jwcarlson

Yep, was in 10 gallon quarantine and then everyone popped over into the 37 gallon and sprouted.

Fins lengthing a lot here the last month.

I bought some snails on EBay from a highly rated seller that sold a lot of them. Figuring that they'd have good packaging/heating included since it was mid-winter. They shipped it snail mail (pun intended). Took like 10 days to get here. I could smell it in the mail box from about eight feet. And even knowing they were all going to be dead, I still opened them up because that seemed like the right thing to do. Toothpaste is a decent way of dealing with it, though I am not convinced that it actually cleans anything off better than anything else. I think it just also masks the smell a little. Bee-Go for pushing bees out of honey supers? Smells like bottled vomit? They also have those stainless "bars of soap". I can't say that I've ever used one.

Appearance. I don't really like how the bare bottom looks because it's kind of reflect-y and I can see the stand through it a bit. And it's dark. So I want to brighten it up a bit. I did have sand in the tank, but that was a bit of a pain, so I sucked it all out.

What's your water's pH straight out of the tap vs in a cup (or some other container) left to age for a day? With an air stone if you can.

I think this is an important point. 0/0/0 readings 🤔

Sunfish are under rated. In college I kept a green sunfish. Converted him over to pellets and he was about as interactive as most cichlids and in general a fun fish to watch. I had him in a 29, which looking with the prism of being 15 years older seems far too small. Will be interesting to see if they'll spawn for you, that would be very cool. And to see the male's breeding colors, of course! 🙂

What water parameters did you check and what were the values? What have you been dosing every day?

I'd hang the filter right on the back. Assuming your 10 gallon had a HOB. I did this when moving from 10 gallon to 37 gallon. Now it's got two HOBs on it. Also moved sponge filter over.

Add the filters from the 10 gallon to the 20. The bacteria is already ready for the bioload. Once you have the new tank set up, just move the filter and fish back over and you'll be set. Instant cycle. The only fish that I'd be worried about losing would be Red Shirt, honestly.

Well, that would make for a very interesting used market for aquariums. Imagine how many impulse buys there would be if you could get a three pack of decent sized tanks for $12! 🙂 Make 10x 5000 packs of guppies by next month.

I dosed Kanaplex in food heavily about 5-6 weeks ago. Rabbit snails and cherry shrimp didn't seem to skip a beat. Shrimp were hatching during that time as well. Six adults survived and probably had 30+ babies in there as well when treatment was over.

I second the hack saw, utility knife might also work. If you go the utility knife route it might help to run it under hot water for a bit to soften it up. A steak knife would probably do it as well, honestly. Anything serrated should be able to handle it. If you feel like spending a while you could probably sand it down. Otherwise just leave it off 🙂

It's a meat grinder. I used to grind our dogs' raw diet, but ending up being money and time ahead buying pre-made. Discus beefheart is like $15-20/lb (maybe more with shipping?) and I'm into this for less than $4/lb. And the kids had a blast helping me clean the hearts. I'm a total discus newbie, but my suggestions would be (if growing out young ones)... paint or otherwise lightly color the bottom, keep the bottom bare, and make it so your water changes are pretty well effortless. I've got a semi-permanent python hookup right next to the tank so I just grab it, start a siphon, and go. Then pump the aged/preheated water back up into the tank. Takes about 30 minutes if just doing a vac/fill. If I'm scrubbing sides and interior surfaces it takes a bit longer. I tend to find some crusty older person and latch onto what they say. It's worked well for me with honey bees, so I figure it'll work out this way as well. I started with sand and after about three water changes I'd completely pulled the plug on that. Way too big of a pain. It's a lot easier to add some of this stuff than it is to take it away after the fact! Good luck when you get them, it took ~2 weeks, but they've started to win me over. 😄 Make a thread!

It looks like he had a salad for lunch. Or at least threw one back at the waiter. 😄

I think a "creek" type longer tank with high flow would be something cool to do. I'd like to do it someday, with natives if I could. But sometimes the temperature requirements for fish like that are complicated (would need a chiller). But I'm sure there are plenty of tropical creek fish that would be neat too.

