Beastie's journal

[beastie]

Everyone has them, I will make a journal too!

I kept fish when I was little, but we ofcourse did it all wrong. Later when I decided to start doing fishkeeping, I did a lot of reading and research. Sometimes it feels like I like the planning and reading more than the actual keeping. My first was a tank my boss had at work in office, which was also completely wrong, but he allowed me to remake it and take care of it for few years and at the end, take it home. I also did the mistake of starting with my own 20 liter, which bought me nothing but grief but also a lot of experience and love for nano fish.

In 2012 I purchased my largest tank and since then I slowly graduated to two larger and at this moment four smaller tanks, so I have six 🙂 

 

South American tank, 120x50x60cm. My oldest physical tank, the setup is about 2 years old though I keep meddling in it. 
It houses top to bottom, 6 hatchet fish, 20 or so ember tetras, 20 rummynose tetras, 4 bolivian rams, 12 sterbai corydoras, 6 otocinclus, several amanos. I sometimes consider adding something, but do not know what

 

Asian tank, running for a year, 110x40x45cm. I am quite satisfied with this, though it is basically only two species because the hillstreams do not work. I feel like it may need something, but not sure what and with all the cloud minnow fry, I am reaching capacity.
20 golden white cloud minnow, 12 normal white cloud minnow, 4 older fry and 9 still doing some growing in another tank. 7 panda garra, one remaining hillstream loach

 

"Window" tank, 60x30x30 cm, it is the one I inherited from my boss free of charge 🙂 It houses my colony of rabbit snails, I only have 2 adults now, but 11 babies that were born in the past year. In August I bought a group of 10 pseudomugil luminatus, which have quickly become my most favorite fish. They also breed and I have several fry of various sizes. Am very curious about their future. I know the pH water params shouldnt work for this combo, but they do.

 

Office tank - 56x25x36 cm, it is a very old tank someone gave me with various chips in the corners, so I live in constant adrenaline state of when it will leak. It houses my 6 clown killifish, I think I saw some fry but they have been in there only since beginning of August. I think later on, when I have some generations, I will consider scarlet badis/tiger badis or some other bottom dweller.

 

Shrimp tank - 40x25x25cm, this is my smallest tank. Houses my red cherry shrimp colony and eight Indostomus Paradoxus, that I have had since this march. They are easy to please but they do not breed for me, not sure if it is the shrimp/snails or something else

 

Cube - 40x40x40cm tank. My last and temporary tank. Or so I say. It is again very very old tank, so I live with constant thrill of waiting for it to leak. This means I am trying to not stock it, but it taunts me with how well the plants are doing with zero light, except its position near window. I set it up quickly in June for my paradise fish, to have it as a solitary. Since then I left my colony of sterbais for over a month in vain attempt to breed, successfully spawned my minnows and now I am playing around with the idea of breeding otocinclus from my south american tank, but I will have to catch them first and since I started considering it, I didnt see a single one.

Otherwise I am tempted by the scarlet badis, maybe a betta, honey gourami, pygmy corydoras, so many fish!!! I am trying to stay strong though

 

I will post here if I do something interesting.

[Guppysnail]

Thank you for sharing. Your tanks are very lovely. I have never gotten frogbit to thrive though I’ve had many failed attempts. I’m envious of those roots. Very impressive. 

[beastie]

On 10/10/2023 at 5:12 PM, Guppysnail said:

Thank you for sharing. Your tanks are very lovely. I have never gotten frogbit to thrive though I’ve had many failed attempts. I’m envious of those roots. Very impressive. 

Thank you, high praise coming from you with all your Zen tanks!!

Ofcourse where you love the roots I sort of hate them and yesterday snipped them in half on almost all the plants. Too much debris gets caught in, it is a great spot for hair algae to appear, they start to tangle in the moss and they have reached the bottom. And as always the frogbit is starting to yellow and produce weak new leaves, having consumed the nutrients...

 

I tried to feed frozen cyclops to my indostomus tank today, to get them something interresting in their diet. Alas I doubt they ate any, I saw a piece of cyclop sitting on the indostomus while the fish waited for some magic to appear in its mouth. They are horribly slow hunters 🙂 

[Guppysnail]

I can so relate. Often I found things I love the look of that are such a nuisance I get rid of them.

I would love to see photos or videos of your indostomus as well as learn more about their behaviors. 🙏

[beastie]

I made some and posted some while back here in various topics, but I dont mind putting it here again.

 

 

 

 

 

They just. Dont do much :)) but they are cute. I feed them microworms/bbs/infusoria ( no idea if they eat that). They dont eat baby shrimplets ( those would be too large for them), scuds or even the tiniest mosquiot larvae ( too fast, too high on the surface, I had them to thank for tank full of mosquito larvae....). I would love to spice up their diet with like daphnia (although might be too large for them) or moina, but I am too scared to collect in the wild and noone I know has cultures.

