Coffee with Teejay

[TeeJay]

Tonight is my fish clubs Christmas party. I hope to come home with something good! I'll report back if I hit it big!

[TeeJay]

I would say the fish club Christmas party was a awesome success. We had a great spread for dinner ...buffet of course 🤗. Then it was on to the raffle.

So for big club meetings/party's in the spring summer and Christmas we do a round robin style raffle. Everyone brings and donates as many bags of fish,plants, wood fish food and equipment as you want. As a number is drawn you get to go up and pick any item you want. Once all numbers are drawn then go back in the pot for the next round until all items are gone 

So I walked away with 4 anubias plants 2 crypts, 50ft of air hose and a bag of red neos! So the shrimps went into the sanctuary tank to help spread the genes in there. Not sure where the new plants will gone they are in a bucket full of water for now 

[nabokovfan87]

I see two or three of my favorite anubias! Congratulations on the awesome haul. 😁

[TeeJay]

On 12/9/2023 at 1:02 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I see two or three of my favorite anubias! Congratulations on the awesome haul. 😁

I'm giving the barteri another try. The past 3 I've had I could never keep alive for longer than a couple of months. All other anubias I do great with. Hope this one does better 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/9/2023 at 12:25 PM, TeeJay said:

I would say the fish club Christmas party was a awesome success. We had a great spread for dinner ...buffet of course 🤗. Then it was on to the raffle.

So for big club meetings/party's in the spring summer and Christmas we do a round robin style raffle. Everyone brings and donates as many bags of fish,plants, wood fish food and equipment as you want. As a number is drawn you get to go up and pick any item you want. Once all numbers are drawn then go back in the pot for the next round until all items are gone 

So I walked away with 4 anubias plants 2 crypts, 50ft of air hose and a bag of red neos! So the shrimps went into the sanctuary tank to help spread the genes in there. Not sure where the new plants will gone they are in a bucket full of water for now 

That sounds like so much fun!

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/9/2023 at 5:48 PM, TeeJay said:

The past 3 I've had I could never keep alive for longer than a couple of months. All other anubias I do great with. Hope this one does better 

The real interesting thing there is that the majority of anubias sold is based of barteri.  Here we just call a lot of it nana or nana petite, but all of the ones we see and think of as "anubias" and the common size versions are all from barteri and names as such on certain plant sites with the details or places like tropica.

Edited December 10, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[TeeJay]

A little video I made of the new killis enjoying a grindal worm breakfast 

 

[Guppysnail]

Those girls sure love the grindle worms 😍

[TeeJay]

On 12/15/2023 at 9:48 AM, Guppysnail said:

Those girls sure love the grindle worms 😍

Yes you can see how plump the belly is getting on the one. I might put in the spawning mop soon.

[TeeJay]

Afternoon fellow nerms. Been a busy week for TeeJay. But I finally had time to get the new plants from the Christmas party into there tanks and out of the bucket of water. First off I added the anubias barteri into the front left corner of the shrimp sanctuary. And planted the majority of the crypt parva, a new plant for me in the front center of the tank. We shall see how they do.

Next in the 20 gallon long I planted the big pot of crypt wenditti in the front left of the slate cave. Hope it does well in here. 

I still need to get pics of the rest. But here is a start. As always keep it fishy my friends.

[TeeJay]

Now in the danios and pygmy Cory tank I added the anubias coffefolia and a small bunch of the crypt parva in the center of the tank. I have never really planted in sand before so I'm curious to see if it makes much of a difference.

In the new killi tank I added another anubias in the center of the tank. Not that you can see it and I putt the spawning mop in the back right corner. Again something I have never used before but curious to see if it makes a difference in getting eggs to survive.

[TheSwissAquarist]

I find that spawning mops only work if there’s no other egg suitable plants in the tank…which is a bit of a shame because the tank doesn’t end up looking great. 

[TeeJay]

Merry Christmas fellow nerms!. Not much news to report today. So here is a small photo dump of my wet friends on this Christmas day.

[TeeJay]

So after taking those pics @Guppysnail noticed something. And I kind of noticed it but was having a hard time believing it. But before I shipped the apistos trio off to guppy they obviously had there first spawn that I was unaware of. And we have a sole survivor. I believe it's a female. Because the first thing she said to me was when did you get more apistos lol. So I fished it out and moved it over to the 5 gallon tank until I can find a forever home for it. 

I tell you what I have some pretty good ",luck" with not trying to breeding lol.

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by TeeJay

[TeeJay]

Afternoon fellow nerms. Some exciting news in Teeajays fishy adventures. My lfs had some pygmy corys in stock! So a friend took me over and I picked up 5 more to go with the trio I already had. So now we have a free of 8. All nice and round and healthy. I just got them acclimated and into there new home. I can't wait to see how they all do together. I hope to get more natural behavior since they are a larger group now. 3 of the new ones are already swimming around mid water saying look at me look at me!

As well I picked up some frozen daphinia to try out. 

[TeeJay]

Got a couple of good pics just now.

