jwcarlson

I am assuming the 600 is the gallons/hour rating? If so, you would be turning over the water 30 times an hour which is, frankly, pretty insane in my opinion. I think when I was keeping bigger fish like oscars we shot for 9 or 10 times an hour, unless I am mistaken. I wouldn't use a canister, personally. I would put a $10 sponge filter in there and call it good. CPDs are not your standard danio, so far as I know. Meaning they don't like higher flow. I only have them in tanks with sponges, so I cannot speak to flow exactly, but by their behavior I think they don't strike me as a fish that's interested in fighting 30x turnover. But, even with high flow fish, I think what you have is way way too much flow for a 20 gallon. Have you done a test with just the tank and filter? Does that filter have a "tank size rating" on the box? Those numbers are bunk, but is a good sanity check maybe.

@riioKen I highly suggest you rethink the filtration. That filter is probably big enough for a 125. Otherwise, I don't see anything wrong with your stocking. I dont necessarily see my CPDs as schooling fish so much as hiding fish.

It's exceedingly easy to overfed fry food. Not just the Co-Op variety, but anything of powder or almost powder consistency because it's so much more dense than what you're probably used to.

Feed them less and change water as suggested above. Doing 50% water changes in a 10 gallon tank doesn't take but a couple of minutes. That said, I have never had any major issues with this kind of thing while paying attention. Just monitor the parameters every day or every other until you're comfortable things are OK. That's the main reason I like the strips. In the past I've done twice a day 50% changes in "quarantine" and then once filter catches up down to daily, then every other, etc.

I haven't moved any ten year old fish, but moving fish in the dark seems to work well for me. Do the same thing with chickens, add a new hen to the roost in the dark and when they wake up it's like they just assume that's how it always was. There's more to it than that, but very low/no light might help a lot. Otherwise just wanted to say well done on a ten year old fish! 🙂

All purpose or play sand is OK. The big box stores also usually have bagged river pebbles or similar that makes a good natural looking substrate. The issue with paver sand type products is they typically have a concrete-like curing that happens. Now, there might be safe "paver sand" out there, but I wouldn't risk it. I looked into it awhile back because I liked the more uniform colors. But when I looked at it in the store, I knew something was up. I have the all purpose sand and river pebbles from Home Depot in tanks now. It works well.

I have several 957s. You can custom program them pretty easily. I struggle with algae, but am searching for the correct intensity to keep it under control. Every tank I've got them on has plants pearling almost daily. I don't think you'll have a "not enough light" situation. I will say that the lights turn on/off differently. A coupling of my newer ones will not disable the moonlight feature even in custom program. But suspect I can fix it with a reset to defaults and disabling moonlight before custom program. They also behave differently on startup after manual override or accidentally hitting a button. To reset it into auto some of them turn right back to where they were. Some go through the whole "sunrise" again. Not a huge problem, but they are a bit jenky that way. The 957s CANNOT be just and on/off light on a timer. So be aware if that. Don't know about the 999s.

From the manual: I do not own one of these, however, there's a controller inside there and sometimes that can get squirrelly. I would suggest "rebooting" the heater. Probably unplug it and leave it for 20-30 minutes then plug it back in.

I've had pretty good luck with assassin snails keeping my bladder snails in check. In fact, I pick bladders from other tanks and put them in the tank with assassins. They're also dwindling the mylasian trumpets too. Now, will I have an explosion of assassin snails soon? Don't know, I haven't seen any babies yet, but I'm sure they'll show up.

I have one for every one of my aquariums (seven right now). And other Inkbird controllers for my water aging/preheating setup and extras for additional setups if needed. I've used Inkbirds for years for everything from chicken egg incubation to honey liquification to queen bee incubation... They're fantastic. The official Inkbird account on Ebay sometimes sells them there significantly cheaper than on Amazon. And Amazon occasionally runs sales on them for as low as $17, though that's very infrequent. I don't think you can go wrong with them. But make sure you're getting the real thing as there's now a heat controller company who is flat-out stealing the name. The official ebay store is called inkbird, which is convenient. They're currently $27 for the 306T.

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).