modified lung

I have 7 or 8 years of data on this. Maybe I'll find and post some of it tomorrow.

Here's a calculator: https://www.indigoinstruments.com/sanitizer-dilution-calculator.php It's in metric but you can use Google to convert. For 'Starting Solution" enter the % on the back of the peroxide bottle. For "Desired ppm", 100 ppm will kill most bacteria in 1 hour, 50 ppm in 8 hours, 5 ppm in 2 or 3 days. For "Desired Final Volume" enter your water volume. There might be some residual peroxide left so I'd through some snails in the water before adding it to the tank to make sure it's safe just in case. An air stone would get rid of that really fast though.

E.coli only affects warm-blooded animals, so your fish won't be hurt. I'd be more worried about you getting exposed through your tank. I don't know how much it would take to get you sick. UV will kill any E.coli in the water column. But I think more E.coli is found settled at the bottom or on suspended particles that might not get sucked through the UV filter. You can pretreat your water in a separate container with hydrogen peroxide and let it sit for a few days. Pre-treating with hydrogen peroxide + UV will definitely kill it all. Then do a good gravel vaccuming and a big water change. If you're interested in that route, I can look up the dosage for you. You can add hydrogen peroxide directly to your tank too but that could be very risky. I don't know how much snails or a Betta can handle and your cycle could reset.

Licorice gourami are expected to go extinct in the next decade. They might not be a bad choice. They need almost straight RO water to breed though.

I vote female.

Fry from the first spawn are about a quarter inch now. They're always at the back of the tank and I can't get a good pic through the blackwater. I've been feeding rotifers, vinegar eels, and ceriodaphnia.

We're on spawn #4 now.

That's true with the line breeding. In the SFBA space is definitely a factor too. Good points. People I talked to thought shallow tubs mean easier egg collection. But I think they just need a better designed egg collector. Ricefish can definitely handle 100°F water at least for a week or so. I've had them survive a max temp of 104°F. This year we had almost a week long heatwave of 110-116°F. I feel like those temps would be pushing it. 116°F was a record high but something like that could be the new normal. I'd rather have a good amount of water to buffer the temps. Right now its all connected with 700 gal total. I have miyukis whites, yohiki oranges, and sansyoku tomeirin tri-colors that have been breeding for a while. The yohikis will go in the pen this week. We'll see how it goes. For other strains, it all depends on what I can get. I know at least one importer that has gotten ricefish from Japan before.

Added more detail the the filter schematic. Blue arrows show the water path. Valves leading to blue pipes are generally open. Valves leading to grey pipe are general closed. Just about all of it can be made from basic plumbing parts. Most of them I might have already. For the surface skimmer I can cut off the bottom part of a 5 gallon bucket. Then insert some 3 or 4 inch pipe through a rubber bulkhead in the center for the downward flow settler. This will probably be a next month project.

