mountaintoppufferkeeper

Cool. I agree with the rest of the thread. If it were me I would do the drift wood with repashy morning wood or a more vegetable based repashy (solient green or super green) poured over it for those species. If they were carnivorous pleco types I "wood" have suggested a more meaty version of repashy or mixing in other foods to the repashy to accomplish the same idea. I use a mortar and pestle to turn whatever foods I have in the fishroom into a powder for fry. Using this method I have added extreme krill flake, extreme pellets, soldier fly larvae, etc into the repashy mix.

I have used down to an 18x12x9 for a pair. Bigger is better and I would do some sight breaks with plants coconut huts etc. I kept my group of 6 in a 25 ish until the pair formed and spawned on the back side of a coconut hut. The harder part was getting a pair; it would be tough to get a bonded pair from 2 fish. The linked thread has how the male and female have different shaped tubes when conditioned. In my group the females is square while the male is more pointed back : https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/13370-best-ways-to-breed-bolivian-rams/

What species of pleco?

I generally just have a net per tank and let them air dry and do not worry about it. I have used rinse in the hottest water I have and let air dry. I have experimented with the med trio in a higher concentration as a solution in a specimen container since they are around and eventually expire. QT for nets sorta. Let them soak for a while air dry rinse hotest water and air dry.

Im a total hairy puffer guy.....all in. So much so that I have bred my mekong puffer (pao palustris) to learn how to best raise the hopefully future hairy puffer fry. Hairy puffers have rivaled the other species of puffer as the one of if not the most personable for me. My Hairy Puffer colony of 3 adults, which could go violent at some point, has been happily together since 2018. They have been exhibiting spawning behaviors since early this year but have not yet produced eggs or fry. I feed them frozen krill with vitachem, mystery snails, and normally house them with a barb colony to clean up. They generally reduce the population of the Barbs for a few weeks but the population then stabilizes. Snails for my crew are size dependant they do not break the shell they go for the snail meat and pull it out. 77-78 7.0ph 300tds easy green and live plants . Good flow and filtration lots of plants has worked for me. I use a powerhead, a bigger hang on back with just floss and sponge. Water change is 20% every week or two depending on feeding. I mostly just need to remove duckweed. They only eat every 4 days or so. Spawning behavior from 2 of them. 4-5" clay pipe Bigger likely male maybe 3/4 size of likely female who is a broader head shape and was the biggest of the 3 when purchased This is the tour I did of my fishroom with a good portion of the hairy puffer set up I use. Caves sand live plants and whatever flow you have handy. I would probably consider more rocks and taking the coop powerhead and medium sponge filter set up or using 3/4" PVC to put the powerhead on one end and the sponge over the other end to make a constant river flow across the long end of my tank.

Puffer signal recieved 🙂

They do. My first photos of the mekong fry are at 3 days old. I was observing the tank and waiting for the first batch to hatch out and see what the male did with fry if anything; I noticed what I can best describe as a speck of puffer fry swimming around then another then 10 specks of puffer 3 days after the eggs vanished from the cave. The Pao can take live baby brine at 3 days if that helps size wise. I have obtained and now have reliable cultures of whiteworms, daphnia, blackworms, and peanut beetle larvae to go with live brine, "pest" snails, and mystery snails for foods.

Congratulations. It is interesting to see the different puffer breeding behaviors between the cave spawners and the scatterers

I also enjoy that latest kasa update for the timers running off local sunrise and sunset as well. I shoot for that offset anyway where natural sunlight is around when powered lights turn on or off. I figure I'd prefer it vs going total darkness to full light and the sunrise sunset keeps the seasonal variances for them. (Weekend times for the teenager wifi destruct button. Programmed the router so the "guest" network replaced the full internet. The saved password works the same but now that is fully controlled. Highly recommended parental control.)

When I see scuds I take it as an indicator of system heath and maturity. More of a bonus food and clean up crew than an issue for me. Anything with a mouth of sufficient size eats them in my systems.

