems plenty excited to have her to himself pretty much right away. One other change I haven't thought about is that I think I gave the female a day or two by herself before adding a male. She looked plump again tonight, maybe I will move her over and let them give it a shot again later this week. It doesn't really hurt anything. I would agree that our setups don't look particularly different. I might eventually get frustrated enough to do the squeeze in and let it go method, but have been pulling them to a box to monitor. It cannot be any worse than the now hundreds of eggs that have gotten me zero fry over the last weeks.

Any number of the things above. Do not willingly bring duckweed into your aquariums. I like dwarf water lettuce and pothos for nitrate removal. However, in tanks with those I tend to struggle a lot with keeping nitrates in for the rest of the plants. But in your situation, not a bad thing. I have run levamisole, metronidazole, jungle fizz tabs, probably other meds I cannot remember right now in tanks with normal aquarium plants and pothos and they haven't seem to have been an issue. I have had good luck on Etsy with plants.