jwcarlson

Sure looks like spawning to me. I'd say that it looked like spawning to all of the other vacuum cleaners that swooped in for a high-value snack as well! 🙂

Sounds like maybe a lot of changes in two weeks? Lights off for four days, adding silver dollars, full of decor, now empty of decor. On average they should be settled down, but that does seem like a lot of stuff going on in a short period of time. I'd put a bit more structure back in and then just feed them occasionally for the next couple weeks. Dim the lights a bit, maybe.

How long have you had them? Do you have cats or dogs? I've got tanks near the floor and I always wonder if our cats bother them much. The cats are pretty old and they certainly watch. When they were younger they would have been little terrors. They do occasionally swat at the tank though.

This study: Effect of controlled temperatures on gametogenesis in the gastropods Physa acuta (Physidae) and Bulinus tropicus (Planorbidae) | Request PDF (researchgate.net) Summarized here: Bladder Snail – Detailed Guide: Care, Diet, and Breeding - Shrimp and Snail Breeder (aquariumbreeder.com) With the following table:

I've wondered about their color as well. The main tank has a white background and they're obviously in a clear breeder box. So I don't know if that factors in. They never really had much color at all. The most color they had was before free swimming. These are about a month from egg lay. In person, you can see their fins. But I've still got decent eyes, so sometimes I can see a bit more than others can without being aided by magnification. There's certainly a color difference (between mine and yours in the video), but when I put the adults in this tank they get pretty pale/light colored, probably because of the very light background. As soon as I drop them back in their main tank, they color right back up. Yours does seem to have a bit more color, but it looks slightly bigger than mine as well. Mine had some mottling about 4-5 days before they started hopping up onto the sides of the box. By the time they were free swimming there were less colored and now that the ones that are eating are on BBS, about the only color they have is the orange in their belly. I'm still feeding a little Sera Micron 2-3 times a day in hopes that the two tiny ones are eating something and I'm not noticing it. I don't know the answer to why they're not growing. They swim around and look at the BBS and I have seen them mouth them a couple times. I... think... I'm seeing them eat some micron, but it's tough to tell. They're the same age as these ones pictured, but they're about 1/3 the size. I would have thought they'd be dead by now, honestly. Maybe they got 'sick' or somehow damaged when I lost a bunch of other ones a couple of weeks ago.

Another total failure. I think the breeder box is too stressful. I'll have to totally clean the 10 gallon and spawn them in there again with limited vegetation so that I can get back to the original conditions of my first one as that was the only successful spawn at all. It's pretty disheartening, honestly. The only thing I can think of at this point is the breeder box prevents them from successfully fertilizing. Perhaps the male is too cagey or something. Maybe give it another whirl towards the end of the week in the 10 gallon. Still not sure that answers why the eggs just basically... disappear. This last set did not look like they were fertilized. The first batch has five or six like this and two that just are not growing. I don't know how they're alive. Also not sure what's wrong with them, but they're just getting bigger.

@nabokovfan87 I could see that being the case regarding temp. Size would be hard to convince me that 77 in apistos is different enough from 75 in the community tank. I did see some research showing clutch size and lifespan is very different at different temps which makes sense (higher temp = shorter life, reproductive span, and smaller clutches). I'll see if I can find that again.

The smaller one would be pretty big for my other tanks. The bigger one is a pretty standard adult from my apisto tanks.

I have no idea. I get plants and they seem to do pretty good for a month or so and then it's like they realize "this guy STINKS!" and then they die. 😄

@nabokovfan87 I hope your Hygro Pinnatifida does better than mine. It was doing so well for like a month and then I blinked and it was all gone. 😄

It is hilarious, but I think my personal favorite is when one of the shrimp gets ahold of one and rides it violently to the bottom. Eats like a king for awhile, though.

Subtle fish-shaped whole in the wood there too. Beautiful design choice. 🙂

I've got a couple of them in for about a month. The leaves looked like that for awhile, but they eventually opened up more. Might just be a time thing. Different plant, but I've got two dwarf aquarium lilies also in for a month in the same tank and one of them is huge and has 8+ lilly pads at the surface. The other is about 1-1.5" tall and has barely any growth. 😄 I'm digging both of the plants. The one tiger lotus is probably 8" or so in diameter now and the apistos like it for two reasons. First, it kind of collects the baby brine shrimp in a funnel and they concentrate there. And second, the male likes to use it as a dance floor to display for his lady. 😄

Well... this a cruddy 😞 Sorry about your fish. Do you have any pictures from earlier on in his illness?

