mountaintoppufferkeeper

I have UPS more for cleaning the power wave a bit and giving me hours of internet and its connected cell signal for safety up here. They aren't big enough to provide power delivery long term for me. For tanks I have the portable powerstations jackery 1500 and jackery 200. Heaters can drain a battery fast the draw is not small. I use lots of live plants and one high volume airpump as my primary air and filtration that pump can be plugged into a powerstation and run like normal for a while that way. I use coop air pumps running sponge or box filters in some tanks as my in tank automatic emergency air flow and filtration they automatically kick over to battery power and run air for me even if im not home. My primary heat retention strategy is still the old school method because it works for me : 72hour heat packs activated and taped by edges to the tank front, and tape as my space balalets over the top to make a "heat bubble". That can be refreshed as meeded with new packs and monitored using a wifi temperature probe in the water and under the blanket.

Looking forward to your sucess with those 134s

@Patrick_G same here. This will be the first time I came up with a design and had it turned into reality ....whenever I pick it up

Moved way too many tanks and racks around in preparation for my custom designed puffer breeding tank that I should pick up from the manufacturer this week. This rack replaced a smaller one and was initially supposed to sit against the far wall with 2 40 breeders on it. It ended up with this layout when i wasnt comfortablewith the legs being quite that close to the main water cutoff for the house. Intelifaucet under the single tank rack on the fishroom sink. Currently the grow out for the 5 Tetraodon miurus . It's a bit of a "where's waldo exercise" but all 5 are visible in this photo along with there bags used to hold them for 6 hours of effort moving and setting tanks back up. This heater hasn't yet been upgraded to the coop heater so is still using the inkbird controller as the heater safety. Inkbird set higher than heater range so it in theory cuts off if the heater fails on.

@Leo2o915 I run wifi temperature probes inkbird, grill probes, etc as permanent fishtank monitors, and use either a heater with external controls, like the coop heater has, or run heaters through external controlers like inkbird Temperature Controllers. Those even have wifi and can do alerts and allow for remote monitoring and control. This is the natural pattern of temperature rise and fall over 3 days here with just sunlight heating and overnight cooling in approximately 50 gallons of pond with a cap of live plants to retain some heat. Full disclaimer my air is thun and normally dry so likely doesnt hold heat nearly as well up here at high altitude. My drops and rises are probably a but more drastic here than lower elevations would be. If I did that up here I would expect a similar gradient from pleco heated water temperatures down to mid 70s in room temperature air over probably 12 to 24 hours. There are tons of variables that would make that gradient shorter or longer in a given tank like cover, flow, decor holding and releasing heat, glass vs acrylic tank. etc . With external control of a heater I would just set the temperature for my desired low in the tank and not worry about it then just adjust thst temperature back up when desired. It would be easier on the breeding process for me to not disturb the process messing with a heater in a tank vs pushing a button to adjust temps less invasively

If you have java moss or some nice mulm'y plants I throw that in a breeder box with puffer fry as both cover and some microsopic food sources. I haven't yet worked on breeding schouldenti but I put in vinegar eels as soon as the first one hatches out for the Pao puffer fry then work up to grindal worms, baby brine shrimp, whiteworms, etc as they grow. I feed the smaller sizes of live foods well into the next sized food to cover all the ranges in puffer sizes in the box. An example is I still feed vinegar eels well into baby brine shrimp feeding days to help the slower growers catch up to the larger siblings.

I'm prettymuch in the same boat as everyone else but my biggest one is I keep and try to breed fish for my enjoyment and education first. If I don't love the fish already it is a ton of work; if I do love the fish already it is my enjoyable hobby well worth my time and effort. There is no incentive out there that would be worth my time, effort, and resources to raise, cull, and move on to others any species I wasnt already all in on. These puffer projects would be happening without the internet or outside interest in my fry because they are so much fun for me. The rest is just a bonus. I've tested myself way too many times but am old enough now that I have finally learned the lesson work with fish I am passionate about until I am no longer passionate about it then move on to the next passion project or take a break. I always see the fish I am not interested in to that level as a waste of my time because those fish take away from my true fishroom interests.

