mountaintoppufferkeeper

I clearly have it. Replaced a few with 40 breeders today

@CJs Aquatics thanks for the heads up. @Fish guy ty congrats on the puffers. I do normally treat with the trio on arrival and watch.I haven't had a fahaka in a while. Puffer poop is pretty food dependant up here. Lumpy hotdogs of whatever color the food had is normal here. I normally dunk or soak food (snails,krill, worms, etc) in garlic extract and vitachem water mix just to get a little more puffer nutrition in them. If its struggling with the process, Brine shrimp might get the system moving easier and possibly daphnia. My puffers up here have their poop change based off food more than any other species. This is a 1/2" F1 Pao cf palustris, spawned here, who crushed about their weight in whiteworms and daphnia in the past 12 hours. The majority of this poop-pearance is due to the heavy diet of whiteworms and the bit of pink lump is from the daphnia bit passing through. If I were to see consistent white with other foods like ramshorn snails, mts, pond snails, cherry shrimp etc I would treat for parasites but if it were changing based off food I wouldn't be concerned. It's a puffer thing in my limited experience across the colonies of Pao cf palustris, Pao baileyi, and Tetraodon miurus.

Has anyone ever done an acrylic build? Any tips? Any suggestions? I have no experience gluing them but think my build plan will probably work well (until it doesnt) I will practice a bit on thinner material to make a "puffer fry box" on a smaller scale to get the technique down a bit before going for it on the tank material order. The current plan is to have cast cell 3/8" acrylic cut to my exact dimensions and build basically a "43 breeder" tank (or a few) that are 38x23x12 black bottom back and sides clear front panel. Not cheap but a decent upgrade to my rack systems. Acrylic is just easier to move and work with weight wise vs glass for me as a bit of a broken vet. A side benefit is it would not bust a seam since there are no seams to burst in a rare worst case event. The draft draft idea. My top would be 1/4" double wall polycarbonate panels cut to need . Not pictured are acrylic bracing somewhere along the top likely 3" strips at center and both ends (Height shortened to 12" tall since I powerpoint'd this idea) Any response most appreciated

My guess is some swings are always happening as the water supply temps fluctuate ......unless you do the thermostatic valve deal at the sink. That is essentially turning the taps constantly to keep a stable set temperature. Input temperature must vary a bit either from the cold supply cooling as it flows or from the hot side warming more as the water heater fires off to replenish a tank of water. Even if the taps are set it seems plausible that there could be a variation even without another tap opening in the system

I have a AA battery temperature gun that I got off a big box building supply store. I eventually bit the bullet and put in a shop sink with an analog intellifaucet. Our cold is low 40s year round. As a result of that I was getting some temp swings I didn't I Iike if someone was using water in the house while I was filling

Its a whole different and ridiculous feeding response. I'd bet Jabba isn't picky with them. They dance around and keep going until fully consumed. I'd still work in shelled foods i have snails dwarf crayfish and shrimp growing for them as well. Worms are the crowd favorite in the puffer colonies here though

Its a whole different deal with worms. Hairys, palustris, t.miurus all go crazy on them. I raise the worms on spinach etc and rinse them in a container of water with garlic extract and vitachem figure it doesn't hurt Palustris fry 0 hesitation T.miurus not pao but same idea

@nabokovfan87 I haven't for that type of med but I've used the repashy delivery system for some items. @CJs Aquatics id also consider getting the meds in or on nightcrawlers essentially a reactive steak. I've never seen a Pao not crush worms. The movement fires mine off even more than snails. I've also not medicated worms for them before.

It's only a problem if your significant other calls it a syndrome.....otherwise it's a "dispersed fishroom"

I'm pretty much around that bottom right of the 42 degree circle for Colorado on that map @Patrick_G. @Jen Abe I would do the bucket trick and let it sit for a while to get to tank temperature if my issue was too hot. And possibly do a tray of ice cubes in the bucket with an airstone to help speed the temp drop to your needed range. My water is the opposite issue where without the use of a thermostatic faucet I would have difficultly getting it within the ranges I am looking for. 42-45 is about right for our cold temp out of the faucet up here.

@SimmonsSnailsNScalesThese are the first I have heard of doing this behavior; thats what sold me on them. It is more of a guarding of territory and fry in that territory indirectly but the reports are they do not eat the fry either