Apologies for the out of focus Pao palustris spawn #4 eggs. Seems promising to this point. Male is out of frame within his clay cave in spawning and spawn defense reversed colors dark green with light green spots.

The first thing I thought of was I am always looking for fry in my puffer colonys, and from my L169 plecos..... I look everyday. Real answer Besides new puffer species to try observing and possibly run breeding projects with I am always looking for newly available loach species particularly the hillstream species of loaches both flat reticulated, spotted, etc, and elongated species panda,sumo,etc. The tri band sumo loach and the panda loach are both two of my favorite colonies I have now

Very fascinating indeed. I am looking forward to learning more from my colony as it grows.

Agreed even as adults with the less than ideal lighting they enjoy the repashy a bit and of course algae Nice choices that would be a fun tank with the hillstreams and colorful schooling fish.

True and even that is not absolute in the way we expect. Fish need water most of the time. If we count some species you can get annual killifish from a bag of dirt sent through the mail and have to wait months before adding adding water back, lungfish don't have water for long periods and return when the rains do, the many fish, snake heads, climbing perch, walking catfish, etc who can cross from one body of water over land to another body of water and be fine for nearly a week out of water.

What is everyone's favorite loach they have kept, currently keep, or want to keep? How do /will you keep it? My first choice (recency bias) : Tri band sumo loach. I keep a colony of them in a 35 gallon with a coop powerhead sponge filter combo, a sicce with the directional attachment (hillstream level flow). Also used diy slate tile tunnels, coconut huts, and a few plants in easy planters to create lots of sight breaks territories, and cover. Dither fish will be prestilla tetras after they quarantine to encourage more viewing and less warp speed food runs out from cover and back in . My now #2 loach is the dwarf chain loach. My dwarf chain loaches are about perfect for any tank I have (without puffers). They play all the time, eat everything, and have never met a snail they didn't enjoy.

My theory is that daphnia might keep the worms more stable over the winter and hopefully allow me to feed both over the next 6 months of my kind of cold. up here 9100 feet closer than sea level to the sun the packages are normally frozen on arrival due to overnight lows. In better temperatures I would rather go with the regular orders of worms but I figured I'd do the way more work route to try and feed them during the NHL season. My Scleromystax baianinho II C112 go crazy for the blackworms. Other fish are just not as all in as the catfish. I've see a few times when they were up to their eyes in the sand grabbing blackworms from the depths. Happy catfish every time.

Those Eastern Aquatics blackworms are a game changer for me. My Scleromystax Baianinho II C112 in particular will start going crazy when they see me coming with the rinsed blackworms. Even my panda loaches go nuts for them. Excellent food.

It does not seem to be caused directly by the male. The speed of death when it occurs and lack of visible damage to the female almost completely rules him out in my opinion. I would expect to see aggression or at least a little damage if it were the male causing it. No split fins no scratches, nothing visible make me think the female death is possibly a result of spawning at my altitude, in my water, as a colony, etc;or how and what I feed;or the age of the WC adult puffers involved, or somehow that possibly that being a survival strategy of the species. That seems odd but I bought my group online unsexed and it broke down to 1 male and 5 female. They crank out eggs and fry it is every 60 days or so for my group. This is not something I've experienced with any other species before. It has peaked my curiosity enough that I wanted to share and see of anyone may have some insight based off of their experiences with other species.

