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Minanoras adventures in fishkeeping


Minanora

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Your guppies are very beautiful. Fellow daily water changer for nitrates. I feel your pain. I pull my babies to a 20 long after they are too big to be eaten. Then move boys to 2 10’s as soon as I can tell. They max out the capabilities of the tanks even with ridiculous  amounts of filtration. I get nervous as they approach size to take them to the LFS. 

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On 12/9/2021 at 3:49 AM, Guppysnail said:

Your guppies are very beautiful. Fellow daily water changer for nitrates. I feel your pain. I pull my babies to a 20 long after they are too big to be eaten. Then move boys to 2 10’s as soon as I can tell. They max out the capabilities of the tanks even with ridiculous  amounts of filtration. I get nervous as they approach size to take them to the LFS. 

Thank you. They're all doing well, too.

Yesterday I moved all of the babies that were in the 10 to the 20t I received. However, I also added the new babies that Misty and Shiva had as well. Probably 30+ week old kids. Squad 5-6. Squad 1-2 will be leaving for the LFS the week after Christmas so that will help a bit. Things that aren't helping... I had to pull the sponge filter I had in the original 10 to put in a completely new shrimp tank and I don't have a bigger filter for the 20 so it's still using the one that was on the 10. So.... Now I just have more water volume, not so much a better filtration situation to match the new size. But, I mean, it's just nitrates anyway, so I was keeping up. Just, losing that sponge was not ideal.

 

My original shrimp cube was doing great. Had a ton of algae and happy snails. pH was stable. GH,  KH all good. Cycled and happy. I ordered my shrimp. Then, the same day... Hydra appeared, they ate all the cyclops and other inhabitants, I don't know how, but then the nitrates spiked and the pH fell. Tried to get it back to happy even with the hydra, no dice. The controsoil was now playing a roll in over buffering the water. Tiny tank challenges...

So the same day the shrimp shipped I had to bust out that 5.5g. I put in inert sand substrate, got all new tissue culture plants. New rock. Rolled the dice with the sponge and wood from the fry tank and got the shrimp in a whole different setup when they arrived yesterday. Making the decision to abandon the 2.6g until I can reset it was the hardest thing I've had to do. I spent over a month getting that ready and then didn't use it!

I hope the shrimp do okay in the 5.5 while I get the old tank set back up. I'm waiting for some "no planaria" to show up. Trying to save the environment in the 2.6. I switched the substrate to inert sand and replanted everything that was in there. All else fails, I actually really like the 5.5. I love that they have more room in there. I had only done the 2.6 because my husband wanted it to take up very little space and he loves the cube.

 

 

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On 12/9/2021 at 8:55 AM, Guppysnail said:

You sound like me playing musical tanks. The larger water volume will help with the smaller filter and buy it more time to do its job. I’m glad all is going well with you. Hey was it you who said rotala grows like crazy?  I bought some to try. 

I seriously spent all day on fish tank stuff yesterday. I should have put on some music! Then it really would have been musical tanks! 😛

Yeah it was I with the rotala obsession. I just got some Rotala 'Bangladesh' as a tissue culture. We'll see how that one does. My first time using tissue cultures yesterday.

My rotala indica, rotala macrandra green, and, rotala h'ra gia lai do great. My rotala nanjenshan does not do quite so well but it could be because of where it's planted. Rotalas do have a more delicate leaf, and the nanjenshan has the finest leaves of the bunch so that could also be a factor. The rest of the rotalas handle my swordtails, guppies, harlequins, shrimp and otos traffic just fine.