@AllFishNoBrakes me either..... Divide is a bit of a drive to a meeting but one of these days ill get up there I'm on it for fish stuff that's pretty much it for me

I've had success on club Facebook pages etc more than emails. Much less responsive via emails. I'd guess that is because more people are admins and can track and respond via social media pages

I haven't but assume it's the same concerns as standard sumps. I have yet to find a negative review on them which is saying something. I sure have thought about it hard though....Their 40 breeder insert was calling me last month. The possibilities intrigue me.

Same

@CJs AquaticsI am a member of the colorado aquarium society and participate in the breeders award program. I even have my breeder certificate. I'd assume that your local club or clubs have the program and some may be open to youtube or similar submissions if you can not get to in person meetings. I would need to change my work schedule and drive a few hours minimum to get to an in person meeting from here. That has not yet happened.

What HAVE you bred? Betta Macrostoma Betta Albimarginata Bolivian rams Xenotoca Doadrioi African butterfly cichlid Crenicichla Regani Characodon Lateralis Crenicichla sp dwarf Orinoco Pelvicachromis subocellatus moanda Jordanella floridae Flagfish Limia Perugia Corydoras sterbai Xiphophorus variatus Hawaii Zoogoneticus tequila Dwarf Mexican Crayfish Cherry shrimp Ramshorn snails Pao cf palustris What are you TIRED of breeding? nothing so far What do you WANT to breed? ....I will at some point breed my groups of Pao baileyi Tetraodon miurus Rhoadsia altipinna Always more Pao cf palustris And if I ever find stock to work with the Carinotetraodon salivator

I can't motivate myself to keep or try and breed some species. Despite my best efforts to convince myself its just not enjoyable. That took me a bit to figure out for myself. If you are a badis keeper I say go for it knowing that you'll have the back end of breeding and raising fish fun as well. Most beeeders I know, which granted isnt that many, enjoy the full process of growing breeding raising sharing to some extent. I would agree with the rest of the forum and say decide what you expect to enjoy first. The process of breeding, raising, culling, keeping and sharing fish, however you choose to do that, is quite a bit of work. If you are considering species that is less common that is often because it is that much harder to raise for any number of reasons. The lack of female badis could be some factor you will discover in your experiences beyond the ones you might expect going in. My personal experience raising a batch or so of pao palustris puffer fry a month is that when fry are present I am generally spending 2 or 3 hours a day of effort in the fishroom and about and hour reviewing video of behaviors and behavioral changes in puffer colonies from that day. That time and effort with the puffers is crazy enjoyment for me ...... for many others that time and effort is probably just crazy 😁.

Yeah if I do an hour of moonlight /nighttime I take sunrise 1 hour later too

Great post @CJs Aquatics . 24 .....I'm looking forward to both of those updates 😀

I use a bit of a moonlight feature on a fluval aquasky light as a part of the normsl light cycle to view behaviors in the tanks. I limit it to about an hour a day and reduce the on time of the full light to offset the moonlight time. It it were me I would try it out and see how I liked it and how it worked for my situation. Moonlight, depending on lightwavelengths/colors used, could do pretty much everything the full light does for algae and plants just at a lower intensity http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3898

Cool. Looking forward to reading about that success. If you haven't checked out planetcatfish that might be worth a review for Rineloricaria sp. (L010A). It seems like 1/2" pvc cut to 6" or so long works, slate caves, ceramic tubes, bamboo tubes all have worked in some situations. Bamboo poles posts etc should be in any home improvement store, craft place, hardware store, plant nursery, online big retailers, even physical stores of walmart probably.

@OnlyGenusCaps lol thanks. The questions were the reason i even thought about a few of those stories it was a fun process to try and get a few in here. Amazing is too generous a description but much appreciated. I just managed to find myself in a unique collection of situations that I was privledged enough to learn from along the way I can't even imagine what the 2nd half of the journey could bring me.

