Anjum

I finally made the trip to Aquarium Co-Op! They're about an hour from me, I can only get there on the weekend & I'm a homebody 😅 But this was the weekend to make it happen. Of course I had to meet Murphy. He is impressive! I'm not in the market for a Betta right now, but I love them so I had to look. These two were my favorite. And I got my Cories!! A 6 pack of Corydoras paleatus. They're hard to get pics of! I think I'll have better luck once it's dark out.

Well, he's not a very murderous little murder bean, now is he? Hopefully he figures it out!

@eatyourpeas Does your Pea Puffer eat them?

It's a sign!!! I've been considering cories for my 29 & I'm going to the co-op tomorrow!!!! So excite!

The whole Aquarium Co-Op organization is top notch. It's a rare thing these days.

Unrelated, but I love that the signs on the doors are Ladies & Gents 🤗

What I've learned: Feeding season is Breeding season 🤣

@JettsPapa awesome thank you!

Turns out the Co-Op needs snails! So I'll be making my inaugural trip down this weekend (they're about an hour from me, never been there yet). I want to bring them as many as possible so I need to get serious about baiting them so they're easy to gather. A lot of them are really small still, so not easy to hand pick. I have lettuce, kale & cucumber on hand. I can pick up zucchini too. Should I blanch these before putting in the tanks? Any other suggestions for baiting or gathering them?

You're probably right, if you want full lighting on the 75. Could add a 2nd light to make up the difference, but that's probably overly complicated.

One idea: you could take the 3.0 from your 29G & use it to it's full potential on the 75G & get something (less expensive) better suited to the 29G.

The Reverse Respiration thread? It's pinned at the top of the Journals section now.

Same, same. Idk when I'll remember that I don't remember anything 🤪

Thanks @Guppysnail it does! I realize now just how much snails can reproduce with only a little extra food... @RonBFree my tanks are sparkling right now! 😅 I couldn't crush them though... I even feel bad "starving" them out.. I hand picked a bunch out last weekend & put them in these 5 gal buckets outside where I put all my extra duckweed & floating plants. Cuz yeah, I can't just throw those away either 🙄 There's still a lot of snails in the tanks, but a tolerable amount. I'll just have to keep a close eye out for egg masses.

Yeah I do think I'll bait some out, put them in a qt tank or outdoor bucket. I'm also strongly considering pea puffers or chain loaches 😅

@Brandon p I feed once a day. ETA: I think you hit the nail on the head there w/ feeding more than the fish can eat quickly. It's not necessarily the frequency of feeding, it's that I'm feeding enough quantity to reach the snails. I actually thought I should be feeding enough to get food to them. Light bulb moment 😅

Argh. So how do we keep them in check? I want some, but it's gotten excessive. I don't want snails to be the only thing you see when you look at the tank.

@PineSong I watch a lot of the same channels, so the only one I would recommend is The Impatient Gardener.

I don't *think* I overfeed, but maybe I do. I almost never fast the tanks, maybe I should start doing that once a week.

Speakin' my love language now.. Sheriff will be 10 in Sept. IDK where the time goes...

For the last year+, I thought I must be doing something right because my Ramshorn Snail population just stayed in check without me doing anything. In the last couple months though, the population has absolutely exploded. I've started scouring the tanks for egg masses & removing them. The main change I've made is splitting my single 10 gal tank into 3 separate tanks, a 5G, the 10G & a 29G. Same fish, just split into the 3 tanks. Were the snails triggered to breed because of the extra space? Do they naturally breed more in the summer months? Or is this just the nature of exponential growth & they're not actually breeding at an increased rate?

I have ramshorns if you can't find bladders. I live/work in Sultan & Monroe. What kind of puffers do you have? And how many snails do they go through? I was considering them now that my snail population is so robust 😅

Well that's encouraging! Best of luck! They're lucky to have you 🤗

I like the suggestion of pygmy cories, that could be fun in that scape. I like my harlequin rasboras for movement w/out being too busy/frantic. Although in a 10g cube, I'd maybe go smaller, like chili's or cpds, just so you could have a slightly larger school. Btw I think your scape looks great! It'll look quite nice when it's all grown in 🙂

It's a good topic to think about. I have a renewed interest (passion?) for the hobby. I've kept a tank here & there over the years since I was a kid. But it was always just a show piece, never a living ecosystem. I got an impulse Betta a little over a year ago & set up a community 10g. And it stayed like that for a year. But then it started having problems so I went researching & came upon this world of living aquariums. And now something that was just nice to look at has become something I'm fascinated by. And now I have 5 tanks, a 6th on the way & dreams of a really big tank. And I now have interest in breeding 3 different kinds of fish, plus shrimp & micro-fauna. BUT! I know I have limits. I have a very full life, family, full time job, other pets & plans for the hobby farm. I know realistically I can't do it all. So I'm trying to slow it down, not do any more impulse purchases & really evaluate what's important to my enjoyment of the hobby. I think I'll probably settle to fewer, but larger tanks.