jwcarlson

Thanks! I thought there were two types of the same thing (that would grow to the same size). So I guess it's full grown. Haha

Here is a better size reference shot.

I bought a hillstream loach around Christmas... so about six months ago. And it has not increased in size what-so-ever. Perhaps there's lots of different varieties and I just have a tiny one, but the next time I went into this particular store, the ones he had were many times bigger. So I thought maybe this one would grow at some point, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. This is an old picture, but it's in a planted tank, I don't scrub the sides. There's some algae on the plants and I'm sure on the wood/rocks, but it isn't algae laden by any means. I feed daily Xtreme Krill Flakes, a shrimp pellet by Wardley (I think my wife bought this with the kids, so I've been using it... the corys seem to love it and are growing up pretty well), Co-Op fry pellets, and an algae pellet with zucchini (and other vegetables). I have never seen it actively eating anything except for on the glass, rocks, and plants. Ever since we upgraded to 37 gallon from 10 gallon qt, he got a nice rock pile and he seems to just hang out in/around that, rarely leaving that area when I'm observing. Spends most of his time inside the rocks with the shrimp as best I can tell. I don't mind if he's just a tiny fella, but it just seems like I'm doing something wrong and maybe I'm not helping him. I would guess his length to be under 1.5" and probably closer to 1". This picture makes him look huge now that I look at it. He's only about as wide as a pencil... a AA battery (which is 2") would dwarf him in comparison (I think). Am I missing something? I've been thinking about buying some Repashy, if I do that, which one would be best to buy for him?

I think that's what I'm going to do. And am considering also populating the discus tank for grins... I've got plenty of shrimp! I thought I heard if you let them intermix they'll eventually revert back to a clear version. Maybe that's the case, but it takes a longish time. If that's the case, I'm cool with whatever happens.

I suspect there is a wide range of broodiness and mothering. One of our original buff orpingtons would go broody each spring and would simply not come out of it. For a couple of years I let her hatch fertile eggs. So was an absolutely great mom, would defend the chicks against our dogs. (see pics above, she'd mother them for months). I hatched some bantam cochins and they do go broody. Two of them tandem set some eggs last year and were absolutely terrible mothers compared to our orpington. They were good egg setters, but once they hatched there wasn't a lot that they were good at... and they were done with the chicks at a very young age. It was pretty neat watching two of them setting and mothering together, though. It broke their silkie friend's heart. They were all hatched (by us) and raised together. When the two started setting the silkie would just hang out in the coop with them most of the day like "what are we doing here, guys". Then she got very mean after that and once the babies were hatched and left the coop, she'd mount and "breed" the two moms and get rough with them and the babies. Like she was upset about something. Chicken politics... it didn't last too long, just a few days.

I realize my rambling was probably unclear. I understand that different colors will eventually cloud the overall coloration, and I'm fine with that. I think I'm more asking if I'm going to have a bunch of clear shrimp in two years, something that I think I don't really want so maybe I'll start culling over the oddballs to the discus tank. But if it's just a bunch of random-ish colors I'm cool with that. I'm not selling these or doing anything with them other than letting them do their thing in the tank. Re: bloody mary shrimp - I bought them as cherry shrimp and he said "well, we have fire red". To be honest, I'm entirely unconcerned with what they're called. I just know I've seen some pics of shrimp called bloody mary with the "racing stripes" down their backs. Most of the shrimp are very well colored, a good and solid bright red. They're a little more orange looking when they're younger, but it seems once they get full sized they seem to be well colored for the most part.

Right around Christmas I bought six cherry shrimp from a local shop. At least a couple of them had some stripes down their back, looking like what I've since seen be called "bloody mary" shrimp. Anyway, since then the shrimp colony has probably grown 25x... there are just GOBS of them in the 37 gallon tank. And I greatly enjoy them. I am not really bothered by what colors the shrimp are, but have noticed some very cool colors being thrown. One that looked like a rili shrimp, one that was very close to being black, one that's a beautiful deep purple color... and then this one I saw last night. In person it looks like a lighter green with purple accents. My question is... what happens if I don't select these shrimp out? I don't necessarily have a plan to do so. But if I don't, am I just going to eventually dilute down to more-or-less clear shrimp? The VAST majority are decent red and none of these odd balls have probably reached breeding age yet. I am planning on tossing some into my discus tank at some point as I've been told by a number of people that their discus don't bother their neos. And if mine do, if it's the off colored stuff then it's just a nice snack for the discus, I figure. (but also have so many that it's not that big of a deal) So... should I fish out the odd balls and drop them in my discus tank... or should I just let the community tank just remain the thunder dome of breeding that it has been? I'm not overly concerned either way and if I'll have reasonably colorful (any color) shrimp for the foreseeable future, then I've got zero issues just letting it be. But I might want some shrimp with the discus either way. Additionally, is there such thing as an "over population" of neos in a tank? I don't think that I'm overexaggerating the population at all. There are SO many of them... I thought that the thick lipped gourami might take out a good number of shrimplets, but if he's feasting on them... it's not making much of a dent.