@PineSong yeah the lyric there certainly is a bit different but it can most definitely fit into many situations. Ha I'm honored to be the first rootbeer barrel guy. That's hereditary from my dad for sure. I may have had them sent to me within things while in basic training for the Army. A little taste of home as needed. Oh yeah what made them even more great was not everyone likes them. Very helpful in that situation. I later made my "beer" of choice Guinness when living in barracks with a few hundred of my coworkers. That was because no one would drink it but me Yeah that CO2 deal was crazy but it steered me into doing the projects I do today and whatever fun things I havent even considered yet that I'll be doing in the future.

1.) Favourite fish? Hairy puffer by a mile. Alone or in groups they are like my spirit puffer 😁. That said the Pao cf palustris puffer is nearly tied for favorite after breeding and getting to raise F1 generation puffers to adult hood here. 2.) Least favourite fish? As much as I would prefer it to not be this way All the day sleepers to include most plecos, morymid, and many catfish. I'd rather get to watch the activity when enjoying my tanks than either try and find those species hiding in the tank or watch them when I review a night vision camera. 3.) Favourite fish YouTuber? Id have to give it to @Cory who was really the only youtube channel I watched or participated in for a couple of years at least. The coop youtube helped me find the puffer bug, decide to actually move into groups of fish, get fully into live plants, and due to a mention on an old school livestream a little before that first order in March of 2017 I felt comfortable ordering fish from a couple of online shops. Though I love me some Dans Fish livestreams on Wednesdays 😀 4.) Favourite non-fish YouTuber? FLAIR I enjoy the animals and random daily activities. 5.) Favourite food? Lobster, I grew up in Revere Massachusetts a 1/2 mile from Suffolk Downs Racetrack) and a 1/4 mile from Revere Beach. When I was about 10 we had some divers we knew give us a bag of their lobster quota at the end of a fishing trip. They gave us basically a kitchen trashbag size To take home and cook for my birthday. My dad and I were the only lobster fans in the house so we had a feast of lobster meat that probably could not be matched in modern times it was awesome. 6.) What fish would you like to be the most? Something like a halibut. I'd be living in cold water, I'd rather be cold than hot, be big enough to handle trouble when needed, and no problem blending in and observing if that was the better path. 7.) What was your scariest moment? Ill ammend this one to moments because there are so many really good stories involved that I couldn't pick one I've done a lot of interesting jobs in my life to this point. Im about the niceset most mellow guy there is now with my office work of the past 13 years. I even wear suits pretty often. But for the pure entertainment of my crazy path these are they ones that arguably had scary moments including a. Repossessing vehicles as a higher risk collatoral "repo man". generally not scary and more logistics and analysis than you would think but that company we did primarily the ones that no one else could find or that they deemed too dangerous to attempt. A few times it got a little more interesting that I preferred (You would have to use your imaginations on what that means in this job). I will say one new vehicle that was driven off the dealer lot was never recovered because it was too scary to attempt (even for us) from the people involved. The other kind of scary.... I had to find and secure a 1 ton pickup to my 3/4 ton dually allusion towtruck and drive it down an interstate in high winds at speed. To get a sense of that level of scary you could put your hand out the car window at 70 and try and control your palm while holding it flat to the wind. b.Catching shoplifters as undercover security at a grocery store chain covering a district of half a western state. This job was fun because I made my schedule and covered around 20 stores on a rotational basis. It probably had the most "moments". i. One guy shoplifted 20 boxes worth of a precursor drug that can be turned into meth, got caught by me and then decided to unsuccessfully attempt to stab me with a not yet dispensed drug needle in the security office. ii. A 6'8" guy who stuffed $200 in steaks in his pants was one I got to stop alone. That individual ended up being wanted for a homicide out of another state. I did let the store manager know just before the stop that if he didn't back me up and I survived I would be "really unhappy" with him. He thankfully believed me 😁 iii. My similarly motivated coworker and I worked a store that was far away from the center of the district. 