jwcarlson

Rummynose, for schoolers. And I really like my kerri tetras, they're quite interesting. Especially at feeding time.

Got a long way to go before making anyone jealous! Once they successfully breed and I get some fry raised up then I will claim responsibility for them.

Nope, no silver tips. I guess my apistogrammas are yellow/yellowish. I forgot about those. They're newer to me. 😂

He eventually died. I tried Epsom salt dips, but it just kept getting worse, unfortunately.

1. What is the largest tank you've ever cared for? 75 currently, but I have a 125 in the basement that I'm going to reseal before I set up.2. What is the most amount of tanks you've kept? Why? 8 or so. I have 7 set up now and two more almost ready to go. Mostly just trying to keep myself sane.3. What is the next plant you wish to have in your tank? Something like likes my water and grows without too much messing around.4. What is the biggest challenge you face with maintenance? Aging water. It's not too tough, but it is kind of a pain in the rump. My tap water has a large pH swing (about 1.3 higher when aged).5. How often do you test your tank? Fairly infrequently, The ones I'm still trying to get sorted out for plants I test a bit more.6. Do you have aquarium salt on hand and what was the last time you used it? Yes, pretty much daily for brine shrimp, but for a fish related issue it's been a few weeks.7. Have you ever kept a tank with a planted substrate, what did you like or dislike? I have two with Fluval Stratum. One just the Stratum and one with Stratum capped with some gravel and then sand. I like the capped one best and I don't mind the substrate. Plants seem to have a wider "sweet spot" with it. The next tank I set up is probably going to have 1-2" of dirt capped with 3" of sand. 8. What is your favorite thingamajig that you have for your tank? (something you use) My barrel aging/preheating setup. Powered by a Kasa smart strip and hardwired Inkbird controllers. It takes all the screwing around with heaters and whatnot out of the equation.9. What is your favorite color and do you have any fish in that color? Yellow, and... not really. Though the one random furcatta rainbow that I have does have quite a bit of yellow.10. Choose 2: Seiryu stone, Ohko stone, Red Lava Rock, Mopani wood, Manzanita wood. The woods, I honestly don't care much for larger stone in a tank.

I'm not sure why anyone would fight over it. But we don't have anything particularly close. Takes about a hour to get to any of them. I frequent just one of them. He's an ACO partner now which is nice because when I need a couple sponge filters to sit on a shelf I'm not going to the website and spending $100. Sorry, Cory. I always want to make my way around to some of the others to check them out, but never really end up acting on it. Because it's quite a drive, it ends up being a "day" where we end up at several other places like the mall and whatever other stuff my wife or kids need. And we usually go out for lunch. So it ends up being a bit of a production. And if we added another 30 minutes in the car just to go check out another fish store... I'm not necessarily keen on that.

😞 I actually think I remember some time ago some of your other posts. I don't envy your situation. I've made like 100 gallons of RO and it's kind of a pain in the rump. Having to do it for all my tanks would basically be untenable. I don't have any tips or anything, I hope you can get something to work for you!

What's going on with your water that's making you use RO? Just curious. I'm using an RO mix (RO + tap water to hit about 60-80 TDS) and it's kind of a pain, but I don't think apistos will breed in my straight tap water.

Well, she looks pretty significantly smaller this afternoon. I have no clue if she spawned or pooped, but I'll take it. I have no clue what eggs look like, but I am reminded that I got a pinch of pool filter sand in the QT tank a few weeks back. 🤣

Here's one of the other pairs. I'd call her... reluctant. He is being pretty gentle in his persuit though. I don't think I've seen her in a cave yet. The other pair seems to be maybe getting a bit closer to spawning, the female is yellowish during a few periods during the day, which seems to be like what the female that has spawned was doing a few days before she laid. And have seen them in the caves a bit more. She's just genuinely not interested yet. But he sure throws a lot of water at her during the day. 😄 And he was doing some very hard bends for her last night. Pulling out all the stops. She was... content in her crypt. haha

Lots of spawning-ish behavior this morning. They started up high and got progressively farther into the plants. Wish I would have read your reply sooner I would have left it at one male. I will probably remove one of them tonight. I could see how she tires of them following her around. But she was initiating some interaction as well. Guess we'll see. I will just not feed too much. Do you think me changing the lighting schedule from one solid 6-7 hour chunk to two separate periods might have caused an issue?

