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jwcarlson

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Everything posted by jwcarlson

  1. jwcarlson
    I looked in mine lol. No eggs as expected. But this is, perhaps, a prolonged courtship. Which might be a good sign.
  2. jwcarlson
    This one pair of mine was doing so good, progress with each batch for 4 or 5 spawns and now the wheels seem to have completely come off. She's acting like she's trying to get him to spawn again today. I am going to pull the cave and look.
  3. jwcarlson
    They're so fun to watch aren't they? 😄 I'd say those look close to spawning. At least in my limited experience. Once the female starts tail whapping him back it's usually about to go do. 😄
  4. jwcarlson
    I have no idea what's going on. I thought they spawned, but maybe they did not. She was out and about and flirting a bit last night and this AM. But maybe she's just not chasing him as much? She's still hanging around the cave, but not... in it... much? She makes me want to pull the cave every 12 hours to see what's actually going on. I might try a half-pot with the back snuggled up to the glass so that I can at least see in there (if she would actually spawn in it). I haven't seen any eggs at the footstep of the cave, but that really doesn't mean anything. I'm not mad, I'm just confused, Tiny Female Apisto. 🤣
  5. jwcarlson
    It's important to note that decreasing aeration would basically just slow the pH shift down, not eliminate it. Meaning... you can't keep your tap water at pH of 7 simply by not aerating it. It's being aerated by gas exchange at the surface, so unless you bottle it... it will eventually shift. That's why measuring at the tap and after half a day or so is important. It's almost important to note that you can't "over aerate" your water. At least in this sense. Meaning that your pH won't just keep going up if you aerate it longer. The goal is to get it to the steady state that it would eventually arrive at in your aquarium. If you pH shifts only a little, say from 7 to 7.4 or something, it's not a big deal most likely. I personally age/aerate everything I put into my tanks and my fish have benefited from it IMO. Doubly so if you do any sort of large water changes, which is basically the only type I do. Every thing is 50% or larger for me.
  6. jwcarlson
    To get a baseline for what you're working with. Fill a small jar (like a quart) with your tap water. Test the pH immediately (sounds like you've already done this and it's 7). Then drop in an airline or airstone and aerate the water for... overnight or so. Test the pH again after the aeration. It sounds like you basically have this number as well at 8, but it would be good to get the pH shift quantified outside of the aquarium just to eliminate some variables. I would immediately discontinue the use of the pH up/down stuff. It's a waste of time and money unless you've got much softer water. With high KH the amount of "pH down" products you will have to add in order to lower your pH is astronomical. Because your water has a high buffering capacity, which is why you see the pH immediately bounce back up. This is also tough on your fish. I haven't kept otos, but have kept everything else on your list in my tap water which comes out at 7 and aerates to 8.2-8.3 with massive KH and GH. This shift (to my knowledge) is because of CO2 that's dissolved or captured in the water that off gases overtime and with agitation. This is a function of temperature (warmer water off gases more quickly) and quantity - a jar will age more quickly than a 55 gallon barrel. I've got a big, used ~65ish gallon barrel that used to have pickles in it that I use to hold my water 24 hours so that I can pre-heat it and aerate it. Works well for me. Then I have a submersible pump to pump it wherever I need it. I believe all of those fish on your list can be kept in your tap water without any real issues (in my opinion and experience). Overall, I think people WAY overblow pH when it comes to just standard fish keeping. Breeding fish or keeping wild caught fish are a whole different situation and likely would require water modifications. Cross that bridge when you get to it. If you absolutely insist on messing with your water, you should get a small RO unit (my RO Buddie works pretty well, I have the 100 GPD unit, it cost something like $100). Set up a small storage barrel (I currently use a 32 gallon garbage can from Home Depot) and use that to catch your RO and then mix it with a bit of tap water to try to hit the parameters you want.