welcome to the forum from Divide Colorado

Sweet congratulations 🥳

@OnlyGenusCaps @modified lung thanks kindly. I do loose livebearer females quicker than males but it's a few cycles deep before they start slowly dying off and the batches slow until the line ends. Unless I can be super saturated in dissolved oxygen with the live plants (no pearling) and air in the room, the salifert test seems slightly high the was at 75⁰ from the top of the tank at 815 pm mountain time tank light sunsets and slowly fades to off from 830 to 9pm. Looks like it is closer to 8 mg/L than 6 mg/L to me but the link previously posted says im limited to 5.9 mg/L @75⁰ water @ 9100 feet. I imagine that content can swing a bit here as well with the air density and temperature fluctuations throughout the day. Dissolved oxygen test @815pm The room temperature sensor at time of collection. The water in the tank at time of collection for testing. @modified lungI'd take any advice you have on dissolved oxygen meters. I'm interested to see what a more calibrated instrument would say. My assumption is this is related to livebearing processes at altitude because it's more notocable in those species. There are definately losses of gravid females and eventual loss of adults with no production after a few broods. The egg depositors, egg scatterers, and mouthbrooder methods all do pretty well up here. To the point that I think the altitude fires most fish up to spawn regardless of their difficulty at lower altitude. I've got more wild caught puffers producing F1 fry and F2 puffers spawning of than I could have imagined. They produce like I would have expected livebearers to produce. Pao cf palustris F1 fry 30 in the tank day 40 (tonight) F1 palustris born here spawning 9 months old I am certainly making some assumptions based off anecdotal evidence and it could easily be a case of confirmation bias that is bringing me to blame the spawning method and altitude vs any number of other contributing factors that I have yet to notice. To me it seems like the act of carrying the eggs to live birth,at arguably very high altitude, may be shortening the lifespan significantly and some level.of fertility for whatever reason.

@Hobbit sorry on the delay I was positive i replied back then. I did do some additional research on dissolved oxygen at altitude. Based on my limited understanding of Henry's law and using this calculator https://www.waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/dosatcalc.html it seems that up here at 9,137 ' my water has the capacity for 5.92 mg/l dissolved oxygen at 75⁰. At 7,200' that number is 6.40 mg/l and at sea level that is 8.43 mg/l. 7.5% less dissolved oxygen capacity from 7200' and 29.7% less than sea level may just be a little too far to get the fish who live birth young really thriving but I'm still working on breaking the code to get a livebearer really happy up here. All other conditions being equal, I still think altitude may be a contributing factor to the livebearer experiences up here. I do wonder if the limitation on dissolved oxygen is possibly causing changes in the blood of the livebearer , similar to humans, and that in turn causes stress on the female and prevent or reduces the ability carry those young to birth in successive broods. Yes box filters are the green filter here with either airline or an air diffuser pushing bubbles to create the flow. I have had issues with livebearers even in this setup long term. I normally have mixed ratios and cull any that have any visible issues which may weaken the line. This is the typical rack tank where I use the box filters and a barbed fitting on the water supply line to give me some pressure and oxygenate the water. This runs 24x7 for my colony of Scleromystax sp. C112 Baianinho II . A male is on the filter in the clip.

I've done that over mixing in adding flaked oyster shell to repashy for puffers. Found out they were not big fans of flaked shells with repashy like they can be of repashy with flaked shells.

Nice. My mix is usually 2 parts community to 1 part others. That community plus is pretty popular.

Late to the party here but I'm more of a fan of the credit at this point. So much easier. 20% is currently what I shoot for with a store. They should be able to make money on 20%. I look at it as im helping them out by reducing their risk to loss and they are helping me out by taking those hungry mouths off my hands.

Dominant male defending the back right corner from intruders. Fairly certain we have a spawn back there based off his color change and his behavior change to that mouth open teeth showing display. Dominant male in back non dominant male in front. It's a pretty intimidating show with him flying around leading with his teeth. Females have darkened up. Female is on the far left. Caves and wood are primarily to break sight lines and allow for some cover for a few sterbai corydoras

@_Eric_ @Chick-In-Of-TheSea thanks it was a fun time. I though it was neat to share the first purchases on the return to the hobby. I set up in plastic containers from walmart in my room with a cheaper airpump and some light bubbles for circluation. I forgot that even back then I was doing live plants in small containers for water quality and microfoods to help feed the fish fry when they got hatched

2007 ..... doing my wounded warrior appointments while getting set for discharge..... and buying live plants and killie eggs. Wow does time go fast. Funny that the first purchase to get back in the hobby was some live plants. Java moss I believe and Austrolebias nigripinnis. A good stress reliever between life back then.

I came up with my rack systems and the dog pool pond in dreams first. I keep a notepad next to the bed and write whatever i remember down on wakeup. The projects then develop from there

So far ..... I think they are a little too young to produce eggs but they are certainly fans of practicing. I did lay out the growout 50 so there was plant cover blocking the views from each cave. If they don't see an intruder from the cave they aren't too concerned

@Tyler Kaplan Nice. I look to pull some eggs, if I pull any, around 5 days post laying. The male has removed the bad ones and kept nothing but good eggs ready to hatch by then.Its more of a feel for me though; I wait until they are eyed up and looking about right in the cave to siphon out. I only take a portion of the spawn when I take any. That is an adjustment made after a learning experience taking them all once. The male takes that guarding very seriously and when all eggs get removed he goes looking for a thief to dispatch and decides whoever he sees first is the enemy. He was so mad I did an emergency feeding of krill and apologized to him. We have an understanding of he keeps some I take some now but he still gives the COOP airline a run for its money when it's in there by the eggs

This was a first for me. I did the am fry feeding this morning and saw two caves with pairs. Pretty cool to get both pairs going in the same tank at the same time. I have to think this is the first clip of 2 pairs cave spawning simultaneously. Little better as the short.