jwcarlson

I think people are saying it to be funny. But yeah, it's terrible advice.

I have no clue what their eggs would look like. But that looks like eggs to me. Would have to look up how long to hatch but 2 or 3 days seems pretty typical.

I got this one on March 8th. As seen through the algae farm window.

I put female and one male in a breeder box, they seemed really stressed and had not laid yesterday. Tonight after work she was skinnier, still scared. But I saw a few eggs so I pulled parents back to their tank. Harvested the few eggs... I count something like 80. 🙃

High levels of nitrates are bad, but they're far less of an issue than ammonia and nitrites are. Nitrates safe under 40 PPM almost universally so far as I know. I tend to have mine under 20 and basically zero in some tanks (like my discus tank). But plants suffer because of that. So I shoot for 25-40 or so in my heavily planted tanks. And I use fertilizer to keep them that high. Flourish should be safe. I use Easy Green. Stopping until you get things stabilized is a good idea.

There are SO many factors that it's hard to really offer advice for particular situations. And a lot of it can be pretty private. I do a ton (I would say all) of the day-to-day household activities as well as working full-time. So the dishes, laundry, 90% of the cooking, all pet care, etc. In my mind, that makes it nearly impossible for my wife to complain about anything I want to do. Her only request is that we don't overwhelm the main floor with fish tanks and we have an basically unused basement. So it all works out. But if you're slacking on chores so you can play with more fish, I could see that being a point of contention. Additionally, from a financial standpoint... our family... doesn't have any concerns for this level of spending because I'm not doing anything fancy. We're still saving for retirement, have no issues with bills, have no debt other than a bit on the house, saving for kids' college, etc. If you are struggling to make ends meet and you want to spend $300+ to set up another fish tank, I would also see that as an unreasonable request. Don't misread me and think that I'm accusing the OP of being lazy or anything like that, just coming at things from the other side. My wife (who also works full-time) enjoys painting and drawing as her hobby... and she spends a ridiculous amount of time and money on it... and it is 100% for her enjoyment. And it's money well spent, IMO. She understands that hobbies are basically why I function. I not hate my job (engineer) at all, it offers our family tons of freedom financially... but I am not passionate about it at all. If I didn't have something enjoyable to do when I got home from work, I would not be in a good place mentally. That said... she really likes to just come home from her work and kind of flop. I cannot do that, I'm like a freaking tempest basically from the minute I get home. I'm doing a quick once through of the fish room, feeding fry... seeing if anything spawned. Then outside to collect eggs from the chickens, take the dogs out, make sure the chickens have food/water. Then I'm off with the dogs and the kids on a walk for me/dogs and a bike ride for the kids. Then when I get home from that I start my nightly discus water change, feed the dogs, do laundry and dishes while discus water change is going (semi-automated). Right now I'm also doing a fry water change somewhere mixed in there and getting the brine shrimp hatcheries drained, harvested, refilled, etc. Then after that it's bedtime for the kids which isn't a big deal anymore because they're getting older. After everyone is in bed (my wife goes to bed early) I read/play with dogs/video games... It can be a bit of a grind, but I'm efficient and I 100% do not allow my "pleasures" to get in the way of my must-dos... and I don't sit like a bump on a log staring at my phone for three hours a night. Anyway, enough with the oversharing... If you check all the box and your partner is simply trying to keep you from doing something that you enjoy without good reason, then I would consider that an unreasonable request and would make sure to draw some boundaries and expectations. If you were coming in here saying you wanted to build a 1000 gallon plywood indoor pond and you don't know why your partner didn't like the idea would be another story. Or... if you've tried to limit partner's hobby or hobbies in the past, then it might take some introspection and give/take. Best of luck to you, I don't think anything you're wanting to do sounds unreasonable other than I would not get fish that are going to readily multiply in numbers. That's a recipe for disaster without a plan IMO.

Sand would be a better cap than gravel. Unfortunately it's kind of a mess at this point. I would wait until it settles and then cap it carefully. When it settles drain most of the water out and then cap it. Fill it carefully. Personally, I think you should cap with about 2" of sand. I have just plain fluval stratum in one tank and it's not... too bad. But if I start moving stuff around it can get messy.

