Beardedbillygoat’s Fish & Shrimp Tank Journal

[Picklepuppy]

Thank you for sharing! I just found your journal tonight and enjoyed bingeing the saga of the sad bowl, although I empathize with your disappointment.  I hope you have a rejuvenating vacation.  Folks in the medical field have my highest respect and gratitude 🙏 Thank you.  I wonder if you’ve considered going low tech? No filter, no air, no heater?  Just concentrate on scaping and getting the plants happy & growing for a month or two before introducing any livestock? It may be a nice challenge!

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Picklepuppyyep, was considering making it a Walstad bowl which is exactly that - a filter less bowl. Using capped soil, the beneficial bacteria and the plants to filter. Balancing them in a small volume is a challenge. Mind you the sad bowl is not the smallest volume at over 10 gallons. I’ve done it before but it’s kind of a mess for months until it cycles and matures. That’s the key with a filter less setup is that maturation. It’s what you rarely see in the FishTube videos on filterless bowls. It’s in my bedroom with my wife whose not happy when I have scapes that are “green messes,” she likes to call the maturation process. In our bedroom it would be a no go. I’ll have an update soon on The Sad Bowl which may answer some of the questions on it. I’m actually really excited about what I’ve got planned ! thanks so much for reading and following along. 

[Patrick_G]

I just read through a week or two of your journal. Hang in there at work, the double punch of smoke and virus must be terrible, I bet you’re exhausted. 
Your tanks are looking spectacular. They all look good but I really like the jar with the shells. 
 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Patrick_Gthe Opae ula jar is awesome! 1.5 g of fun and beauty. 
I’m lucky to be off and on vacation right now as it’s truly awful at work right now. I was in the midst of all the worst outbreaks 😷 up to this one. 
Can’t wait to get The Sad Bowl up and running and show off the work I’ve been doing. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

The Sad Bowl, bringer of high highs and low lows.

Well I’ve been working on a plan for round 4 and had a window to do some work on it so here goes. Thanks all who have followed - I am a glutton for punishment that’s for sure but I love this bowl. 

Substrate- using a bit of laterite and some acoop root tabs capped with crushed coral, then lava rock and then Stratum. Probably going to get some aquarium gravel to put on top and aide plants and build up certain areas. 

Filtration- as discussed in this thread and the old Sad Bowl thread there were concerns about circulation and proper filtration with a small sponge kind of hidden and pinned in the back. I thought through a Walstad filterless bowl, using various in bowl filtration from off the rack to diy. I settled on a DIY setup - under gravel filter (ugf) made with some food grade polyvinyl tubing. I used my Dremel tool to help out making the holes I needed in the tubing and in the T. It turned out great and only issue was kind of keeping it pinned in place. So I made a tiny hole and put a suction cup on the length of tubing coming up to make it conform to the shape of the bowl. Used aquarium silicone for all the joints and the suction cup. 

I filled it tonight and it’s working well and not too cloudy. 

Stocking is still up in the air - my wife has been very involved lately which has been awesome and I’ve included her again in the stocking choices. I’ve got a plant list I’ll be sending to my plant guy after vacation then I can start worrying about the hard scape - I need a certain piece of driftwood for this. No rocks other than the lava rocks this go round. 
 

I am basing my aquascape design on one I saw on Rachel O’Leary’s YT channel: 

I’ve been busy with aquarium maintenance on all the tanks as we’ve got a much needed vacation coming up Monday. I’d recently bought some poret foam from Swiss tropicals so I’ve put that to use. I’ve got a cloudy tank problem with my sons tank but I’m blaming the kuhli loaches as the parameters are fantastic. I may just need to clean the two sponge filters in the tank and it may just clear up.

We have a house sitter - she’s been my 2 sons Nanny through this COVID debacle and is really responsible- instead of twice daily feedings I’m having her do once a day figuring the lower waste and nutrients will help me with not doing any WCs for 2 weeks.  I’m not even going to have her feed my flex 15 shrimp tank - so much biofilm and algae it’s nuts in there.
I’ve added some extra filtration on a couple tanks recently  - extra HOB on the 45 g display and now on my sons 20g L rainbow/kuhli/Molly tank. 