Two part post: breeding pens and new filtration ideas. A few months ago I attended a ricefish society meeting near San Francisco. Most people were talking about breeding their ricefish in individual 7 gallon tubs from the dollar store. Personally, I don't really like that idea. First, I don't live in the SF Bay Area. I live in the valley where it gets much hotter. So I don't think would work for me. We recently had a heatwave where and the max temp in my shaded 300 gallon tank hit 93°F. 7 gallon tubs would have cooked the fish alive. Second, it seems the larger the space, the more eggs are produced. In ten gallons of water, each female would have maybe 5 to 10 eggs at a time for me. But in the 300 gallon and the 50 gallons tanks, the egg clusters are twice the width of the female. I'm sure this has something to do with health and welfare. My original plan was to put a cinder block shelf up against the garage which would hold 50 gallon tanks that drained down into the 300 gal tank. There would have been 6 50 gal tanks in total. Each one could have held a different strain of ricefish for breeding with the 300 gal being the grow out and holding tanks. But stupid me, I put the 300 gal tanks 1 inch too close the the garage and I now I can't fit the cinder blocks. Moving the tanks forward would be a lot of work. So new plan ...22 inch breeding pens! . .made with plastic mesh screen/chicken wire, some heavy rubber hose, and zip ties. Each 300 gal tank can hold at least 6 of these. So that's 12 total pens possible. The 50 gal tanks will be used for grow out. The area between the breeding pens and a few 55 gallon barrels van be used for holding. I think I like this plan better. ---------- Filtration With the heatwave there was a lot of plant die back which has filled the tank with a lot of particulates. It might be time to start thinking about filtration. The first post I made in this journal was about considering different types of DIY filters. I rethought this and will be going in a little different direction. It will be a two part filter. For the first part I will be turning the 55 gallon sump into a radial flow filter with an inner surface skimmer. The second part will be a self cleaning bead filter submerged in a 30 gallon sump. Both filters will be experimental. Radial flow filters, which is a type of settling filter, usually have an outer ring surface skimmer which is much larger and more efficient. But because that's not very easy to build with random parts, most DIY radial flow filters just point an 90° elbow upward to drain surface water. Well that's boring. Plus, I like making things difficult on myself and get off on the regret that follows. I have also never seen a DIY bead filter or a submerged self cleaning bead filter located in a sump or anywhere else really. We'll see how that goes. Both of these should be easy enough to build. With the radial flow filter I won't have to deal with cleaning mechanical filtration media at all. I'm sure the bead filter will still occasionally need back flushing but that's easy.

Lol I thought the same thing.

Party's over, dragonflies. I didn't realize there are so many different types of dragonfly nymphs.

It's the chloride actually.

First I want to say that I'm not trying to say you're wrong here. I'm saying you're both right. Whether or not pH shock affects your fish depends on a lot of variables. I've raised millions of fish in my career and I can tell you with 100% certainty that pH shock is real and a quick change of only 1 pH can kill in some situations. So if you swing your pH around and your fish have been fine, then keep doing what you're doing. In my personal situation, my fish have definitely not been fine with quick pH shifts. If someone is unsure, it's best to be cautious which is why avoiding pH shifts is recommended. Lots of people say the pH shifts in nature, planted and CO2 injected tanks, and blackwater tanks prove pH doesn't matter to fish. But the speed of the pH shift is very important. The fact that pH can go from 6.5 to 9.0 over the course of a day in a planted tanks or in natural waters doesn't mean anything when considering rapid pH shifts. Then there's the life history of the fish. Fish raised and have been able to survive (remember, in nature we only see the survivors) in an environment where pH changes are common will be more developmentally adapted to it that fish raised in stable pH environments. Tannin/humic acids from blackwater and the consistently low KH that's often also in planted tanks protect against osmoregulatory disruption and ion loss (which is what rapid pH shifts cause), so pH shifts in these environments have less of an affect. I'm not really sure why but a low KH environments might have something to do with allowing the fish's body to self regulate blood pH more easily (HCO3 in the environment is also absorbed into the body). Many fish will shift their blood pH in the opposite direction to compensate for ion loss. I don't recall the mechanism behind it off hand. Rapid pH shifts downward have actually been found to be more dangerous because the increase in blood pH will also increase blood ammonia levels. So how recently the fish was fed is also a big factor. I personally suspect CO2 or an excess of negative ions in general might also help. Low TDS water also means the affects of rapid pH shifts will be less severe. pH shifts cause ion shifts for many different molecules, especially of metals we generally don't test for, which is a bit stressful and sometimes toxic to fish. Low TDS means fewer ions that can shift are present and less chance of toxic ions forming. But also hard water competes with positive ions meaning less toxic positive ions can enter the fish's body during a pH shift. If you're doing remineralized RO/DI, then you know these aren't in your water and rapid pH shifts are less of a risk. Life history matter again here. The biology of fish raised in soft and low TDS water are accustomed to regulating their ions against the gradient. They'll be far less affected compared to fish of the same species raised in hard or high TDS water. Plus many (if not most) fish from soft acidic environments, like Discus and many other species from the Amazon, have evolved biological defenses against losing ions. Basically they have hyperactive ion receptors so even very rapid pH shifts don't affect them as much if at all. Things get even muddier because mortality from osmoregulatory disruption/ion loss (like rapid pH shifts cause) is known to often not start until 2+ weeks after the event. Even if there's no mortality, long term health is often negatively affected. Most toxicology studies don't wait around to observe and report on many long term affects. And then all of this isn't true for all species of fish. Humic acids don't protect all species of fish from pH swings for example. Did you happen to get your info from aquariumscience.org? I strongly recommend not taking everything on that website too seriously. The author does lots of "experiments" but often doesn't seem to understand that what might have made something true for him does not necessary make it true across the board. When he does, it often has a notable lack of emphasis IMO. The author definitely doesn't understand much of the fish science he cites. I often get the impression he doesn't read much beyond the abstract. Toxicology studies from before the 90s, and especially before the 80s, even on the same species are very inconsistent. Back then they didn't understand the affects that many other water parameters and different fish biologies have on lethality. One of your studies was from 1972 and the "Witschi et. al. 2011" study was originally published in 1979. Those old studies shouldn't be taken as strong evidence for anything concrete. The 70s gave us all sorts of fun science. My favorite is a paper called "the minnow problem" where a fisheries biologist suggested killing all minnows to make room for more game fish. I don't think I have to explain the problem with that here.

