jwcarlson

My experience with every brand of adjustable heater is that it might be kind of close for a bit, but as soon as you move it, all that's out the window and you can't get it back. I have everything cranked to max and use InkBirds. It's the way to go. They can be had for $25 at the moment on EBay and occasionally they'll dip down under $20.

Happens so quick... Though I don't think she is laying yet, maybe just cleaning. He is putting his nose through the hole like my dogs do through the basement cat door. Haha I'm not sure he can even fit his big head through the hole anymore. I need to get some larger caves.

Rocking some tannins now. This little one is out of hiding, sitting through tail whips, and even returning them. In between showing off her belly from across the tank. Maybe another go for them here soon.

@mountaintoppufferkeeper Did you make that breeding ring yourself or purchase it somewhere? I'd be interested in either the plans or the source.

If I want flake to sink fast I just put it under the water with my fingers and release it.

I currently have three (and a fourth on the way) type of test for pH and so far I don't really trust any of them. Especially the strips. I wouldn't worry much about pH at this point. pH can fluctuate between what comes out of your faucet and The bigger concern is that your tank looks uncycled, I think? 0 ammonia is good. 0 nitrite is good, but 0 nitrate is usually not good unless you have a lot of plants who are just eating it all or that you're doing so much water changes that it keeps it very low, which is possible. In regards to your trip, I wouldn't set up an auto feeder as that's kind of asking to have an issue with your water while you're gone. Your fish will be fine without food for four days. If the light isn't on a timer, I would just leave it off. Your heater should be on every hour of every day unless your house is warm enough that you don't need one or you are draining enough water out that it would expose it.

I often wonder how to tell when to change out this kind of stuff. I guess there's a sludgy brown color indicator? 😄

A couple of my Hongsloi females will come up to the brine shrimp syringe thing and bite the soft, orange tip of it, which I find hilarious. They even eat from the surface if the vibrabites or bug bites haven't sunk yet. At some point I'll get a video or picture of one of them doing it. It's just hard to attempt... need another hand. 😄 They certainly eat some BBS out of the water column, but I think they eat the vast majority of it off the bottom like you say. They've got sand in their mouths a lot if nothing else. So I do try to inject it a little farther down and this comically long coral feeding dodad helps with that.

I was lucky enough to win @tolstoy21's RAOK giveway for a pair of Apistogramma Abacaxis and received them a few days ago (March 31). Set them up a 20L... which has since cleared up pretty nicely. I will say that they are hide-and-seek champions! Though they are getting a bit more outgoing. They're getting baby brine shrimp twice a day. Tough to know how much they're eating. But even the Hongsloi that are out all the time don't seem to eat much BBS. I think they actually prefer to eat it once it settles down more onto the sand where they tend to collect up in little depressions and can be eaten in bigger bites. So maybe these little things are doing the same. In any event, it seems like they successfully acclimated and are settling it. Tolstoy's thread here for a picture of an adult male: I don't know why it quit letting me type. But there's really no update on the Hongsloi, they are... keeping on keeping on... no more near spawning activity right now, which is a little strange. Not sure what to make of that. The pairs are all kind of in a holding pattern. The pair that has spawned multiple times, the female spends a lot of time hiding from the male. The pair I thought was close to spawning just seems to be friendly and no closer to spawning. And then the last pair I still continue to believe the female might very well be a sleeper male. I've been considering moving one of them to a community tank and seeing if "she" starts coloring up without a male harassing.

Looking good, @Birdsnstuff!

That is an extremely long photo period, what kind of light do you have? Typically you'd be shooting for something about half that long or less. I struggle because I'm up early every day and then by the time I am home it would typically be well past a good photo period, so I divided mine up from 5-9 AM and 4-8 PM so that the tank lights are on around the times I'm typically most active with them.

That's beautiful! How long was it set up and how do you get over the hump before the waste produced can feed the plants? I ask because I had an inert gravel substrate and for over a year never vacuumed it. Also used root tabs and still just couldn't seem to get any stem plants to grow. I suspect my issue was the height of the tank, I just tore it down and into a 40B this weekend. But I'm still curious as to your ideas in regards to your tank!

That's about how many eggs I do and it's typically not cloudy unless I don't heat them at all and it goes quite a bit longer than typical. Which reminds me that I didn't put eggs in my 2nd hatcher this morning... that's going to be a monkey wrench in about a day. 😄

Looks like it is still one layer thick mostly. That's not even an infestation yet! 🤣

They recently changed locations, so possibly still stocking back up from that? I will say that almost always the stuff I would be interested in is OOS. But the email notification works pretty good for when it's back.

Yep, it does the same ramp on/off on a timer. I have mine on a Kasa. There was one size they didn't initially have in stock, which might have been the 24"? I think Cory mentioned something on the order of a month or so for the next shipment? It was on a live stream. Source: I own a 48" ACO light and also my memory.

In my discus tank - 90% daily. In my fry boxes take about 75% of the water daily to clean up excess food on the bottoms. About every other day swap boxes for a good scrub down. In all of my other tanks I now average one change about every two weeks. Roughly 50%, typically. Everything gets aged and preheated water to refill because of a big pH shift between tap and aged water.

Within a couple degrees. I up'd the temp on the reservoir tank a few degrees to compensate.

I bought a culture from Fish Guy's Place and followed his instructions. 50/50 ACV/water. 5 or 6 apple slices. They multiply quickly in my limited experience. I have two going, going to set up another one here shortly in a quart deli cup. I suck them out with a pipette, put them in a coffee strainer, rinse, and then rinse them into wherever I am feeding. They are a bit of a pain to feed.

I think there's plenty of good suggestions above. If I were doing this personally, I would rehome everything and restart at the new place. Unless you've got strong attachments or things you're breeding or something very rare. Don't take that as a suggestion of what I think you should do, but an option. Sometimes we get lost in the fact that we can do something when it might be easier another way. Otherwise treating it like shipping a fish isn't a bad idea. This is done all the time, including the dead of winter.

I don't have experience with those apistos, my not quite full sized kerri tetras will kill and eat a full sized cherry shrimp without issue. So I would think apistos could eat them just fine. That said, tanks has tons of hiding places. They won't exterminate them, but they'll probably keep the population down. As long as it's an established colony.

Agree with Inked, hang on breeder boxes just like this.

The breeding pair did their thing pretty early today, it's like they're more comfortable so they get down to business a little faster than they did before. There's quite a few more not in the picture off to the left. I'm not sure how many... 40 or 50, I'm thinking. Female seems a bit stressed after the spawn so even if she still had more to go, I moved them back over. I'm not planning on handling this set at all other than to take the ones off the moss. Also not going to do any methylene blue. There's of course a bit of debris, which I'm not a big fan of. But I'm worried I screwed up the last batch. So will let these ride with some water flow through them for a few days. Here's a cruddy video of the fry eating:

In my experience the "classics" are called that because most people wouldn't call them "goods". 🤣

Big development today! There's at least a few fry munching on baby brine shrimp. And I was just watching them chew on them which is kind of funny to watch. Hard to see them eat vinegar eels, but their bellies are big and clear so I am guessing they have been eating those too. Still feeding fry powder, vinegar eels, and now will out in a tiny bit of BBS a couple times a day.