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jwcarlson

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Everything posted by jwcarlson

  1. jwcarlson
    Agreed. Looks like algae to me too. The pink in this picture has been RR'd. You can see the dark stuff, which is what it looked like before RR.
  2. jwcarlson
    You can pop ammonia on certain tests if you're using dechlorinator.
  3. jwcarlson
    Triops actually got me *back* into fish keeping. I bought some eggs and a 10 gallon tank to start them in. I got a bunch to hatch, but they didn't seem to grow. In any event, I cleaned out the 10 gallon and empty tank syndrome didn't last too long. 😄 Forgot to add: regarding sand and/or gravel. If the goal is to save some money on inert substrate - Home Depot has plenty of options as long as you're willing to rinse a lot. Which isn't that big of a deal, really.
  4. jwcarlson
    This is how I would approach it. Remove all livestock into a bucket. Take your siphon and remove the "gravel vac" part so that you've just got a smaller hose vs the larger tube. This increases water velocity at the point of suction. Start a siphon and use that smaller hose to suck up the Stratum around the plants and roots. It's going to be a big mess, but there's no way of doing this without making one. You might be able to remove the vast majority of the substrate without massively disturbing the plants. Then you can put your new in and might not really have to move the at all if you're careful. I wouldn't try it in a bigger tank. But in a 10 gallon it might work. I've removed sand with this technique. If you're vacuuming into a bucket that would work. If you're using something like a Python draining into a sink - I used a bucket and siphoned into that in the sink and then the water overflowed the bucket into the sink/drain. Most of the sand settled out in the bucket that way. Stratum, I think, would be similar, you might have to tweak flow a bit to make sure it doesn't stir up in the bucket too much. I've got Stratum in service for about two years and it seems fine to me. I've never "gravel vac'd" it though.
  5. jwcarlson
    My mother-in-law gave me (not exaggerating) and entire grocery bag full of PSO some months ago. She had just trimmed it before we went to visit and I dug it out of the trash. So technically she didn't give it to me, but I dumpster dove for it. Anyway. I have succeeded in keeping about 33% of that volume still alive. But overall it's dwindling. I find that the tips I cut off root and start growing well, but it starts new shoots at the location of the cut. But they only grow a little bit and then stop. I guess my assumption is it's a fertilizer issue. As long as my MIL can keep donating grocery bags full to me, I should be good to go. She also has massive amazon swords and mine die if I don't put 8 root tabs under them every two weeks... and even then... they still die. I've got them in plant substrate and give them root tabs and they still just flat out won't grow. 😄 I, too, struggle with water sprite. I currently have one small 2-3" piece that looks pretty good floating around in one tank. 😄 I have removed pothos from tanks where I want to keep plants more reliably. They remain in the discus tank. My anubias are dying in there, so I will probably pull most of those out this week and just leave boring driftwood in there instead. Eventually they're moving to a bare bottom 125, so I'll regroup on planting strategy in that tank. Likely potting some plants. The biggest help will be that I won't be doing 90% water changes every day in that tank. So maybe the nitrates will get a little higher than 0.
  6. jwcarlson
    I haven't taken updated pictures, but the bristlenose and shrimp have done a great job cleaning up the algae and the moss actually looks like moss as opposed to algae with a moss substrate. 😄 I will RR the rest of the moss now that I've had success. Will also do the rest of the algae covered stuff (some java ferns and a couple anubias) at the same time since it went well. Hornwort is also alive and did not melt. It did take some damage, but it grows quickly enough that it's not a big deal. I actually might have treated that twice, I cannot recall for sure. The guppy grass and PSO did not like the RR, but there is no reason for me to salvage guppy grass having two ten gallons nearly full of it. And PSO I've not trimmed off most of the algae'd bits and what's left is looking OK. I still struggle with PSO. It will grow like a total and complete weed and then just stop and die. Doesn't matter how many root tabs I cram under it or how much easy green I squirt in the tank. Perhaps it doesn't like my lower levels of ferts. It is in Fluval Stratum in most cases, though. Somewhat disappointing because it's a really cool plant. Part of my issue, I think, is my refusal to take a tank that I can barely keep nitrates in even without water changes and then pump 40 PPM of easy green into it. I am making a concerted effort to dose daily to hopefully level out the ferts. But all that is well outside my RR situation. I think shortening it up to 9ish hours and not temperature shocking the plants as bad helped a lot! Thanks to @Guppysnail for those suggestions!
  7. jwcarlson
    They need to swallow a goldfish ASAP or risk having their entire urinary tract full of duckweed.
  8. jwcarlson
    It's pretty well impossible to tell (probably) without a microscope and an expert. But I see worms like that in my tanks fairly frequently. Particularly after water changes when I've kind of stirred things up refilling the tank. I think they're detritus worms. I've seen tetras eat them occasionally. I will say that I haven't seen nearly as many since I've consciously been feeding that tank less and feeding more live BBS (perhaps more complete consumption?). The main effort was to take snail population down and that also actually dropped the shrimp population down as well (probably due to less breeding, but also more predation for sure). Not uncommon to see a kerri tetra with a large shrimp in it's mouth.... 😄 so I'm sure they're also eating the lot of shrimplets. I actually just tore that tank down from a 36 or 37 (tall 29, basically) into a 40 breeder. Added a LOT bigger rockpile to hopefully give the shrimp a bit more refuge. I wouldn't be terribly worried about those worms.
  9. jwcarlson
    I can do *whatever*. The struggle with fertility makes me want to go back to the way I originally did it. So I'm thinking I give the QT a thorough cleaning and then put a small dish with some plants in it and try it that way.
  10. jwcarlson
    I did in the main tank and briefly in the spawning 10 gallon. But was too much other stuff. I will totally empty it and use some sort of shallow dish, I think. Otherwise hunting them with a pipette is actually kind of fun. My daughter had a blast. Made my eyes ache though. 😂
  11. 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! 🙂
  12. jwcarlson
    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.
  13. jwcarlson
    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.
  14. jwcarlson
    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:
  15. jwcarlson
    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.
  16. jwcarlson
    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.
  17. jwcarlson
    @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.
  18. jwcarlson
    The smaller one would be pretty big for my other tanks. The bigger one is a pretty standard adult from my apisto tanks.
  19. jwcarlson
    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. 😄
  20. jwcarlson
    @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. 😄
  21. jwcarlson
    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.
  22. jwcarlson
    Subtle fish-shaped whole in the wood there too. Beautiful design choice. 🙂
  23. jwcarlson
    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. 😄
  24. jwcarlson
    Well... this a cruddy 😞 Sorry about your fish. Do you have any pictures from earlier on in his illness?
  25. jwcarlson
    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. 😄
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