  7. jwcarlson
    I've heard that they're smaller, I'm almost surprised that's possible because the freshly hatched ones seem really tiny. At least some of them do. Tough to sort though. 😄 I'll have to pick some up for my next batch of fry. Two failure hatches is making me feel like a big ol' failure. But I think I've got a good shot here on this one. I think my goal here is that they can passively breed. I'm not sure there would be a big market for them locally, but I suppose there could be. This all started because I wanted to make sure the female didn't die from not laying, really. Though I have found raising them 'manually' to be interesting and not a huge amount of work. I think I've decided I was feeding fry powder WAY WAY too heavily and also that I was mixing it too well before pouring it into their breeder box. I think initially that's a good plan, but I think some of them were simply not interested in the powder when it was so well mixed. I have started just twisting a toothpick with a little on the tip and it leaves bigger chunks and those fish are MUCH more interested in it that way. They look like they'll be big enough to eat BBS soon. BBS feeds SO much cleaner. I've also added 4 MTS to their enclosure to eat the gunk that piles up on the bottom and that seems to have also been a pretty good idea. They eat all the extra stuff. And I don't think they'd bother anything as long as I wait until the fry are free swimming. I could see them eating eggs or the nearly motionless fry. Thanks for the SF BBS suggestion, Guppysnail! I've been a fount of good ideas for me the last couple days. 😄
  8. jwcarlson
    The remaining 8ish CPDs are doing well. A couple lagging behind, but they are eating well now. The ones eating BBS are nearly twice as big as the lagging ones. Hopefully they'll start taking BBS soon. Spawned a pair again today, focusing on cleanliness, limited handling of the eggs, and got them in methylene blue right away. I was discouraged when I saw the female was slim, but only saw a couple of eggs. Then I flipped over the algae and found a jackpot.
  9. jwcarlson
    As long as it has some oxygen it should be fine for quite awhile. There used to be a relatively active market for seeded sponge filters in which you would pay to have a sponge filter shipped to you. I'm not sure if people still do that or not. I *believe* LRB Aquatics used to sell a mulm bag or something like that, which I think was just squeezed sponge rinse water. I would expect if you squeezed it into a quart jar and took it to work that it would be OK. Might not be a bad idea for him to open it and give it a little swirl occasionally during the day. This of course assumes it's kept at a reasonable temperature and not left out on the factory floor in some booth where it's 105 degrees all day. BB is a bit more robust than we give it credit for, I think. All that said... I'm not sure what you would be providing to him would be of any benefit to his particular application. But I'm no expert. I don't think nitrifying bacteria from your aquarium is going to do much good for your friend's bearded dragon enclosure unless it's going to have a... water feature...? I think bioactive setups usually have springtails and other larger critters like isopods. That said... I don't think it would hurt anything.
  10. jwcarlson
    Interesting that cold to warm can cause melting like that. To be honest, we keep the house pretty cool in the winter. It's probably about 60 in the basement. Only 64ish in the house proper. It might be a whole lot lining up to shock them. So I think I'll take a more measured approach when re-introducing next time. I'd only moderately considered temperature to be any sort of possible issue. I suppose it makes perfect sense, just something I hadn't really been considering. Thanks for brainstorming with me! 😄 Now I've got to pick some plants to RR this weekend! I bet they're already quaking in their boots. haha
  11. jwcarlson
    One more note... these are typically going into warmer water and that very much might be part of the problem as well. Apisto tanks are 77 and discus tank is 85, but to be clear anything I've put in my discus tank at 85 has been something I got from another discus keeper who also keeps their fish at similar temps (perhaps a couple degrees cooler, though). I've got some hygro that won't grow in my hard water that I want to transfer over to one of the apisto tanks and see if it takes off in softer water. So if I can get it to take off, maybe I'll experiment with that a bit.