[Guppysnail]

They are cool. You were not kidding about slowest eaters ever 🤣. That was slow motion eating. 
Moina can be bought in egg form and hatched. They also sell rotifers in egg form though they may be to small. 
Here is an example that’s sold in the states. 

[beastie]

I will check amazon near me then. However from what I understand moina will only thrive in large containers.

 

I did a cleanup in the asian tank while musing about it, tried adding airhose to my atman, will not be a possibility, because boy that noisy slurping sound is bad. I will buy another air pump and airhose, maybe an air curtain even to see. I dont think the asian tank can have anything else in it, so I will add airstone and try the sewellia again.

I did cleanups on my luminatus tank and also lifted the heater that is lying on the substrate in the back against the anubias. Maybe this is the problem, in past I found one large snail stuck under it, now when lifting, I discovered 3 shells of the smallest of the snails (those are the most susceptible to meat overfeeding, which I do for the fry)  and one of a 3,5 cm one, not sure if it is still the one of my older or one of my babies. Anyways I straightened the heater, added more oak leaves and prepared a repashy food for them for a boost.

I also hatched bbs and fed my small tanks, the minnow fry, the luminatus, the indostomus and my clown killifish. And lo and behold, I finally saw and managed to sort of capture on the video my clown killifish baby! There seem to be only one, but you can see it only when squinting and looking at an upward angle with a weird head angle, so I almost get an eye ache from all the zooming in I am doing. So there maybe more, who knows. But yay!

 

 

In my South American tank, b-rams are again breeding, have day 2 wigglers. All of my new plants that I put in last week ( limnophila aromatica) are doing ok, I have three sort of forest spots and the fish are loving it 🙂 Will try to get some pictures

[beastie]

I did a major remake today of the south american tank. 

Given all of my wood is nature collected it rots quicker, releases a lot of debris and has been in the tank for nearly two years.

I took all the would out of the tank, cleaned the substrate under it, cleaned some of the wood with a brush and a knife and returned some of it back to the tank. There is too little now, i have to find and add some more, but it is not as bad as expected.

I also added another bunch of leaves. The hygrophilla does not look good. I will take it out and tomorrow at the fish fair buy an amazon sword to fill in the corner. I may have to move the lotus again, but after i add some other wood 

Not quality pics but for ideas. One of the wood pieces is still floating so it is wedged in there. The tank is funnily so empty now. I even added back one of the anubias I took out some time back and left it in the bottom area to break line of sight for the brams.

Let me know what do you think

 

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by beastie

[beastie]

A fish fair was today (that I attended, we have them every week, in two locations) and I bought stuff!!

First off, the luminatus tank got some egeria. I threw away all the melting plants and bought egeria, not densa but najas. Here is to hoping the rabbits wont eat it.

The South American tank got new sword plant, didnt find any good wood so that will have to wait.

The Asian tank, I bought a cheapish air pump and an airstone and put it next to the filter. I also acclimated my last ever bought sewellia, because if they wont work, never ever getting them again.

photobombed sewellia

And the biggest purchase, three pearl gourami and ten pygmy corydoras. Currently spending time in my cube tank, corydoras permanently, gourami as a quarantine procedure

From the pearl gouramies, I know one is a male, cause it has the longer pointed fin. After release they are all hanging out together, exporing their new temporary home, constantly touching. Very cute! I hope they wont hurt the pygmy corydoras in the two or so weeks they will spend here before they will be moved to my South American tank. I am not sure about their gills, if they are ok, I will keep an eye. I am not sure how they are supposed to look

Aaaand the pygmy corydoras!! Awwwww. There was one that was like half a cm larger than the other ones in the sellers, most likely been there for a while, so I asked for it. Looks a bit worse for wear from the constant moves, but otherwise is ok. They are all so damn small....They are all over the tank, on the anubias, in the substrate, cute. I expect I will be squealing for a while

Last but not least, I acquired an assasin snail. I didnt think I ever would, cause I dont really like the concept, but I got the one for my clown killifish tank, because thanks to the fry I am ovefeeding and it is causing a massive ramshorn bloom. I know one snail wont do much, but it also wont starve and wont breed. I picked an active one, was active in the bag too, once I acclimated it was active, feeling good about it

 

What do you guys think, should I be worried about the gourami hurting the coryodras?

