GoofyGarra's Journal

[GoofyGarra]

On 12/6/2023 at 7:21 PM, Guppysnail said:

Both my mom and dad do this. However I’ve only seen mom do it like twice and she was mad.  My dad does this to show off. Show everyone in the tank who’s boss and when he is keeping critters from even thinking about entering his cave. 

Vulcan was just chilling on the glass munching at algae. Maybe he's just exercising his muscles. Either way it was adorable to watch his little Odontotes puff out a few times.

[Guppysnail]

I got some photos of mom with hers puffed about half way out. You can see they are not the impressive spike like dads. More powder puffs. 

[GoofyGarra]

I like to revise my ideas when they dont work well, and this is a case like that. Today im revising this idea:

On 12/4/2023 at 6:34 PM, GoofyGarra said:

Ive been very confused why ive gotten no fry, or at all signs of gestation from my purple female in the 2gallon. Parameters are perfect. she is well fed, and there is cover. Ive decided to start thinking like a gravid platy.

I believe that it is not true that platies dont care about their fry, rather they dont care about their fry after birth. Often a female platy will try and find somewhere hidden from predators to give birth to try and give her fry the best chance of survival.

I noticed that there were no signs of further gestation on this fish which was odd as she showed a gravid spot when i added her in. I noticed that she spent most of her time in that tank hiding in the back, as far from me as possible, so she is probably stressed out and worried about predators. If she thinks there is constant risk of predation in an area, she wont drop her fry and might consider gestation to be a complete waste of energy. So im trying to make her feel as comfortable as possible.

What Ive done is taken a small trick from discus breeders to make the fish feel more comfortable which is blacking out the sides. The back of this tank is a matten filter so i cant work with the back, but i cant see through it either. The sides however i covered with black plastic from an outdated planner, to try and make her feel like she is in a safe area.

The other thing i noticed was that there was a decent amount of light going into the tank, and these fish probably want to give birth in heavily planted areas with much less light. I accomplished this with two remaining parts of the planner cover. By strategically placing them on the lid i can control how much light, and where gets into the tank. The V setup i have now allows more light at the front, but less and less as the tank goes back, to imitate a thrush of plants with various light spots. The female has been noticeably less shy and has been more eager to come to the front now that ive made these changes. I also implement hair algae in the tank as cover for fry, due to its complex structure giving the fry lots of hiding spots.

\

These are just some ideas i had "thinking like the fish", im not sure if they will work but im hoping they will, either way it was a fun experiment.

Basically i think the limited light messed up the fish's day night cycle so she spent the whole time hiding in the back. I decided on a compromise. I let full light in but keep the sides blacked out. This means her and the plants get plenty of light, but she can still feel safe because she cant see around her. So far  she has been the least shy with this method.

I could not get her on camera she was too shy. i could not even draw her out with grindal worms.

[GoofyGarra]

Ok another thing happened. I was messing with the matten filter in that tank trying to make it better, it did not work. But then one  of my connections broke and i ended up with an air leak. So i have lots of bubbling on the non-fish side of the sponge. In effect there is oxygen in the water, and there is a nice flow effect coming out of the matten filter tube without agitating the surface constantly with bubbles. Though it was accidental i think its an improvement.

Also the purple platy was right in the front of the tank, i think she likes the new (accidental) system.

Edited December 8, 2023 by GoofyGarra

[GoofyGarra]

Hand feeding party! Always makes my day.

Even Garra Guy got in on it, he's usually too shy:

Also took a good picture of Garra Guy before feeding:

 

[GoofyGarra]

did some maintainance today, got my main tank and the family shrimp tank looking good:

[GoofyGarra]

Ive realized that with the new tank stand for the 5gallon, and the fact that it does not have a light ive been ignoring it, thus i dont quite feel comfortable keeping live animals i care about in there, so im moving the rest of the shrimp into the main shrimp tank, they are just slowly drip acclimating now:

 

[GoofyGarra]

water is super clear today:

Crypt Tropica is growing more, ive had it for over a year and its still tiny, its growing slowly:

Also working to get better picture quality, so trying out a new camera.

Edited December 11, 2023 by GoofyGarra

[GoofyGarra]

Todays update:

SHRIMPLETS!!!

We still have hydra and planaria in the tank so i doubt many will survive, but either way its fun.

[GoofyGarra]

school tank got an interesting new addition:

also got my ACO order today.

]

Im seriously impressed with the easy flow kit, it has added phenomenal amounts of flow which my fish will love as most of them are flow loving. Its getting my sponge filter working better now as well.

I also got a new heater as my old one has been flashing EL for a while and i dont want to risk a failure.

[GoofyGarra]

 small question on guppies.

