jwcarlson

1. What was the first fish you ever kept in some sort of an aquarium? My parents had aquariums when I was a kid, we used to have some native fish (bluegills, bass, warmouth, stuff like that). The first ones I had for myself was a red oscar named Spike. 2. What tank are you most proud of and why? Currently my discus just because the amount of work doing all the water changes and how well they've grown out. 3. How did you get here, specifically to these forums? From Cory mentioning it in YouTube videos. 4. What is something you think you do to make the hobby easier for yourself that others can use? If you're changing water in one tank or one specific area frequently, I find it really nice to have a hose connection through the wall and to whatever drain you're using (I have mine drain to the sink in the basement). Makes changing water really simple and not dragging python hose all over the place, it's already right there. 5. What is something you specifically wish for guidance with in the hobby? I think I agree with others, disease identification and treatment. It's one of those things that you (hopefully) don't have to deal with often so you don't necessarily have a lot of opportunities. 6. What fish do you miss most? I miss my oscars and often think about getting one or two again, but I don't know if I want such tank terrorists again. 7. How often do you change water? Is this the same for all of your tanks? 90% in my 75 gallon discus tank every night. It's not the same for all, I was doing weekly changes then biweekly ones in everything else (planted tanks), but have scaled back on that and am trying to do a better job of monitoring when they need a change. Plants are doing better this way. 8. What is better, one big tank or a rack of 20Gs, why? 20s, I think. You can do a lot in a bunch of 20s. 9. When was the last time you spent 30 minutes staring at a tank? Frequently with these new apistos I've got, last night for sure. They're very entertaining to watch. My discus I rarely get a half hour in a big chunk, but do watch them for a few minutes at a time as often as I can. They're just not as interesting as the apistos in my opinion. But they're also not breeding. The discus do have a lot of shimmying and shaking and tail slapping, though. And that is fun to watch. 10. What is your favorite food to feed your tanks? Probably baby brine shrimp for most tanks, but they're too small for the discus. They seem to go nuts for beefheart or frozen blood worms the most.

A pretty good update here. On @Guppysnail's suggestion, I turned the air up and got good results. 3 tablespoons of salt instead of 4. Using different eggs (non-ACO). Temp about 80 degrees. Really good hatch, very few parachuters left and I got a good hatch at 24 hours and another good one at 36, which is just fine by me. 1/2 teaspoon of eggs. So last night, same recipe as above, but back to the ACO eggs. I do not expect that the eggs are the problem here, but tonight should help prove that.

They do make different width options (though they're probably more expensive). I am honestly surprised that people put tanks on these shelves. I own a lot of them (the metal shelves with pressboard inserts) and wouldn't trust that loading on them personally.

With all due respect, I think you're overthinking it. 🙂 Doesn't seem like it's going to fit. That said, sometimes things are measured "nominally", and the shelf might actually be a little wider. Is there a store that has a display model of the exact ones you'd be buying that you could go put a tape measure to?

I did 10x2.5" in a 75 with sponge filters (very little current) and changed 90% of the water daily. They turned out swell. You should be fine growing them out in a 60 as long as you keep the water quality in good shape. In the grow out you can pot some plants and grow them that way so you don't have to completely sacrifice aesthetics. I just had no luck with that, though I just found two floating anubias last night, so I'm thinking the fish are sabotaging my attempts to a certain extent!

Better pics of pair #2, probably best pair overall. I think she is the best of the females for sure. Hopefully it is a female and not a sleeper male. Which I have been concerned about. Though they do act like a pair, "she" likes showing him her belly a lot. Pair #3, he is starting to color up a bit, not sure if he will much more though. Might just be younger.

How many can I put in my 125? 🤣

My understanding is he has those (though you might have to email). @Fish FolkFolk might be able to confirm.

I'm pretty sure Fish Folk just bought some from Jonah's Aquarium.

Actually, that's a German Ram in costume.

What I've been getting done is conditioning apistos. But every night I have to stop at the CPD/shrimp (+1 accidental furcatta rainbow) tank and watch the guppy grass pearl itself silly.

I would 100% buy the fish if I was browsing the store and the breeder cared enough to be checking up on them after they dropped them off. Unless it was like an arowana or something. Did they still recognize you?

What if I just put my hand over the hole in the lid and shake it really hard? 😄 I'll adjust the air up some. I had a bunch dead early on and so had turned the air down thinking they got their limbs destroyed, but since then I think I've arrived at not enough salt having possibly contributed to that. Thanks so much!

I always rinse it with as hot of water as I have in the water heat, which is way too hot to hold my hand in. But I could pretty easily do some sanitizing. I'm interested to see what this different set of eggs looks like tonight.

