mountaintoppufferkeeper

At the very least they are feeding on newly hatched copepods at the moment. That dart up to the left is always fun to capture

I pulled5 spotted congo fry from the first version of my auto egg harvester german breeding ring combo when i was resetting it today. I decided to add in paramecium and a few syringes from the copepod tank to the initial grow out ring i moved them to. Hopefully some of the food in there suits them and they get to growing quickly. There is a selection of snacks to pick from now. The ring that is attached to the harvester. For scale the nylon mesh on the bottom is 153 microns (0.00602 of an inch)...ao we have a ways to go

Ive added 2 new cultures to the fishroom to use along side the 2 quart mason jar cultures of paramecium. The goal is to get the puffer fry to bbs size and move to worms and snails eventually. First add: 20H tank room temperature with a few hours of direct sunlight depending on season. This is for sure seed shrimp and copepods of at least one type. There might be rotifers and moina in here as well. 2nd add Calyciforus pallas is be attempted in multiple 5 gallon buckets, and large mason jars to see which is best. Foods are the chlorella powder and other algaes while i figire out the best method for my setups. The cultures might fail spectacularly at aome point but im enjoying figuring out what is best for my fry up here in the mean time.

I decided to try and capture the 20H miscellaneous micro food cuture in a photo and gif. Seeded from a sponge filter and plants with whatever copepods and potentially rotifers i have in my tanks. Added moina weeks later (which i think failed at leas partially). I keep it about this green by feeding freshwater algae if it gets closer to clear. Light base of crushed coral to buffer. I can see seed shrimp/ostracods, and the copepod cyclopoida. There is all kinds of stuff in the photo. Im not sure what else is in there but seems like puffer fry food to me.

I decided to attempt rotifer culturing. In hopes to have more options of foods for fry. Today started me on my focused rotifer culture path for baby puffer foods. Test 1 is a 5 gallon bucket with chlorella in the water column. I guess ill see un 5 days or so if it works. Took a break from veggies and fed some pellets to the Kamp Krobia. Im curious to see my male to female split ends up. If I cant get a pair from this size group (which arrived as wild caught 1" fry) its not meant to be. We have a ways to go bit a really fun species so far. Mostly puffers here not completely puffers though :)

Id do the low lights low stress and observe personally. Meds can just add to system stress if its not a specific illness they are intended to be treating. Puffers are pretty tough they heal quickly. 4 days is not too long for going off food up here. If otherwise healthy i just keep observing and offering food as normal until they start eating again. I had a fahaka do that running into the glass when surprized years ago. That was followed by acting odd was probably related to "ringing its own bell" with a solid hit. I added plants on the ends and cleared out the middle of any obstructions or plants to identify the limits better similar to flags on an electric fence where its a visual cue of the stop point. Photos or video/gif might be useful in this case as well.

Soil-less worm experiment update. My attempts to culture whiteworms as I do grindal worms has been a decent success. I started with the grindal worm on scotchbrite pads. Current yield after rinse and re-kibble I started trying this same method with the bigger whiteworms months ago. Some on blue pads some on green pads. I rinse the pads and make sure there is a 1/4" of distilled water in the bottom to keep them hydrated during the week. That kibble is replaced every 3 days or so to give a general sense of the worm counts involved. Now im thinking....Could i do this with blackworms, tubifex, etc?

Id vote whitecloud as well. Bonus fish cant beat that

Looking forward to updates hopefully it settles in nicely

Id consider trying a divider in qt and see how it goes in a 29 after quarentine. If that was up here. My dividers are a lighting diffuser from a home improvement store i have hidden behind the bookshelf near the fishrokm. If i need one for a tank I just pull one out and cut the size if divider I need from that sheet. The full disclaimer to my limited experience is that Ive never figured out cories or other bottom dwellers with puffers personally. I also havent tried red eye red tails with any other fish becsuse of my intent to collect eggs once they spawn for me. Im sure its possible to do a red eye with other species without issue given the right individual puffer, cover, and large enough space.My guess is that puffer will just keep checking out cories and everything else on the bottom. he might find them less interesting in a larger space. The cories might also get a bit more aware and avoid the pointy end of him by using plant cover etc.in a larger area like a 29 etc.