I do a split of 4 hours in the AM and 4 hours in the evening and I still get the algae. I think it's a good sign. It means things are growing. 🙂 Your setup looks good though! Once things start balancing out you can clean most of that stuff up and it usually doesn't come back. Or if you have shrimp, they love to eat most of that stuff. The tanks I have without shrimp are by far the biggest algae/gunk farms. 😄

@g0nk Do you mean it comes on at current sunrise and sunset times? If so... that's quite a long photo period as days are something like 13 hours at the moment. I think I'd cut that down quite a bit (down to like 7-8 hours). That algae stuff just happens, I think. As long as you approach it with a longer term mindset, it will probably work out. My newly setup tanks seem to have a big bloom of algae and if I just wait it out, it eventually gets better. I try to trim out the algae covered plants. Some respond well to reverse respiration to kill the algae on them. So you can kind of salvage them as long as you don't let it go too long. I dislike the look of the slimy hair-algae looking stuff, but I find some of the other algaes visually appealing. I have some marimo that came from who knows where that I actually enjoy. It looks almost like a dense moss, I made a ball out of some.

My apisto tanks are certainly overfed... mostly BBS and they wait until they mostly sink and then eat them off the bottom. So I'm sure they're missing a lot of it. Also lots of newish plants that melted and plenty of algae. My discus tank has TONS of food dumped in, but I'm also changing 90% of water daily, so it doesn't necessarily sit around quite that long? Perhaps it is just maximum snail nutrition. Maybe I should start breeding monster bladder snails and ditch trying to get a successful apisto spawn? 😄 Me after selectively breeding my "jumbo bladder snails" for a year:

I'll preface this by saying that I don't have pictures right now. But I can get some later. I've never noticed a large difference in bladder snail sizes until I started using RO water to cut my tap drastically and lower the pH. My standard tap water is 8.2 pH, GH and KH are something like ~20 degrees each. All of my fish have lived in this water as well as the snails I have. When I started setting up apisto tanks, the snails went from maxing out in size at MAYBE 1/4" and being pretty markedly 'bigger' at that size compared to the others in the tank. Like "oh, that's a pretty big one!" Now, in my apisto tanks it's not uncommon AT ALL to see a bladder snail at 3/8" and I'd bet there are a couple even bigger than that. They are HUGE compared to the "big ones" in my standard tap water tanks. Apisto water is around 7.4 pH, KH of ~2, GH ~4. 77 degrees, but community tanks and CPDs are 75. Discus is 85. Has anyone noticed this difference? I initially thought maybe it was predation of larger snails, not nothing really kills them in my discus tank or in the community tank with a bunch of tetras and corys. This size difference also occurs in my QT and CPD tanks where it's straight normal tap water and in the QT tank, no fish at all most of the time. I also use it to hold plants and when I QT fish I usually take all the plants out and put them in a bucket (including any snails in the tank). Then when QT is done they end up back in there. They also appear to grow faster and die sooner? Or at least I notice death more in the apisto tanks. (seeing the empty shells). Are their shells maybe thinner from less calcium and so they grow bigger/faster? I'll try to get a side-by-side with a "big" one from QT or CPD tank and a big one from the Apisto tank.

I haven't found that the coarse foam intake covers keep snails from getting in. At least bladder snails. Even most full grown ones can navigate them as you can more-or-less see through them. Though it might keep some out. The mesh bag might be a better bet.

First day with the male from this "pair" separated.... thinking this isn't a she after all. Normally quite dark, but this morning even displaying a little bit for the female on the other side of the divider. haha Yesterday I noticed what looked like some minor damage to the forehead area on this fish. So I dropped the male down into a community tank to see what happens. So now what to do with two extra hongsloi males? 😄

I've never been able to get one of them to sink to matter what I do, but I've never had the ACO ones. I've got a small trash bag sized ziplock full of some in my freezer to work through. 😄

Done any water checks just to make sure nothing is off kilter?

It's possible. I don't have the ACO tubifex, but I do have tubifex (freeze dried as well) and it's exceedingly easy to overfeed. Especially if your inhabitants are mostly bottom feeders because in my experience it all wants to float and it wants to float BADLY... like it can't wait to jump off the glass. I feed about 1/4 of a cube to a tank and that usually feels like too much because there's a lot of mess with it. I was having good luck taking a piece of gravel out and pressing it around the little rock and then dropping it in that way so the corys could get some. How much and how often are you feeding it? What tank is it in? Size and stocking, I mean.

This is one month old today. Seven pads at the surface. This one is the same age. 😄

Ok, did for the second time in two weeks an anubias, a java fern cluster, and a chunk of highly algae'd java moss. Also hornwort and some PSO trimmings. And guppy grass. Let it soak about 9-10 hours. Warmed it up more slowly than I have previously. Can you tell which algae had taken a second treatment in 7 days? And the moss is next to some that was treated last week but not this week. Now shrimp need to do their thing. Guppy grass looks a little rough. Hornwort looks OK so far, but it usually takes a day or two to melt.