Any ideas at all why hatches would be taking so long? Even with a heater and 78 degrees. I'm getting good pulls from them at 36, 48, and some amount less at 60 hours. But now that I've upped to 1/2 tsp of eggs, it's definitely getting soiled by 60 hours. I'm straining out the swimmers and re-adding the water back. But last night after 60 hours I strained the swimmers and there's still a bunch of parachuters floating on top. Last night started a new batch with different eggs, so will see if that changes anything tonight @ 24 hours.

Yes, water matters greatly! I am keeping them in massively hard water, pH 8.2. But if I had a bunch of substrate and changed water infrequently there's little doubt in my mind that they would have a lot of issues and look poor. There's a reason discus evolved to feed their babies on their slime coat and it's not because their natural environment is teeming with biological activity. I wipe bottom and sides down weekly, clean filters in tank water about every 10-14 days. To be clear, I do not think it much matters what water you grow discus out in so long as it is clean. For me that means lots of water change while growing to meet my goals. And likely more water change even as they are older. It's not just nitrates that's an issue.

I purchased a bit of a glut of new-to-me tanks a couple of months ago without any plans for them and decided to wait until I felt strongly about something before even filling one up. I'd thought about buying some more juvenile discus to grow out, but thinking harder about it kind of quashed that idea. If I were to grow discus out again, I would probably get rid of the ones I have and get new ones. I had heard of apistogrammas, but had never seen one in person. The majority of my fish exposure is whatever could be bought at the local fish store 20-25 years ago, which was a grocery store aisle. So I did some rudimentary research and arrived at giving A. hongsloi a shot. Frankly, there was enough indication that they can breed in moderately hardish water so I thought I'd give them a shot. I do not have soft water at all. It's pH of 8.2-8.3, TDS out of the tap of 300 ppm, etc etc. So I bought three hongsloi pairs and pitched them in a 55 gallon to quarantine them and worm them. I use levamisole on day 1, 5, and 13 with lights off 24 hours and decent cleaning of substrate with a water change after. My initial goal is to see how hard of water they can hatch eggs and so my thought was to start with straight tap and see what happens. I've since kind of rethought that idea because water is a pretty big variable. I've been sitting on an RO unit for a year, so I installed that this past weekend and I'm going to start cutting in RO soon. Anyway, here's the 55. During QT and worming of course one of the pairs spawned. Here's the dominant male. Sub dominant behind him, though similarly colored for the most part. The female when she spawned. She spit the eggs out in front of the hut after a couple of days (which wasn't surprising). So after the last worming treatment, I pulled the spawning pair to their own 29. Dirty glass and relatively freshly setup, it actually cleared up a lot. I'll be curious to see if she selects one of these natural caves in the driftwood or if she reuses her cave or selects the other. And then I also tossed in a divider in the 55 with a pair on each side. So the subdominant males have colored up a bit more. Right now all three pairs don't seem particularly close to spawning (which is fine, I'm not really in a hurry). I've been hatching brine shrimp and feeding them that often (on average daily), but they also very much like flake, pellets, and even freeze dried tubifex (though I need to make some sinking worm holders so it is down low for them to eat). Plants are doing pretty well, there's a small layer of Fluval Stratum, capped with inert gravel and then 1.5" or so of all purpose sand. Here's a video of the female the day she laid eggs: The fish are an absolute blast to watch and I've seen them eat quite a few snail eggs, which is a plus. That's all for now... thanks for looking! 🙂 If you happen to have bred these before, I'd be curious to know what parameters you had success at!

I don't mean to be "stick-in-the-mud" guy, but if you're going to grow out juveniles and you're hoping for good shape/sized discus, I would personally suggest growing them out in a barebottom tank and changing lots of water. Doubly so if you're going to feed beefheart or similarly messy concoctions. Otherwise, if you're looking for more pleasing views, consider buying larger discus as parameters are less important. Of course there's all sorts of variables, if you're lucky and you've got softer, acidic water you can get away with a lot more. Discus are certainly beautiful and challenging in their own ways. I'd look into where to buy them from... there's a lot of unscrupulous sellers out there. My experience is that local discus are like 2-3x as expensive as higher quality shipped discus (when buying juvys). Learn a little bit about what you're looking for (do the eyes look huge compared to the body? if so it's probably stunted, which might mean it is going to have additional issues down the road). Once their grown out (in my opinion) that's the time you should start doing some different stuff with your tank. I'm kind of at a point with mine now that I'd be more comfortable with some sand or something. But I don't mind the tank being ugly at the moment because the discus are in good shape and still growing well. I'm happy enough with it at this point. Most of them are near 5.5" some might be a bit bigger than that. I got them at 2.5" fish just short of a year ago.