I've seen that little white ring on a number of my shrimp and haven't noticed it necessarily meaning certain death. I don't think it's too big of a concern, at least in my experience. I've found that the coarse AC sponges are basically shrimplet hotels. I thought I had no shrimplets at one point, moved a sponge filter and like 40 of them were blasting around the tank. Additionally, that means you should be careful when cleaning those sponges in a tank with shrimp. Forgot to mention that. I've got young kids who think it's fun to net stuff out of a bucket, so usually rinse the sponge in there and then they get to catch all the baby shrimp once everything settles down a bit. Though I'll confess to not rinsing sponges out too often in most tanks.

20 PPM is absolutely fine! Good if you have plants and you might even want it a little higher with plants. 0.25 ammonia isn't a huge deal, you can also get "false" ammonia if you're using Prime. I don't know all the specifics there. I personally wouldn't worry about pH other than is it stable... I think that's something that's FAR too examined for the average fishkeeper. Unless you're breeding or something, pH isn't particularly important outside of very specific instances (like very low pH which won't allow your aquarium to cycle because the bacteria cannot grow at that pH).

I don't have a nitrates in tap water issue, however, if I were to have one... I would set up an aging setup with good lighting and emergent plants (pothos, bamboo, etc) and floaters like water lettuce. I'm already aging and pre-heating water anyway. So it wouldn't be a huge deal. My experience is that it's tough to keep nitrates in my tankswith those plants in the tanks. I would probably also put some sort of a grid suspended midway so that when the water drains down, it catches most of the plants and keeps them away from the pump.

I got two of these from the Co-Op a couple (few?) weeks ago. One sprouted immediately and has several leaves and I suppose will start shooting them to the top soon. The other was very slow and just has little buds. I thought it was a dud and have picked it up a couple times to make sure it wasn't upside down. I'm curious to see if it goes as fast as the other did once it started or if it's going to be slower 'forever'. The faster one sent out like a runner and plopped down into the sand an inch or so away from the bulb. Pretty plant 🙂

King is quite rarely faithfully adapted and probably gives over far too much freedom, see also Game of Thrones... As a Dark Tower fan I feel qualified to speak for all of us when I say that we just pretend that movie doesn't exist. Or at the very least, it only was released on a different path of the beam.

I won't say that I've never wished King would "get to the point", but I'm a fairly character driven reader vs plot driven, so his style just works for me. I think that's where King really shines. I'm not always in the mood for slice of life kind of stuff, be he's the king in the regard (pun intended) in my book. Please don't take this as me like arguing that he is better than he is or that you should like him or anything. I know sometimes it's difficult for me to convey that properly. 🙂 I think it is great that we all get to mostly do what we want to do and oh how boring it would be if everything was exactly the way we currently like it best! Sorry for dragging the thread down Tower Road. 😄

Eyes is a great book, I read it awhile back based on recommendations here. Interestingly, I have read the vast majority of his books. But I had not read that one. Nor 'Salems Lot until recently. More broadly about The Dark Tower... Stephen King is not known for his endings. In many cases his stories just kind of... wind up. When I read it, I actually thought it was fitting for Roland and was certainly foreshadowed. I think one thing that really affected King and The Dark Tower was when he got hit by a car and had a close call with death. I think he panicked a bit that something would happen and he wouldn't be able to finish his 'magnum opus'... and increasing noise about getting it done from the fans. Feels like he rushed it a bit, but I still think it's such a great series... but like everything... it's got warts! I'm excited to see Mike Flanaghan's adaptation.

