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jwcarlson

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Everything posted by jwcarlson

  1. jwcarlson
    @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.
  2. jwcarlson
    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:
  3. jwcarlson
    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.
  4. jwcarlson
    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.
  5. jwcarlson
    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? 😄
  6. jwcarlson
    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. 😄
  7. jwcarlson
    Done any water checks just to make sure nothing is off kilter?
  8. jwcarlson
    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.
  9. jwcarlson
    This is one month old today. Seven pads at the surface. This one is the same age. 😄
  10. jwcarlson
    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.
  11. jwcarlson
    I looked in mine lol. No eggs as expected. But this is, perhaps, a prolonged courtship. Which might be a good sign.
  12. 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.
  13. 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. 😄
  14. 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. 🤣
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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. 😄
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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
  21. 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.
  22. 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?
  23. 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.
  24. jwcarlson
    I missed the large snails part! Agreed that certain snails certainly fit the bill as increasing bioload.
  25. 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. 😄
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