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nabokovfan87

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Everything posted by nabokovfan87

  1. nabokovfan87
    I've never had success combating a snail eradication without breaking down the tank completely. I hope that you're able to find a way to treat everything as you need to. Again, I apologize if the post I had earlier didn't make sense. I'm slightly more alert at this point of typing. I don't have any sort of idea what the tank looks like, but I it's pretty common to have to pull plants. I am not saying that you have to or anything like that, but it's probably a lot easier to treat the algae by pulling the plants. If you want to avoid that step then I think you might be able to work on the issue with a bit of a two-pronged attack. A. Snails - Use your copper med, understand you may never be able to keep invertebrates in that tank (snails, shrimp, etc.) on the snail issue. B. Plants - Blackout the tank, balance the nutrients and lighting. Balancing the tank: You want to run a few water tests here and this can be for your own information moving forward or it could be a situation where you actually discover the root cause of the algae. It is pretty likely that the snails going a bit nuts, temperature, and feeding all play a role here, but... Test your water for phosphate, nitrate, ammonia, temperature, GH, KH. Using those variables it can give you an idea of how "out of wack" the tank may or may not be. Once you have that information and we dive into reviewing each result then you would want to do a full tank review. This just means to verify the substrate is ok for the plants, or root tabs are ok, that your dosing regime is acceptable, that your lighting is acceptable, and that your maintenance is acceptable for the plants. A lot of times something like this can be indicative of Old Tank Syndrome and with snails going a bit out of wack over time you could compound those issues as well. The technique for blackout I recommend is going to be one I heard on a livestream from Bentley Pascoe and there's a neat little twist on it. A. Wrap the tank in thick blankets or towels, foil, or whatever you can to block light from all sides and the top of the tank. B. Every day you will want to change 30-50% of your water to try to remove spores from the water column as the algae is killed off. C. Keep doing this for ~7 days and you should see the algae recede or disappear. A lot of times the blackouts method doesn't have that water change mentioned, but I think it's a nice little bit of advice for some of the persistent algae varieties. I can even see something as long as a 10-14 day blackout being effective. Please feel free to share your tank photos, details, and your lighting setup to help out with any algae issues. I hope this helps and is informative!
  2. nabokovfan87
    Considering what I got going on with Riddick (female black cory cull) it's good to hear this. There are some fish, especially deep water species that have some pretty amazing adaptations for fishing during moonlight/dusk/dawn as opposed to during the daytime. I can't recall anything specific on the top of my mind, but it is absolutely a type of adaptation that you're mentioning. There are a few "nature at night" style of shows that give some examples as well. 🙂 There are also great whites recorded as using this ability to excel at hunting far past normal hours due to avoiding human traffic in South Africa. A bit of this is "newly" discovered and it's cool to see little tweaks in animal behavior based on these adaptations and the world around them.
  3. nabokovfan87
    I've seen people use this method for keeping shrimp. There's two main methods.... The goal for shrimp is to have very low PH and so bags of aquasoil are used if the bottom layer of substrate is not sufficient for the tank needs. There is also this method of using an air pump and a holding container to make a type of UGF / sand filter. Ultimately, I think it could work well for you. As always start flow and try to place the bag near flow or at least not in a dead spot. You'd want to try to avoid localized issues.... this is the same thing that people need to do with heaters.
  4. nabokovfan87
    I don't think rams have the mouth shape or the ambition to hunt down a bunch of fish fry. Maybe something like shrimp, but not fish.
  5. nabokovfan87
    It is very common to size them, so to speak and it's 100% about size of the shrimp (age). Amanos can grow pretty quickly, but if you have a concern of them being eaten then you'd want to have a larger size. I would always recommend getting the smallest possible because they are extremely adept at hiding and they will just give you more for the same cost. Small = ~0.5" or so normally medium (i.e. normal) = 0.75-1" large or XL = 1" or bigger Full size they can easily hit 2-3 inches.
  6. nabokovfan87
    Yeah, both work well for a shrimp tank. I meant the corner one though. 🙂 Yeah, I think you sent me photos before and I was saying a bunch of "alright glue this and seal this and then...." comments. I would love to build one of these, honestly. Get a small 1G or 3-5G rimless and toss it in somewhere....
  7. nabokovfan87
    I dig that filter. It works. It's like the "new" UGFs that mark has on his channel, but just s tiny version. It works! 🙂 Interesting.... I wonder if lava rock at the base or other media that might be a bit chonky would help with that. You can always glue a bid stainless steel washer to the base too! Talk about jams! Nice song choice!
  8. nabokovfan87
    Just add one school, give it a week or two, add the rest. It's hard to say specifically without numbers of fish involved, but you seem to be fine. Just be sure to check for disease well on all of the new fish, QT preferred. It sounds like you've already done that.
