Tazalanche

Hello all. My apologies for not posting when I finally joined a couple months ago, after lurking for ages. I've been on other aquarium related forums for nearly a decade, but was getting tired of the "same 'ol, same 'ol", plus so many of them now have very little traffic. Then I found this one, where things are still pretty active & I appreciate the business philosophy of Cory & how he wants to help the hobby, so here I am. As stated in the title, I'm in northern Middle Tennessee. I've been in the hobby off & on since 1994, but fully active since 2012. I suffer from multi-tank syndrome & can't seem to deal with less than 2 aquariums at any given time. From about 2013-2018, we bred various fish, ranging from discus, angelfish, sterbai corydoras, ancistrus (marbled, with albino & longfin traits), endlers, guppies, assassin snails, & neocaridinia shrimp for various LFS in our region. Since my wife & I both have full time careers, it became too much effort when it basically only paid for itself. Because of that, we started shutting everything down to just what we wanted to enjoy that were easy to maintain & care for. When we made that decision, I think we had 305 gallons worth of aquariums that were being used for breeding. Since our move in September 2021, I've managed to keep it down to the two aquariums listed below, but have another dozen in storage... just in case. 😇 I am currently running a 55 gallon "low tech" planted "nano" aquarium that contains neocaridinia shrimp, nerite snails, pygmy corydoras, celestial pearl danios, emerald dwarf rasboras & chili rasboras. I'm also running a 135 gallon "high tech" planted aquarium that contains assassin snails, cardinal tetras, congo tetras, sterbai corydoras, kubotai loaches, various types of ancistrus (longfin, albino &/or blue-eyed lemons), some rams (2 German Blue Rams & 2 Electric Blue Rams) & our old striped Raphael catfish pair. I say "old" because the female is 18-20 years old & the male is 11-13 years old. We inherited them from 2 different former fishkeepers that were shutting everything down. We got the female about 9 years ago & the male about 7 years ago. This is my current setup, from late April. It's mostly the same, but without the hornwort. The shedding was just too annoying & reminded me why I stopped using it many years ago. I still need to finish cleaning up the appearance of the wiring & get more automation going on them. Maybe even running some waterchange plumbing to the bathroom that is on the other side of the wall behind the 135. Right now it's a 75 foot hose attached to a python style setup.

Welcome @John Henry! I'm about 90 minutes northeast of Nashville & have also intermittently been into the hobby of freshwater aquatics since 1994. If you need any info or assistance, please feel free to reach out. P.S.: I just realized I never posted a "hello" in here when I stopped lurking & joined. Oops. 😁

My main aquarium contains assassin snails, cardinal tetras, Congo tetras, sterbai corydoras, kubotai loaches, ancistrus & our old striped Raphael catfish pair. I've tried cubes & slivers of igapo explorer, morning wood & mixing the two, but they just don't seem to like it. Maybe next time I'll try the stick dip method & see if they'll be more interested if it is at the middle of the water column.

I know this is an older thread, but since it's back on the front page of this subforum, I thought I'd post my thoughts too. While there might be a little loss immediately after the shrimp hatch, I'd say it is a very low risk. I have a 55 gallon planted aquarium with 8 nerite snails, 12 pygmy corydoras, 40 celestial pearl danios, up to 16 emerald dwarf rasboras ( I never can find them all) & 45 chili rasboras. In April I added 26 neocaridinia shrimp. It's been less than 2 months & the colony is up to at least 50 now. If I'm having any baby shrimp losses, the pygmy corydoras are the lowest ranked critters on that stock list that I would blame.

About once per month, I hatch a maximum of 1/2 a scoop of the Aquarium Co-op brine shrimp. When draining from the Ziss hatchery, I strain through a fry net, with everything else ending up in a large bowl. Once the fry net is about half full, I remove the net from the stream & let whatever's left go into the bowl too (excluding the cysts). The half full fry net is emptied into a 55 gallon planted aquarium that contains neocaridinia shrimp, nerite snails, pygmy corydoras, celestial pearl danios, emerald dwarf rasboras & chili rasboras. The bowl of water & "everything but the cysts" is dumped into a 135 gallon planted aquarium that contains assassin snails, cardinal tetras, Congo tetras, sterbai corydoras, kubotai loaches, ancistrus & our old striped Raphael catfish pair. It usually gets a 25% water change the next day (weekly schedule because the ancistrus & catfish can be messy), so I figure the extra minerals will give the plants a little boost over the CO2 & fertilizer they already get.