I have a ludwigia arcuata that does alright and looks the way it's supposed to; however it's just slower growing than my Rotala and a bit less dense of a plant than I like.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Read through 1st page of your journal tonight, can really feel the passion you have for the hobby. Your 75G “Takashi Amano inspired tank” is awesome! The moss is placed well and the planting looks good. Can’t wait to see it grown out later in journal. (No spoilers plz I’ll catch up in a day or two) Also wanna see your process with a 2.6G tank. I’m thinking of starting a nano shrimp colony 

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@Atitagain Thank you. The last week has been a true struggle. I'm sure the next page you go through will go quickly. I haven't been able to make the time to have as much fun with my journey. I'm actually about to post a good update. That darn shrimp cube... that's a special adventure... You'll soon read all about it. -_- 😛

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The last week has been a bit crazy. I'm just taking the little victories. Things have been a bit crazy.

Shrimp cube.... Hydras headquarters and now there's issues with the pump that came with it. I am treating it with "no planaria". Glad I waited for so long and never put shrimp in it! I actually love them in the 5.5G. The plants are growing in well. I ordered 10 shrimp, received 14. I lost one within 24 hours. It's been over a week now, most of them have molted and everyone is happy. I love my orange shrimps so much! I can hardly wait to move their home out of the bathroom... but I do enjoy them in there... I love that they're the last thing I see before bed, and the first thing I see in the morning.

Mac turned into a pinecone in a 24 hour period. I tried to save him but he passed very quickly. Misty also passed away out of nowhere. All water parameters totally fine in both tanks. Little blue boy passed out of nowhere as well, I assume from stress but I honestly have no idea. I'm just beside myself with those losses.

 

Also, I've learned that moss loves to hold onto waste. I have been fighting with my christmas moss off-gassing what seems to be hydrogen sulfide gas... or something similar I assume. If I move my moss it smells like the tank farted prime. So I'm not sure how I feel about that or what is the best action to take now. The only reason why I haven't removed all of the moss is because all of my baby swordtails love it and I'm sure that without my moss the rasboras would have eaten all of the swordtail fry.PXL_20211215_010311981.jpg.c9fdb54439854c472094d9474d081607.jpg

Like I said, I love my little shrimp.... And yes, I know my master bathroom backsplash screams "progressive 1965 home". Eventually it will be remodeled, the guest bathroom was further forward in the line. We're the second owners here. I love our humble home. But... We may move into another home to gain rental history for this home... which means I'll have an actual fish room.... So, I can dream.

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The baby swordtails, well, first generation, there's a new batch as of Thursday! They're like miniatures of their parents. They're so cute....

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It's bedtime though...

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I’m leaning towards a 5-ish gallon for a shrimp colony. It’s on projects list. How has the maintenance and keeping water parameters stable been going with yours?

All your plants seem to be coming in nicely. In the 75G is the plan to propagate the PSO and fill the central area with it? I love your 2 pieces of driftwood with the moss hanging. And I was just thinking out loud. 

good luck with all the guppies. 

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@Atitagain Everything has been good with the 5.5; doing the first water change tomorrow using the Salty Shrimp, Shrimp Mineral GH/KH with my RO. Previously I mixed RO water with tap water but my TDS was a bit high from that. I also had to mix my tap half-ish hard water with half-ish soft water. Just not ideal. We're at almost 2 weeks with the shrimp 5.5, so it's hard to say. I had to make the emergency tank setup because of the hydra and crazy pH crash in the 2.6. Blessing in disguise, truly.

 

The PSO was just a placeholder for the Taiwan Lily. It's just a group of cuttings from my sons 20G. There's just so much of it.... I've never had any issues with spreading it between tanks due to it's fast growth rate. I will be pulling it out once the Taiwan Lily fills in more. The otos love the PSO, but the corydora love the lily.

I love my driftwood. I'll be sad if I have to remove all of the moss because of the weird off-gassing it seems to have.... I'm still at a loss for how it's impacting the health of the tank, if it is at all. It makes me nervous at the least.

 

The guppies.... They're the easiest and yet somehow the most difficult fish to keep for me. It's like a beautiful tornado.

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Micro update! I'm laying in bed and so excited that I had to post.