2 individuals grabbed as many boxes worth of a precursor drug as they could. We stopped them bith got them both to the office and while starting to search one he attempted to pull a loaded handgun and shoot us.....also unsuccessfully. Boy was that a shift and a half. That got us job offers from the local police department and a really fun ride along the next week. c. Serving as an airborne qualified infantryman in the Army , the jumping out of an airplane that first time is a bit of a challenge. But that and the standard army stuff post 9/11/01 also came after my experiences noted in 1 and 2. d. My 2nd specialty in the army an interrogator and mid level leader of soldiers, the scariest moment there was, due to that crazy time it was back then, realizing I was working a position that normally would be a 35 year old with 10 more years of experience than I had as 25 year old. I was the pimary planner and lead instructor for training over 150 new soldiers, most of which under the age of 20, how to survive in combat and still successfully perform their missions in a war zone. Everyone came back alive though so that actually turned into a great accomplishment for us all. 8.) What country do you want to visit the most? I have not yet been to Scotland I think that would be the most want. I have visited 45 US states and Puerto Rico at some point in my life. Many for at least few days and some for weeks. I have not yet visited to Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin. I have lived in 10 states Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. I have been outside of the United States a few times visiting the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Dominican Republic, England ,Germany, Iraq, Kuwait, Mexico, and Ukraine 9.) Cats or dogs? Dogs. Allergic to cats but they sure do love me. 10) Describe yourself in 3 words. analytical - decisive - confident I am always analyzing whatever I am on at the time. I am an all in all out kind of person. This is job related, hobby related, knowledge related, life related. I have no trouble being decisive and making calls in fairly high intensity situations with as much info and analysis as time allows. Once a decision is made I do it confidently because in my experiences confidently wrong will beat unconfidently right all day long. I guess that might put my puffer focus into a bit of context now. 11) Pancakes or Waffles? Waffles they hold the maple syrup better 12) What is your favorite song? Nathaniel Rateliff S.O.B. it is a pretty amazing arrangement and lyric. My top tier that are heard most days to give you a sense: electric light orchestra, acdc, iron maiden, greta van fleet, top secret drum corps, flogging molly, dropkick Murphys, Nathaniel Rateliff and the night sweats, and finally the blues Brothers, my dad an I met Matt "Guitar" Murphy, a famous blues musician, on a golf course when I was about 14 many years after appreciating that the cast was nearly all very famous blues artists. 13) What do you dislike most about the aquarium hobby, and why? What I dislike most is that the hobby is not as appreciated as it should be for the power it has to connect and educated others on the possibilities they never considered. Sometimes it is good to push the limits of knowledge a bit further. Aquariums are really an entire world that you can learn something from everyday, teach with everyday, and reinforce methods of learning and growing as a person with everyday. I think its an amazing group of people in the hobby and I am not sure I would have realized it without COOP and the forum. There are people that have now seen one of my tanks who have never seen some of my fish species in a group, how they act at high altitude, or what a little direct sun shining into the tanks at 9100 feet in the woods changes in the fish behaviors. There are also people who will only a tank of mine once and bring it up years later because of how it stuck with them. That ability to share something that I am passionate about changes others for the better in my opinion. In some cases I might have been the first to document a project in the world and share it with everyone I could. I would like the hobby to do that more knowing that anyone could be the inspiration for countless others to attempt amazing projects. If there were more hobbyists keeping and sharing whatever they are passionate about they would certainly inspire someone else and they someone else and on and on. It is amazing that people are taking what I have shared with the palustris deciding to keep them in their homes and building awareness of the species off of my information. I did not even know they existed as a species until I found them for sale one day on a fish web surfing session. 