modified lung

Lol I have no problems naming names. I've only used a product by Pentair myself. A manager at an old job insisted on buying it all the time. It has the wrong bacteria and never worked at all even after using gallons and gallons of it. I actually think using it made things take longer. I know others that have been very successful with Tetra, Fritz, and Dr. Tim's. Dr. Tim is the guy who first tested for what bacteria exactly is in an aquarium. He says his graduate advisor told him he was doing it wrong when he wasn't getting the bacteria that was expected. Tetra pays him to use his formula so those two are actually the same product. I can't think of any other major brands. I wouldn't use it if it didn't specifically say it contains Nitrosospira and/or Nitrospira. Yep. They use the carbon in carbonate and bicarbonate to reproduce. So no KH means no population growth. pH technically doesn't matter much. But with low KH comes low pH, or in other words, pH is a good indirect indicator of KH. Usually KH is too low around pH 6.7 and the bacteria almost slow to a stop. That's why people say pH needs to be above a certain level which is accurate enough. But technically you can get good nitrification down to pH 4 if you constantly microdose bicarbonates. But why would anyone bother doing that?

These are also very good.

Yep, API sells a good one.

Some products are based on outdated science and rarely work, others work much more often. Tetra, Fritz, and Dr. Tims all have the correct bacteria. But either way they don't always work because of lot of different factors but I wouldn't consider trying to be a waste of money. Do you know your water's alkalinity/KH? If it's too low, your bacteria won't grow and your cycle won't complete. It should be above 45 ppm or 3 KH.

You can still add it. The baking soda is to give your KH a quick boost if the crushed coral isn't dissolving fast enough. Or you can use Seachem alkalinity buffer instead which is basically baking soda mixed with a few other helpful things. Remember to add only a tiny bit at a time. Too much at once can swing your pH high very fast.

I wouldn't worry about 0.25 ammonia too much. Ammonia tests have a range of accuracy above 0.25 ppm. That means anything between 0 and 0.25 will look basically the same on the test.

Your bacteria will probably restart when you get your KH back up to at least 3. Add the crushed coral and a very small pinch of baking soda.

I like to cut the back end of a pipette into a spoon and use that to drag things around. The newer the eggs the more elastic and hard to damage they tend to be. When you can see the eyes inside the egg is when I'm more careful.

You may not need to use meth. Fungus is opportunistic and mostly only happens in an overly sterile environment. If you do use meth, do a daily 5 to 10 minute bath instead of having them sit in it until hatch. The possibility of damage depends on the species. Idk about Corys specifically. Sticking to the sides is fine. The most important thing besides flow is that the eggs are not in contact with each other which increases the possiblity of fungus spreading from non-viable to viable eggs. Depends. Better to remove the egg in case it grows fungus and spreads. Here's a pic of some non-viable Medaka eggs I didn't remove that grew fungus. I'm not going to remove it now though because I can see the eggs around it have developed eyes and I think the risk of damaging them in the process is too high. Also eggs that get covered in fungus in the late stage can still hatch. I keep mine in at least a quarter gallon of water at least until the free swimming stage. I put a weeks worth of eggs into each hatching container so sometimes they'll stay in there for a week longer.

Last month or so I started an outdoor 55 gallon barrel half full with greenwater. It's filled with all sorts of protozoans perfect for feeding the fry. Since ricefish are top dwellers I wanted a good way to disperse the greenwater across the top of the water column. So I poked holes near the tops of this container and attaches some floaties. The container is filled with greenwater and placed under a slow flow spray bar. I have a few interesting color mutations already. For all I know these are common but I haven't seen any reference to others also getting these anywhere The first has a translucent, pinkish body. I have two of these, both male. Another has a translucent, white-ish back half that fades into orange. I only have one of these. Some of the Miyukis came out strikingly brighter than the others. Here's a few: I brought the pinks inside for some hot winter breeding action. Since I only have males I brought in a few Miyuki females to cross with them. I'll probably try crossing with a few Yokihis afterward. We'll see what happens. I brought in some Yokihis last a couple weeks ago for winter breeding. It took about a week for them to start after coming in from the cold. In other news I'm doing an insultingly bad unofficial translation of the "Improved Medaka Variety Classification Manual" which I'll post on the forum at some point.

😁 That's what everyone assumed until someone decided to actually look. I've only used one bacteria product from Pentair because my employer at the time kept buying it. The label said it contained Nitrosonomas and Nitrobacter. It didn't work at all. I actually think it might have made things worse. If I were to try anything, it would be Dr Tim's. He was that guy who actually looked at what's was in an aquarium. Otherwise, I would only consider using something that says it has Nitrospira on the label. I hear a lot of positive reviews about Fritz too.