[Picklepuppy]

Woo hoo!  Gooooooo Sad Bowl!  Great job!  😀

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Had a encounter with nature in the Yucatán I wanted to share. At a restaurant we were told Pancho the crocodile would be joining us for dinner and he sure did. But the didn’t say anything about the amazing and adorable Yucatán pufferfish 🐡! 

[Patrick_G]

Looks like fun! Where are you vacationing? I love the Yucatán and we might go in December. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Patrick_G between Cancun and Playa del Carmen. The restaurant was in Cancun. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Coming home is always interesting after vacation. You wonder how things have gone without your meddling and usual routine. I left for two weeks of vacation - my first extended vacay since summer 2019. 
We’d paid for my kids nanny to house sit for us - a 19 yo woman whose been an outstanding caregiver and presence in my children’s lives. We’d walked her around the house, showed her the plants and animals, written down instructions, and I took her through a typical routine of feeding the animals and where the foods are. I even put them in a row with a different food or blend of foods per day for a 7 day rotation. 
To say she failed would be an understatement. There’s uneaten food spread throughout the aquariums even on the surfaces around the aquariums. She only used the one feeding container of Tetra color tropical granules. She obviously got confused because she gave bottom feeder tabs to aquaria with no bottom feeders. There was no call or text about this. I did receive a request about a filter making noise and I had a fellow aquarist and friend come by and take care of that. 
It’s a disappointment. She is moving on as our boys are old enough to be in formal kindergarten and preschool. The animals are alive I haven’t lost anyone although my golden back Neocaridina colony is looking pretty low in numbers. I decided to have her feed once a day not twice (not the shrimp) like I do because in my experience people always second guess the amount over feeding “but they look hungry “ is what my wife always says. 
I completed all my maintenance and reevaluated all the tanks. 

My sons sponge bob tank is doing great. Plant look good. I’d added a hob to it along with the ACO sponge filters and it seems to have helped the tank get a better balance. Less hazy. I’ve been discussing the centerpiece fish for this tank with my son. With the mollies would be nice to have something that could keep the future population in check. 

The shellies - I grabbed some broken conch shells collected while on vacation. The pairs are still together and odd man out “What about Bob?” Is my wife’s name for the 5th wheel. 

The Opae Ula shrimps are doing well. We’ve got some very small shrimps in there so we are assuming we had some babies. Don’t see any berried females like we had a month ago. Adding an occasional 1/4 algae wafer. 

The Sad Bowl lives! This is a temp scape just wanted to try some manzanita pieces and wanted to see the optics. I like where we’re starting. I tried to get a Madagascar lace plant to start out in there but no luck online everyone is sold out. So I’m going to pull out the lace plant in my display and move it. Then will do a planting in the 45 g and the bowl. Very excited. I got a special piece of wood and mounted it on some obsidian to weigh it down. 

The 15 g Column is coming together. I used some anubias petite and some Java fern plantlets on a piece of manzanita to try to fill In some of the space and use the height. I want to leave enough room for the sword to grow up and also for the corkscrew Val. The tests on the water are encouraging just waiting for some algae. I saw a haze the day after the planting so we’ll see where that lands us. 

The 15 g flex goldenback neo tank is looking very natural and grown in but just getting the dwindles with the shrimp. Started with 14 now I’ve got 4-7. I’m thinking of scraping this and going with a pea puffer tank. Those puffers in the Yucatán started something. 

[Patrick_G]

Sorry about the fish feeding fiasco! It looks like your tanks survived and they’re still looking nice. 

[Hobbit]

Yikes. It’s hard leaving our pets in someone else’s hands. I was recently out of town for a few days, and my mother in law, always very eager to help, ended up in charge of all the animals. For my main tank, I portioned the fish food in one of those days-of-the-week pill boxes, and for the other tanks, I gave her a measuring spoon. She did great with the fish, but unfortunately left the chickens without water for 24 hours on a really hot day. 😬 Thankfully they have backup water in their coop and they all survived!

Tanks look wonderful as usual! Especially the sad bowl! Bummer about the dwindling shrimp though.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Patrick_Gthanks so much yeah it’s remarkable when you do that work to get them balanced it can pay off. Feel like I’ve filtered enough to allow them to have a cushion when something happens like over feeding. @Hobbiti envy Cory and the 50+ Auto feeders and the employees that know fish watching things. Glad the chickens made it. My in-laws have had some close calls with that they have a flock of 100 birds or so. It can get tricky when farmers/ranchers take a few days off. 
I have a plant shipment coming this week and I’ll be scaping all weekend I’m sure. 