@Atitagain 5.5 has been stable still. I did my first water change using the shrimp mineral. I did add some soft water to the mix but much, much less. 1/10th. I siphoned just under half the tank. I let my water sit over night before. The water temp was 61.. And their tank is at 76. So I added the water with a drip made of air line and a flow control valve. Worked very well.

As of today..... One of my females is berried!!!!!! 🦐💚🥳

I'm so excited! I hope the babies make it to hatching! Still one great Christmas present. See photo, she's on the sponge filter. Other photo of my mildly crazy water change setup. It's a work in progress.

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On 12/24/2021 at 2:26 AM, Atitagain said:

Congrats on the upcoming babies! Looking really good 👍 

Thank you! Another female berried up as of this morning, too! My chances for babies increased! Huzzah! Such a grand surprise! I wasn't expecting them to breed for at least a few more months.

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I hope that everyone had a great holiday!

I've found that I struggle to be away from my fish for more than 24 hours. I dream about them, I think about them, I share photos of them with family who give no cents about my hobby, and then think about how I can set up another arlo system to watch my tanks...

I love my fish, shrimp, and my snails. Coming home to everyone being happy, albeit hungry, and healthy was the greatest relief.

I'm pretty sure I worry more about my fish than my own child. 🤣

We left on Friday morning; I changed the water on the fry tank. Did a 90% water change over the course of 3 hours, fed everyone, dosed meds in the female guppy tank (I've had several issues in there). Did my final dose of "No Planaria" on the 75... Death to hydra! Fed the shrimp a special "Christmas" treat. Came home to find everyone happy, like I said. We'll be going away again for three days in February. I'm more confident now.

However.......... I got federal jury duty summons on Friday! For the same Friday that we're supposed to leave, to the opposite end of the state.... So yeah I may be stuck doing my "once in a lifetime" federal jury duty. Hooofriigginboohooray. -_-

Mind you I've been summoned for normal jury duty, 5 times since I was eligible.... Husband, only once! He's older than me and STILL hasn't ever been summoned for federal!

Anyway, I'm super excited to read about my shrimps reproductive cycle. I get to have "broods"! As a huge Zagara/swarm/bee fan, I love the word brood. Being able to have a legit brood of my own, well, I mean, my lovely little orange ladies.... Brings me great joy! I don't get to have bees yet... our county ordinance is ridiculous... or I would have already been hosting bees at the 83 acres.

I had a female that had columnaris, she's 100% cured. I had another female that had something going on, not sure what... but she was haggard looking, THIN, tattered, loss of color, looked like she may have parasites, or ich, or columnaris.... I couldn't figure it out.... so I had treated the tank with kanamycin and jungle fizz for the other girl, but the one was still haggard, so I did a double up and dosed paracleanse, maracyn and ich-x. Everyone is tip-top now. The haggard girl is putting on weight, tail looks great, color has returned. she's still thin but things are looking up!

However in the 75, I'm starting to think that Mim the swordtail has dropsy... early stages... I'm not sure because her behaviour is fine, and I hadn't seen her in over 24 hours so maybe I'm just paranoid. If I feel the same tomorrow I'll move her and treat her accordingly.

Meanwhile, my plants are a jungle! Just letting everything grow out for a minute; it's interesting to look at and honestly I can start a lot of cuttings in a hurry this way. Plus, the fish have been eating some off the new growth, which I can appreciate to an extent. Yeah I want the tankes to look "perfect" but really, I care more about my fish kids being happy. ^_^

Happy Holidays, merry Christmas, and happy new year!

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Well, here we are in the new year. I lost the haggard looking girl on new years eve. She suddenly returned to her previous state and stopped eating.

Today Paco passed. He had a tumor or something develop in his chest. His behavior had been that of an old man as of late. I'm not sure what exactly happened with him. I am sad that he's gone.

I finally got around to pruning the jungle in the 75. I also moved the spray bar up, finally... And discovered that I had assembled it incorrectly... It's now producing flow from both sections! I'm still annoyed with it's design.