I dont worry about the extras personally. The fish in the tank tend to utilize them

@Gannon I am of the try it out and see philosophy in my tanks. Puffers to me are fairly individual fish. I have not found two that have the same personality. Occasionally even an individual puffer will behave drastically different in one tank vs another for me. The give it a shot and have a backup plan has been the best result for me. I have had the most success with fast swimmers that are mid to upper water as puffer tankmates. The variatus species of platies have been most successful in puffer tanks for me and are generally able to self sustain in puffer tanks when i I have had the least success with bottom dwellers. i believe is a function of puffers eventually getting curious and tasting the bottom dweller or establishing a territory which includes the bottom and "encouraging" the intruder to not return. If its quick my species its not normally worth the effort from the puffer up here. If I add a puffer to a tank I try whatever combination I prefer first and observe for a few hours to decide if it is, at least initially, working. I do that knowing the puffer could decide everyone goes at some point in the future with little or no warning. ************************** My Red Eye Red Tailed Puffer Colony -Carinotetraodon irrubesco I have kept my current colony of 2 males 3 females in a heavily planted 40 breeder for a while now while they grow, aclimate to my fishroom conditions and schedules, and prep for breeding. I have not tried tankmates because I intend to collect eggs eventually. They are relatively peaceful for me. I expected the males to fight a bit but they live as a group peacefully for me. These 5 ignore snails for the the most part. They prefer bloodworms, earthworms, chunks of raw frozen shell on shrimp (Seafood dept at grocery store), frozen krill (petstore flat), and rarely frozen clams on the half shell ( generally I online order my frozen foods up here so the standard stuff at a shop). I use vitachem soak and a little garlic guard on foods. I view aggression as a relative term with puffers. There are certainly disagreements in this group of irrubesco. Its not too often of an occurance in the 40 breeder with sight breaks. I believe a dominant male will generally change to that striped camo pattern get a red stripe on their belly to displayan almost mock charge. I do not have that on video yet but they dont really get too crazy its more display than contact. Aggression My opinion is that aggression has been limited in slighrly bigger tanks. Spotted congos are normally known as the peaceful puffer. These two were in a 20 gallon for qt. this is aggression and required a divider. Both puffers would attack the divider in this tank in an effort to kill each other im sure. The below two are the above individuals in a tank with more space its basically a custom short 45 gallon breeder. The colony has 4 adults. 2 males 2 females and its this level of relaxed.

@Fish Folk Id second that but I have never tried tetra so no clue what those eggs look like . @mij They look like puffer eggs to me as well. I do methelyne blue and run a slow air bubble in a heated container ( i float in a tank normally Im a big easy button guy) To my novice eye the circled eggs are the look that have generally developed and hatched for me Pao palustris eggs for comparison clear good white bad I try and move the clear ones to another container and any that look white leave in the first container with mb and see what happens. They should develop and hatch really quick and be very small. Thats a spotted congo fry a few days old up here for a size comparison Breeding indicator visible for a few hours after on females here. @Preston John is the spotted congo expert i ask as well.

Thanks for the puffer guild signal @Beardedbillygoat1975. @Tnt fish I will update this one later tonight with a more in depth version..... my group is in a 40 breeder 2 males 3 females. They are getting a little "chippy" so possibly seasonal. My current understanding is they scatter very small into plants but the males do seem to claim portions of the tank bottom occasionally. Its possible there may be some paternal spawn site defense. I'd say these are full grown i feed earthworms,whiteworms, bloodworms, scuds, frozen clams on half shell, occasional krill, and snails. They arent real big on snail shells though. I have a clip on the forum of spotted congos trying to fight eachother in too small of a tank. There is something to be said for lots of space for puffers. The more space the less aggression for me. Update I checked some refefences on scholar.google.com ..... the Carinotetraodon irrubesco has been spawned in the past using a 5 gallon tank and a male female pair. After one year the spawned scattering 200 eggs were over caves,leaf litter, and plants. no parental care was observed and the fry hatch 3 days later under-developed and took 7 days to begin swimming and feeding. The parents were egg eaters in that setup. The fry were small enough that live rotifers are needed for the first 2 weeks of free swimming. baby brine is too large until around day 15 of swimming. My current plan is to move one male and 2 female into a 20 with subwassertang and see what happens.