14) What is your favorite TV show? Deadliest catch 15) What is your greatest fear? Worrying too much about the unimportant things. I get too caught up in day to day life at times and I fear not appreciating the journey itself. I try and live life like it's Jiu-jitsu and just be in the moment, be available for the gifts presented to me, and appreciate what comes as I'm moving through the struggle is making me even more prepared for the next one. 16) What is or was your favorite subject in school, and why? Of all the subjects in all the schools I will say the fire science courses and academies were my favorite. I did 2 years grabbed three associstes degrees and completed the structure fire academy through the local community college a few years back. I then did wildand firefighting "red card" resident academy down in souther colorado for a week to get that side down a bit. Those were my choice which made them my favorites and done when I moved to the woods . We have a volunteer fire house well trained, equipped, and staffed but it is about 15 minutes drive to the house and the last 5 miles is a dirt road. I took those classes to better prepare for any emergency out here by actually doing the full fire academy both for wildfire and structure I've got an understanding of of the science involved and actually have a couple of 2.5 gallon fire cans set with supressant gel that would put out a room if needed, wildland tools to cut in a fire break, and technically have the equivalent of a Type 6 wildland engine in and behind my garage with 275 gallons of water in an IBC tote 50 US gallons per minute at a pressure of 100 pounds per square inch. I expect to never need it but if I do it's nice to have it there and practice with it occasionally 17) Do you keep live aquarium plants? If so, what types? I do. Mostly subwassertang, Java moss, Brazilian pennywort, Amazon frogbit, abubias, and duckweed. Subwassertang really loves the puffers and they can't really damage it due to it growing in fairly small individual pieces that loosly interlock. 18) Do you love or hate pest snails? Love them almost as much as the puffers do 19) Do you enjoy gardening? I do not garden up here but I suppose I technically ranch earthworms 20) What do you love most about the aquarium h##obby? The ability to find something new or challenging to enjoy nearly everyday you want to look for it. 21) What was the biggest mistake you've made so far in the hobby, and what has it taught you? I'd say that was running DIY CO2 system. I used the two 2 liter bottle method with baking soda and citric acid. I did not realizing the air valve i was using as a regulator would fail all the way open over night and dump the maximum CO2 possible into my 40 breeder planted tank for 20 bucktooth tetra. I went down in the morning and got the shock of a lifetime when nothing was alive in that tank. The CO2 highly effectively gassed the tank in hours. That experience taught me I didn't need CO2 that much, I should do puffer breeding vs bucktooth species tanks, and that CO2 is amazingly efficient at de-life'ing a tank. 22) Burgers or Pizza? Burgers it's more enjoyable to play with the flavor profiles 23) What is your favorite aquatic animal? Pufferfish for sure there is just so much thinking they do day to day and food item to food item. Their abilities are just fascinating to study. 24) What is your dream tank or something you want to "the soon to arrive acrylic tank "43 gallon breeder" 12 inches high fand divodeable into 4ths for the puffer breeding and raising projects. 25) Favorite candy? At the moment beanboozled jellybeans because we just did them in the office and boy was that a fun morning. I ate them all strsight faced deadpan and enjoyed the highly dramatic reactions to the bad flavors everyone else had. But normally rootbeer barrels. 26) What is your favorite book? I will take this one to the way back machine when Itty bitty mountain top would check out the same book from the elementary school library Fish do the strangest things" the coolest parts were the archer fish and the alligator gar. 27) What other things do you do for fun outside of the hobby? I practice Gracie Jiu-jitsu when I'm not overly broken of a veteran. I do my day job of analyzing and mitigating problems before most people have to deal with them. I forgot a few initially ... I have fun answering as detailed as I can when asked, I am the fantasy hockey league commissoner of a something like ten year old 12 team keeper league during the nhl season. I even won the league for the first time in its existence this past season. Ivre golfed all my life even playing in a few tournaments over the years so try and have fun there, and occasionally I ride my Indian FTR 1200 S motorcycle around when it's not too cold and when I'm not overly broken.

I'm kinda down a niche being very high altitude and mostly puffers but I would also be game

That's awesome

Have you captured a behavior or weird aquarium thing you never expected to in your tank(s)? This is not the greatest quality (from last year) but is probably the first GIF of Pao cf palustris captive spawning. Male Is darker color female lighter green spawning coloration. I didnt even know they changed colors until they started spawning. They look and actually act like completely different fish in this coloration. They can't be the only ( though i am clearly biased) amazing camera captures out there. Who else has something That male in non breeding colors That female in non breeding colors

Essentially what I unintentionally did when a co2 valve failed open overnight. Carbon dioxide rish water. It was very effective against everything in that life lesson