BeeD
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Posts posted by BeeD
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Yea there's something wrong with the chain store guppies. Not sure what the situation is exactly. It wasn't great ten years ago, but it seems much worse now.
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Watched the whole thing. I love it! I feel like you really knew what you wanted, considering you moved the ceiling fan twice. Every tank is just gorgeous, and you're right the fish look incredibly healthy and happy, colors galore.
I've always liked the underwater bamboo look. I think I saw some egg crate or something, was that to keep them from tipping over? That's a great idea.
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On 8/15/2022 at 1:18 PM, Patrick_G said:
😂
How did the fish keeping hobby as a whole end up on the number six anyway?
I don't know how reliable these memories are, but I'm pretty sure I was hearing the pet shop telling my dad that in the 80s, so that's pre-internet. So it must have been the wholesalers or one of the magazines.
I know what you're saying, though. How did they decide on that?
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I've always wondered about this stuff. I had a Serpae tetra colony of 10-12 for years in the same 55 gallon. In the beginning they had German Blue Rams, Otos, and a female Betta. Every morning the Serpaes would school around low in the tank while the rams frolicked and the Betta showed off for me. For the next couple of hours after that I would get distracted from work because the top two or three Serpaes would spar in the middle of the tank, not a lot of nipping most days just posturing and slapping. I don't know if that was over favorable hiding spots, breeding, or if they just need to sort out hierarchy when they feel pressured to school up every day.
I was leaning toward the latter, because eventually it was just them, a school of White Skirts (+1 Glo Tetra), and a couple SAE. They never schooled and rarely sparred. In the end there were three of them left with the Glo Tetra in a retirement home. None of the tetras really interacted at that point. They just kind of hunted through the Anubis jungle on their own, nobody really took over a specific territory.
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Looking great!
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Beautiful fish. Not my wheelhouse at all, but I think there will be some naturally white scales on these. I don't see any obvious ich, pictures don't always do the job. If the white looks milky, that could be a sign of a bacterial or fungal infection. The famed Aquarium CoOp quarantine trio meds wouldn't be a horrible idea here.
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I did have a nerite climb out of a 10 gallon once. Found it on the floor. I guess it didn't like its quarantine tank. I knew it was unlikely to be carrying anything, so into the main tank it went and all was well.
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On 8/2/2022 at 12:40 PM, Flumpweesel said:
I don't know how are coping I have nightmares about being in this situation.
I feel the only practical solution is cull I know how hard you have tried to get new homes and stop production. Evidently there is not much demand in your area. And although it sounds harsh it's better than buying a predator you don't really want then having to keep breeding guppies just to feed it.
I would choose the best males and females in separate tanks.
Maybe see if not feeding the tank at all will get the males to eat some of those tiny fry. But I think it's time to cull the rest.
The females might still drop fry for a few weeks so be ready the smaller you get them the less harsh it will be.
If not you'll have to consider getting a Pike. Or put them outside and pray for heron that like tiny food.
Separating isn't easy either. I have a male 'cull' tank, a female 'cull' tank, and a 'desirables' tank. Problem is, the females in the female cull tank dropped fry immediately, and since it is a larger tank, it has been a nightmare finding juvenile males before they are old enough to have potentially bred. If I were checking it six times a day no problem. I can't.
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It's almost impossible to keep their population in check unless you are actively isolating pregnant females and raising the fry in separate tanks. If you do that, you can mostly manage to get male fry separated before they mature, but there are some sneaky ones. You can try separating males into another tank and lowering the temperature, but you will inevitably reach this point again.
So I guess I would say do nothing. Usually they will reach a point where the population stresses them. The female will delay egg development and become unavailable for breeding. Most will be more inclined to eat fry. The older generations will start to die, but the cycle will start over obviously.
Just a note. When I moved males in an effort to slow down a breeding tank, every female dropped fry. The population in that tank is massive. Like I said, they are damn near impossible to stop.
As for fry predators, it helps a little. I had a 4 inch gold gourami who helped suppress, but fry are pretty shifty. He also seemed to prefer newly hatched snails, which he could fill up on easily.
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On 7/22/2022 at 8:12 AM, jwcarlson said:
I like this forum, but from a mobile standpoint it's a mess. Not sure what's going on with this quote that won't go away.
I finished Nettle & Bone last night, it was a very very good book. I started Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin.
I was about to start Fire & Blood, and then I realized that it's only a first volume of two, and that he hasn't finished the second volume. I about fell out of my chair. I think I'm going to finally sit down and finish all of the Dunk and Egg stuff instead. At the moment all I have is The Hedge Knight.
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A lot of people here are more knowledgeable than me, but in your position I would try to reduce the volume and frequency of water changes, because your tap water is really the only thing holding you back. At a steady 8.2 you will be able to keep most species comfortable. Plants have been the easiest solution for me, Pothos in particular. I use a Pothos + Anubias combo in a tank with similar parameters, and I only do water changes to replenish trace minerals/nutrients. Both plants have also held steady in higher PH.