Relocated my wild caught Krobia xinguensis grow out colony from a 40 breeder to this 60 breeder to see what happens. The group appears to be a bit male heavy but I think there might be a female or two in the colony. They are around 3" currently and eating anything I put in the tank. The smaller fish are some limia vittata fry I had in there to clean up prior to the krobia moving in

@Lennie much appreciated. Im learning slowly and sharing the adventure on these for sure. @Preston John is who I follow for spotted congo puffer keeping feeding breeding and raising. They are a really fun group up here I look forward to breaking the code on raising them up from eggs. Missed a few eggs it seems 🙂 im fairly confident I got plently of eggs in my collection container /plants based of the clean up along the outside seen above.

Thanks kindly. Im bit better of a paramecium rancher at this point and the worm cultures are in full production with the slightly nicer weather up here now. Hoping for no snow caused power losses from this month but still a chance up here.

Most recent experiment with egg collection..... She doesnt seem to be too bothered by the grab considering the eating here The current process is this container holding all the subwassertand etc. In the tank which i can then remove and replace with new subwassertang. The idea being to try and limit disruption to the colony when getting eggs out. i do have another idea to semi automate the egg retrival amd make this more of a hands off process beginning next month. Dropped the water and plants in a container to hopefully hatch eggs and learn some more up here.

Took untill a water chage day to get it. its basically two subwassertang leaves tall on that 6" edge or so....kinda carpeting All 5 2 males 3 female red eye red tails are not as big of a fan of eating snails as they are of the camera

Thanks @Fish Folk @Landon I just feed as normal an monitor behavior. If the puffer behavior changes then I start considering what is best for the fish. Puffers are very tough in my personal experience and seem to recover from many things. The closest I have had to that photo was in one of my hairy puffer colonys. The swelling was on the bottom right jaw and just appeared one day in 2021 around 3 years after arrival. The growth went away on its own at some point and the colony of 3 is still going strong today. That group has been together since 2018 and this has been the only growth to date in any puffer I have kept so far. There was no change in behavior with that growth and it was more like an abscess. It looked crazy enough that I photographed it. The only thing i adjusted after this was more varied of a diet and more vitachem on snails/ other food items whenever possible. All the puffers including the colony of spotted congos get vitamins one way or another to hopefully keep their diet more balanced and get them all the vitamins and minerals they might need.

It grows somewhat fast in the puffer tanks up here. Its even sort of/ kind of carpeting a bit in the Red Eye Red Tailed Puffer colony.

The flow has caused the subwassertang in the tank into a giant subwassertang ball that slowly rolls down the middle of the 60 breeder back and forth slow and steady with a few dwarf crayfish riding the center. I figured this was worth a share.