  9. nabokovfan87
    @OfficialThomas It definitely can matter. You have a pretty good size tank. There is a few things to consider here, but I will try to give you a bit of an overview on my thought process for adding fish. 1. You have a betta in the tank, which just means you want to add fish that the betta will be unlikely to harm. Don't add too few, and make sure they will be ok long term. 2. You want to slowly add the bioload, which just means to make sure you're testing and have some safeguards for the process. (I'll explain more on this below) 3. You want to add one species at a time to allow that species to be able to school and protect itself. This also helps with stress to give the group comfort in numbers. Safeguards: -Moving hardscape and decor resets the boundaries on the tank and forces the species to find new territory. This is important for species that are aggressive or semi-aggressive. -Have a well developed filtration system. This might be age, but this is moreso the type of filtration and having adequate filtration for the FINAL bioload in the tank. (AqAdvisor is a tool you can use to check this as well) -Have something like carbon or stability on hand for emergency use. Aquarium salt can also be used to help with ammonia burns or nitrite issues if you run into a big spike. Let's say you have 3 species to add to this betta tank. 1 school of 10 and 2 other schools of 6-8 fish. I would ensure the filtration is in place for the full capacity of that tank with all of the fish in the tank. I would add the largest school first just to ensure that the betta is used to having companions in the tank. Smaller schools might be at risk for getting attacked easily. You would give yourself a minimum of 2 weeks between adding fish. If possible 3 weeks is better. This gives the filtration time to do it's thing as well as 1-2 water changes in between adding new fish. When you do add in new fish, be sure to test daily for at least 1 week. You want to see ammonia at 0, nitrite at 0. If you do not, then consider the methods above or moving the fish to their old aquarium and reviewing filtration. If you add the fish and right away you see 2.0 ppm of ammonia for an extended period, it likely means you don't have adequate filtration and the tank is not cycled. This is what we want to avoid. If you see a very small ammonia bump and it goes away in 1-2 days, that is fine and tolerable. (0.25 or below being small and tolerable) You can dose in dechlorinator 1x every 24 hours in that instance as an emergency method.
  10. nabokovfan87
    you can check something like MSDS sheets for specific ingredients. If you're trying to eradicate algae + snail then you might be able to use bleach.... It's a bit harsh, but if the tank is empty (no livestock) then it would work. Pull the plants to dip them to treat the algae, then run diluted bleach through the tank / filtration and deep clean everything. Dechlorinator will counteract the bleach as well. You would have to restart your cycle, but it's something people do. Reverse respiration is a thread on the forums here which can be used to treat algae. You can also use a video by Jurijs to use liquid carbon to treat plants (takes 3-5 days) as well as a blackout. Cupramine/copper meds you would use something like cuprisorb to remove it after treatment. It can cause issues moving forward in the tank for shrimp and snails. It's been a known issue, but I can't say for certain cuprisorb will make the tank save for invertebrates in future. I have it on hand, but I have not used it because I have shrimp in all of my tanks. I apologize if that doesn't make sense, slightly drained.
  11. nabokovfan87
    Is the eye thing a bacterial infection or just a camera trickery?
  12. nabokovfan87
    I definitely don't have access to RO. It's just from the hose. I wish I could filter it somehow. KH on the tap is ~4 degrees. GH is anywhere from 4-6 I believe. It could be changing, but I've given up trying to track that. I miss my liquid rock. for reference. used to be a GH of ~25 degrees.
  13. nabokovfan87
    They like snails too! They definitely enjoy their calcium.... I have some mysis I can't use anywhere else in my tanks. I will have to see if there's any left and try it out. I just fed the corydoras some Super-Brine (eh, let's just go with that) and they are being feisty and ignoring me. One of the young ones want's to go snack, but the parents were a bit stressed or something. I checked TDS on the shrimp, better. I checked TDS on the 75G, still too much but it's very likely nothing to do with GH/KH from my testing. I swear I've checked the shop like 50 times and they never have it in stock. 😞
  14. nabokovfan87
    I used to have them, I am not sure what I did with them. 😞 I was looking up a bunch of foods last night. I think I have 2-3 that I really like. Nordic and then Shrimp king might be the main 2. Nordic has some "treats" that I am going to try to get my hands on as well.... eventually. I also found this and might use it as a mix in for repashy batches. There is also a seasonal mulberry leaf version of repashy, which seems great as well. They do also just have mulberry sticks.