For the school tank we had fish donated by a breeder which was great as they were free, but now the m:f ratios are 5:1 and the female is definitely being harassed, Is my best choice to move her out or is there another better option?

[JE47]

I was trying to think of another option than removing her but I think that really is the best choice.

[GoofyGarra]

really havent been up to posting lately, i think "that seems like a good thing to post" then get distracted and never post it.

First of all i noticed the purple female was just hiding in the back of the tank and not eating so she wasnt doing too well, so i moved her into the 5gallon tank, on which i put a light in a creative fashion: Using a HOB stuffed with sponge as a light stand...

A,s

Also trying a planria trap in the shrimp tank to try and reduce shrimplet predation:

[GoofyGarra]

On 10/29/2023 at 11:53 AM, GoofyGarra said:

got this today:

its a finer sponge that i normally wouldnt use but someone in my neighborhood put it out for free so i figured it was worth testing on.

Its a fine sponge that is bumpy:

@nabokovfan87 did you notice any difference in bumpy sponge in your HOB testing?

Its a sponge so im hoping it cleanable, and im seeing right now in my aquaclear if i can use it to replace fine polishing pads. (i have a coop medium prefilter, a 30ppi, this stuff, then bio rings+crushed coral).

i want to give an update on this. Switching to this sponge has been one of the best filter media decision ive made. Its fine and bumpy so it keeps the water clear, but also because it is fine it is easy to clean. Im just running a ACO prefilter, this sponge, and a bag of bio rings and my HOB is working great.

[Guppysnail]

Panacur-c dog dewormer (fenbendazole) for both hydra and planaria. Available on Amazon  

I use it with my shrimp every time I get hydra from heavy fry feeding and I’ve used it in planaria in shrimp tanks. 
NOT SNAIL SAFE for a few months after.

.1 (point 1) mg/ 10 gal. 
Redose in 24 hours. No water change 1 week.

It has never affected my shrimp or shrimplettes.

 

 

 

[GoofyGarra]

On 12/16/2023 at 7:35 PM, Guppysnail said:

Panacur-c dog dewormer (fenbendazole) for both hydra and planaria. Available on Amazon  

I use it with my shrimp every time I get hydra from heavy fry feeding and I’ve used it in planaria in shrimp tanks. 
NOT SNAIL SAFE for a few months after.

.1 (point 1) mg/ 10 gal. 
Redose in 24 hours. No water change 1 week.

It has never affected my shrimp or shrimplettes.

 

 

 

Ill look into it, im just concerned a major snail die off could cause an ammonia spike that could harm the snails, so id probably need to remove as many as possible first.

[GoofyGarra]

Not aquarium related, but i worked on this all morning and want to share.

Inspired by a terrarium channel i like (terrarium designs) and sort-of following what he does,  i built a dripping water fall inside a peanut butter pretzel jar. I didnt have any big rocks on hand, so i just used foam, it still looks kind-of artificial, yet somewhat natural. I haven't decided if i want to add moss yet, as i dont have a good lighting system for this setup. It was fun yet annoying to build, but know that its done its really calming just to watch it run.

 

[GoofyGarra]

We ordered some No-Planaria to try a kill the hydra and planaria, im hoping that will work because shrimplets are cute and i want more of them. In the meantime i have set some repashy in a dish and have put it in the tank, as the snails come to eat i just lift out the dish and can easily remove the snails. I like them but a die-off of snails could cause an ammonia spike which would be bad.

[GoofyGarra]

Just checked on the school tank, we have guppy fry!!!

There are only a few adults, they are well fed,and  there is lots of cover, so im not going to interfere right now, im finding it super exciting though, ill spread food around better to make sure the fry can get food. The bio-teacher is very excited.

[GoofyGarra]

Ok, so the one female guppy gave birth in the school tank today, and its been a long while since ive had livebearer fry, so with permission from the bio-teacher i adopted two., I have acclimated them and will be raising them up in the 2gallon tank. They are so tiny and cute! (and hard to photograph 😒)

[GoofyGarra]

ok some updates:

My 5gallon tank used to be under my stand and i could not access the back half but know that i put the tank on its new stand i can however i never changed it up from the old setup which meant there was a lot of mulm on one side i could not vaccum out, and the sand was all on one side. I decided it was time to redo the tank. I pulled out all the plants, sorted them, removed the hardscape, drained the water and sucked out most of the mulm. In the process it turns out i had lots of shrimplets in that tank, im just gonna let them grow up in there for now. I then replanted in a orderly fashion with stem plants, and shoved lots of java fern into a fake log tunnel. I then threw in the sponge from the sponge filter for the shrimplets to play in, here is what the tank looks like now. Admittedly most of the stems still need to fill in:

Filtration for the tank is just a corner box filter. I like it because with a small modification of the uplift tube i have a small amount of bubbles coming  out which agitates the surface but does not create too much flow unlike the sponge filter which has a much more powerful airstone. I'm also amused how well my DIY light stand is working for this tank, just an HOB im not using stuffed with sponge...