Yes, I know the ratio is all off. It was "luck of the draw" from Aqua Huna. I have been thinking of ordering 8 more and keeping any females and giving away the males. Or perhaps giving away some of the males I have. I put two males into the QT tank with her tonight, catching these things is such a pain in the rear. In any event, I appreciate you looking. She is most likely young, I got them in... November. I was surprised to see them slithering all over each other, but... fish will be fish, I suppose. Locally I haven't seen any CPDs, but he usually lists them. They must sell fast.

@GuppysnailThis first picture makes her look worse than she does. But you can get the idea, I think. All taken tonight.

Waldo prefers to be referred to as "good at being found" as opposed to bad at hiding.

They look like there's a smug rat like 15 feet away that's making faces at them, but he's behind a fence they can get through. 😄

I think they'd make a great storage rack for food, equipment not currently installed, and other dry goods/hardscape items. I wouldn't put a fish tank on those if you paid me. There's much better racks available, but I'm not sure about the cost difference.

@The endler guyI didn't catch that bowfin, no. Another name for them is dogfish, which is why I posted it here. 😄 I have caught quite a few of them over the years, neat fish. Dinosaur, basically.

That's a very interesting way to think about it and makes a lot of sense. Just my (unfinished) basement would fit between France and Greece on this list and I could basically fill it with fish tanks if I really wanted to. I enjoy watching these people do their thing, but the impression I get is that they're constantly setting up and tearing down setups. Maybe that's just my impression and not reality. Also some possible questionable livestock decision making going on in some of these. One guy had a beautiful aquascape, put discus in and at least two or three of them jumped to their deaths. Same guy just put 60 female bettas in a tank. I guess if it goes well long term, that's great. I've never had a sorority tank and have no desire to. I think I've heard enough horror stories. I donate blood and about a year ago the lady taking my donation and I were talking, she also kept fish. Had a sorority tank and it was setup for some pretty extended period of time and all was good. I don't know size, but she had like 8 bettas in there. Had been going something like a year and then the bottom dropped out seemingly randomly and all but two were dead and she had separated those. Basically, just came home one day and it was a war zone. These people have a great eye for the art, no doubt. But I think there's some more going on behind the surface as well. Long way of saying why this particular American doesn't care to "aquascape". 😄

I don't have a picture, but I can get one tonight. She doesn't look pineconed to me and is getting around fine and will eat. My goal is to move the males over tonight around lights out time and see if that doesn't get them excited to spawn again. I don't know if there's too many males with her now or if the furcatta rainbow is making her hold (when they were doing the spawning dancing the rainbow was also joining in. I isolated her because I'd read a thread elsewhere and someone mentioned separating them and then combining them after a bit will sometimes get them excited to breed. I think I'll only put one or two of the males in with her. They're in pretty heavily planted tank with suswassertang, guppy grass, hornwort, other stuff. QT tank also has some plants in pots from the Co-Op that I just haven't planted yet. I did put a small plastic cup in main tank and filled it with suswassertang thinking maybe they just didn't like any of the other places to spawn. I guess I can move that over too just in case they don't like the water lettuce, anubias, and dwarf sag in the QT tank. It was just weird, everything was ramping up and I figured they would be spawning (maybe they were, but it was pretty new behavior for them) and then she just started getting bigger and bigger. Probably should have done something earlier, but I've never had CPDs so wasn't sure if it was normal. There's no way this is normal at this point. I have no idea why I didn't take a picture this AM. I had her in a net and everything. I was just heading out the door to work so I didn't fully think it through.

