nabokovfan87

They very well could've gone through the gate, into the tank. We'll see how many I have when they get bigger. That's the worst. Yeah, now that I know the method, I'm going to keep them in the breeder box or something for minimum 6 weeks. At least until they get a decent enough size to handle the tank. When they were in the 75G and had all of my rocks and hides, triple the space, I worried a lot less. At least for now, waiting for all the plants to grow and carpet.... Yeah, have to protect them.

Nicely done! 🙂

Looks like BBA to me as well. If you want to try to resolve it, let's start from the top and go through everything. -Equipment and settings -Dosing and Schedule -Plant issues / Hardscape photos to show if this stuff is elsewhere or other algae issues. Usual causes: Too much light on slow growing plants, nitrate levels, phosphates, heavy metal issues, or equipment failure. The main driving cause for BBA, generally speaking, is going to be a lack of CO2. Given my own experiences with the stuff, there's a few other issues as well.

You would always want to slow acclimate shrimp over a few hours. I use the method above that @Cinnebuns is mentioning. I put them in a tub or container and then double the water volume, sometimes triple. Then dump as much water out again, repeat that process. After that's completed I'll take a light and very closely look for parasites.

Someone gets me a few 10G's and I'll run it. No big deal. 😂 I have had some experience with and without, starting up tanks. My estimation and experience has been that without the bottle you're looking at 3-6 weeks to cycle something. With the bottle you can do it in as little as 7-14 days. No scientific notes, and a trial of one person's experiences, but it's about half the time. Generally speaking, when I see a tank start to go "off" it's one the tools I use to get things back on track. Especially when you start getting that bacterial snot mess.

Next time you're at a target. Peets Italian roast is pretty good. I also get Don francisco's in a variety of things. I just mean, there's small things.... like.... Columbian or Ethiopian coffee beans are probably what you're used to. Compared to something more citrusy and acidic like Costa Rican / South American coffee. Klatch is a local roaster here that I like. They have this one during the holidays and the tasting note is Toffee. Yeah, unsweetened and it tasted like a skor bar. Insanity! But it was one of the more interesting experiences I've had randomly trying something. There's always interesting things at whatever price, whatever shop, whatever place. Sometimes it's all about just having that nudge into "hm, try this and see what you think" and that's one step into better knowing what you like. Seems to be a lot of that in terms of life experiences, fishkeeping, and needing that nudge to try a thing and then having it open a door.

I had the same thought, then I think the bigger fry ate the little fry! Just saying, give them a few days to get fully formed. Very, very sensitive the first week. 100%. See above 🙂

It all depends on methods. I lost 1 in my hatch, but of course not everything hatched. On the second attempt I had about 30 more fry and I ended up with just 1 that I saw after a few days. Either the rest were a snack or jumped the gate into the tank. Time will tell! I have the same one you have. 🙂 The first 2-3 weeks keep in that last gate. Even after a month I had added it back in to make cleaning easier. I pushed all the junk to the right, then siphoned that out without risk of the fry in there. Adding something at the gate, depending on the angle the box sits on your tank, those two things play a role on the water level. Any sort of material at the gate, the output little grid thing, that causes the water to exit a bit slower. If the flow itself is cranked too high, I almost overflowed the box once or twice. 😞

These two. Feed one one day, then the other on the following day. Not at first. No need. After they start to have fins and tails, yeah, you're a lot safer to do something like that.

You're in the right spot! That's pretty epic. Nice work. Consider us all intrigued. Even if it's just once every few weeks, try to take the time to sit and enjoy the tank for 10-15 minutes. It's the type of thing where you will find the serenity in it. That might help, hopefully so, with some of the things you've been going through and finding some zen time to get through the day. I wish for some strength and peace for you. Hoping to see that gigantic tank next post!

Technically it's been sitting for 6 months? It's my first wood working media project. I have to remove the stain and then re-stain the wood accents. I purchased an extra kit. The default ones I have, for whatever reason are super dry and splintering, so either way I need to remove them, sand it, etc. this was just easier. Agreed. Cheap cold brew that tastes decent.... Almost as good as making it out of the "good stuff" from the fancy roasters. LOL.

Bloating that bad is usually not a great sign. I see "enlarged" scales which looks like pineconing to me. Because of the pattern on the fish being pretty dark, maybe it's difficult to tell, but you can see the bloat and that's basically one step away from some pretty severe conditions. Especially given your statement about it's poops, you've been doing the right things by giving it time to flush it's system out. Usually someone would give the fish a 5-7 day break from food and if that doesn't do anything, then you are going to proceed with other methods, bacterial issues, and parasitic internal issues.

Soilent green or community blend. The bottom scratcher is a bit too chunky. Soilent green works really, really well for them. I have my methods in my journal for what I did and notes, but the basics are.... Feed them 2-3x a day, lean towards 3 if you can. (morning, afternoon, and then late night feeding so they can graze overnight). I cleaned the container every 24-48 hours for about 6 weeks. I also recommend adding some moss. They like to lay in it. Make sure the water level isn't too high on the box, keep the last divider in there and try to use something to keep them from going through the gate / overflow. That will raise the water level, but once they get big enough you can remove that and then go ahead and remove the divider.