I think the thing is awesome! Working great. I haven't populated the second one yet, but the first set of starts are humming right along!

Forgot I had a picture of this one.

Mine are also from Hans 2.5"ers. I am an over thinker/researcher (which is why I never had them when I was younger). So I kind of knew what I was getting into. I don't have enough experience to know if I am doing well, but I am happy with them other than the runts. However, I have been told that is a normal occurrence. Yours looks healthy, I'm sure they'll get going with continued good maintenance. What are you feeding them? This staple of beefheart and freeze dried Australian black worms seems to be doing the trick. I am thinking about experimenting with beefheart in gelatin to keep it a little more intact. They do seem to consume the vast majority of the beefheart and I am learning the correct portion sizes. I am up at 430 daily, lights wake them up around 530. So I feed then, then feed again about 615 (beefheart both feedings in morning) on way out the door to work. Sprinkle in some Hikari Vibra Bites and Discus Bio-Gold occasionally at that second feeding for extended grazing while at work. On days I am home I pound them with food all day. On normal days, I don't feed them again until about 5 when I get home. Then I pound them until 730 or 8 when I am doing water change. Tonight I hit everything perfect, they were pleasantly plump when I was changing water. Most weeknights I feel like I leave a little on the table. I have learned that they eat more of black worms that get loose and float if I feed those worms a little earlier in the evening so they can clean them up. Otherwise I skim a lot of them off the top when changing water (that they would eat if they had some more time). Basically, if I am awake at home, there is quality food in the tank for them. They eat an unbelievable amount of beefheart and black worms. And I really should install the auto feeder. I got it all set up and never put it on the tank. That might help push growth a little farther and I know the runts peck away at the food if it's available laying around during the day. Forgot to mention that I have pothos going now, which is pretty cool. Roots are going like crazy, nitrates at the end of the day are effectively zero.

@JuanchoHow long have you had yours?

It's been two months now. I measured on the "two month" day (now about a week ago) and the biggest of the batch were a hair bigger than 4". I'm battling now two that eat sparingly. Or not at all so I am probably going to worm them again, raise the temp back to 92 for a couple of weeks, and be more consistent with the salt. And then maybe a course of metro. I hate tossing stuff at them, but would really like for them to grow. 🙂 Of the nine, six of them are doing very well and are probably 3.5-4". One is a bit smaller and then the two weirdos. Still banging away at 70% daily water changes. Anyway, here is a couple of pictures. I think I might have talked myself into adding some rummy nose. I have eight in my community tank that have been problem free after dealing with some issues in QT. Trying to decide if I risk bringing them straight over or if I should put them in QT and add the two sad sacks to that tank for a couple of weeks to see if they get sick. Heck, maybe they'd start eating. But then that's two tanks to change the water in every night! This dope scuffed himself on a filter just before the photoshoot. I'm still kicking myself for losing this one's "match". What a dang shame. I'm not sure if I have a favorite one as they all seem to unique. And of course they're not at their adult appearances (for the ones with patterns), so that's something else that's fun is seeing how different that is from when I first got them.

That's what I used on the bottom of my discus tank (above). It took all of one can to cover the bottom of a standard 75 and I wish I would have had a little more.

Window cling film stuff. Comes in gobs of colors, easy to apply, easy to remove. As you can see from the pics below, it really helps bring out the dirty front glass and water spots. 🤣

Healed up pretty quick.

Well, I think I've got it at this point. Been three days like this. And that strip has been sitting for at least 10 minutes. Been wiping down small sections so as not to shock anything and hopefully boost colonies in the sponges. They ate two beef heart cubes this morning, two more after work, plus 2.5 freeze dried black worms. AND one of them was pecking my hand for the first 1/3rd of the water change. How do you eat so much, discus? Forgot to add this pic. The one with the head injury is still doing well, it looks better already, actually.

I am slowly figuring out what sets them flying... it doesn't entirely make sense, but that's fish for ya... I'd kind of like to get some floating plants in their tank, but am (as always) nervous about introducing something that's going to harm them. I have some red root floaters and dwarf water lettuce in another tank (and a boat load of freaking duck weed), but I wonder if there were some floating plants if it would settle down the spooking that happens opening lids. However, it would probably complicate changing water a little bit if they got dense. But, they are a lot better than they were the first couple of weeks. They are fun to watch. They seem to have bone to pick with a different fish every couple of minutes. 😄 And the tail whapping each other. And they're doing some little weird shimmy move that most videos I've seen describe as some sort of courting behavior. But I know that type of stuff starts earlier than most people might realize in most animals. I have seen day old turkey poults strutting and chickens I have hatched are crowing an just a couple weeks old if you know what you listen for.