Currently well into a blackworm colony culture with daphnia which I hope to run from September to May. That covers our winter time frame up here where overnight lows are regularly to single digits and a few times over the years have hit -20 F. Not conducive to successful shipping of living anything. The blackworm culture now in its 2nd month is in an 18x12x9 tank with non-crushed coral chunks for a base and a medium sponge filter. I siphon the bottom every time I feed them off and change 1/2 the water from the tanks above every other day. Food is a repashy block, spirulina tablets, or spirulina powder. I have yet to find the best balance of worms vs filtration and water volume. It has been a challenging and somewhat successful project so far despite that ongoing search for balance. The coral seems to break the worms up decently and effectively replaces the worms I feed off. A few weeks ago I decided to add daphnia from the outdoor pond to this culture before the daphnia freezes solid for the winter. possibly top keep the blackworm culture cleaner by filtering the water a bit more. I started feeding the tank my daphnia food: coop purchased extreme spirulina flake which I mortar and pestle down to powder. The green water is primarily from the spirulina powder. At the moment i would guess 2 lbs of blackworms from 1/2 lb I started it with and around 1000 "Russian red" daphnia from.the initial net full. I Probably will swap sponpge to a box filter to clean the water a bit more but both populations seem happy enough to be reproducing and feeding the fishroom The outdoor daphnia pond has already formed 1/4 inch of ice overnight but is still producing enough to feed the room. I did not expect it to be producing at 40-42 degree water temperature but probably no more than 5 days from it being fully frozen until late spring. Tough food to beat once established. Has anyone done multiple live foods in the same container, tank, etc? What were they and would you recommend running them together?

Pao palustris spawn 3 in the cave. Letting nature take its course on this one and will just move the fry to the breeder boxes once free swimming and visable +/- 3 days from hatching. Spawn 1 : 1 week of heavy courtship abruptly ended by a female body being ejected from the males cave 30 seconds after entering for the last time. (Wyze "Puffer cam" motion capture and playback feature was valuable for figuring this out. No visible damage to body of female which was removed nearly immediately. Fertile eggs fry visible hunting even at small size 14 days later Spawn 2: 6 days of heavy courtship eggs pulled after 2 days once seen -- female did not die and eggs were not fertilized. Spawn 3: 1 week of heavy courtship. At some point that female died and was discovered directly above the entrance to the male's cave. Almost certainly the same process as the first death based on location and lack of visible damage to female. It does seem like whatever happens at the end of spawning the death of the female may be required for viable eggs. I almost view it as a requirement to get the male to fertilize and protect the spawn based off of spawn 2. I am convinced it is not a result of the male doing anything to the female since when documented it happened very quickly and there was no damage to the female. They are built to argue and have plenty of feisty interactions when not breeding and not feeding as a colony. The only deaths are post successful spawning. Anyone heard of this before with other species ? I thought it worth sharing; it is a very interesting pattern developing.

My favorite is there are absolute truths about anything fish related.

My vinegar eels came from aquabid. I would bet your local fish club could also be a source.