@Hobbit It's funny how much the timing and your age can change your perception. I read a good portion of LOTR after the first movie came out as I recall. I left the book open on the floor and our cat puked all over the thing (it was a compendium). I own multiple copies of the books. At that time (2001) I was already up to date on Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and had read a ton of his books because my parents owned a lot of them. I've always read a lot, but I cannot necessarily remember what other fantasy I might have read at that time. I know I read everything I could get my mitts on from Roald Dahl. But, at the time my mom thought Harry Potter was satanic... though she is now a huge HP fan and has read the series like 4-5 times. I read HP as an adult and within the last 5ish years (I'm 38) and enjoyed it. *Please don't put much thought into the fact that we owned a bunch of Stephen King books and that I was allowed to read them, but that my mom thought Harry Potter was inappropriate. I don't think my dad ever believed anything like that, but I still find it... amusing.* I do tend to lean towards "grim dark" series within the genre... like A Song of Ice and Fire, Gentlemen Bastards, The First Law. But I do appreciate changes of pace and more light-hearted stuff. I've also read The Silmarillion and the Hobbit, of course. I'm not positive that I didn't read The Silmarillion before LoTR, honestly. I also enjoy what amounts to 'ancient' fantasy, particularly creation myths (like Enuma Elish), though mainly to see how they were plagiarized by biblical authors. 😄 In a lot of ways it feels like Tolkien created his entire world so that he could make language/languages for it. Which is quite admirable. Part of me wishes I liked the series more because it has absolutely laid the groundwork for modern fantasy as we know it. I wish a recording existed of Tolkein himself reading the book. There's at least some snippets available and his reading of the Ride of the Rohirrim my get me tear'd up a bit depending on how the day has gone. That might be better or different or more complete recordings of this... if they exist I'd love to hear them! @Theplatymaster I think they're talking about something from one of the (animated) movies. 😉

In Guppysnail's signature. Or here:

I appreciate the comment, LFL! Your YouTube channel is an inspiration and my absolute favorite, your care and dedication shines though! I'm excited to get them to the BBS size... perhaps moreso because I'll really be able to tell who is eating plenty. But the last day or so has made it much easier to see. About 15-30 minutes after feeding I check in on them and the ones that I'm able to observe have little paunches. I'm feeding a mix of Sera Micron and New Life Spectrum Grow Powder. I had both so I figured a mix wouldn't hurt. I think I'm going to move a pair into another breeder box and let them spawn again. I should have done it tonight as she's quite full of eggs again... but kind of ran out of time. So maybe in the morning before work I'll swing two of them into a bigger one and see how that goes. Hoping to eliminate the "spend an hour sucking eggs off of plants and algae". Though that was pretty fun as well. I'm starting to have frightening ideas of filling my empty 125 with hand raised CPDs. 🤣

Full bellies! They're eating a lot more this last day or so. And can see their intestines full and poop too. So small lol

When you're doing the API nitrate test it's extremely important to follow the instructions perfectly. And to be clear... it's an absolute pain in the rear-end to do the test. It takes FOREVER. So... make sure you review the instructions and are confident you're doing it correctly. The other wildcard can be the age of the kit or perhaps how long it's been "open". I very rarely use my API kit, mainly because of how big of pain all of the tests are. So mine is about a year old and has been open/used a handful of times about a year ago and then only once very few months or so since. 0 nitrates is... possible... with all of your water changes. But it's not really possible to have gone from 5 PPM nitrite to 0 nitrate without a lot of water changing between... if that make sense. Best of luck!

Do you like to passively care for fry (I would consider guppies in this category - basically they take care of themselves as long as they can hide and have food) or take a more active role with harvesting and "incubating" eggs and raising the tiny fry? I've found caring for these CPD fry to be pretty neat to see. I haven't been at it for long at all, but they've been pretty easy to do with some work on my end. Now I'm thinking I might try to condition some tetras and breed them. I like a surmountable challenge with some intervention... basically me tinkering with stuff so I feel more involved. 😄 On the flip side, what got me interested in trying apistos was reading/watching about their parental care which I also find fascinating.