If you prefer a bare, plant-free, rift lake type aquarium, I think you can still get away with Pothos. There are lots of videos where people use hang on back filters as pothos planters, etc. People use aluminum plants, lucky bamboo, and others. This one seems to be controversial for some reason, but if you hate plants, the next thing I would recommend is anoxic filtration, deep sand or deep gravel, etc.
Good luck!
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I think you're okay. With some of these changes that happened, I'm not surprised that the cycle is still in progress.
You had set up another tank as well, right? How is that one doing? Did that one cycle and stabilize?
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I've had some show up years after the last new plant/animal entered the tank. It coincided with an overfeeding of dried tubifex worms, and then I think the gourami and the serpaes obliterated them. I think I can support what everyone is saying with some anecdotal evidence, they seemed harmless to me.
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I don't know that tanks retain the amount of value we would like them to. I guess most of my used ones turned out to be good deals, though. The only one I probably should have backed away from was the 30g I bought from a local club member. I figured the scale on there was fresh and easily removed. It's like some kind of herculean variant of scale... I'm giving the guy the benefit of the doubt that he was not aware, but yea, wasn't worth what I saved compared to a new setup.
So I guess that's my advice. If it has a lot of scale, save money and buy new. Or wait for them to give up and cut the price in half.
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On 7/22/2022 at 4:57 PM, MommaOlenik said:
The only thing with this is that I’m not seeing ammonia. Or do you mean it could be converting it to ammonium and that’s why I’m showing no ammonia with a ton of nitrite? Or am I missing what you’re saying? I am doing water changes every other day but still using spring water that I’ve tested prior to treating with anything to ensure there’s no ammonia or anything in it. I want to keep with that until I see it has fully cycled to ensure there’s enough bacteria to handle the ammonia in my tap water which can sometimes be at 1 ppm or higher. What do you guys think?
Well I was kind of thinking that the spike seemed a little high. But when your plants died, they stopped soaking up ammonia, and it's possible that it is just from that. If Prime is converting ammonia to ammonium for only 48 hours, that could also explain some of the sudden return of ammonia. Either way, I think once your filtration is finally cycled, you should see stability.
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I would guess normal melting. All of my new anubias had some amount of melt while acclimating. It isn't quite as rough as crypt melt, but it happens. One or two lost portions of every leaf before holding fast. Personally I wouldn't worry unless the rhizome or 'roots' start showing some yellowing or decay.
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Well that thing appears to be very effective.
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So treat this one as more of an inquiry than advice. Broadly asking everyone watching your thread, and hoping something helps you in the end.
I've been trying to read a bit about Prime because I don't use it. It sounds like it detoxifies ammonia by converting it to ammonium, but the effect only lasts for 48 hours? Given how low the PH in your aquarium is, I would guess that a lot of it is still spring water. Could there be some 'detoxified' ammonia from the spring water converting back to the toxic form of ammonia? Or are we well past that point now? Is it actually 48 hours or did the internet lie to me again?
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On 7/18/2022 at 11:51 AM, JettsPapa said:
I see there are quite a few Stephen King fans here. I read Misery decades ago, and while I powered through and finished it, I had no desire to read anything else he wrote. Maybe I need to reconsider. If yes, any suggestions?
I think the classics for me would be The Tommyknockers and Pet Cemetery. I read them a long long time ago, but I would say they read a little differently than some of his other work. I never read Misery, though, so I don't know how they compare in style or pacing.
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I've always had to pull that much by hand. You might be able to adjust your lighting schedule to prevent it from growing back so big. I get a bloom every spring if I'm not careful, just from the increase in daylight intensity/hours through a basement window under a deck.
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133?
133?????
The day Wisconsin sees that temperature is the day I start packing up for my move to Alaska.
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Obviously I'm not there, but it sounds like treated tap water was probably fine. The cause was probably some of the other things mentioned. I've been in a similar situation. Personally whenever I switch water sources for smaller tanks, I just prep a 5 gallon with the new water and change maybe a cup or two a day until it's done. It might be overly cautious, but it works.
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Is it possible for the double dosing QuickStart and Stability creates a situation where the bacteria consume all of the available ammonia, and then the majority of the bacteria starve out, restarting the cycle to day 1?
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NANF from All 50 States
in Photos, Videos & Journals
Posted
There was a decently run PetCo I used to go to. They had a pair of those Bluefins in that big open tank they sell their submersed plants out of. I asked if they were surrenders, but it seems they hitched a ride in on one of the plants. That was the first time I had ever heard of them. Maybe it was the depth and thick vegetation, but I really liked the way they hunted around for food. They seemed to behave very naturally.