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I've gotten back to school and working on the School tank in the past few days. It was pretty bad. While the pothos growing from the top and submerged Java moss were thriving, all the guppy grass was dead and there were several dead fish, no shrimp, and mulm everywhere. Upon checking the autofeeder I discovered it had died at some point (kinda my fault, assuming it would just work straight for 3 months was a mistake on my part), which most likely contributed to the loss of the fish, shrimp and plants. My best theory is the fish got hungry and hunted down the shrimp, and the Pothos blatantly out competed the guppy grass. As such there is some news now regarding this tank.

The school tank is coming down. The biggest reason is that last year i was in the lab 4/7 days every week and this year I have no reason to ever be in the room, moving the tank is just not a feasible option. Because of this I'm not seeing the tank and I no longer believe I can properly take care of the fish, I talked to the Bio teacher and she agrees that if the fish cannot get proper care we do not need to have a tank setup.

So I did a water change at lunch today and removed all the livestock, a few endlers'(mostly female) and a nerite snail. They have come home with me where i can take care of them better. The endlers' are very washed out so I am putting them in the 5 gallon for quarantine, i'm hoping that as long as i feed them well they should not hurt my shrimp colony. The nerite snail will be put in the big tank to be a friend for my mystery snail.

Also to me personally $5 for a snail seems absurd, I've had fun experiences, but at the end of the day paying $5 for a snail just seems fundamentally wrong in my mind. To make it worse now somebody that I know (teacher at the school who has some tanks of his own) had mystery snails breeding and now he has babies he wants to get rid of. If only I had waited a few weeks 😫, but I still might take him up on his offer because mystery snails are fun.

Tank lights just turned off so I don't have any pictures but i will gave an Endler update in the morning with some pictures.

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Did  a water change and BBS feeding this morning, I trimmed back the guppy grass mass and scraped off algae growing on my lid and there is a lot more light in the tank now, which makes it easier to see the fish (especially Garra Guy, dark fish on a dark substrate can disappear in dark lighting...)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry its been a while since my last updates, I wish i could say i've been busy but the reality is that I have been distracted.

Not much has changed since the last update, i've been doing some small shrimp projects so if those get interesting results ill post them here. Basically my shrimp colony has very interesting genetics so i occasionally get cool shrimp that i want more of, currently i have a yellow gold back shrimp which I have isolated in the 2gallon and already have a few very new shrimplets raising up, so hopefully i can get more yellow shrimp because they are super cool.

Cories and Garra Guy are doing great, i've started feeding 2 wafers every day instead of just 1 due to all the Cory fry needing more food, and I have started seeing much better behaviors from him now, which I missed seeing previously.

The Albino Cories will probably will going out in the next few weeks, either to try a new kind of cory, or get more panda garras, or both which is most likely. I'm open to some cool ideas for new cories, but at the end of the day it will probably come down to whatever is cheapest (besides for albinos) at the LFS.

I'll be selling out some endler's to my friend in a week for his tank, and I am also sending him my 2 platy juvinilles with darker coloration then I like. Since my tank often gets overgrown and low lighting, I like platies for it that are bright colors like yellow in this case.

Honey Gouarmi is also doing fine, i'll probably get him a few friends in the next few weeks as well,  probably a big trip to the LFS happening soon, bringing in and sending out fish.

Crazy to think it is October already, hope everybody is having a good year.

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Going out today:

2 female platies, to my friend. Nothing wrong with them just not the coloration I wanted. (the darker coloration doesn't look very good in my tank since I often end up with lots of shaded areas from plant growth)

3 Endler Trios to the same friend, because i have excess.

3 Cory fry to a person my friend put me in contact with+as a freebie some shrimps.

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So yesterday when I dropped off the fish with friends I went to the LFS and got a new male platy in an attempt to get more fry. 

It's not going very well. A few hours after I got him I noticed that the fish appeared to have some sort of Redworm sticking out of his butt. And now he is sitting on the bottom of the tank hiding, gills moving but unresponsive. I need to put in an order for a dewormer but I am skeptical the fish will make it at this point, he seems too far gone.