  12. jwcarlson
    @Guppysnail I'd be willing to say that the plants might not have been in perfect condition. However, some of the ones it has flattened were in fabulous shape. Now... some were a shipped plant. However, I included some of my tank-grown plants in these same treatments and it leveled those as well. I want to be clear that I'm not complaining or anything. I typically do not do anything like this if I am not willing to lose it. Your results make me wonder if I'm actually living in another dimension. Those are all 12 hour soaks? Here's a couple of results/aftermath for me. I don't have a before for this guppy grass, and honestly I could burn a glob of guppy grass this big almost daily and it wouldn't bother me. This was trimmings that had a decent amount of algae, from this same tank, actually, just the other side of it. I decided to see if I could clean it up a bit because I was already RRing something else. I don't have a before pic, but you can see some GG in the foreground that wasn't quite as bad as the GG that melted. This was poor timing as these fish just spawned now, so I haven't even had a chance to slurp out the 'soup' 😄 She's in the cave right next to the mess. The GG was probably 8" tall when I planted it. These plants were a mix of shipped plants and home grown plants. This is immediately after RR: About 24-36 hours later: Even the stems and "woody" parts of the plants melt for me. Again, I do mean this to be "mean" or confrontational. I hope I am not coming off that way. Sometimes it's difficult to convey that on the internet. 😄 Plus, I can't be TOO mad about it, because I continue to do it! haha I do think I will do my next batch split in half - half RR and half some sort of peroxide 'dip'. The other moderately confusing part is that I almost never get the algae to look dead (by nature of changing color). I have noticed that these same algaes will turn pink/red if I let them dry out for a bit outside of the tank (on driftwood or a part of a filter for instance). But the stuff I RR seems to stay green. But perhaps they aren't the exact same types of algae?
  13. jwcarlson
    I've had good luck on all the anubias I've done RR on. And now on some java ferns and some java moss seems to have made it through. RR brutally murdered PSO, guppy grass, giant hygro, vesuvius, hornwort and probably some others that I'm forgetting. I'm talking 100% kill within ~2 days (usually less) of removing it from the seltzer. The algae on said plants just seemed to laugh it off. I don't doubt the success people have had on here, but it really feels like I've got to be doing something wrong, but I can't pick it out. Edit to add: one thing that I've thought about is the fact that my water is so incredibly hard and the pH is 8.3. But some of these plants are from my apisto tanks and it's much softer 1-2 dKH and 4 dGH and had the same issue. Another thought is that I've been mainly doing this on trimmings as something to kill the algae off. Is it possible that being trimmed and basically immediately RR'd is too stressful? But I have also done it with established plants (hygro, vesuvius, hornwort, guppy grass) with the same dying off effect. Overall, I don't know what to make of it.
  14. jwcarlson
    I missed the large snails part! Agreed that certain snails certainly fit the bill as increasing bioload.
  15. jwcarlson
    The inch-per-gallon rule isn't a good means at arriving at stocking choices. Or at least it's not highly fallible. It might be kind of accurate for nano or nano-ish fish. But using the same logic you could put a full grown oscar in a 10 gallon aquarium and he'd have to touch his tail and face to the glass in order to turn around. But would have met the inch-per-gallon "rule". Unless you get all male platys, you're going to end up with dozens of them in short order. Live bearers are typically EXTREMELY prolific. You really need to have gameplan for the offspring or prevent it all together. Perhaps you have experience with this already because you also said you have guppies. I do not personally "count" snails or shrimp as their populations are typically fluid to meet the food available. For example. I have a 10 gallon with basically six celestial pearl danios (one is actually a furcatta rainbow, but you get the idea). That same tank has a handful of snails (MTS and bladder)... and probably 100 shrimp. It's a jungle of plants as well, so that's another factor to consider. I don't have any experience with the black neons, but I think I would (personally) forgo the platys and maybe get a few more black neons. Or just make it a shrimp tank. 😄
  16. jwcarlson
    Ok, who's voting for the hermit crabs on a fish site? 😄
  17. jwcarlson
    I'm going to assume she's eating because she's pooping. If her belly is, in fact, flat (doesn't necessarily look like it in the picture)... it might be a worm issue. Her poop looks white which can be indicative of worms, but I also wouldn't necessarily say that it looks like typical worm infestation poop... What do you feed them? Do you happen to have a microscope or know someone who does? Even one made for kids is probably acceptable. Personally, I'd probably worm the whole tank either way. Especially if it's never been done.
  18. jwcarlson
    I've used about 2.5ppm of pure levamisole and I wish it would have killed all my bladder snails. I think it just made them stronger. Have also used it with assassins and MTS and seem to be unaffected. I will say an experimental high dose of metro (on a single discus) killed my assassins when I put them in the water forgetting that I hadn't done the tear down and clean.