Full disclaimer I feed prepared, frozen, grocery store items, repashy, and live foods to keep as much variety as possible and to avoid being stuck if something crashes, goes out of stock, or other issue on the supply side. I can only give you my observations of what live foods I have tried, and how I have tried them but in the event my limited experience helps: Vinegar Eels - a bottle with a neck, water, apple cider vinegar, apple slices. a rubber band and a papertowel. very easy I start my mother culture apple slices the mix of water and vinegar and a starter culture then rubber band a paper towel over the top to allow air exchange but keep out bugs. I also do the same to set up my working culture when i want to feed a push polyfill down the neck of the bottle and fill it with fresh water. eels climb up in n hour or so to get the air exchange and I pippette out the eels from the bottle directly into the tank im feeding them. They seem to last forever with nothing beyond the initial apples. hard to see but they are there once started at least in my cultures. The clear harvest water will get a little wavy for me and thats how i can tell there are eels. Live Baby Brine - excellent when needed - handy to have I have had the most success with the Ziss hatcher and coop eggs personally. I do 80 degrees with a heater in the center and no additional lighting - 2 tablespoons salt 1/2 to 1 tablespoon eggs depending on what is happening in the fishroom. They hatch in 36 hours for me up here Daphnia " Russian Red" - outside in water very little effort to keep- I keep these primarily outside in a 70 quart / 17.5 gallon muck bucket with 2 inches of blasting media on the bottom and floating plants as well as indian almond leaves to rot and provide microscopic organisms to the daphnia. I filled the bucket with water change water initially and occasionally top it off for evaporation if needed. The bucket is located and relocated to receive 1/2 direct sunlight for a few hours per day. There is no heater, no air, no water movement, no water changes, and I feed them 2 tablespoons of powdered spirulina flake every 3 days or so. The water temperature in that bucket often ranges from 42 degrees to 60 degrees in a 24 hour period and I can harvest hundreds of daphnia daily and not make a dent on the population. I also have never seen it crash once established outside. Live Blackworms - own tank feed spirulina flake or wafers regularly and no heater- a relatively new adventure but extremely helpful to nearly all fish and particularly bottom dwellers. I have set them up on a 26x18x9 tank with a sponge filter and a small amount of daphnia from the outdoor bucket. The tank is kept as cool as possible and the water is changed twice per week with water from a cool water tank. I harvest with a turkey baster and then mix the colony up by sucking up worms and shooting them around the tank to break them up into more worms. My as yet unproven theory is the daphnia will keep the water quality in the worm tank that much cleaner by filtering the water column a bit. The worms and the daphnia seem to be thriving both are reactive to light which is something I had not known prior to this experiment. These can get foul smelling fast and I have yet to figure out how to avoid that in my long term set up. One benefit is they will survive in the fish tank until eaten. Depending on what fish you are feeding this could be quite a while until they hunt them down and consume them. Live White Worms - tupperware container, cut a rectangle out of the top add the sheet formed polyfill used to make your own filter. (Not the resin stuff the straight polyester fiber stuff in a roll). The container is filled with coconut fiber"soil" or any other soil you have and kept moist. whole wheat bread smeared with live yogurt and brewers/nutritional yeast sprinkled on top of that yogurt to cover. I place that on top of soil yeast side down and replace every 48 hours. The whiteworms feed on the yeast yogurt and bread this culture doesn't really smell like anything the only catch is to replace the food to avoid any mold etc for my conditions anyway. These take a bit to get going but whiteworms are very popular with all my fish. I believe grindal worms work the same way. I have no experience with grindal worms. Peanut Beatle Larvae - this is also tupperware container, cut a rectangle out of the top add the sheet formed polyfill used to make your own filter. (Not the resin stuff the straight polyester fiber stuff in a roll). I do half with oats and half with cracked unsalted peanuts. Feed them one slice of potato per week and try to keep the moisture content just below that which causes mold to start. If that occurs I try to reduce the humidity. This culture churns out peanut shells full of larvae which drives the fish wild. Hydei flightless fruit flies - this is a commercial supplied culture done in 32 ounce deli containers with ventilated lids that have a fabric on them to allow air exchange. The culture is ready to harvest at 2 weeks through 4 weeks for me. I start new cultures every 2 weeks. Any fish that feeds up top has eaten these flies but they are the larger variety which weighs too much for its wings to function. Butterfly fish really enjoy these as well as betta and goodied like characodon audax. The key is to have minimal floating plants and feed as much as the fish consume otherwise the flies will walk up the sides of the tank and look for an opening. They do occasionally get to the covers of my tanks but fall back into the water due to gravity. Excess fry / culls - a reality of keeping fish is some reproduce in numbers too great to share or too great to keep. In this instance they make for nourishment for larger fish just as in nature. A reality you can do this by leaving fry in a tank also and just let nature take its course. My preference in setups is to have multiple species to encourage stronger pair bonds and to keep the weak or sick fry and in some cases fish out of the population. In my opinion this results in stronger fish long term. Mystery Snails - I keep these primarily for puffer food for both my hairy puffer colony and my mekong river puffer colony. The lay a ridiculous amount of eggs. once the snails are large enough those ambush puffers will eat the snail out of the shell. My puffers will not go through a shell but will go crazy for snail meat the size needs to be large enough for them to accomplish that otherwise they will ignore the snail in my setup until it is big enough for their tastes. Ramshorn Snails and Malaysian trumpet snails - both are food for the dwarf chain loach colony and the ramshorns are also added to tanks where there are assassin snails. They are a live food for a carnivorous snail primarily. That is all the ones I can think of that I use and how I use them when they are in a harvesting cycle.

Yes for a month or so in my set ups.