With crayfish in the aquarium, I'd recommend fast, inexpensive cooler water fish, such as zebra danios or endlers. Some crayfish can be very opportunistic when a sleeping fish is nearby.

Over the years, I have had both in aquariums with neocaridina shrimp, celestial pearl danios, chili rasboras & other nano fish. I tend to have them in separate schools of a minimum of a dozen each, in aquariums ranging from 20L, 30 & 55 gallons. I don't recommend both in the same aquarium. They will try to cross breed. The corydoras hastatus (tail spot) act more like their larger "cory cousins", staying more on the bottom. I have not had any of these in about 3 years. The corydoras pygmaeus (striped) will often swim around the middle of the water column, like "normal fish", & regularly hang out on leaves or branches in the lower half of the aquarium. These are my favorite of the dwarf cories. I have a school of them in a 55 gallon aquarium right now.

I can only pick 3? That's too hard. 😁 For standard sized schooling fish, I guess I'd pick sterbai corydoras, cardinal tetras & congo tetras . (If cardinals are not available for some reason, I'd pick rummynose tetras) For nano fish, I'd pick chili rasboras, pygmy corydoras & celestial pearl danios. For larger fish, I'd pick bristlenose plecs, kubotai loaches & raphael catfish. Disclaimer: I currently have all of those, except for the rummies.

Aquarium Knoxville is a terrible name for a fish store, but it is really nice & clean every time I've been there over the past decade. However, I won't drive the 3 hours each way that it takes me to go there. If you're into outdoor ponds, I feel they're the best in the state for their variety of pond plants and "outdoor fish" at a LFS. When we go to Aquatic Critter, we are coming from the east, so we take I-40 to I-24 to Haywood, to Nolensville. Traffic is usually not an issue, as long as it's not weekday rush hour. They no longer do special orders, but they will keep an eye out for uncommon stuff you mention & post it on their website when they get it in. That's my only disappointment with them, because I used to special order almost everything I got from them. Since I QT everything I get, no matter the source, the store's QT policy did not bother me, because they had a good live guarantee. That being said their QT policy seems to have gone back & forth over the past few decades. For example, a couple months ago, my wife took the day off and drove the 90 minutes each way to pick up some stuff their website showed as a new arrival, but they would not sell to her because everything that arrived that day was in QT. Exotic Tropicals in Cookeville is small, but pretty good too. The best thing about them is that they do their own QT before putting anything on the sales floor. They post their "just released from QT" list on FB.

Excellent! I'm glad you liked it @Master Photographer ! It's 90 minutes each way for us, so we usually make a day of it.

I've been playing off & on since it was released in 2016. I try to get on daily & share gifts whenever I get them. 9352 1400 0082

Congratulations!

African cichlids usually have a fairly high pH requirement, compared to South American fish. I've only kept African cichlids once. They were so territorial that it wasn't enjoyable for me, so I sold them. From what I recall, cyprichromis or julidochromis would be okay, but you'd probably get better information from google than I could provide about African cichlids. Good luck!

Also look VERY closely at the mounts for the metal clips that keep the two halves together. Those are the weakest link for an Eheim canister filter. If one breaks, you're usually ok, as long as it has a good o-ring. If 2 or more are broken, I would not recommend using it. Good luck with the new (to you) filter! I've been using Eheims for many years.

I'm not of much help with the betta part of your post, because I was always concerned about potential aggression levels from them in my community aquariums. If it makes a difference in your plans, I've kept chili rasboras for about 6 years, in 4 different aquariums, and they rarely go down to the middle of the water column. They're usually near the top. However, my celestial pearl danios & emerald dwarf rasboras tend to hang out in the middle & bottom of the water column.