It's like 35% hydrogen peroxide though.

Yep, even more interesting, if you keep fluctuating salinity levels over and over, the bacteria adapt and get a little less shocked each time. But it takes about 3 months before they aren't affected at all.

The water at work is extremely hard. If we dump a bunch of hydrogen peroxide or turn on the ozone machine in a tank without fish, the water turns a little pink.

Lol that's exactly what happened to me. The manager was more of an engineer and never bothered learning any of the biology or chemistry behind anything. The last year I was there the chemistry of the incoming water started changing dramatically. The problem was definitely manageable but he refused to change and killed a lot of the fish. I was the only one telling him why fish were dieing and that's when he started trying very hard to get me fired. I found myself being disciplined by HR for things I didn't do so I just quit. If you like podcasts, check out Let's Talk About Sets. It's two intermediate level NYC comedians analyzing comedy. Lots of good stuff on there and the hosts are hilarious. It's the best podcast that exists.

That's weird. The only other thing I can think of is if you have a lot of potassium, manganese, and some kind of oxidizer in the water, potassium permanganate can start forming. But with 0 GH that wouldn't happen.

Here's a good calculator: https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/DirectSaltCalculator.php Or if you like spreadsheets there's a link to one in my signature.

Depends. Salt won't start killing bacteria until about 15 ppt. But the more salt you add at a time the longer the bacteria go into shock. So if you have a few days, you can add it all at once and wait for them to recover. But if you don't have time, I usually do about 0.5 ppt a day without much affect.

The salt just has to be added a little at a time. Then the bacteria slows by 3% for every 1 ppt of salinity.

Yeah, that's why I left my last job. I'll never understand the point behind making everyone else's job miserable. There's some new aquaponics startup in town I might try to get in on. The current job is too hard on the body at times. Have any favorite comedians or bits?

Looks like some kind of ostracod.

pH shifts affect osmoregulation and causes ion loss in fish. Fish from soft acidic environments usually have biological defenses against ion loss. I believe that's where silver dollars and plecos are from so they'll probably be fine either way. Medium to hard water fish like guppies don't have the same defenses so I'd be a little more careful with them. I've seen pH increase of 7.6 to 8.8 over less than an hour kill hundreds of fish from these environments at a time. I used to work with a guy that did this over and over. I've also noticed a very clear positive difference in the long term health of my own fish that were slow acclimated compared to those that weren't. I keep mostly hard water fish though.