The Fish-Apartment Journal

[MAC]

Epic Brine Shrimp Fail and a cool new dark tank setup.

A rough patch in the Fish-Apartment recently. Moving around so many aquariums at once really threw off alot of the balance I had going in many of the tanks. Algae explosions, sick fish, a cichlid pair that has decided they can no longer live without constantly trying to destroy each other has led to a slight feeling of burn out over the past weeks with the constant shuffle. But all is not lost. I treated myself to my first "fancy" pleco the other day picking up a L128 Blue Phantom and am really looking forward to it getting through the quarantine process and into the living room front and center. Whats a little retail therapy to brighten things up?  

I did, however, manage to fail my first attempt at hatching baby brine shrimp. With only a month or two away from the two year anniversary of my re-immersion into the hobby I figured it was time to step up my game. I put my order into the Co-op and familiarized myself with videos and the like on the basics of a successful hatch. Now, here's the thing. I really thought I was going to nail this. I was pretty dang confident that with a 2 liter bottle, some aquarium salt, and a clever little heat and light arrangement I was fixing to hit the big leagues. Well, my friends, I have been sufficiently humbled. I have found some, but definitely not all, of the faults in my execution. I cut the top--or technically the bottom--off a clean two liter soda bottle and inverted it like all the cool kids in those DIY internet examples. I used the cut off bottom as a lid with a hole in it for my airline. So now I have a bottle, a lid with some rigid airline to the bottom, I add straight tap water, two tablespoons salt and its about to be showtime. For my stand I felt especially ingenious. I have a shallow storage tote that is about 20 gallons but only a few inches tall. I use it to grow out killifish and plant clippings on a desk that I have a little preset 50watt heater in. I took a Costco Mixed Nuts jar, filled it with water, put it in the tote and then placed the cone of the hatchery bottle snugly into the nut jar. Heater heats the tote water, tote water heats the jar water, jar water heats the cone of the hatchery where the airline terminates, thus distributing heat throughout. Right? Well...just to be safe I had a little desk lamp near by to provide a light source and I swapped in an old 60watt bulb to make sure the heat idea had a contingency plan. I went with 1/2 teaspoon of brine shrimp eggs stirred in and waited patiently for the magic to happen. 

I had set a reminder on my phone for exactly 18 hours and couldn't wait to see if I had hatched my first baby brine shrimp. To my dismay, nadda. Looked just like I left it 18 hours earlier. Ok, no problem, might be late bloomers, give it another 4 hours. Zilch. At this point I felt a sneaking suspicion that I had screwed something up. My first step was to turn off the dang desk light that was blinding me as i searched for any signs of life in my attempted hatchery. Reaching for it I immediately became aware of how warm it was. Like, really really warm. I grabbed a thermometer I had laying around to drop in the hatchery and watched the red skyrocket. I took it out as the temp surpassed 90F and climbing; I think I found the problem, the light nuked em. 

But today was a new day! I had reset, applied our lessons learned and set out to hatch some brine shrimp! This time I thought ahead by monitoring the water temperature for a few hours before adding the eggs to make sure I could maintain the recommend zone. The tote-heater-jar-bottle set-up along with ambient room temperature kept the temp right in the 75-78 range and I managed to move back the light to where things hung pretty well at 80 throughout the late morning and past the noon hour. So, lets try this again. This time, feeling bold, I used a whole teaspoon of brine shrimp eggs. Double or nothing!

18 hours later...nothing. 24 hours later... I muttered words adults use to express displeasure with situations. 

Now, much later and many paces back and forth through the apartment I have made two observations. First, the brine shrimp appear to have at least attempted to hatch. It looks like little yellow critters clinging to the brown case of the egg-cyst thing just bobbing around. Second, the PH had plummeted. For some reason I decided to check the PH and was pretty shocked to see it bottom out the color scale of the API liquid PH kit. I'm talking yellow water. No hint of any blueish hue whatsoever. This could be my new problem. Before I cooked them, now I melted them in acid. Brutal. So I'm at a bit of a loss currently. Not sure whats next, maybe add some ph buffer or something. Water out of the tap is usually 7.8, the municipality says its 8.2 and all my tanks settle in at right about 7.0-7.2 but has nearly zero for gh or kh. Maybe this is a clue? Please, someone, read this far and give advise so I dont have to create a new thread on how i suck at brine shrimp, ha. 

