Beardedbillygoat’s Fish & Shrimp Tank Journal

[Brandon p]

On 11/24/2021 at 3:03 AM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

I couldn’t understand why my dominant male longfin pleco had not left his cave and I finally figured out why. 

there were at least 60 more in the cave that I didn’t get the last time I was In there for a water change. I’m excited to see how this goes over the coming weeks. 

What colors are parents or is this from two pairs?

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Brandon pI have 1 longfin regular male, 4 super red calico females that supposedly also carry the longfin gene, 1 regular longfin female and another longfin lemon blue eye male.

These are from one of the calico females and the longfin regular male. 

[Torrey]

@Beardedbillygoat1975 I made a sponge filter that goes inside those plastic containers and I put the airline inside the sponge.

The sponge is obviously not as good as a Co-op sponge filter, but I think it saved the fry when I ended up at a 78 hour birth.

I keep it running even when I don't have fry, so it's always ready. I adjust the airflow according to the strength of the fry.

 

 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Thanks for the poke to get some filtration in there @Torrey! Here’s what I came up with: 

I used a leftover intake from a filter, stuffed it with rocks and sponge, a little up lift tube from a sponge filter and some more sponge and a coop no clog airstone. Also for some reason I decided to put the top of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at the top. Not sure that’s permanent but the rest of it is great. I really like DIYing these interesting size containers. The filtration for The Sad Bowl is all diy - ugf and a sponge filter of my designs. 
 

[Torrey]

On 11/25/2021 at 10:25 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

Thanks for the poke to get some filtration in there @Torrey! Here’s what I came up with: 

I used a leftover intake from a filter, stuffed it with rocks and sponge, a little up lift tube from a sponge filter and some more sponge and a coop no clog airstone. Also for some reason I decided to put the top of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at the top. Not sure that’s permanent but the rest of it is great. I really like DIYing these interesting size containers. The filtration for The Sad Bowl is all diy - ugf and a sponge filter of my designs. 
 

Awesome! Glad to be of service (and ORD🥰)

[anewbie]

On 11/26/2021 at 1:23 PM, Torrey said:

Awesome! Glad to be of service (and ORD🥰)

Why is everyone sitting in the Chicago airport ?

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I started out my evening by feeding out the rest of my baby brine shrimp. Then fed the frogs. Silliest eaters in the animal kingdom. 

Next up I put a new Black Friday filter Fluval U2 into my sons 20 g long shelly tank. The MTS and nerites do a great job of churning the substrate but thought we could do better. 

Ive been working a lot with my bristlenose babies. A big shout out to @Guppysnailfor the advice and coaching. They’re looking great and I’m thinking sooner then later getting them into my fry growouts. 
Their Dad my longfin regular male has not been tempted by the variety of foods I’ve laid outside  his cave except for some boiled squash. He’s been very faithful to this cave. Well I found out why tonight!

The tub I have my steel blue killis and my panda Cory breeding colony is so much fun. Tons of action. I think we’re still a couple months out from seeing the corys lay eggs - no big belly mommas yet. The killis are already getting busy after a couple weeks of baby brine shrimp! 

I can now understand the attraction of killifish. Their vibrant color and pattern, the displays to the females and their responses to good husbandry it’s been a real pleasure so far. The females have a very subtle red spotting and I’ve loved watching them fill with eggs. And corys well we all know they’re just so adorable 🥰🐼 ! 
Now I’ve got to go deal with the laundry! Have a great weekend and enjoy your tanks! 

[Atitagain]

Lots of excitement in your tanks. Everything looks great! The killis are getting busy quick! Them BN I’ve found out once they get going it’s like a fountain of babies. It’s awesome following along especially now that I’m limited to the projects I can have. Good luck with the corys.