I got some CPDs (small) from Aqua Huna about the same time and ended up with just one female. She looks ready to burst any day now. They are doing some spawning behavior but haven't see any eggs yet. Been feeding baby brine on/off.

I'm entering a world in which I have never operated and that's tank water that doesn't have absolute gobs of KH. How does mulm help stabilize a tank? I'm not really planning on cleaning out mulm unless it gets excessive, just wondering how that helps stabilize pH. We're departing the original intent of the thread here, so I'll snip the rest of my reply. I need to start a journal and gather my thoughts on this whole apisto project. 😄

For that small of bioload you'll be fine as long as you're changing water fairly regularly. I wouldn't necessarily bother trying to cycle the sponge completely anyway. Doesn't hurt to let it seed from now until whenever you get the betta and just put it in when you get him. When I first set up my 10 gallon QT I just had a 5 gallon bucket next to it with a heater and air stone in it and would change 50% twice a day. Then as filters caught up a bit down to once a day. Then eventually done with the daily ones. It's very easy to stay on top of it even with big bio loads if you make the changes easy for yourself. Now my QT tank is in with my aging/pre-heating barrels anyway, so changes are really easy.

I'd say a couple of weeks, but there's things you can do to speed that up. Re: needing a cycled sponge in QT tank, if you're doing big water changes daily, yeah you'll be OK. But it also depends what you mean by QT. If it's "my neon tetra has a white spot so I'm separating it" probably not a big deal. If it's "I just bought 25 new fish and I'm slapping them in this 10 gallon for a few weeks to fatten them up and make sure they're not sick" then that might be more important. That said... you can't necessarily make sure that the filter you have will have the right sized bacterial colony for wherever you are placing it. I like them as a "jump start" but not a substitution for cycling. Meaning, I consider every tank I set up a "fish-in" cycle regardless of how I set it up. So monitor parameters daily if heavily stocked or every day or two if it's two small fish in a 55 kind of deal. Water change a bit if things build up and when you start seeing "zeros" for ammonia and nitrite for a few tests you can be pretty sure your cycle is "done". But, of course, it's never done done... as plants grow and fish grow/die/breed all of that changes things. But an established bacterial colony can pretty quickly adjust do these things.

The two that I lost were also blue (turqoise and 2nd blue diamond). So it would have been a bit better rounded out overall appearance with them in the mix, I think. If I had to do it all over again, I would go with 10 red spotted greens, I think. Or tefe (though I don't know if those two are different). Basically, something more wild looking, but not wild. I'm happy with what I've gotten out of them, though. Learned a lot... changed a lot of water (about 22,000 gallons by my estimation). 😮

I don't think you'll find a tank shamer on here. There's nothing uglier than a discus grow out tank, but here's my 75 gallon setup. It's changed a lot now. All of the double stacked filters are gone as well as the other two sponges. Replaced with a single stacked large filter (for emergency or cycle kick start use) and a Tidal 110 HOB. There's some driftwood with anubias glued to them as well now. In any event, this filtration setup worked well for me, but that's with me doing 90% daily water changes for nearly the last year. I wouldn't ever get too worried about the current state of your tank as long as it's not actively making fish sick or making you want to leave the hobby. It's OK to make incremental improvements. The filtration setup in this tank would have worked "forever" if that's what I wanted to do with it. But the biggest drawback of sponge filters, in my opinion, if the amount of floor space they take up. The one caution I'd say about the types of sponge filters you've linked is that those fine ones "clog" up really quick. Meaning, they do a lot more mechanical filtration than the Aquarium Co-Op ones do. I have quite a few of the coarse ones from ACO and I love them. But in my discus tank I would usually squeeze sponges to clean them weekly and there's next to nothing in the ACO ones because they're so coarse. Which for my discus application or for a tank with a HOB or other filtration and the ACO sponge acting as a souped up airstone is perfect. My personal suggestion would be to get a HOB (something sized for your entire tank) and then have a sponge filter or two of basically any type as your glorified air stone. Like @nabokovfan87 says above a HOB does a much much better job polishing the water. I don't know if having a before/after helps visualize the difference or not. There's no way to have driftwood and all of these sponges in a tank... it's just too much. I much like the HOB + a single sponge.

Live bearers are absolutely relentless and I feel your pain. Years ago I had lots of guppies, but it helped that I had oscars and so would feed some of the unwanted guppies to them, but that's not an option for everyone. I'm not sure if there's a good method of controlling population without actively removing fish. Obviously if there's less cover most of them will be eaten, but in my experience that doesn't necessarily resolve the issue. Hopefully this doesn't discourage you completely out of the hobby!