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After

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The first set of mutt guppies are leaving next week! I'm super excited. The bio load of these gluttons... It's unbelievable!20220103_083312.jpg.eda34d7ae521d56b8c71bf6f62abafce.jpg

I have lots more babies in the female tank... One batch of 90+/- mutts and about 50+/- single strain fry. I'm going to break down the 20g tall fry tank in May and set up 3, 28g totes outside.

And fyi the tank divider in the 20g is useless... The gap along the edge, where the suction cups are, juvies go right through it. I'm going to plug it up with some batting but dang.

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Long and rambling update! Babies, babies, and more babies... That is the world I live in right now!

I keep delaying selling off the durp squads. I finally got the fry tank to stabilize! Weeks... MANY weeks later. I have a 20G High that holds 100+ fry right now. I separated the males from the females for the most part. I fixed the divider... It wasn't centered between the sides of the tanks, there was more space to the front than the rear. Simply sliding it over to make it more centered fixed the issue. Now only young fry fit through the gap.

Sadly I only have one mutt mother left; Shiva. Shiva wasn't originally a mutt but after her first squad she became such, and even with her first batch of fry there was something up with the genetic dominance of the pairing and the fry came out very, very, orange and with little to no blue/black. They're beautiful but do not look anything like the classic red dragon mosaic everyone knows so well.

Anyway, because of this I've been doing research into guppy genetics! I'm trying to make sure my line bred guppies stay pure and lovely and not accidently breed out the traits I'm looking for. Which, for me, also means... More tanks! I'm going to set up a rack of three 10G tanks with dividers and then the 20G grow out to boot. *shrug* For science!

I am going to take a break for a few months though. We're going on holiday for two weeks in May... And I want to get some more corydoras in my 75, and more otos! So I want to prioritize those additions before I get out of control with line breeding. My current females are almost "empty" so I'd rather just focus on my 75G occupants, and the shrimp for a minute. Especially with a vacation on the horizon... yeah 5 months from now... but that's seriously what you have to think about when you're doing projects like this.

My shrimp ladies are all still berried! I did lose another male to a failed molt after my last water change. Which is odd to me because the water I changed matched parameters pretty closely. I drip added the new water as well. No matter, I'm sure that the future generation is set and I'll have more numbers in about a week. I'm excited!

Out of all of my mutt guppies I have found ONE albino! I think I may keep her. I'm reading more about the albino mutation and have not decided for sure but WOW she's so beautiful! I will try to capture a photo of her during the next water change. She's very hard to find among the mass of other females.

Besides all of that, my sons 20G high that homes the females and youngest line-bred guppies crashed and I haven't been able to stabilize it for the last week. I thought it would be simple and let it go a week without testing after changing a huge amount of water over 12 hours. Nope. Still homes 4ppm ammonia, and 3ppm nitrite; which is lower than it was, oddly. But still... I'm supplementing bacteria to try to repair the damage from cleaning the filter media and the increased load from the new babies.

 

I added one new male guppy baby to the 75G. In a few weeks I'll be saying goodbye to the first generation of black swordtails. They're lovely, but they need to find new homes. Even the next generation needs to as well, but that's 10 weeks out. The black swordtails are the only pair I have that I'm letting breed freely. Their babies are so lovely!

I think it's time to add some more otos to the 75. The current stock of 5 are all in hiding most of the time now. I think I'll add 3 more and see if they come out again. They were out all the time, now they just hide.

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Sounds like you have your hands full of babies and lots of fun ahead seeing how the fry color up. You are wise to consider what will happen in five months--I keep thinking about how even if I *do* have all my guppies correctly divided up into male and females tanks today, I still have to wait out 6-8 months for every female who was ever anywhere near a male. Scary!

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On 1/10/2022 at 9:11 PM, PineSong said:

Sounds like you have your hands full of babies and lots of fun ahead seeing how the fry color up. You are wise to consider what will happen in five months--I keep thinking about how even if I *do* have all my guppies correctly divided up into male and females tanks today, I still have to wait out 6-8 months for every female who was ever anywhere near a male. Scary!