[beastie]

Clown killifish tank maintenance today. The tank is so hard to keep up, full of debris on the sand, algae in the roots, mess in the roots and have to do quite often cleanups, because I overfeed. I know I overfeed because I first have to distract the parents and then squirt on the surface. Given I have a fry (but only one) there is some success to my madness, but there are also consequences. There is hair algae, there is debris in the roots of the frogbit, there is debris sitting on the sand. The tank has low flow, because that is how the clown killifish is supposed to like it. But this scares me, so I do water change every week, sometimes every five days.

Today I took like six plants out to make space for more. I also spent a lot of time collecting hair algae and cleaned some of the debris on the substrate, though there are places I do not even see and the leaf litter is in the way. 

Any tips on how to reduce the mess? Should I put in malaysian trumpet snails ( this is basically the only tank that doesnt have them, which was sort of on purpose), should I remoe the hornwort or hygrophilla, remove some of the frogbit, or just leave as is and resign myself to hair algae and mess in the roots?

 

 

[beastie]

Ooh one of my indostomus posed nicely

The tank glass is dirty, despite having a clithon in there for cleanup, and some hair algae... Will have to keep an eye on it but I cant see myself scrubbing it with a sponge as I do with my other tanks, everyone would have a heart attack :)))

 

[Guppysnail]

What is that adorable little clover plant sprouting?

[beastie]

On 10/24/2023 at 3:12 PM, Guppysnail said:

What is that adorable little clover plant sprouting?

One of my favorite "carpeting" plants, Marsilea hirsuta,  Four Leaf Clover Dwarf. Grows slowly, which is ok for this tank, looks cute, spreads everywhere...

[beastie]

Asian tank, fed repashy in powder form, enticed all the sewellia to go out, to eat, to chase each other and the garras. Nothing too vicisous, just chasing, sometimes sitting on one another. Garras will chase the sewellia back but like "tag you are it"

The golden sewellia is the female I have since August I believe, rest are new crew

Edited October 25, 2023 by beastie

[TheSwissAquarist]

Really nice tanks @beastie! I wish I had the same patience to passively breed fish 😅. 

[beastie]

On 10/25/2023 at 7:57 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Really nice tanks @beastie! I wish I had the same patience to passively breed fish 😅. 

Hey I just feed, they do the work :))) But thanks

I took whole tank shots yesterday, it requires me to have turned off lights, turned off other tank light and in the seethrough one has to have my boyfriend standing behind it with a black sheet :)))

And that is all for me this week

[beastie]

I manned up and cleaned the glass in the shrimp/indostomus tank. With a sponge. I also cleared the airhose tube in the filter, but the flow is not better. As in it doesnt exist. I raised a lot of debris and given due to shrimplets I never gravel vac, it is an interesting tank. I wonder if I should remove the sponge from the "filter" as I am not sure if it is working and just leave the airstone to provide a flow.

I also cut some growing of the hygrophilla and planted them in the back and removed 80% of salvinia, as always.  Since it is Wednesday, shrimp feeding time. I feed once a week something just for them, a spirulina tablet, a nettle wafer, a vegetable,... During the maintenace it showed how many shrimp I actually have and oh boy, such an explosion. Nice difference after the planaria caused them to die off, I had like 7, and now there are 30, easy.

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Are the indostomus as hard to care for as the internet makes out? 

[beastie]

On 11/1/2023 at 3:50 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Are the indostomus as hard to care for as the internet makes out? 

I dont really know. I want to say no, because they survived post shipping (and they came from indonesia, all are wild caught) I have had them since March, issues with algae, issue with planaria, dosing no planaria, moving them into a different tank. I feed them daily, once, with a one to two day breaks, and they have survived a week of my vacation, no issues. They are ok with severe temperature swings, summer was up to 26, when the weather dropped the tank had 19 degrees. And I feed them only two things, so a very very one sided meal. It makes me uneasy and I want to change that

They all live, they all look great, I saw a snail try to climb on the fish, shrimp will regularly touch it the fsh does not care. I have no flow, virtually no filtration, I dont do gravel clean. I also do not meassure the stats, so I wouldnt even know if the tank was not doing well. I do a water change every two weeks, sometimes just a top off and always just a 10%.

But on the other hand they are not breeding or the fry is not surviving ( I saw breeding behavior)

 

With them it is hard to say, you mostly wont see them, they wont complain, they dont look bad or thin or anything to indicate they are starving or not enjoying live. I wish someone had experience with them to advise to me.

[beastie]

I forgot to update on my Cube tank. I had a small crisis on the weekend, because I was away and when I came back I found one of the female pearl gouramis dead, and not recently based on the smell.

I did immediate 50% water change, looked everything over and upon further noticing, saw that the male gourami is a tad more agressive towards the remaining female, chasing her and so on. I mean the tank is too small for them, was supposed to just be a two week quarantine.