I've found that the bacteria grow or recover from a crash a lot slower if nitrite is above 1 ppm. I always recommend to make sure you stay below that level with water changes. Otherwise, if you're ammonia and nitrite levels stay low enough, it's best to keep all the other parameters as stable as you can and wait.

That's actually been found not to be the case. In aquariums and aquaculture systems we mostly find ammonia-oxidizing archaea and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria from the genus Nitrospira because they do better in the low nitrogen concentrations. There's even some "comammox" species of Nitrospira that can oxidize both ammonia and nitrite. There's over 400 species of nitrifiers most of which have a specific environmental niche. So that fastest way to grow your population is stable parameters. But the more stable the environment, the less your population will be able to handle change. So there's a trade-off between speed and robustness.

If your strips measure "free chlorine", then they're only measuring chlorine and not chloramine. If they measure "total chlorine", then both chlorine and chloramine are being measured together. Some strips have two pads. One for free chlorine and one for total chlorine.

@OnlyGenusCaps Filtration Build (6) Reconfigured using 3" instead of 4" pipe for the main body. Also increased the discharge pipe to 1.5" from 1" (not cut to size yet in the picture). The main body is still the same height so almost the all of it is still submerged in the sump—the water level is still right up to the top. New, much more powerful air pump. I couldn't find an air pump that was fully compatible with my system that wasn't either too small or too large. So I went with this boat live well air pump with gator clips that hooks directly to the battery instead of the solar controller. Idk if that's a bad idea or not. Foam refraction achieved. The color of the discharge water is very different than the rest of the water. When I dumped this water into another bucket of rainwater, it all foamed up again. Must have been some highly concentrated dissolved organic compounds in there. Interestingly the new configuration (which is now much more of a protein skimmer/foam refractionator) no longer collects fine particulates like the airlift skimmer. So now I have a filtration gap between larger solids (removed by the radial flow filter) and dissolved compounds (removed by the foam refractionator). If I want to truly neglect these tanks without consequence like the lazy, good for nothing I strive to be, I will have to fill this gap. So the next idea is to reincorporate the airlift skimmer into a sort of epic duel rabid skimmer filter monstrosity thing. Those of you with week constitutions may need to look away.

Japan Medaka Association http://jma-medaka.jp I'm very slowly trying to translate their classification manual atm.

I ran a study on feeding enriched brine shrimp for some researchers years ago. The fish actually did worse. The whole concept of gut loading their prey with food doesn't really make sense ...at least not in every situation. The gut load may have nutrition but doesn't necessarily have the nutrition the fish needs. Enriching with vitamins specifically formulated for fish does make sense though. If you can get brine shrimp or daphnia or whatever to filter in vitachem with their food, assuming they absorb or hold onto enough of the vitachem in their gut, then I'd think the fish would benefit. But there's still the question of if that's a practical approach. How much vitachem would you have to add to the culture water for the brine shrimp to take in and hold enough to have a positive affect on your fish? We won't know until someone tries. So try it! What are you still sitting there for? Go go go!!

I'm assuming you get them from your LFS? Most CPDs don't seem to handle stressful events like being shipped to your LFS very well. One or two stop eat and waste away, then the rest do the same one at a time. If you can find one, get them from a local breeder.

Where does that black tube in the lower left corner lead?

Ceriodaphnia

Yep, I just use my phone.

This guy: AmScope M150C-I 40X-1000X All-Metal Optical Glass Lenses Cordless LED Student Biological Compound Microscope https://a.co/d/3WGJHDM

Same here. I tried plop and drop after temp acclimate for a year a noticed a lot more long term health problems in my fish. I went back to throwing them in a breeder box which replaces all the water within a half hour.

I was trying to think of ways to adapt this to an aquarium. But it's very dependent on a very narrow water level range. The only reason it works on my outdoor setup is because of the float valve hooked up to the faucet. There'd need to be an auto refill valve or you'd have to pay lots of attention to refilling water loss or make height adjustments every few days. Or there's something I haven't thought of. I'll take some kind of video when I get a chance. I just got in a more powerful air pump to hook up. No one seems to make a battery or solar powered air pump in the "mid-power" range. They're either very small backup pumps or huge pond pumps, so I bought a live-well aerator made to hook up to your boat battery. I'm not sure these are designed for continuous operation so hopefully it lasts. I'm going to size the main body down to 3" pipe. Which reconfiguration should I try? The 4th one is closest to what I already have.

I placed a deli container under the breeding pot to relocate the fry later. The container floated up and destroyed the bubble nest holding the fry. But dad fish relocated the fry so no harm done.