On a completely unrelated topic, I was rearranging tanks and fish and plants and created another "dark tank" setup with driftwood, leaf litter and subdued lighting. It is another 20 gallon long and is situated on a huge dresser in the bedroom next to the previous dark tank I had featured earlier. In the move and reshuffle I decided I liked the idea of those two tanks being together as the previous tank has some really cool occupants now that we had to put in a place to give lots of interaction. At some point I'll talk about those fish which probably deserve their own thread. But anyway, I took some excess ecocomplete and florite substrate and a sword plant from a rescaping I did in a tank in the living room and added a few runners of crypt wendtii, dwarf sag (i think) and a few java fern to some drift wood and leaf litter. The tank has my first and only attempt at a Matten filter and is lit with a single LED strip light hood from a box store that came with one of the tanks I bought off craigslist. 

The current stocking includes ten nannostomus eques and a whiptail catfish that I believe is rineloricaria eigenmanni. The pencilfish are easily one of my favorite fish, super chill, and have some really interesting behavior with eachother. They are a bit skittish, especially in this tank because there is no surface cover, but once comfortable are much more confident around the tank. At least they were in their previous home. A very underrated fish considering they are surprisingly inexpensive. The whiptail is a gem that has only gotten better as its grown. I'm pretty sure this fish can change its color based on its surroundings as somedays its a very uniform color and other times it shows a striking thick dark banding. I saw this guy labeled as "whiptail cat" at a Petco one day for $5 and was like "yep!" Great impulse buy.

I havent decided if I will be adding any additional species to this tank. The relaxed feel and fish is something I want to preserve. One thought was possibly moving the sundadanio axelrodi rasboras into here or possibility getting another similar species that would really show well in the setup. We'll see. 

Happy Holidays everyone, thanks for looking.   

Edited December 16, 2020 by MAC

[Maggie]

Hi Mac, I was just perusing the brine shrimp topic, and someone mentioned adding baking soda to raise pH. I'm not sure what its supposed to be but am going to do that with my next batch to raise it to 7.5, just to see if more will hatch. I only have the ring-dish setup, no air or heat except from a light.

[MAC]

Thanks @Maggie I had read about the baking soda trick as well. Will have to give it a try.

[MAC]

Its bound to happen at some point. With over 25 aquariums and limited space something is bound to fall, bang, get dropped with in the danger zone of proximity to water filled glass boxes. This was the result of a 4ft 2x4 falling from a leaned upright position across a hallway. It must have hit just right because it punched right through the side of this 10g. Too bad, this tank had been going for quite some time and I was looking forward to trying some hillstream loaches in it. At the time it housed a sumo loach (Schistura Balteata) that has not been compatible with any other fish and was in solitary. Now to find a new spot for the loach.

I figured out the issue I previously had with hatching the baby brine shrimp by switching to marine salt and some of the fry I've been growing out are loving it. The krib babies got moved to the killifish tank which had a nice established sandy substrate to sift through. I took the trio of Fundulopanchax Gardneri and put them in a dense cover 10 gallon to see if they have any fry survive naturally. I had been pulling eggs and raising fry but they were becoming so proficient that if half the ones I have now hatch or continue to grow into adulthood I'm going to have more than I know what to do with. 