  19. jwcarlson
    These new-to-me apistos are the most hidey fish I have right now, I think. I've also got a bristlenose in my discus tank that is extremely good at hiding and even at the fully drained stage of a 90% water change after I added her, I could not find her. I kept checking under the driftwood and behind the filter thinking she might have sucked onto the glass and stayed there above the water. Finally on the 10th time I lifted up the driftwood she parachuted off and into the last inch of water. 😄 That's just where she hangs out, so now I know where to find her so she's less elusive. 😄
  20. jwcarlson
    I age/aerate my water because my tap water is 7.0 pH (lots of dissolved CO2, I think) and when aged it jumps up to a pH of 8.2. Which is a pretty big swing in pH and can stress fish. If your tap water doesn't do anything like that and you can match temperature of the tank fairly closely... there's really no point in doing it. I still use Prime dosed at the volume of the whole tank when I do WC. It also becomes more important when you're doing big water changes. So the main driver for me is when I do 90% WC every night on my discus. I don't both aging or preheating water for topping off.
  21. jwcarlson
    I don't worry much about it personally. Usually I try to do it just with room lights. But some "higher value" fish that I'm introducing I really want to see how they're reacting and it can basically be impossible with the lights off depending on the setup.
  22. jwcarlson
    This morning she was hanging out in the cave a lot and Captain Dopey was more-or-less ignoring her affections. She's trying to herd him over to the cave and he just keeps milling around with mouthfuls of sand. She was getting pretty frantic with him, but I had to get to work so I couldn't enjoy all the festivities. They were exchanging tail whips in the middle of the tank then she would circle around trying to point him in the direction of the cave and he would just swim off in the other direction. I don't know if these two will ever get it together. I've read/watched a lot about apisto courting and observed a lot of it. It's just remarkable how uninterested she seems until seemingly like the moment she's going to start dropping eggs and then it's like she panics, she seemed almost distressed this AM that she couldn't get him back to the hut. Breathing heavy and everything. 😄 Hopefully it's all just a warm-up to her actually laying.
  23. jwcarlson
    Well, I had kind of a big die off. Perhaps over feeding? I don't measure any ammonia or nitrite or nitrate, but maybe too much 'goop' even with daily vacuuming/cleaning. So I'm down to about 8 fry. And two of those don't seem to be eating or not eating much. So I'm a little perplexed. The ones that are eating look great and are growing well. And the last set of eggs they're hatching and disappearing like the last batch. I really do not understand that. Not sure what would eat them. It's almost like they're dissolving... I don't even see bodies, but I do see egg husks. Got some thinking to do. The female is probably ready to go again if I wanted her to. I think I'm going to focus on getting the biggest male which I had netted the first time. The tank is such a jungle it's tough to do though. I couldn't even find him last time. 😄 Anyway... here's to learnin'! 🥂
  24. jwcarlson
    I know people frown on this sometimes, but in limited sample size for me... assassin snails have done pretty well on the bladder/pond/pest snails. They don't seem to do as well on MTS, though they haven't been exposed to them for long. Bladder snails have been a massive problem in my discus tank, but I am slowly bringing them under control my physical crushing and in depth cleaning (which is moderately easy with a bare bottom). Right now I feel like I am correcting the population in the right direction. But I might need the continual downward pressure of a few assassin snails to do that. I'm just too nervous to add them into my discus tank because I think the ones I bought were wild caught. Eventually I might get brave enough. I put 10 assassin snails and a bunch of bladder snails in a small container of tank water for a few days and I was amazed at how many of the snails they ate. Every bladder snail I put in was eaten. The MTS not nearly as much, but perhaps when they're more hungry they would. Right now they have basically eliminated the bladder snails in the tank they're in. All that said, they ate my rabbit snails. However, they seemed to have already been sick/dying for some unknown reason. Nothing else in the tank had an issue, but they just kept acting more and more strange. Possibly too much Easy Carbon? They haven't bothered the two nerites.
  25. jwcarlson
    That's what I use. It might be a bit of a pain to do if there's not much clearance behind the tank, though. In that case it may be easier to use something more rigid that you can cut to size and tape or otherwise fasten on. My issue with most of that is I inevitably get water on it and it ends up looking trashy. 😄 I love the velimax stuff. I've also used some semi-opaque blue on my discus tank.
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