[TeeJay]

When I was picking up the new group of pygmys I got some frozen daphnia and frozen garlic brine shrimp. Buy one get one 50 percent off so I figured it was worth a try. Tonight everyone has a daphinia dinner. Everyone went pretty crazy for it. Tomorrow night we will give the garlic brine shrimp a go.

[TeeJay]

Little video of the pygmys. 

https://youtu.be/pLoEL-2HOhc?si=1ZZZUi45y8VQoX4f

[TeeJay]

Happy New Year fellow nerms.. 

The new group of 5 pygmy corys are doing well in there new home. They are getting used to the other 3 pygmy's and everyone is starting to hang out together more. I did get the single apisto borelli juvenile out of there tank since noticing it. It's in the 5 gallon shrimp and snail tank for now until I find it a new home. It's still pretty small so I'm not to worried about it outgrowing the 5 gallon before I get it a forever home.

The new killi gardneri  are doing awesome as well. They are taking to the frozen daphinia and frozen garlic brine shrimp well. The cpds paleys honeys and apistos are enjoying the frozen foods as well. I think I will put them into my regular food rotation. Speaking of that I need to get a streamline rotation of foods established better. For there health as well as on my wallet 😆

I added the spawning mop into the killis tank a little over a week ago. I'm hoping I will find eggs soon so I can try and raise some new babies. I know at @Guppysnail is looking forward to receiving some of these. I check it every few days to hope to not have to many eaten in between check days. 

As far as my adventure plans for the New Year I have a few things in mind. My plan is to have a fellow fish club friend help me build a couple of 2x4 dual 20 long tank stands. This way I can upgrade the shrimp sanctuary the danio/pygmy tank and the killis tanks to 20 longs instead of 10gallok tanks by doing this I can streamline my dinning room to a more manageable and aesthetically appealing mini fish room. 

The goal is to have 4 20 longs total. The 29 and one 10 gallon wild type shrimp/snail/at tank.

I hope to keep the bottom tanks on the new stands at least 12" off the floor for better viewing and water changes.

Once this happens I plan to move the 207 canister filter over to the 29. Then run dual penguin pro 125s on the 4 20 long tanks. I personally like the pro 125s as the most versatile and all around hobs. I am also a fan of always running 2 types of filtration on all of my tanks. Yes I know I'm sure it's major overkill but this way I always have at least one filter that stays in place each water change while the other gets by weekly service. So all tanks also have 1-2 coop sponge filters on them as well.

This all will not happen at once. I plan to upgrade each of the 3 10gallon tanks one at a time. Less stress and again easier on the wallet 

So as always keep it fishy my friends.

[TeeJay]

Grindals versus killis. Who do you take to win?! They have been getting a rotation of grindals frozen daphinia and frozen brine. With kens grow meal mixed in. If I can't get a spawn off of that food rotation I don't think I ever will lol

https://youtu.be/3yU1tZE1pYc?si=GWG-7Jj6RsFPIpXv

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/1/2024 at 2:02 PM, TeeJay said:

If I can't get a spawn off of that food rotation I don't think I ever will lol

Fingers crossed!

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Love these fish @TeeJay

[TeeJay]

On 1/8/2024 at 8:18 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Love these fish @TeeJay

They are quickly becoming some of my fav fish. Very active and love to eat lol.

[TeeJay]

Once again TeeJay has fallen behind on his updates. Only 2 weeks tho this time.

Just been planning on how the new stand(s) are going to go and tank layouts and such. 

Sunday I went over to a fellow nerms house to see there fish room. Been wanting to get over there for awhile now. It was fun to feel out and see all the fish and how there setups are.

I e been studying on air pumps for a few days. Right now I run backup battery power pumps on all my tanks. While I like having the piece of mind of backup power I have definitely noticed they do seem to lack on powered after they are a few months old. I pulled out a couple of tetra whispers I had laying around to just to a comparison on flow. As I hooked up the tetra to each of the tanks there flow increases easily 20 to 40 percent. Sometimes even more 

So while brainstorming a out the upcoming tank stands and tak upgrades my fish friend showed me a extra pond pump he has that he never used and showed me how he setup taps to his tanks. He said why don't you do the same to the tanks in your dinning room. Since all of my tanks except the 29 are located there.

Now I know it's major overkill for the amount of tanks I have but he is giving me a great price on the pump and will help me setup the lines so this is the way I'm going to go. We are going to build in looping PVC pipe along the side of the two tank stands we are building to drop the taps from. The. It will have a bleedoff valves on each stand if I need to relive pressure from the pump. I don't think I will need to bleedoff much since I will be running at least 12lines. As well this way in the future if I ever add more ranks or need extra air for extra air stones I have the capability to do so. 

Hopefully I will get to start the stand builds in about 4 to 5 weeks.

I'm adding a pic of the air pump and the stands we will be building. As well as a few random pics. As always keep it fishy my friends.

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/23/2024 at 4:31 PM, TeeJay said:

As I hooked up the tetra to each of the tanks there flow increases easily 20 to 40 percent. Sometimes even more 

Cory had mentioned on the last live that they are working on a slightly more powerful air pump.