jwcarlson

Is this the bump you're worried about, @Helpwithmy_snailpls?

I think they've got API Quick Start (pictured earlier), which... unless I am mistaken. Isn't a dechlorinator, it's starter bacteria like Seachem Stability. I'll be honest, the ammonia test looks like a zero to me, but pictures can be tough. I personally think people get a bit too trigger happy with water changing during cycling. I really think the bigger issue here might be not conditioning water at all. The good news is it's probably just chlorine not chloramine so it eventually dissipates.

Drain water into 5 gallon bucket, net your fish and anything else over into it. Also put your plants in there. Throughly vacuum your gravel (assuming you have gravel) or sand or whatever substrate. Get it as clean as you can. Drain all the water while you're doing this. Move 29, put the new 40 up. Have the 40 prepared for water (do any cleaning you're going to do before hand). Move the substrate over, adding any additional you need to. Fill the tank with water, make sure you dechlorinate with Prime or similar, you can start planting along the way. Move over your filtration from the 29 (keep this damp while you're draining 29 and setting up the 40. Get the water to the correct temperature and plop your goldfish in. Instant cycle. Would suggest not doing any major filter cleaning at the time of tank swapping. Give it a couple weeks. The goal here is to not destroy all your BB. Even if all you transfer over is the filter from the old to the new, I wouldn't be worried about having a cycle issue at all.

It's my favorite type of Crypt! Cryptocoryne survivorii

I would think so, it says it's for marine and freshwater if my memory of the label isn't mistaken. I wish my cories would lay eggs at some point. All I have are sterbais and they're in a community tank where the eggs probably wouldn't last long, but I think they'd be neat to try to raise.

I don't know about the worst, honestly... they'd be almost museum quality compared to some from the early internet forum days. "Got a new baby oscar, can anyone tell if this is ich?" Or the bad-old days when forums didn't host pictures at all, you had to use something like postimage or photobucket. And then if you posted higher resolution images you'd hit the bandwidth limit after like eight people saw your pictures and you'd get a little "no picture" icon or eventually they put a "bandwidth exceeded" place holder image and you'd be locked out until whatever bandwidth counter reset. I do miss photo contests on forums way back when. To a certain extent photos are almost too easy to post now. I am not saying that's bad, in fact... the exact opposite. But I feel the same way about everything I take pictures of anymore. My grandma had like three pictures of her between the ages of birth and like 10+ years old. They were terrible black and white, blurry photos... but they were ALL she had. Our oldest just turned ten and she's already probably taken more pictures than my grandma did in her entire life and for sure made more video than Gma ever did. And that's not to comment on the thousands of pictures we've taken of her over the years. Anyway... I'm ranting. I didn't buy anything at a mom and pop store today. But I'm thinking about getting some otos for my apisto tanks, so maybe I'll do that this weekend, QT tank is empty again so... time to fill it back up, right?

To be honest, almost none of us have. But that doesn't stop us! 😄

Indeed. As soon as he finished pooping... he was right back to being fine. I am a bit concerned because one of my discus has whirling, which as far as I know... nothing is really known about and not real treatment exists. I did what apparently is a controversial treatment *redacted*... at least on a discus centric forum. I love the place, but I don't quite understand the backlash... this fish will kill herself darting or I will have to kill her... OR maybe this random treatment will help her as it did for the person who suggested it. And it's not just a random guy, it's someone pretty well respected. In any event, this treated fish was in QT so it's not like I did the whole tank. *but that's a whole different fish and different 'story' all together* I am going to add some spinach to my beefheart. Some strains of discus are apparently known for this type of pooping, though I have never heard of them making a scene like this one was. Weirdly, I haven't had this problem for a year, but that might be due to growth tapering off now. I do feed freeze dried black worms and some of those are mixed with spinach, but perhaps they need a bit more mixed into some of the other foods. I think I can make that happen with the beefheart easily enough. Maybe I'll dehydrate some and make a powder to mix in.