What happened recap: My fishroom is 9,100 feet in altitude, 30 minute drive from "town", and a 2 hour round trip from the closest city. I am generally out of range of fishroom assistance. We recieved an early may spring snowstorm up here that dropped a foot of heavy snow and significant wind that knocked down trees and dropped more big branches than ive ever seen down in the past 10 years. We lost lines in multiple circuits that feed our house. It turns out one of the power lines those trees and branches destroyed that we rely on was in difficult terrain and took multiple crews and a helicopter a few days to restore. On the fishroom end we lost power for 52 hours from 909am on May 11th to 1243pm on May 13th. The last 36 hours of the outage having no air running. This outage also fell right before and did not return until we were 36 hours into a family trip. We returned from that trip 6 days after the power came back. I shut down my autofeeders before I left, dosed Fritz ACCR, similar to how i use it when a med may kill beneficial bacteria, to hopefully limit ammonia buildup when everything balances back out. I relied on the wifi timers to start everything going again and my cameras to monitor once it came back on. First the no loss setups: Mekong River Puffer: Pao palustris, (F1 m/f spawning pair ------- 20 gallon high tank // box filter off coop airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 500 Internal Filter // coop 100w heater at 77⁰F // light sand substrate light amounts of subwassertang and brazilian pennywort Hairy Puffer: Pao baileyi ( wild caught colony) three 6 to 8 inch adults------- 75 gallon tank // box filter off larger diaphram airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 900 Internal Filter with venturi running // 300w heater at 77⁰F run through controller // sand substrate heavy subwassertang carpet down low and floating cover of duckweed and brazilian pennywort Spotted Congo Puffer: Tetraodon schoutedeni ( wild caught colony) 4 adults------- "43 breeder" tank // three 6" cube sponge filters off larger diaphram airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 900 Internal Filter // 100w coop heater at 78⁰F run through controller // light sand substrate subwassertang carpet and floating cover of duckweed and brazilian pennywort Red Eye Red Tailed Puffer: Carinotetraodon irrubesco ( wild caught colony) 5 adults 2 male 3 female------ 40 gallon breeder tank // Sicce Shark PRO 700 Internal Filter spraying acfoss surface// 100w coop heater at 78⁰F run through controller // sand substrate heavy subwassertang carpet down low heavy floating cover of duckweed and brazilian pennywort miscslaneous plants in center. Cuban Limia: Limia vittata +/- 200 ------ 40 gallon breeder // box filter off coop airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 700 Internal Filter with venturi // 300w heater at 77⁰F run through controller // sand substrate heavy subwassertang carpet down low and floating cover of duckweed and brazilian pennywort Cuban Limia: Limia vittata +/- 100 ------ 20 gallon high // box filter off coop airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 500 Internal Filter with venturi // 100w cool heater at 77⁰F run through controller // sand substrate floating cover of duckweed and brazilian pennywort Krobia xinguensis (wild caught colony growout) +/- 10 at 3" ----- 40 gallon breeder // box filter off coop airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 700 Internal Filter with venturi // 100w coop heater at 77⁰F run through controller // sand substrate heavy subwassertang carpet down low and floating cover of duckweed and brazilian pennywort The one tank that did not so well: Panaqolus sp. L169 Gold Stripe Panaque (wild caught colony) six adults----- 50 gallon // 2 box filter off coop airpump & Sicce Shark PRO 700 Internal Filter // 300w heater at 79⁰F run through controller // sand substrate light amount of subwassertang down low. In my guesstimation the temperature drop was too fast and knocked out some of my older colony members. I had those since 2018. I lost all the L169, and a group of Atabapo Dwarf Pike that were weeks away from spawning and had males actively courting females. The aftermath..... it wasnt great to deal with after driving home. This tank is clearing up with the population of ramshorns and assassin snails growing quickly off the nutrients in the tank. Slight update for 5/27/23 on this tank. I also had 5 sterbai .... a pair was still in the tank once it "re-cycled" and stabilized. That pair of sterbai corydoras seem to have come out of the experience as well as can be expected. The assassin snail is pointing to a portion of a large amout of sterbai eggs throughout the tank. Current lessons learned: 1. My fish in my setups in my fishroom can handle down to about 68 water temps for 2 days and no feedings for 10 days. (Better than expected on the temperature drops) 2. Live plants and dosing A.C.C.R https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/water-care/products/fritz-a-c-c-r-water-conditioner right before I left probably helped save fish. 3.Temperature drops are likely the biggest risk for me up here. 4. I can never have too much battery backup 5. And probably the biggest takeaway is live plants saved some of my fish by cleaning the water of excess nutrients when air was not available to drive box and sponge filters.

Yes I run live plants and coop battery air pumps they are great

Absolutely ....the spring storms are the most concerning up here (20s for overnight lows until late may). I lose around 10 degrees per 24 hours. Summer storm outages are less concerning( 50s for overnight lows) I plan to update fully by saturday .... I have added a 2nd large battery powerstation backup and multiple solar panel options for recharging each battery station and hopefully assuring i will never lose power again 🙂