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I have never kept a journal so I am not sure if I am going to enjoy doing this or not. I am that… I want to try things at least once type person. I spend a lot of time reading all the fantastic journals on here. Two weeks ago my bearded dragon BOOP’s suddenly passed from a stomach tumor he was diagnosed with last year. Boop’s spent nearly every minute of the day with me including the fish room. He had a shelf in front of each tank he liked to watch his fish and chase shrimp. He was probably a better plant guru than me 🤣 (you have no idea how hard it was finding info on which aquarium plants are dragon toxic) He always tried to eat them when we worked on them. For the two weeks it took me to process the worst of my grief reading everyone’s journals and posts kept me sane and filled the time I normally spent with my dragon. Thank you everyone for sharing your journey. I have had fish since around 7. All whatever I could catch with mom’s kitchen strainer in the creek when I was younger (her rule was no snakes all else I can have) and keep alive using creek water and bugs. This is how I learned anything in nature that fits in something else’s mouth is food. I also developed a weird fascination with all the nifty critters and hitchhikers that end up in aquariums. I’m the weird old lady that even finds value and cool snooping entertainment in hydra. I have been hooked ever since. went through job demands of travel so way more up and down with tanks than I want to think about I watched every video and livestream (although never in live time) the coop had. I wanted more. So I joined the forum. It’s really great as I have no one to talk fish to. Hubby only likes my giant mystery snail but loves that fish make me happy since I rarely leave the house (it’s my garden of eden why would I venture into societies current chaos) I’m new to the internet in the past few years since I retired. I used email but mostly fax before I retired but that’s it outside of works dedicated computer programs. I have never done any other social media so I feel awkward and was and I guess still am a bit intimidated most of the time trying to convey things to others in a way that seems friendly and helpful as typing seems so blunt and impersonal. I try and use a lot of the cute face cartoons. I hate offending others so I hope the cartoon faces convey niceness. Most of my fish keeping knowledge (if you want to call it that and not just ok this worked for me and this distinctly did not) comes strictly from Observations of my tanks over my life, trial error heartbreak National Geographic magazines learning about fish not aquariums and other assorted magazines in the mail. Finding the internet fish keeping prescribed guidelines baffled me and I still wonder if some of the people doing the articles ever actually kept the fish they were writing the article on. Seems fish are supposedly super delicate??? 🤣 I never knew that I always loved fish because they were so amazingly resilient. Silly me. That’s why I got hooked on Cory’s videos he seems to go with what he has seen with his own eyes and learned instead of what the internet spews and is willing to try things just to see what happens. (He also finds benefit in hitchhiking micro fauna and snails 😁) So enough about who I am…just an eccentric old lady who loves fish ….here we go…. My multi tank syndrome has taken a drastic turn since my health declined 6 years ago. Getting old stinks but is also the greatest. I cannot physically take care of large tanks anymore so now it is how many fish and different things can I keep in each tank and healthy. My current tanks that I have up and not in storage are standard 29 gal, 20long, 2 x 10g 8.75 gallon shrimp tank I got on sale and hate but guppies and snails have too many babies and it’s handy for a dozen or more things, 5G QT 2.5G QT i do not ever actually plant plants i float them tie them to something or suction cup them on the wall. Even root feeders do great that way for me. I don’t use fertilizers or chemicals I am afraid of them. I tried easy green half dose in 2 tanks and panicked after 6 hours and did late evening water changes so I could sleep. I admire the fabulous aquascapers I’m not one of them I love plants they keep my fish happy and healthy and grow well for me i stuff every tank to the gills because our water is miserable even in tanks years old with so many plants I can barely see my fish brown diatoms live on. I tried recently using jugged spring water from the store for wc and it all went away … came right back when I used hose water 🤷‍♀️ over the years I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of it though 🤪 the fish and assorted critters like it YUMMY 😋 29 g stock 11 panda corydora, 6f/1m guppy(the wolf pack and Little Boy, Nemo the nerite snail, 3 female magenta mystery snails (the wonder twins and microdot) bladder snails and some stray shrimp that migrated on a coop large sponge filter. I stopped there because my 2 longfin lemon blue eye bristlenose plecos are trying a second time he has not left the cave in 3 days other than to get a quick nibble of the green bean I put outside his door. I’m hoping it’s a fruitful spawn and may need to rehome the pandas and set up another 20 long for them? This is a newer tank set up with established filters gravel plants from other tanks and such so we are waiting for the micro fauna to establish. I think the Pandas and guppies are eating most of it so I may not get much. 20 long is my pleco pair (sweet pea and baby girl) 4 huge male mystery snails 2 magenta (the baby boys) 2 chestnut (chestnut and bandit) 10 celestial pearl danio(only one has a name she is huge and eats everything Meg as in megalodon) more neocaridina shrimp of every color than I can count. Some bladder snails (someone keeps eating them I do believe 😕) many random assorted micro fauna and a gorgeous little colony of tiny green hydra in one corner that never seems to travel or grow bigger even though I feed cpd bbs. I may actually like this journal thing. I’ll detail the rest another day and add more pictures. my pointer/typing finger is cramping at this point 🤣

I have had my eye out for a female scarlet badis for a while. So much so, that I was know as "the guy who comes in looking for scarlet badis" at my LFS. A few weeks ago, I brought home a promising candidate and after a few days of feasting on moina, eggs were apparent! I picked up a companion for her and started quarantine. They seemed healthy and happy, but not "in the mood." I moved the female out for a few days. When I added her back it took about an hour for spawning start! Hooray. They spawned probably 10 times over the course of an hour before the female went to hide in a corner, her egg supply visibly depleted: I moved both parents out of the the tank. As the eggs started coming, I realized a I had a few mistakes and miscalculations: I had put some plants in a small, removable container in the tank hoping they spawn there. They did, but only some of the time. They also spawned next to heater, behind a small pump in the tank and just here and there. They eggs are incredibly small and almost neutrally buoyant, so when I tried to remove the container I think lost most of them. I can barely the find the eggs in a glass petri dish when I know they are there. Finding them on in the sand substrate in the tank is a non-starter. The eggs are quite fragile. I checked some under my microscope and the most amount of egg moving I did seemed to have damaged some of them. I managed to move about 5 of them in a mini egg tumbler I have, but I can barely see them. I've read it'll take about a week before they hatch and get through their yolk sacks, so I guess I'm just going to wait and watch. The good news is that there's lots of life in the tank, so their should be food for the very tiny fry. The potential bad news is that there's scuds in there too. I'm concerned they may eat the fry. In any case, in couple weeks I'll even have fry or I suspect the female may a new batch of eggs and I can again. I'd love to hear how other people have managed collecting/incubating/hatching tiny eggs that get spread all over the place. Thanks.