On an unrelated note I've been wanting to try a new kind of Cory for a while. My friend contacted me recently and told me that he was trading out an old tank and the person offered some Emerald Cories (Brochis before reclassification I think) so I will probably will be trying those. First I am waiting to see what happens with the platy because i need an available QT tank before i can take new fish.

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Posted (edited)

After dosing some salt on the Male Platy i am no longer seeing any worms sticking out of his butt (which I hope is a good thing) he is also now eating better.

However a few symptoms persist:

-some sort of white spot disease

-Shimmying

I am currently addressing both of those by dosing small amounts of Marine Salt, raising hardness and adding some salt to help with the fungal infection.

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Edited by GoofyGarra
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Haven't been updating a lot recently, really hasn't been that much happening. I've been having some medical stuff so a lot of fish project ideas I had were put on hold. Fortunately my current setup can handle a few days of neglect so I am not too worried for the fish.

The new male platy is doing phenomenal in QT, he is eating and acting great and I dont see any signs of disease. This is about the 1 week mark of QT, which I like to put the minimum at 2 weeks, so although he will stay in the 5gallon I have no worries about his health.

 

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If it was a rework sticking out you need to research camallanus worms.  They are not always visible but 1 means many since the ones that stick out are females attached inside laying eggs.  Could devastate your entire tank.  
I hope he pulls through.  

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On 10/15/2024 at 11:24 AM, Guppysnail said:

If it was a rework sticking out you need to research camallanus worms.  They are not always visible but 1 means many since the ones that stick out are females attached inside laying eggs.  Could devastate your entire tank.  
I hope he pulls through.  

I have been doing some research but i haven't been super concerned since the fish has been eating fine and isn't overly skinny or swollen at all. Furthermore the Endler that is in the tank also (long story) isn't show any signs of sickness or worms, so i think at this point i have solved or misdiagnosed the issue.

Either way the fish is staying in QT so if it pops up he shouldn't be able to hurt anyone in the big tank.

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I saw some activity on @Chick-In-Of-TheSea's journal and it reminded me to post this.

I've noted several times before on this journal that impulse control is not my strongest skill (I'm working on getting better), so I made a new fish purchase a few days ago.

I had off from school on Wednesday and I decided to go to the LFS (Unrelated note but I had to go early because Wednesday is saltwater delivery day so the store gets super busy later in the day). I had some money from selling fish a few weeks ago, and I was pretty happy with how things were progressing with the Male Platy in QT and I was feeling ready to move him out soon.

Basically I could drag out the story, but TLDR is I bought a Bolivian Ram a few days ago(not my smartest decision), and moved the male platy into the big tank early, where he is doing just fine, a little shy but no signs of disease or anything. Part of the reason I got him was because it was a day before the LFS got their freshwater deliveries so since he had been in the store for almost a week and was still healthy (and everything in the tank was healthy), I figured the odds of him carrying a disease or anything were pretty low.

Still working on getting a feeding routine for the Ram since as I was warned, they are very slow eaters, but I think once I can make it work it will be a cool centerpiece fish, I would confidently add him to the community tank since he is doing amazing, but I am still figuring out the food sitation first, the cories are very fast eaters and he is not. 

I have sexed the Ram to be a boy, and kinda inspired by @xXInkedPhoenixX's Punk, his name is Rocky, although my mom calls him European Tank as a joke to when she couldn't remember the right species name.

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That's really the biggest thing that has been happening around here. I did a ACO order with my friend and got some Bloodworms and Tubifex worms, so the fish were enjoying those (I also got a new prefilter sponge because my current one was falling apart)

 

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The day after I introduced the platy male to the big tank I ended up losing one of my big female platies (the one in my profile picture). I'm pretty sure the male wasn't the issue as far as correlation/causation go because she was old and was not behaving as actively before I introduced him. I have not seen any disease or aggression with the other platies so the problem was most likely in the female that died, not in the male.