Yeah, it's really challenging when the females are already hit. I'm sure I'm going to have babies coming every month through May, but I can hope. The females that came to me pregnant are young, so I'm hoping that impacts how many fry they have and how many batches they have.... So far... there's just more babies.

My biggest issue right now, aside from the many, many, many babies... is that I don't want to mix up the mutt fry with the line bred fry.

The easiest thing to do to keep them from mixing.... put the line-bred fry in the 75 gallon... However I'm hesitant because they're very difficult to catch out of the 75G. Then there's the issue that I've got the 3 strains of line-bred fry all together right now because they're not mature.... Eventually I'll have to sort them out. Luckily the strains are very different. Aside from culls, they'll be easy to sort out so long as I can keep them away from the mutts and seperate the males from the females in time. Shiva will have to stop having babies at some point. She had upwards of 90 on her last drop... We're 3 drops into "stored" packets with Shiva. 

Guppies.... Babies... Lots of em. Lol

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On 1/11/2022 at 7:33 PM, Atitagain said:

Wow so many babies! Good luck keeping it all sorted out. I have some mutts and seriously considering a line breed but I may have too many tanks to have time to keep up with that much breeding. 🤣😂🤣

Thank you! Honestly, I like all the babies. I just wish I had a 55, or two, to deal with them all. 😛

I love mutts. It's interesting to see what traits pop up. Almost like a kaleidoscope of their past bloodlines coming forth to remind us that they're explosive in not only numbers but colors as well!

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On 1/11/2022 at 10:51 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

@MinanoraORD, when it rains it really pours guppies. I’ll be in your boat when I start up some additional tanks for blue Hawaiian colonies along with my teacup platys. Sounds like you have a finish line in May to look forward to. Sorry for the losses but you sound as if you’ve kept a stiff upper lip about it.  

I was looking at Blue Hawaiian literally the day before yesterday.... That's super exciting! They are so lovely. I would love to do a swap with you at some point! If you're interested. 😀

As for my losses, I cried when Paco passed away. I buried him in my miniature peach tree pot that we've had for 11 years. It's now 'Pacos peaches'. He may have been overly affectionate but he was a sweetheart who loved attention. The rest I fought hard and lost as well. Tried to just focus on the positives and press onward. Other challenges in my life outside of the fish have taxed me to near breaking. I can't let these things win and mow me over. I have a hard time getting back up if I do. I'm not trying to be callus, just strong.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm behind on this thread. Micro update time! Shiva is about to pop! I have a feeling that she'll be having another brood of 90+ fry tonight. I put her in the breeding net the day before yesterday. I keep her fry separate from the line-bred fry so I don't have to worry about mixing them up. A week after birth I move them to the mutt grow out to live the mad-max life. Chaos!

Shiva this evening.

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The rest of the female guppy sanctuary.

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Mushroom, the lone wolf swordtail.

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I'm going to move my best black swordtail female baby in with him. I'm hoping for a beautiful outcome. Hopefully a small Hamburg style variation. But that's a ways out. 3 months at least.

The 75 crew. Moved the 2 month old male line-bred guppies in last weekend.

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Good thing I'm keeping logs... This brood of fry will be shiva's 3rd without a male present. Sadly that puts me behind where I want to be in April for mutt guppies. Assuming she lives through this and the next brood. Poor lady. She's had a lot of fry. I never wanted her to carry the burden for so long. I wish I had pulled her from service 3 months earlier than I did.

Meanwhile, as soon as the line-bred are finished dropping fry every month, I'm going to intentionally breed the oldest HB Red Rose pair I have for the first time. The male is just the most beautiful fish. I may breed him to a younger generation HB RR female if I have a stronger suiter. It's highly unlikely that he's the father of the fry she's dropping. He was very young compared to her when I got them. Though he's stayed very small.

 

 

 

 

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