I think it got spooked and whacked into something. I'm not too worried about it healing, it should do so quickly with the daily big water changes and good food. If I had to guess, it might have happened when I turned the refill pump on. I've been doing that down at the aging barrel in the basement and then doing laundry or other clean-up work down there before I head back up. Sometimes when that turns on it can blast out some water/air and be kind of loud. So I wonder if that wasn't worse than normal last night and made it bang off something. Thankfully it seems pretty superficial. I kind of wonder if there will be a scar, this one might end up with some pretty good street cred out of it. 🤣 Interestingly, I have had discus swim into my gravel vac at least twice. Last night one did (not this injured one), but was too big to get up the tube. Awhile back one did and got kind of wedged in halfway up, was a real pain to get out of the tube and I was really worried it would be injured. I think they're chasing the debris. In any event, I'm going to have to start paying better attention. Seems to happen when I let the vac sit still for too long to start a timer or check the temp or go grab the water conditioners or whatever. @JuanchoHave you noticed or been impressed with discus' ability to swim backwards? I've never seen a fish swim backwards so quickly. It seems like they can do it almost as fast as they can forward. I suppose as they get bigger that might slow them down a bit. But right now they can really scoot around in reverse swiftly (and in control).

I'm not sure what happened here! When I was filling up their tank after water change last night I noticed this. Certainly wasn't there before. Was first to the food this morning so it doesn't seem any worse-for-the-wear. I am, of course, out of suitable salt. I'd bought some kosher salt thinking I could use that, but when I checked the ingredients last night I saw it has yellow prussiate of soda added as an anti-caking agent. Google tells me that's also known as sodium ferrocyanide which was a game scary enough to keep me from adding it. I'm not a chemist, but sodium iron cyanide didn't sound like a great addition. I also have Maldon flaky salt, Redmond real salt, and Himalayan pink salt, but I read that pink salt has some non-zero amount of halide so I decided not to use any of those. The Maldon salt is probably pure, but I decided to wait and get something "known". So I bought a big 40# bag of straight salt (Diamond rock salt) this morning. They happened to have it next to the pump this morning when I was filling up. $8 for 40#. It's amazing how quick they're growing even just seeing pics from about ten days ago. The little turq has grown quite a lot.

Scud, I think, Katie

I lost two sterbai corys right away after I got a group of 8 of them from a LFS. They looked rough when I got them. Lost them during the med trio (about 1 day in and the other day 3 maybe?), but don't think it was the meds fault, as everything else was fine until they showed signed of another infection. I am not a farmer or a professional in any field like this (I'm an electrical engineer and I fancy myself a biology lover), but I've done tropical fish, hactched/raised chickens (both egg layers and broilers), and small business raising/selling honey bees. I genuinely believe that some animals just aren't going to make it and a additive nature of disease, stress, and sometimes meds are too much. There's a difficult balance of waiting long enough to help reduce stress and treating early enough to avoid the disease reaching lethal levels. Death and loss is an unfortunate part of the hobby... but it certainly does stink. I maybe should have been more specific in my earlier post asking if you had an airstone. I've always kept air running in my tanks 24/7. Now it is typically sponge filters with air stones in them, but even 15 years ago in my oscar tanks with two big HOBs I'd still run a 10" air stone curtain thing buried in the substrate (when the oscars allowed them to be buried). Have always thought of it as "cheap insurance" in the event that something goes wrong or some situation that I do not fully understand occurs. Glad to hear they seem to be doing better!

Maybe it's somewhere else... I know corys can breathe from the surface, but do you have an air stone or sponge filter in? Also, you're showing chlorine, did you use dechlorinator?

I just got some red root floaters from California shipped to Iowa and they were in good shape (been below freezing at night still). No insulation or heat pack, just a plastic cup and a cardboard box. I really like how they look. I had some floaters shipped awhile back. A sampler of like 4 or 5 types. All but the duckweed died, which I was going to pitch. I shipped from Texas and went and sat in Los Angeles for a week before coming over to Iowa. The duck weed has multiplied by something like 2000x. I actually like it, though I am not sure I will like it long term. Going to start putting it in the chickens' water. The red root floaters I got in are really cool, some of them had 6" roots on them.

Oh, I was supposed to READ it and not just look at the video? 🙂 Honestly, I scanned the page looking for a price or a "you can buy it here" link and didn't see one so I figured it was something unavailable.

Four in a tank makes me wince, but I've only ever done one because of the notoriety of their aggression. This guy looks a little beat up. @Crayolagirl How big is the quarantine tank these are in?