I've also been actively working on a shrimp project recently. The shrimp that I got (over a year ago now, time flies) have some interesting genetics and aren't the highest quality (I still appreciate @Guppysnail for sending them and they are amazing). Some of them are very nice and others are not. My dream for the future is to be able to breed out a pure strain of shrimp from my current stock, and then replace all the current shrimp in the Family Shrimp Tank with some better looking ones. As such I have started a breeding project to try and isolate out Orange shrimp (mostly just because I like orange). I've been having little adventures pulling all the reds out of the tank (when I tried to isolate the oranges the reds were shrimplets and hence impossible to move out), but I'm hoping that once I can get all the red shrimp out of the tank, and I can get all my fish through QT so I don't have shrimplet predators, I will be able to start working more on improving a shrimp line for my shrimp display tank.

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On 10/21/2024 at 4:34 PM, Guppysnail said:

Your little ram is so adorable 🥰 

This is my first experience with Cichlids and I adore the massive eyes, he always seems to be watching me, it is very fun and very cute.

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On 10/21/2024 at 4:39 PM, GoofyGarra said:

This is my first experience with Cichlids and I adore the massive eyes, he always seems to be watching me, it is very fun and very cute.

Bolivians are very different temperament wise from Germans as also very different from other dwarf cichlids.  Bolivians are more like playful puppies.  

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Rocky is doing pretty well so far, a little shy and not the fastest to the food, but doing well nonetheless. The 5 gallon is my only tank with a fine sand substrate and it is home to a colony of tubifex worms (did not intend for that to happen but it's fun), so I think he is enjoying the sand sifting which I've seen him do a few times.

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4 minutes ago, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

How come?

Mostly just the impulse buy. I knew it would take some work to get him feeding in my tank, and for the 3 days after I bought him I was out, so if something went wrong I wouldn't have been able to do anything.

I will be clear that I have no regrets now.

4 minutes ago, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Welcome Rocky! If you have frozen brine shrimp that is easy for the rams to get. Vibra bites is also good. Snoopy loves those. I send them down a glass tube.

I do not have either of these foods, but I can look into getting some Vibra Bites. I dont do frozen foods because I am not the boss of the freezers in my house and my parents are not so enthused about having fish food near the human food.

Edited by GoofyGarra
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While everything in the fishroom is doing well, outside of the fish room is a different story.

Yesterday I realized that my family room counter was covered in water, and it seemed to be originating from the shrimp tank, so great another leak. I'm not so good with glass and silicone and could not identify the break, so as the tank is only 4 gallons, I just moved out all the shrimp (there were a lot more then I thought) and drained down the tank.

Im hoping to figure it out and get a shrimp tank back up because my mom really liked it, so I will have to see about fixing the tank or getting a new one. Considering the tank was used for several years before I got it, and now it is leaking, it may just be a better option to get a new tank since small tanks are pretty inexpensive. However, this was a fluval kit tank that I removed the filter compartment from, so getting a tank in the same dimensions would be more difficult, so I need to talk to my friend about resealing possibilities before I can make any decisions.

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56 minutes ago, GoofyGarra said:

Im hoping to figure it out and get a shrimp tank back up because my mom really liked it, so I will have to see about fixing the tank or getting a new one. Considering the tank was used for several years before I got it, and now it is leaking, it may just be a better option to get a new tank since small tanks are pretty inexpensive. However, this was a fluval kit tank that I removed the filter compartment from, so getting a tank in the same dimensions would be more difficult, so I need to talk to my friend about resealing possibilities before I can make any decisions.

I'm no master resealer either.

As long as you're sure there's no damaged glass, the easiest thing to do is to cut out the existing seals on all corners of the tank, clean it with acetone, and apply a new bead of silicone. Sounds tough, but Serpadesign and King of DIY have pretty good videos on the process. Super easy once you've done it once or twice.

If that's not appealing, Petsmart and Petco actually have a decent selection of cheap-ish nano tanks these days.

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I've resealed a tank before for my 2 gallon that leaked, that was pretty straightfoward. This tank is more tricky because it is a fluval special tank so it has weird semi-rims that make resealing pretty difficult.

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