[Guppysnail]

Babies everywhere. Very awesome. The sad bowl warms my heart. Be prepared every drop my BN mom has gets slightly larger 😁 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Guppysnaili only have one truly mature female so the others are growing fast so I’m in for it! The other male hasn’t even started sitting on eggs yet! Appreciate the encouragement  and we’ll see where things go with the killis and corys, think they’ll cannibalize each other’s eggs I’m afraid@Atitagain

[Torrey]

On 11/26/2021 at 2:54 PM, anewbie said:

Why is everyone sitting in the Chicago airport ?

ORD=Out of Reactions for the Day

[anewbie]

On 11/27/2021 at 9:18 PM, Torrey said:

ORD=Out of Reactions for the Day

Personally I think that is an Over Rated Defense and Often Required Data to support such a claim 😉

 

Edited November 28, 2021 by anewbie

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Big news overnight as the release of the pleco fry into their growout home. 30 g sterilite tote. Sorry for the poor clarity through the plastic. 

This was originally my tetra breeding setups but with all the leaves and plants as well as tons of cholla wood think it’s a good place for them. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Updates on the pleco fry - I’ve done big water changes and they’ve appeared active and plenty hungry eating a variety of foods - steamed green beans, zucchini and cucumber are the favorites with Repashy a distant 4th. @Guppysnailfeels it takes them a few weeks to a month to get used to it. Lots of biofilm in there so 🤞! I put in some boiled carrot and some snap peas tonight will see how it goes tomorrow. 
On the other side of fish keeping I’d gone back to the well with the guy I bought my pandas from and they arrived today. I bought 15 and 9 made it. It was almost a replay of the talk we had from Eric Thomas - milky looking water, floating corys, nothing particularly good with the bags at a decent temp so we had that going for us. The 9 as they will now be called joined the rest of the colony with some salt and Indian almond leaves. They took baby brine tonight which was encouraging and 🤞for tonight. 
I also have received some assassin snails and magenta mystery snails. They came from Aquahuna along with 10 baby amanos (when they say small they ain’t kidding!). Forgot how much I missed the mystery snails. 

I figure the assassins will be transferred around to my problem tanks like breeding setups with ramshorn snails coming out my ears. I think one of the mystery snails seems destined for the sad bowl. The other we shall see. 

Weekend projects are setting up my 2 three gallon tanks as a spot for the Gardneri and panda fry to growout from egg to youngster. By no means a permanent spot just a way station. I also need to make more mops. I’m also doing a wabi kusa for my wife for Christmas. I’ll start A build thread on that soon. 

[Guppysnail]

Pandas are even more addictive than guppies. They are such clowns. There is definitely something special about mystery snails. I’m looking forward to reading about your panda breeding. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I was so sad about the losses @Guppysnail. Agree on the addiction. Luckily my wife really likes the pandas. They were happy this morning when I was feeding Xtreme Spirulina flake. 

[Guppysnail]

I know I’m always devastated when I lose fish. But the ones you have are happy 😁

[Atitagain]

@Beardedbillygoat1975 when starting up a bowl I think it should go slowly?  What I mean is , do filtration, substrate, then maybe a plant or two. Then a week later (maybe 5-10 days) whatever. Add another couple plants. Repeat until plants are completed. I say this because cleaning the inside glass has to be a pain. So if the bowl is brought along slowly the glass will be easy to clean as I’m balancing. Then once it’s balanced and algae is under control, won’t need to clean inside glass very often? 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

For the first couple months I’ve had a sponge filter to help pickup particulate water in the water column as it was settling on the glass and substrate. I was annoyed with it at first but once I did this it was never a hassle. I just used a cube of 30 ppi foam and stuffed polyvinyl tube down and an airstone it was an ACO filter as it was too big. Need just enough surface area to get the gunk. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Atitagainin terms of planting I’ve always just planted it the way I wanted it and adjusted as I went. 