@Jeffrey Co what are you using to test your water? I'd question your 6.5 pH if your water is hard. My water looks like 6.5 pH on the Co-Op strips... but it isn't. That said, I don't think that matters much at the moment. I'd keep up with the water changes, you can fish-in cycle doing what you are doing with Stability, Prime, and water changes. If I'm reading the initial post correctly... you've had this tank set up for a year, but you're just now starting to do maintenance on it? Is that correct? If so, you could be stirring up a lot of detritus causing spikes in water parameters. What's your substrate? Additionally, if you have misdiagnosed what's infected your fish and it is not actually Ich, you can be causing additional issues with the high temperature. Mainly, there are some bacterial infections that look almost identical to ich, but are actually something else. Epistylis, in particular. Do you have any pictures of the tank or the fish or both? Sometimes that can help a lot. If you're doing large, frequent water changes it can be helpful to check if you need to age your water. Basically, take a jar and fill it up with what you would normally put in your tank. Take a pH reading. Then "age" that water with an air stone or even just an airline down at the bottom overnight or all day... or 24 hours. Whatever works for your schedule. Take the pH reading again. As an example, mine goes from 7 pH out of the tap to 8.2-8.3 pH after aging it. This is (apparently) because of trapped carbon dioxide (or perhaps carbonic acid that the utlity adds?). In any event, the mechanism is unimportant. I don't worry about aging water if I'm topping off. But for big changes, you want that stable. Otherwise, you might be swinging pH pretty significantly at every water change which can be extremely stressful... especially in addition to whatever they're already dealing with. I'd also probably lay off all of the meds, or at least most of them. If you've got something that looks like ich, but isn't responding to 85 degrees AND Ich-X, then you probably do not have ich and was feeding Kanaplex in food to treat the epistylus. Here's a thread of my struggle with epistylus awhile back: Within that thread I also stumbled upon having a pH shift issue with my tap water, though I didn't know it exactly at the time. I was noticing worse issues after water changes and so I started preheating and aerating water so that I could not use a mix of cold and hot water as the hot water goes through my "softener". Once I started aging a 5 gallon bucket, I was doing two 50% water changes a day for awhile and everything squared away once I figured out it wasn't ich.

This one in question peaked out a bit last night and again this AM when I fed them. She doesn't appear to have anything, but must be tired of the male. Though he hasn't done much to her when she does come out... but I'm not watching them 24 hours a day.

I have two egg laying machines... opps, I mean zebra nerite snails. They seem pretty active, I don't know that they eat much algae, but I don't know that they DON'T eat much either. I wish they could reproduce in freshwater.

Is there a male with her? Edit to elaborate... if there's not a male with her, I'd drop one in right after lights out tonight and see what happens over the next couple days. I do not have experience breeding tetras or much of anything, really. But I know that separation and reuniting is a common way of triggering a spawn for egg layers and have used it successfully to get my CPD female to drop eggs.

So I've got three pairs. One pair has spawned about five times. One other pair the female is starting to get more yellow and they seem like they're going to spawn at some point. Third pair the female is occasionally yellower colored/lighter, but is not very yellow that I have ever seen. She remains mostly dark. To be clear, I'm not... "worried" about any of this, it's not like I have a homework assignment to bring in an apistogramma fry by the end of the month or something. They've all been with me for about 2.5 months. I'd say that they've grown a little bit, but I don't think they've grown much. The female that's been spawning is significantly smaller than the other two females. Short of just getting rid of them, I have no plans to do anything other than keep feeding them and taking care of them. And seeing how it pans out. I could see going to a trio (1M, 2F) at some point. I can always move a male in to some other aquarium to see what is going on. In any event, I think you're probably right and they're just not completely mature enough. When the one pair spawned basically immediately I think it set my expectations and the other two should follow relatively soon. But there's no telling how old the fish were and what-not. Waiting doesn't hurt anything. My only moderate concern is the pair that has spawned. They've now not spawned for the longest time (a bit over 2 weeks) since I've had them and she is hanging out in the filter quite adamantly, which worries me. He doesn't seem to be interacting with her much at all. She comes out and eats a bit, so that's good, I think. But I have no clue if she's hurt or has eggs (though she hasn't gotten bright yellow again) or what. I'm going to have to flush her out and will do a water change as well just because something seems off. In the little glimpses I've had of her, she seems to look healthy, but she doesn't stay out long at all. Previously she's always kind of out and about. Certainly a mark-ed change in behavior. But she was never one to spend much time at all in a cave before spawning... so I don't know if she's kind of making a nest in this location and she has just matured enough now to start exhibiting that behavior?