[Guppysnail]

I’m sorry about the nanny not working out with the fish. I love the way the wood emerges from from the sad bowl.  I wonder if you could do a crab of some type.  I don’t know anything about crabs so….?

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Guppysnaili think I could do pom pom crabs  🦀 but most need a terrestrial and a water area like the vampire crabs. I’ve been thinking guppies and corys for the Sad Bowl. The column I’ll be home to the fireball teacups platys. They’ll be joined by the baby ricefish they’ve been with in the plant grow out tank nursery.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I’ve actually been thinking about dwarf African frogs to eat the Molly fry in the Sponge Bob tank. Going to do my research. Think they need blood and or black worms so would need to start a vermiculture. 

[Guppysnail]

On 9/8/2021 at 10:08 AM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

@Guppysnaili think I could do pom pom crabs  🦀 but most need a terrestrial and a water area like the vampire crabs. I’ve been thinking guppies and corys for the Sad Bowl. The column I’ll be home to the fireball teacups platys. They’ll be joined by the baby ricefish they’ve been with in the plant grow out tank nursery.

I kept some of my Pygmy corys with guppy 4-6 week olds. They did fantastic together. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

The Sad Bowl is back. I did not get my plant order but did move my Madagascar lace plant to the bowl. Hardscape is rainbow obsidian and local manzanita. I think when the lace plant perks up it’ll look awesome. I’ve placed a bunch of coop tabs in the substrate so hopefully the melt back won’t be too bad. It’s definitely going to be a guppy bowl, may do some Neocaridina as well.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Moved my fireball platys and silver ricefish to the 15 g column tank. Really like the contrasts on color and textures between the plants, hardscape and fish. 

also checked out the pond today and our little froggy friend was back. Enjoy nature everyday, right?

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Here’s some updates:

I got a shipment of plants from my plant guy and they’re great. 2 anubias nanna in the mid ground on the rocks and wood, limnophila aromatica mini in the foreground, and a really cool crypt ( I need to get the type as this was a surprise) mid ground and a crypt spiralis in the back. This is along with this beautiful lace plant I’ve had for a year and a half. I’m liking how this looks. Lots of biofilm on the hard scape, a little foggy but I think that’s just cause I disrupted the substrate. 

Here’s the column tank - who doesn’t love these beautiful fireball platys? They’re so small and colorful and using all the tank space just a flurry of color and contrast between the fish and the scape. So pleased with this. Fun to wake up to!

I also planted some crypt spiralis and some tiger lotuses in my main display. The purples on the lotus pads were ridiculous I’m hoping I’ll get a fraction of that in my display. You can make it out in my clean water bucket - I soak the plants in 1:3 parts h2o2:water then just clean dechlorinated water. I’m going to try to get some pics tonight of the display- my diamond tetras are popping and I have a new bn pleco who is gorgeous and needs some pics. 

[Vanish]

The fireball platies are very colorful! Good luck with the bowl, watching.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Vanishyou don’t see them much in shops. It’ll be curious to see how many offspring those little bodies can produce. But gosh they pack a lot into those little bodies color, personality and energy. I know my LFS is dying for some. I got them off Aquabid.

[Tihshho]

They used to be more popular in the 90's and early 2000's. I've not seen them for a long time, they are definitely one of my favorite varieties of platy. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Tihshhoi am fascinated my the ebbs and flows of the hobby. When I got into the hobby it was Mbuna that everyone wanted. I was doing fancy goldfish and koi - “all they do is poop dude,” was what the fish store guy said to me. Later when I got sucked into the crew at the LFS  they told me I had to have a canister and stores looked down on me as I had an old school setup with an UGF. Livebearers were lame 😒 and later it was all about monster fish - MFK.com and all that. I remember I got rainbows about a decade later - dwarf praecox and boesmani and once the LFS employee said I was wasting my time - they took too long to color up and “you’ll miss them when they’re their most colorful they do it at night,” boy was he wrong!

[Tihshho]

It's funny what you hear as an LFS employee. I heard the Rainbow argument constantly, then killies, then plecos, the list goes on. Lol.