[Atitagain]

On 12/5/2021 at 1:10 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

For the first couple months I’ve had a sponge filter to help pickup particulate water in the water column as it was settling on the glass and substrate

Ha I thought I remembered seeing one in there. 👍 thank you 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

It’s been a good weekend for my hobby. The pandas are looking great along with their killi friends. Inspected some of my mops and did not find any eggs. I’m thinking if I don’t see eggs in the next couple weeks then I’ll pull a male and 2 females and put them in the 3 g I just set up for fry and then pull the fish and leave the mops. 

My bin with my pleco fey is doing well. I’ve seen them eating pretty much everything I’ve thrown in from carrots to cucumber to green beans to zucchini. I’ve thrown in powdered algae wafer, crumbled up algae wafer and some Repashy. The Repashy is the least popular but @Guppysnailhas assured me they’ll figure it out eventually. I’ve added some caves and I place the bits of wafer in there. I put the veggies in the central bin at the bottom of the tank. They’ve begun hanging out on the cholla wood and leaves as well as the side. 

Sorry for the distortion makes their camouflage all the better! 

The Neolamprologus brevis group have really responded to more flow from the addition of the Fluval U2 internal filter and a new heater. They are all lined up now - 3 females with their shells in the foreground and daddy Mac going from shell to shell with the other boy hanging in the rocks seeing not he can claim a lady friend.

My sons community tank with the Krobia is doing well, somewhere along the way we’ve lost 3 female Pseudomeugil luminatus and only have 3 boys now. We need to determine the stocking in there. I’ve been thinking about more kuhli loaches and maybe add some of my bristlenose babies. I can’t put pandas in there as that would lead to a fight between the boys. 

Finally, The Sad Bowl. Kids didn’t wake us this morning so it was a nice sleep in. I woke up and looked up and there were little flittering orange and blue and green lights and reflections all that marvelous green. 
Have fun everyone!

[Guppysnail]

Everything looks great. I’m glad it was a good weekend for you. All three batches I had a few that it took a few weeks for them to figure out repashy was food. Those stayed smaller than the ones that figured it out quicker. I pulled them to different tanks because the smaller size then seemed to make it more difficult to get their fair share once they did. After they were moved and figured repashy out they had growth spurts. Most took 2 weeks to figure it out some 3 weeks the stragglers 4 weeks. I do daily belly checks. If I see one with an empty belly(they usually never have empty bellies) I pull those to  other tanks guessing they are also being out competed. I seen this more in the first two batches because I mixed them together in the grow out which I think was a big mistake on my part. They get food competitive younger than I imagined they would. They would actually push one another away from where they wanted to eat even though there was ample food. They would either shove with their nose or scoot sideways into each other. Cute to watch but stressful to me worrying if they were each eating enough. 🤣

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Guppysnaili think I just experienced a couple things you’d told me before and the above. I overfed yesterday I kind of knew it suddenly when of course I was at work. When I got home the water was cloudy. The little guys weren’t on the wall and surfaces in mass like they’ve been. I did a 50% wc and removed the uneaten food. Then fed some fresh veg. I didn’t see any bodies until this morning about a dozen of them so far that I could find. I did another 50% wc and fed a little bit of Repashy. I cleaned my filters and did what I could to get all uneaten food and detritus out. They were more vigorous. I have an extra air line going. May do another water change tonight or tomorrow. I am bummed but it’s my first batch. I’ll not make that mistake again. It’s sad but I’ll learn from it.  

[Guppysnail]

I’m sorry for your misfortune. Yes these little ones are hyper sensitive and messy. I almost lost my first batch from repashy I did not have the water hot enough for and it fell to powder in 20 minutes of adding to the tank. Lucky I was retired and fixed it before it was to late. However 2 weeks later I lost 4 to what I thought was failure to thrive but thinking more I think it was the quick spike that contributed to the failure to thrive. I attribute most of my aquarium successes to the fact that I am with them 24/7 since being retired. Prior to retirement I did not actively breed and had more losses from incidental breeding because of inability to react to changes. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I made the same mistakes I was just home to correct them quicker. Every mistake adds experience value to our skills.