I would call that abdominal swelling / pineconing. You're likely dealing with a bacterial and / or internal parasite issue. I would treat with kanaplex for dropsy and proceed with treatment for internal parasites. You can stagger these. There's a few things of note, but just a general methodology would be as follows. 1. Initial treatment of kanaplex following the directions on the package. Decide if you want to add in some aquarium salt or continue the epsom salt baths (don't do both). 2. Add an airstone if you dose meds, it helps with oxygenation in the water and general stress. Also consider adding Indian Almond leaves / cattappa leaves. 3. Once that treatment is done you'll likely need to take a break and let the fish rest. This is where you take 3-7 days off and monitor things. You then proceed with a second dose of the bacterial meds prior to dosing something for worms. Notes: Keep in mind that you want to verify the betta is eating food, but food is not great right now given the abdominal issues and swelling. The injury / pressure on the stomach, adding to that pressure is where I would suggest sticking to only spirulina flakes or brine shrimp. One feeding every other day. In terms of your treatment for worms, again, give the fish some time. Start with paracleanse and then keep an eye on the waste. You'll want to run a minimum of 2 full treatments, preferably 3. Space each treatment 7-14 days apart to give the internal parasites time to hatch and or develop to be fought off by the meds. The tank itself that was housing the fish do a very, very good cleaning on the substrate and check for worms on the equipment, glass, and substrate.

Yeah I need one like that for bigger batches. I have one of those cold brew containers but doing that off an espresso grinder is too much static and flecks go everywhere. Sort of like trying to feed the fish and half the food ends up on the lid. 😞 If you ever want some beans to try out or look at would be fun to nudge you towards something. If you've ever heard of James Hoffman he does a "world's largest coffee tasting" and that was super fun. Things like that I really enjoy participating in.

Do any of you have a grinder? I'm working on "modding mine" but I managed to get a hold of a Niche Zero. It's mostly because I appreciate the design. I keep eyeballing the baratza encores. This is mine. Fish drying test station and my coffee stuff. Today we are drinking some....

The chart that Odd_Duck posted is going to be the most thorough. In terms of what specific word is used, not really something to choose between. I think alkalinity makes sense because you're specifically talking about something that is tied to PH. That being said, understanding what each thing is, that's the question, making it easy. The blog article linked is a great resource for that type of information as well.

Yeah. I have the inlet from the pump ---> 3/8" ID with 1/2" OD tubing ---> Fluval rubber fitting and then it's all smashed together with a zip tie. It "works" but if I had some barb fittings it would be a lot better. Same thing with the intake. Zip tie around the pump pipe to hold the intake filter in place from fish bumps.

This is the one I use. ACO has a very similar one. You can see the "needs attention" or "water change" type of warnings on the strip results.

Give the fish a week to recover, then try to introduce her again. She has to basically learn to stand up for herself or be moved. The tankmates in question aren't aggressive (not compared to others) and It might just be over excitement. Sharks test things with their mouths, some fish do too. It happens, but hopefully she learns to handle it and that will reduce the stress. Ease her into the tank, see what happens.

Sicce and marineland have some pretty decent internal pumps. Don't get the Shark ADV but the new one that isn't egg shaped. In terms of internal, I would do an internal sponge filter and then secondarily add a pumphead mod the output with a spraybar. Not easy to do, but it's one of the better internal filters. You could also do this.....

Mine are fed Mopani and Ghostwood 🙂 Repashy is a good one for them too. Soilent green.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. It looks slightly reduced.

In my case it was from plants having issues. I believe the science behind it is that any organics (organic matter breaking down) left in the water will just raise up your phosphate levels). Nerites or Otos or any sort of BN / RL pleco would go to town on that algae. That's the most common type for any fish to graze on because it's so easy for them to do so. I would just add a snail and let them handle it or a baby pleco or something if you have one of those to move. Using the pads outside of a HoB setup isn't great and even when I was running them in mine it wasn't something where I saw it dramatically remove the phosphates. It went from 3.0 down to 2.5 after going through 3 pads (in my case). Most of it is usually just removed with water changes. I think if you reduce the light intensity by 10-15%, you might see this stuff die off naturally also.

Testing results this week PRIOR to changing water. I also decided to run a test comparing what my tap is, just to verify what on earth is going on with the GH dropping off. Testing Results: Black Corydoras (Tap water) Temp - 71.6 (N/A) Phosphate - 2.0 ppm (0 ppm) Nitrite - 0 ppm (0 ppm) Nitrate - 0 ppm (30-35 ppm) GH - 150 ppm (300+ ppm) KH - 70-75 ppm (60 ppm) PH - 7.0-7.2 (6.5-6.8) Chlorine - 0 (0.8) I spent a bit of time watching the fish and just breathing. I don't know how the video came out, but hopefully it's easy to see some of the fry 🙂