My new fish arrived!

[gardenman]

I sent an order off to Aqua Huna on Tuesday (using the link on the Coop page so they get some  payback) and the fish arrived today. Not bad. I ordered six albino cory catfish, six panda cory catfish, and ten cherry shrimp. Everyone was alive when they got here. One albino cory cat was barely alive, but seems to be improving. He's now sitting upright and moving occasionally. He was curled up and apparently dead on his side in the bag, but is looking better now. Kind of interesting in that you see no gill movement for several minutes then about ten seconds of rapid breathing, then back to nothing for a minute or two. Everyone went into a breeder box after being acclimated so I can feed them more intensively and keep an eye on them for a few weeks. As anticipated, all are quite small, but that's not a big issue for me. The photos on Aqua Huna show the fish relative to the size of a penny, so I knew what to expect. Small fish tend to disappear in a bigger planted tank though, so by keeping them in the breeder box for a bit I can better monitor them and fatten them up. They aren't competing with the horde outside for food in the box and they're not crowded. The breeder boxes circulate water from the tank through the boxes so the fish are essentially in the big tank, just outside it in the breeder box. Each breeder box is attached to the tank the fish will eventually go into. The albino corys are on the thirty high, the panda corys are on the twenty high, and the shrimp are on the ten gallon tank.

The cherry shrimp were interesting. They were very pale with essentially no color until they hit their breeder box that has a clump of java moss with lots of algae on it. The box also has a lot of algae growing on the walls of the box. It was like someone hit a light switch. Within ten seconds of being put in that box they were colored up and feeding. They've also got a piece of cholla wood in with them for more shelter. These are my first shrimp and they're pretty impressive little critters. They're very active.

Eleven of the twelve cory cats are doing great. The twelfth guy is improving. Going from apparently dead to not dead is an improvement. The ten shrimp all look great. I was surprised the shrimp came in a breather bag and wasn't sure about floating the breather bag to temperature acclimate so I ended up hanging it half in the water and half out. The bags were all 74 degrees when they got here and my tanks are about 76 so there wasn't a huge difference anyway. I followed the Aqua Huna acclimation instructions (though I really wanted to plop and drop the albino cory who wasn't looking good.) So far anyway, I'm very happy. I'm still half expecting to lose the one albino cory, but corys are tough little fish, so we'll see. One good thing about getting fish small is there's little to no impact on the bioload. Each breeder box of fish has maybe the same bioload as one of my swordtails.

[Patrick_G]

I really like the breeder box idea for all the reasons you describe. When I buy fish from Aquarium Coop I don’t feel like I need to quarantine them but I would like to keep an eye on them as they acclimate. Great tip!