Forgot finished product:

@Torrey Yep, they're getting pretty used to my hand. Now they're begging non-stop when I walk to/past the tank. If I put my hand in they're swimming into it and pecking at it. Didn't take them too long to learn hand = food. I hand transferred them when they got here and am going to try to catch them by hand when I empty the tank here... in a few days. Planning on painting the bottom from the outside and changing the background to blue from black. I think I could do the back (window film) with fish in the tank, but it will be easier to do it when I'm painting the bottom. @HH Morant Yes and no. Yes for grow out which is at least a year. I understand that I will not do 365 water changes the first year, there will be a vacation or weekend trip for sure. I'll have to tackle that when we get there. My understanding is that leaving them without food for a week w/o water changes isn't some sort of death sentence or massive issue. I could see trying to get someone to come do a water change mid-week, but honestly it's probably not necessary. After grow out, I'm not sure of the plan. This might sound absolutely stupid, but I could see me getting them to adulthood and giving all but maybe six away and then converting into a community tank. Possibly planted. Haven't fully decided. At this point I just want to grow them out and see how good I do at it. It could also go the way of enjoying the growout enough to sell/give away the adults and restart with the new batch. Not really sure what to expect. They're certainly growing on me. Processed about half of this 60# box of beef hearts, double fine ground, and frozen into sheets. Then take the bags and cut them into cubes for use as needed. Here's a video my daughter took. 😄

This is hardly scientific, but I moved a course sponge filter over to my 75 to try to kick off the cycling about a month ago. Little did I know that there were about eight shrimplets in the filter. I was dinking around with putting ammonia in and didn't realize that nitrites would stall a cycle. I had it at ~85 degrees like 4 ppm ammonia and deep, offscale nitrites and nitrates when I found the shrimp. I think one died, but the rest of them I netted out and they seem no worse for the wear now. They were in that toxic bath for about a week and I felt pretty bad about it. Is that bladder snail in the first pic supposed to be in there? 🙂

I do not intend to update this often... then interesting stuff happens. For awhile I was pretty bummed thinking that maybe discus were just going to be standoff-ish and too skittish for my liking... and realizing it's still very very early. But they seem to have settled in and are much MUCH more tolerant, feeding while the kids jut in-out of view and the dogs milling around trying to get pets while I'm watching the fish. They tolerate my nightly water changes which usually mean I'm knocking over driftwood and banging stuff around. Last night I slurped up the rest of the sand/pebbles, there's probably still some left, but it should slowly work its way out in water changes. I do not like the reflection, so I'm going to empty it this weekend and paint the bottom (outside) with some sand textured spray paint stuff. And probably change the background to blue to see if that effects the peppering. I don't really care about the peppering... but I'm a tinker-er and I might as well tinker, I guess. Also hoping to put the driftwood on small tile bases so it's not so easy to knock them over. Anyway, this morning I was working putting in their worm cubes and two of them came zipping straight over to my hand and started eating the cube out of my hand and pretty soon they'd all joined in and my hand was getting mauled by a bunch of little fish fins. I do want them to eventually get used to eating out of my hand because I *think* that will better allow me to feed them flake, so I was hoping to start working that direction this weekend actually, and then they cut right to the chase this morning. The flake patties I made are just too friable. They work great for the smaller community tank/fish, though. A few bites from the discus and it's just a cloud of mess that doesn't really settle so it's tough to clean. I also have competition as the discus' biggest fan. (pic from last night before tank cleaning, they're messy little things!) Pounce really likes watching the fish. Thankfully he is too old to get up on the tank, or at least he's too old (14 now, I think?) to just hop up there. And he hasn't tried using the bookshelf as a ladder yet, though I'm sure at some point he might. I have water changing plumbing coming up just to the right of the tank and during every water change he stands at where the clear tube goes into the wall and watching/bats at the water and bubbles as they go zipping through the tube. And then comes back when I'm pumping the aged water back up and into the tank.

@Minanora did she drop a few extra eggs this batch? 🙂 She looks massive! As long as they have somewhere to hide they will probably be fine. They really seem to like the little rock pile and folded indian almond leaves in our 37. Shrimplets everywhere once they hit about 1/2 adult size they seem to get more brave.

Audio books count for sure 🙂 I want to read Disc World someday, I actually own two of the books... Where do you suggest starting? The vast majority of my reading is physical copy, but I do try to listen to some audio books while walking the dogs. I can't find my bluetooth ear buds now, but if I could I would be listening every night doing my discus water change. I greatly enjoyed "re-reading" The Dark Tower Series last year in audio format. Was a good way of revisiting the series for me, which I've re-read quite a bit over the years.

There's an idea, if you've got an old power head you might be able to use the guard thing that pops off to fence the Otos out. Any restriction of the tube is likely to cause some air backing up and then *glugging* out. So the best bet might be what you already did. They can't get down into the filter itself, though? Through those openings?

Did they need Endlers?

You redose the whole amount after each water change. And, like they say, better with bigger changes (think higher quality water + meds).