Since I saw no ich ( and frankly havent had ich in like 10 years) nor anything that would indicate parasites or anything, I decided to remove the female to the primary tank in advance of the male, so she has time to establish in the tank and not be bullied later on. 

The male will remain in the quarantine, maybe until this Sunday ( for his two weeks mark), maybe later, will see on the behavior. it is his only luck he is kind to the pygmies and I was pleasantly surprised they all survived the crisis.

I did another cleanup yesterday, just in case, algae removal, increased the output of the airfilter, as I read the pygmies like some form of a current. Also my anubias is blooming, is nice 🙂 has been a while since I had one bloom and annoyingly to no end, in a tank without light 🙂 

 

 

[Guppysnail]

I’m sorry you lost one of your gourami. I’ve been in situations where a qt needed to end early. Thankfully it’s always worked out for me (knock on wood). So I hope it does for you as well. 

[beastie]

In some cases I dont quarantine at all (like the panda garra or hillstream loaches, cause I dont have a QT that would match the main tank parameters). TBH All I can quaranitne against is ich and fungus, as for any form of parasites we do not have the medicine, so. Anyways as I said, havent had ich since 10 years ago when I was keeping tanks for the first time and the sellers at the fair are carefull to sell healthy fish, and there is even a guarantee somewhere they are already quarantined, if they are from outside breeders, not the sellers themselves. Alas I was quite confident and so far, no issues.

Thus why today was moving day. I have whole day to watch the fish in the tank, so decided to move the Pearl Gourami male to the (now cant call it that) South American tank, to the female that has been there a week now. It was adorable, right away they found each other, checked each other with feelers and have been together ever since. I hope the bliss lasts and not like the last time when he was mean. I took a short video. Excuse the floating debris, I honestly do not know what is the issue in the tank anymore to cause this.

Thanks to no background in the video it is not so visible, but the male has really nice color, deep orange, and the female has a blue tint to the bottom fins

Even the female before chose this spot, but he male too, this is above the filter output in the calmest part of the surface, on the right side of the tank. In the middle the leaves are, and on the left side, the hatchetfish are. So far so good, so please wish me luck these two work together well and with other fish too.

 

Inspired by @Chick-In-Of-TheSea Snoopy pics I took one of my bolivian ram. They constantly spawn so it is on one hand a heartbreaking cycle. Almost every two weeks, they pair, the lay eggs, eggs hatch, wigglers wiggle, free swimming fry, and on day three or four, the other two b-rams eat these hatched b-rams against parents guarding. Every time...sad really. I love their community and social behavior, I think they may be happier than if I just had one b-ram, but the price....

 

As I was dropping the gourami to the tank with the net, I decided to net out some loose leaves on the surface and managed to scoop up my yellow male endler. I have three males, afaik, in this tank though I have only seen two in a while. I called it fate and dropped the endler to the cube, to the pygmy corydoras, to keep them company for a while. I assume if the corydoras start breeding he would be in the way, but I think I have few months before that, so for now he can stay there .

 

Onto my clown killifish tank, I am seeing the fry more (since it is larger) and to my pleasant surprise, there are at leas two of similar sizes! They are like grain of rice, but roundish, and they full on look like bumblebees, little round black and yellow things. Absolutely adorable. The helena here also looks good, it is not burried at all most of the time, it is actively going through the tank. I find it very nice looking. Especially the killer snout.

 

Regarding my asian tank, all three sewellia are now active and visible most of the time. I am feeding them a smidge more, mangold leaf here, cucumber there, algae waffer at lights out. I plan to feed every other day as it may have been feeding in the past that was my problem. I keep expecting the algae covered stnes to be their primary food source, but I may be wrong. I also finally put the airstone on a timer, so I dont have to manually unplug it and plug it back in.

[Guppysnail]

Everything sounds like it’s doing great. I’ve found that spraying powder food directly on rocks and slate where the flow does not blow it away is great for my hillstreams. They learned it’s yummy and each has their own slate pics. I spray a little on each one and they come running right away. 

[beastie]

On 11/5/2023 at 1:48 PM, Guppysnail said:

Everything sounds like it’s doing great. I’ve found that spraying powder food directly on rocks and slate where the flow does not blow it away is great for my hillstreams. They learned it’s yummy and each has their own slate pics. I spray a little on each one and they come running right away. 

This tank has a super large flow, so I am not sure if I can achieve this. I did once spray repashy powde into the tank ,that was a big hit among the sewellia and garras alike. Is it better to make the gel or to sprinkle the tank the powder directly? I never found if it is usable like that or if the maker advises against it.

[TheSwissAquarist]

I’d sprinkle it if you were feeding very small fry or grazers (shrimp or Hillstreams).