I have only had them in my barebottom QT tank for a few weeks. So I can't answer that for you, @Stef. I'm not sure if they'd eat much larger snails or not. My thought process is that in the tanks where I have snail problems (one tank, really) it's because I greatly overfeed my discus. It's a bare bottom and I change 90% of the water. The hangup is in the HOB the snails live unmolested. I think a few assassins could make a downward pressure on the population. At the very least if I have 100 assassin snails instead of 1000 pond snails, I'll at least be able to do something with the assassins (give away to LFS for example). And they'll eventually get big enough that they can't hid in coarse sponges so easily. In short, if I have to have a snail infestation, I'd take an assassin snail one. Which might be easy to say because I've not had an assassin snail infestation. 😄 My understanding is that the assassin snail eggs don't hatch for a month or two. The ones I bought were moving pretty much instantly. Once they went to work, they do sometimes kind of stop moving. I wonder if that has to do with them being stuffed after eating a snail. I don't know if one burrowing in substrate might also be hunting snails that are buried? I know my MTS are almost always burrowed. Perhaps they're finding those.

Sounds like a business idea. 🙂

Some people get unwanted duckweed with their plants. Others get unwanted duckweed eaters. The world has a way of evening things out. My only hangup is the 6 week timeline. Are the original pictures really 5-6 week old goldfish fry? Assuming goldfish eggs are like most other fish eggs I am aware of (hatching within a week or so). I guess in my head they would be bigger at that age.

Don't do that.

Some of you have never tried programming pattern/image recognition algorithms from scratch and it shows. 😄 To be fair, I haven't done it for 15 years for my senior project... but it wasn't easy at the time so give Google a break, OK!? They tried their best. 😆

I put mine in cold and a 25 watt heater brings it up to temp. I leave the heat on for 24 hours usually sometimes 36 depending on how I'm rotating hatchers. It works pretty well for what I need at the moment. I don't have years of experience hatching BBS, I've been doing it for like 5-6 weeks. I really like feeding it though, especially to things I'm trying to condition. You can't beat live food that keeps swimming for 12+ hours, at least some of it that might survive that long.

I do what I can. 🤣 Currently empty and probably will reseal before anything goes in them: 29, 90 (still need to pick this one up), and 125 - 29 probably ends up with one apisto pair if any of them successfully breed, 90 or 125 may end up as the discus tank or natives... haven't decided yet. 90 may also end up with the discus... at some point will hopefully need space for apisto fry to grow out, so we'll see how that goes. Currently full, but no livestock: 10 QT tank, housing whatever is getting wormed or sick - a discus with whirling just left it empty this morning. My new assassin snails will probably leave their bucket and go back in here. Plants will go with them - some dwarf water lettuce, any new plants that don't have a home currently: some anubias and dwarf sag. Currently full: 10 - CPDs (3 males, 1 female), 1 furcatta rainbow - an accidental inhabitant), mix of neo shrimp, need to remedy the M/F ratio, plants: guppy grass, "giant" hygro, couple of small bristlenose until they clean up the algae on the glass 29 - pair of Apistogramma Hongsloi, plants: PSO, hornwort, guppy grass, hair algae 37 - community tank - 15 kerri tetras, three survivor cardinal tetras, cherry shrimp, 6 sterbai corys, couple small bristlenose, plants: anubias, hygro pinnatifida, dwarf water lettuce, a single/sad amazon sword, a few crypts that don't seem to do anything even after a year, emergent pothos. Side note: I absolutely hate the footprint of this tank. 46 bow front - 15 juvenile swordtails my 10 year old daughter suckered me into taking from my in-laws. Also a handful of small Kuhli Loaches and a 1.5" super red bristlenose, plants: PSO, elodea, a couple of accidental algae "moss balls", val, dwarf water lettuce. I don't want the swordtails long term, right now they all look female, however... maybe they're not old enough yet, but they're getting on to 2". My mother-in-law always says she hasn't seen any in her juvys that look like males yet either. Time will tell. I don't want live bearers. Though, part of me wants to have a few fry from them at some point and put some in with any apisto fry I might eventually have to see what the fry and mother apisto would do. 55 - divided in two, each half with a pair of Apistogramma Hongsloi, plants: PSO, various crypts, val, hair algae 😄 75 - 8 discus, a total of 9 tetras- lemons and rummynose... every once in a while one ends up with some bad thoughts and zips up the tube when doing water changes. A relatively new addition here is a female bristlenose that's been in community tank for a year. Bare bottom with plants: anubias, emergent pothos and philodendron

Forgot to mention, mine are from Hans as well, before he switched suppliers. So mine are German discus (Stendkers). One thing to be aware of is "cross contamination" on discus. Mainly German mixed with Asian, but even from different Asian suppliers will not go well. The thread I sent talks about that some, I believe. Third fish on the right looks like it might be in a bit of trouble. Would highly recommend making sure each fish is eating AND not spitting it all back out. That cost me a fish and some headache later with another. Best of luck to you!