  15. nabokovfan87
    I cleaned out the tank today. I did the first deep siphon in what seems like weeks. I was doing them when I needed to to remove any SJ, but this is just the first one since I have tried to acclimate the tank back to normalcy. My GH crept up to around 15 degrees somehow. I also have been a bit less intense when it comes to cleaning the sponge filters. This isn't out of lack of want to clean them, but just out of a lack of need. When I do pull them and clean them they aren't dirty. It is something where I have to keep in mind what the shrimp eat and how the filters themselves behave in this environment. I will end up running more tests here shortly, but today was a bigger step towards getting the parameters back to normal. I have a new food coming as well. I want to see if it is easier for the shrimp to digest and break down. There is common advice that you should feed the shrimp what they can eat in ~2 hours when you do feed them, but what I've been noticing is that the food is so dense and so hard it does not even soak or lose it's shape after 6-10 hours. This isn't the first time I have experienced this from this brand. In past I have had pellets that would float and retain their shape for well over 48 hours. I can't say this is the same sort of issue, but the one I have coming is a lot more natural and a lot better ingredients in my opinion. I am hoping this helps to clean up some shrimp colors, encourage better nutrition, as well as give the tank a bit easier time when I do feed them. I have been on the search for more rili patterns, but time will tell. I think my plan to start the second colony is to simply replace one of the filters in this tank with a fine foam one from hikari and then go ahead and move one from this tank into the other 29G. We will see how it works if/when that time comes. ..... In other news my fish room flashlight exploded on me. As such that is my main tool I have been using when looking for baby shrimp and it's sorely missed. It has served me well, but I plan to replace it with one that is a bit more water resistant. For those that have made it this far, a question if I may. What varieties of repashy have you fed your shrimp and what do you think makes the "most sense" in terms of a diet for the shrimp. I can attach a chart, but the thing they did "best with" in some research studies I have are copepods. I am thinking aufwuchs and plant debris as the main source for my feeding. I make mine with a bit more water and it's easier for them to break down.
  16. nabokovfan87
    I am not sure. Sometimes they can come in on plants and food. They have a specific movement to help indicate if it is a leech or not. It could be something else as well, but that is just what I see at first.
  17. nabokovfan87
    I saw someone who had their own Pea Puffers using shrimplets from neo colony as a food source as well. Might be something to try if you wish wish to keep shrimp. I tried snails with mine as well as bloodworms. I believe what OD is referencing is that the fish need multiple types of nutrients because there is no such thing as a "complete" food. Only certain amino acid chains might be available in one brand and you need another food to complete the nutrition cycle. This was something I recently learned about with this video. @Odd Duck If there is more to it, and I'm sure there is, please feel free to educate us! I've been trying to expand my food offerings to 2-3 different brands in addition to stuff like frozen foods as a result. for Pea Puffers it's a bit more difficult, but hopefully the information is still relevant!
  18. nabokovfan87
    I had my shrimp tank setup with anubias and ferns. They definitely love having them and those low demand plants are really nice to keep nitrates lower than something that requires a lot of light and feedings. That being said one thing I noticed when I added moss was how much the shrimp use it and prefer that as a plant. I would encourage you to try to have moss of some kind in your setup. It's just an easy plant and it works very well with the shrimp. they can graze off it when feeding powdered foods as well, which is a bonus feature. Microsword as a carpet would also work well. There are also certain stems, staurogyne species, or hygrophila species would be where I go to as well. Broader leaved plants that can support the weight of shrimp on them.
  19. nabokovfan87
    For the corydoras, depending on which ones you have, you can easily get them up to about 12 or so. This gives you a bit of wiggle room in the case that you lose any during acclimation. Once you get to a larger group size you should see a bit different behavior from the group. Once mine hit the 12-15 range they were much more outgoing and natural in their behavior. You will get eggs and have some fry, which is often part of the admiration for corydoras. If you want a very minimal group, I would try to keep at least 8 in there. As for species, I would think something like emperor tetra would do well. Smaller fish might become angel food, but bigger bodied tetras should do well with them. If you aren't concerned with the livebearers reproducing or fin nipping I can't see any issues there either. You would want to use some yes. Depending on your nitrate levels you can dial things in. Anubias is pretty forgiving as a plant. The goal being to not have too much light or too many nutrients due to anubias being pretty low demand. Val would be a great plant! Check out micro sword as well.
  20. nabokovfan87
    They can be extremely picky fish. I would get them to eat as much as you can (within reason). Given the size, 3-5 worms would be appropriate. Some worms from different companies come in all different sizes. If you can, hikari is supposed to have the smaller variety that would be a bit easier to consume. I've had issues with my own tanks (and puffers) where they refused to eat them. I am leaning towards size as a main reason, but it's all a guess at this point.
  21. nabokovfan87
  22. nabokovfan87
    Might be a leech.
  23. nabokovfan87
    The only thing I would keep an eye on from the above test is the PH. It shouldn't be a major issue, but if things get a bit too high due to something like Old Tank Syndrome, then you can have the KH increase ---> PH increase and that might end up stressing out the fish. What is really interesting, and something indicative of most Cypranidae species I have kept is that they like oxygenated water. You have all of them hanging out around the airstone specifically as well. Maybe it is a combination of temp, PH, parasites, and general fish behavior all taking a turn here into the issues you're experiencing. If possible you can always add in a second airstone and the fish may not mind that one bit. It will also help with circulation on the right half of the tank.
  24. nabokovfan87
    @spw678 welcome to the forums. Beautiful setup. What temperature is the tank?
  25. nabokovfan87
    Both setups look really nice, wonderful work! I am excited to see how things move forward for you and how the tanks develop. Keep at it, and hopefully a year from now you're amazed at all that's become. 🙂 😂 so true.
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