@Tanked I agree that more information should be available. The issue is, if most people walked into a place that cared enough, I think they would leave. And I don't know that I fault the store, honestly. Now, if they're specifically asked for information and lie or don't give a full picture... then that's horrible. I keep honey bees and sell queens and I actively miss out on tons of queen sales because I try to help the person who calls me wanting to buy a $40 queen bee from me. Because I don't want them to throw away money for no reason and I don't want one of "my queens" to basically be sent to her death in the wrong situation. Now... I'm not making my living on queen bees, so I can afford to be empowered to turn down someone. In the long run, this helps the people willing to listen. Those that don't typically buy a queen online for $35 and pay $20 to have it shipped and then call me a few weeks later when things are still all messed up. The hardest thing for humans to understand is when the best thing to do is to do nothing. Don't buy the queen, there's already one in your hive you just need to wait. Don't buy that fish, it gets too big. Don't buy that filter, it won't fix your problem. Basically no one likes to be told they shouldn't do something. And that includes me, honestly. But when you're willing to do enough research and be honest with yourself, I think it is really fulfilling. Overall, it's really easy for me to look at a fish store and go, man... wouldn't it be great is this person actively sold less product because a lot of these people are buying stuff they shouldn't have because I'm not the one hoping I can make my rent payment if I sell enough of these 20 boxes of new fish kind of deal. We were at the LFS I frequent last weekend and they always "read off" what they are charging you for "I've got 8 kerri tetras, two medium driftwoods, two sponge filters" etc. So if you're listening or close enough to the checkout you hear what fish others are buying and sometimes it makes me cringe. Or you hear some of their conversations when they're shopping. But I do not know what they've got. Maybe they have a gourami room and they have tanks for those 8 dwarf males they just picked up. *shrug*

I've got a handful of CPDs... five of them. Four are males, one is female. Luck of the draw from Aqua Huna shipment, I guess. A couple of weeks ago there was a lot of spawning type activity with rubbing of bodies and whatnot. She started getting chunkier... and chunkier... and chunkier now. I don't know if she's egg bound or what, but she is enormous. I keep expecting her to finally spew out a bunch of eggs, but it hasn't happened. I lowered the temp down a bit (to 71 from 74). I separated her to a QT tank this morning. Haven't fed for a couple of days so she doesn't explode. Should I drop the temp more? Do a water change or anything? Epsom salt soak? I was thinking of moving a couple of the males over with her tonight right before lights out. Is that the right move? I don't care to get fry (unless it just happens)... but I don't see how she survives if she doesn't lay soon. I suppose it could be something else causing her to be all bloated, but the timing of everything with the spawning like activity seems suspicious. I should have taken a picture this AM, but I completely forgot. It's possible they have been scattering eggs for some time and I just never noticed the mating activity as the light was setup to come on from like 2-8 PM, and I wouldn't be home for the "morning" for them. Recently I reprogrammed the light to come on from 5-9 and 4-8 so that I could feed/observe before work and after work. So maybe that had something to do with it... but she was pretty plump before that.

I'm feeding the parents the BBS, I guess I could stop doing that. I like it because they can eat it for quite awhile between feedings. TDS 81 tonight GH = 3 KH = 4 pH... Who knows. Low range left, high range right. 7.4...maybe? Coop strips look lower like 7 or so.

In seriousness, here's our dogs (Australian Shepherds). I can't say that I've seen a single dog picture on here in a fish thread, though. Meaning someone just like posting dog pictures in someone's disease thread or something like that.

An unfortunate part of the internet is that even if someone is researching, if they happen to latch onto the wrong source... they might as well have done no research at all. Most all hobbies have their fair share of bad information available and fish keeping is no exception. That said, the people who don't do any research at all are probably like that in everything they do. I am, perhaps, an over researcher in a lot of ways. And that can be good or bad. Fishless cycling is a good example of some silliness in the hobby (in my opinion). It doesn't encourage learning about your aquarium, it feels like a recipe... I put this many drops in and I wait and dip a strip in sometimes. When these squares stay white, I can put fish in. With the obvious assumption being that everything is good to go at that point. But if you encourage cycling with a light stocking and monitoring of the tank, that person probably comes out the other end a much better fishkeeper who is better connected to their aquarium and who probably has a good feel for tank maintenance too as they probably changed some water to keep ammonia and/or nitrite levels down. AND it was something to DO and keep them engaged with their tank. Let's face it... it's pretty boring having a box of water that you're not doing really anything with and offers you not much to look at for a month or more. At the end of the day, some people simply do not learn well by means other than by doing.