I did not want to get into the additional expenses of supplies and time to sell online, so I can't help much with that. Starting fishkeeping with the intention of profit is not the best foundation for success. I started keeping fish in the early 1990's & it wasn't until the mid-2000's that I considered expanding to the point of breeding for profit. That was starting with a minimum of 6 aquariums, totaling 305 gallons, with an additional 2 dozen aquariums that were 15-20 gallons each, for quarantine and fry.

Raising fish for profit takes a lot of effort & experience. Your results may vary from mine, & I hope you do better than I did. I did it for over a decade (as a hobby, because I had a full time job) and the best I did was to get the fish to pay for their own food & upkeep (replacement/upgraded filters & other equipment). Unless you plan to sell online, the odds are pretty low that you are going to get anywhere near $5 per fish for any class of endlers. The odds are higher that an LSF will offer you $1 in store credit. Livebearers can be hard to sell, due to how easy they are to breed. Most stores know that if you don't take their offer, someone else will come along in a few weeks with more. When I supplied for multiple stores in my region, only two would take class N black bar endlers or class K tiger endlers from me & that was only because I was established with them for providing discus, angelfish, uncommon ancistrus, assassin snails, etc.

Nice. By that time, I will probably have gone through 3-6 of the el cheapo 25 watt heaters I'm currently using & will welcome something dependable.

I would definitely be interested in a 25 watt version that was designed for the Ziss brine shrimp hatchery, but also happened to work well in nano tanks.

For anyone else that might have questions about the video, here's the blog about the same subject (& more): https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/quarantine-tank It specifically answered my concern on 5C:

For a little background, I've taken care of fish off & on since the early 1990's, but didn't get into it seriously until 2012, when we started breeding discus & a few other types of fish, with mostly planted tanks. I moved September 2021, 5 miles closer to our local water treatment plant, so we're literally just 5 miles closer, on the same main water line. Since we stopped breeding in 2019, the move was the perfect excuse to downsize to "easier setups". When we set 2 aquariums back up at the new house, we did one high tech & one low tech. Here's what currently bugs me: 1) At my previous house, I knew exactly which common plants would thrive & how to take care of them. Of all things to have an issue with, neither setup likes anubias. I think I received an order with "rhizome rot", the seller replaced it, but those died off soon too. I've lost 9 anubias since the beginning of the year. 2) Even with upgrading from a cheap sera CO2 reactor to a serges CO2 reactor & doing the EI dosing method, I just cant get my plants in the high tech tank to pearl anymore.

YES! I've always loved shrimp & nano fish, but refuse to put them in anything smaller than a 20 long. We currently have chili rasboras, CPDs, pygmy cories , threadfin rainbowfish, horned nerites & neocaridinias in a 55 gallon planted tank, right next to my desk (I work from home). There were times that I'd see them playing in the current & the next thing I knew, my computer went to sleep from inactivity. I now have a mouse that intermittently wiggles the cursor to prevent that.

Since you mentioned Seachem Prime, I'll mention what I use. A little over a decade ago, we had a few dozen aquariums running at the same time (ranging from 15-135 gallons each), so we were looking for ways to cut costs, while not putting our discus, or breeding pairs of other fish, at risk. We swapped from Seachem Prime to Seachem Safe & have been using it ever since. It's basically the powdered version of Seachem Prime, except it doesn't detoxify heavy metals. Since we have planted tanks that will take advantage of some of those heavy metals, that made Seachem Safe "the best bang for the buck", for our situation... plus we're not paying to ship the liquids. Now that we're down to only a 135 & a 55, we still use Safe, but the kilo we bought will last us for years. I'm not saying this is your best option. It's just what worked for us. If what you are currently using works for you, keep using it.

Thanks DaveO. About 95% of our current fish are from Aqua Huna.

I like Aquatic Critter in Nashville, off Nolensville Road. They've been in business for many, many decades. We used to supply them with locally bred & raised endlers, ancistrus, discus, angelfish & assassin snails. When we shut down our breeding hobby (only paid for itself, never a profit), I think they started their own ancistrus breeding from the pairs we sold them. The pairs had marbled, longfin & albino traits. We still go there often to check out their selection of driftwood, unusual plants & uncommon fish. They usually post their new arrivals on their website, but only do sales at the store.