I also have lots of work to do with organization. I have most of my things organized then i have this bin that i only want to use for things i use commonly but has a bunch of junk in it:

I also did work on my cable organization because i wanted to be able to know which plug-ins are which when im doing maintenance.

My cables before work:

My Cables after work:

The first thing i did was bunch up long cables and use reversible food grade ties to hold them together, i then used the same ties to attach the bunches to the stand and get them out of the way.

I then took tape and put a piece and the end of each cable where it meets the plug in thing. I used a letter and number system to know which cable leads to what. Letter indicates what it is:

P: Pump (the water variety)

A: Air (air pump basically)

F: Filter (Of the motorized variety)

H: Heater

and number indicates which tank it is running on by gallons. ex. A20 is an air pump on my 20 gallon tank, H5 is a heater on my 5gallon tank etc...

While cable management isnt super fun and doesnt suddenly make my fishes lives better, it makes maintenance easier when i need to unplug things and will stop me from plugging in a dry motor when i thought i was plugging in a heater...

[GoofyGarra]

i realized a few hours ago  that i was using two tanks for grow-out when the fry i had (guppies and shrimp) were of similar size and growth rate and ive heard they get along as adults too so i caught out a guppy fry and moved him into the 5gallon. There were 2 guppy fry but one got siphoned out in my WC this morning, fortunately i found him in my bucket and was able to reunite him with his buddy. The guppy fry are loving the 5gallon and relative to them it is huge. They are having fun in the flow from the box filter and are chilling in the center of the tank, while the shrimplets are on the surfaces so the two sides are just leaving each other alone. Only having 1 fry tank makes things easier, and its more fun to see the guppy fry in a bigger tank.

[GoofyGarra]

ok happy to report the pothos i got from my buddy is doing really well, i just ignore it and its growing. Its putting out roots and one of them is making a new leaf!

Vulcan continues to be shy, i see him most often grazing on my piece of wood, he has his favorite spot which i often find him upside-down on, its very cute. Not as afraid of me as he used to be, but still terrified of the camera, i managed to get this picture though (the red/orange thing is Vulcan, he/she is a super red BN pleco)

Growing out the guppy and shrimp babies  in the same tank is working great, both are growing. I just put a squirt of easy fry food in a few times a day and the guppy fry get some and there is still plenty that makes it to the bottom for the shrimplets, this makes feeding really easy for me. (i love the squeeze bottle for the easy fry food).

and Garra Guy hanging out with the Cories because why not

[GoofyGarra]

went to LFS #2 today, they are bigger with more selection but also more expensive and harder to get to so i dont go to that store as often as i go to my other LFS, but i was in the area and figured id check it out.

It was a pretty good visit, which off course means its documented with pretty bad pictures, but i took a lot of pictures:

random big pleco:

I dont like Glofish, but the glopristellas are pretty cool looking:

Glowlight Tetras, a fish that have a special place in my heart:

Nice Jewel Cichlid:

Mystery snail

Koi:

African Cichlid of some sort:

Cherry Barbs which i am falling in love with. I especially like the albinos, i might do a project with these barbs in the future:

Some nice blue platies:

Labled "Queen Botia Loach" not sure what species but reminds me of a zebra:

A real oddball, the butterfly fish:

Butterfly Pleco:

standard Neons:

Corydora Elegans, one of my bucketlist fish:

some nice powder blue dwarf gouramis:

Some kind of barb (i think labled as "Glass Flame")

a big BN pleco with a nice beard:

and a big group of guppies:

I also asked one of the employees about my platy problem. I did not have a water sample but he pretty much said just take my stocking level down. Now i have no problem doing this for my cories but for my platies it will be hard. I like keeping massivesly off M:F ratios where there are many many many more females then males. However if reducing my population i have two males i really want to keep, but two males doesnt work to well, and when i get to three males then i need to keep a ton of females around and its a mess. But i have a plan for my tank:

Reduce platy and cory populations, ill give some to friends as well as the LFS.

Then get a group of panda garras. My one is so much fun, but they are social fish and im sure Garra Guy would love a Garra Squad to chill with.

 

[GoofyGarra]

Shrimp and shrimplets are doing very well, the tank is covered in shrimplets. Right now the shrimplets are big enough to be easy to see but small enough to be adorable and its pretty great.

There are two shrimplets in this picture, but between photoquality and shrimplets being hard to see i dont think they show up easily.