My White Cloud and Darter Tetra tank ended up getting some plants. I moved it into the living room a while back and decided to drop in some java fern and anubius. I also moved my three Stiphodon gobies, I think they're S. Semoni into the aquarium. They had been in alone in a 20 long that I'm trying to convert into a shrimp tank and I wanted the gobies to be out and more visible. Stiphodon gobies are awesome. I picked up these almost 2 years ago as some of the first fish I bought getting back into the hobby. I had never seen a fish like these before and when I saw three at a Petco I bought them on site. As I got deeper into the hobby I learned more about their care and ended up setting up a 20 long hillstream just for them. I am fairly certain I have 1 male and 2 females. This is the second year, right around the same time of year, the male has colored up like crazy. Info on the breeding the Stiphodon and similar gobies is limited and from my understanding the newly hatched fish drift down the fast flowing rivers of their native habitat and into the ocean for the first stages of life. After developing in marine waters the goby then returns to freshwater to live and reproduce. A really interesting reproductive strategy, but makes for breeding these fish extremely difficult. But anyway, the male I have appears to be in breeding mode. His color is intense and he has been perching on the top of rocks and turning his tail above his body like a scorpion and waving it in the current. Maybe someday I'll devise some special setup to try and capture eggs and produce fry. Being wild caught and from small pacific islands I wonder how their protection/conservation status is. 

Thanks for looking everyone, Happy New Year.

Edited January 4, 2021 by MAC

[MAC]

Enjoyed a pretty successful past week. Sold $25 worth of fish and turned that around to buy an aquarium off Craigslist. Now, I have heard some back and forth on peoples opinion of the 50 gallon lowboy, but seeing one for sale for $25 seemed like too much of a good thing to pass up. I picked up the tank and will be storing it until I have a new place that can accommodate tank with that footprint. From what I've heard there are mixed opinions about the tank, many saying it is too short especially when added substrate etc. I'm not sure what I'll do with it but there is an idea I want to try. Instead of having a planted tank or go with something like a Shellie colony, I want to try out setting powerheads and rocks to see if I can get a circular flow around a central island. The tank would mostly be flat smooth river rock with a boulder pile in the center and bright lighting to grow lots of algae and stocked with hillstream loaches. Might have to work out the details a bit, but for now that is what I'm thinking. 

In the meantime, a fish I've been very excited to watch grow out have been putting on some color and really coming into their own. A few months back I picked up two Microctenopoma Ansorgii that were quite small and timid. I had them at first in a thicket of a tank so planted that I never saw them and they really didnt do much at all. I read elsewhere that the addition of some dither fish would likely bring them out more and the author had themselves used guppies. I happen to have way too many guppies so this seemed like a good idea, especially if the fry can provide a constant live food source. So I transferred the little bushfish into a 10gal with a few "wild type" or feeder guppy pairs and the results have been great. They are still camera shy but starting to get some color and hopefully I may end up with a m/f pair. Bloodworms and Bug Bites are the only thing they seem to take an interest in eating. These are neat little fish just starting to show some personality that I think would be a great breeding project. 

Thanks for looking!     

Edited January 19, 2021 by MAC
Added photos from mobile

[ErinV]

I just came across this journal and have read it from start to finish. I will definitely be following your journey. You also totally know what you are doing!

[Colu]

Love bush fish they  get really colourful as they age 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Colu

[MAC]

18 hours ago, ErinV said:

I just came across this journal and have read it from start to finish. I will definitely be following your journey. You also totally know what you are doing!

Hey thanks! I don't know if I totally know what I'm doing, but I do feel like I'm making some progress. It's definitely been alot of fun. Thanks for following along!

And @Colu the bush fish are really interesting, Ive only seen mature ones in pictures. Can't wait too see how they turn out. 

[Colu]

I have keep leopard bush fish  a long time ago my fish use to hide in the plants all time till it came to feeding time  mine got to about 6.5in in 3year they are really slow growing 

Edited January 21, 2021 by Colu

[MAC]

Secured a new living space and preparing for an epic move! Still a rental, but once this is all reestablished I'll have to change the title to The Fish-Duplex Journal and might even get back to being on the forum again. Lots going on and I am taking a bit of a hiatus. 

But moving. 30 or so tanks. Alot to consider. Luckily the new place is only a few miles away but time is limited to only a few days. 

Things are really going to get shook up and reshuffled. Thinking I'll get some totes to house compatible fish in at the new place while things get broken down and rebuilt. It's going to be a total reset. A daunting task but also opportunity to start with a clean slate on some of the things I would've liked to have done differently. 

Time to get going.