Both eggs work, for some reason coop eggs take 36-48 hours. They hatch and separate really well though. Additionally, I had turned air down a bit too low and @Guppysnail above helped a ton with additional all recommended. I get good hatch rates at 3 tbs salt and I alternate my heater every 24 hours, get them to hatch and then cool them to room temp about 60. Two harvests per batch 12 hrs apart. Second harvest is light, but plenty for fish that need it. Alternating eggs now until I use up the other brand then will do another can of ACO. Have two hatchers now so I can handle the delayed hatch just fine. Have been freezing extras too just for backup. No fry yet and the apistos like basically any food. So I am in good shape. Really good hatches overall.

I think large pH shifts can cause them to lose a lot of slime coat so could have been that instead of bacteria. Discus have a... Different slime coat. I also had an issue this spring when municipal water changed to chloramines and/or I forgot to add my Prime...they got slimy then too. Though I had forgotten before without issue (I age my water for a day because I have a huge pH shift 7 to 8.3 after aging).

A couple of assassin snails would be good tankmates to something. A pea puffer makes that his tank, I believe. But I have never kept them. Something to consider. I thought about getting one so I can throw snails in... But then I am still collecting them. I will eventually parcel these assassins out.

I just bought 10 assassin snails and put them in my 10 gal QT and have been dumping extra pond snails in. They're eating a lot of them. Not sure if they will balance out or what yet. Remains to be seen. But they're eating them pretty good so far as I can see. That said, if you've got something too crazy you're going to have to help out. This is a typical one week cleaning of my discus HOB. I usually just kill them, but have started tossing them in QT with the assassins. Why not?

Also, IMO you can skip the IchX. If you're worried about ich crank the temp up a bit. Can do up to 93 for a couple weeks no problem with discus. Wouldn't suggest doing it with meds in necessarily. Ich almost cannot survive at 85 as it is.

Where did you get your discus? I've got a pretty standard QT protocol for discus that I used, let people talk me out of part way through, and then paid for it later. I can PM it to you (link to another forum). The only other thing I would do would be to add a prophylactic metronidazole course at the end of the other meds. It's basically prazi, levamisole... Something else I am missing. It's weird that overnight a BB wipe out would cause this problem isn't it? I fish-in cycled my discus and had no issues. Could be oxygen related like others have mentioned. I'll shoot your a PM either way, feelnfree to ignore it! 🙂 You should keep up with the daily water changes as well (in my opinion).

So... Interesting shift in behavior which makes me wonder if I caught them right after he fertilized the eggs this morning and they were in an in between state of "come here" and "get away". This afternoon I got home and went to check on them. Male is on his side just chilling out. Female not out and not out and not out. Went to get BBS separated, still nothing. Waiting through that, still no mate-seeking missile. Fed the BBS... Still no yellow streak. Weird. Finally she crept out and sampled some BBS. Then back in. Later she came out to move the male, but she only went halfway. He turned his back and started doing the fin flicking that I have come to associate with submission. She turned right around and left him be. She had, at some point, nipped the bottom of his flowing anal fin. Which could have been damaged this morning. It's nothing major. It will be interesting to see if this has been a one off or what. The location she picked faces the side of the tank and so she can only see like 1/4 of the tank. So he isn't nearly as observable as he has been in previous spawns.

Well, I think I captured an uncomfortable bowel movement tonight.

I don't think you can really go too deep. I think substrates are probably too thin if anything, on average, in the hobby. For plants, I mean. They usually like to start moving around if you put them on the bottom and start dumping something in on top. I would put down maybe an inch of whatever you're doing and then shove them in and start covering them. Otherwise they're not going to stay where you want them probably. As far as too many. You probably can. But I've put a whole bunch of them in (and capped them with sand) more than once and haven't had a problem. If it's something more open like gravel, I could see there being some marginal amount of additional risk. But I don't think the ACO root tabs use ammonia unless I'm mistaken.