Beastie's journal

[Guppysnail]

On 11/5/2023 at 7:51 AM, beastie said:

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.

I find the dry repashy powder yucks my water up big time. I even get foam around the edges. 
 

I use first bites or northfin fry or things like those. 

[beastie]

Indostomus picture dump. They are almost impossible to properly focus on. Plants are in the way too 🙂 Next time, bare tank

 

[beastie]

Since today was maintenance day for me, some more pictures.

First off, the gouramis and the hatchefish (for now they work awesome, no issues, no fear)

 

 

 

 

Now the pygmy corydoras tank. I removed the endler, cause the pygmies do not seem to be shy at al, they are all over, burrowing, swimming, hunting microworms.

 

Please ignore the killed plant, I left it outside too long and it froze...

 

 

And lastly the clown killifish tank. I think it is too dense. Can a tank be too densely planted? I mean the fish seem ok. But how would I know they are not...

 

[Pokey]

Nice tanks, looks like happy fish! 😃 I wouldn’t say there’s too many plants, but I see what you mean about having a hard time making sure everyone is ok. I guess maybe the best answer is what is your own comfort level with the number of plants?

Your hatchet fish are very pretty. Is that green actual body color or a reflection from the plants?

[beastie]

On 11/9/2023 at 9:00 PM, Pokey said:

Your hatchet fish are very pretty. Is that green actual body color or a reflection from the plants?

That is just reflection, they have this shine to them, in the belly area, but they are not green. Must have been the plants.  I am never again having hatchetfish btw, I do think they just like the number 6,I started with 15 I think 2 years ago, had most of them jump out until 6 remained, bought 8 more last year, quarantined, added, and since june or so, most of them jumped out until there are only 6 again. Never again with this fish....

[beastie]

I do not photograph my white cloud minnows cause they move too much to be in focus, but I had some success.

All the females are super fat. I understand their are egg bound, but I need to feed the fry and the sewellia but not overfeed the females. Any tips? Tank is after a water change, so many bubbles 🙂 And yeah, I can see where I attempted to wash the glass from the outside. Too bad this is only visible after the picture is taken, am I right.

 

 

Garras will ofcourse photobomb, and I didnt get to take a picture of the normal color white cloud with the orange fins, he didnt want to 🙂 Papparazi shy I guess

[beastie]

Hm I took some other pictures of my tanks, and just now, just from the picture, I notice female killifish has a gold eye and the male has a blue eye?! I have been watching them for months and never caught this? Weird

fry on top, female on bottom, growing nicely, they now hang with the group more often

 

 

 

aaand my photobombing garras

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/16/2023 at 3:04 PM, beastie said:

I do not photograph my white cloud minnows cause they move too much to be in focus, but I had some success.

All the females are super fat. I understand their are egg bound, but I need to feed the fry and the sewellia but not overfeed the females. Any tips? Tank is after a water change, so many bubbles 🙂 And yeah, I can see where I attempted to wash the glass from the outside. Too bad this is only visible after the picture is taken, am I right.

 

 

Garras will ofcourse photobomb, and I didnt get to take a picture of the normal color white cloud with the orange fins, he didnt want to 🙂 Papparazi shy I guess

Those are looking spectacular! Try adding sera micron to a smal cup of water and adding that to the aquarium. All the small particles will sink to the bottom much faster and make a small fry- and sewellia friendly bio film that they can feed on. 

[beastie]

On 11/21/2023 at 7:41 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Those are looking spectacular! Try adding sera micron to a smal cup of water and adding that to the aquarium. All the small particles will sink to the bottom much faster and make a small fry- and sewellia friendly bio film that they can feed on

Thanks, I feed sera vipan baby, is similar. It just really needs to be soaked, or the fish eat it from the surface, gulp, and cant submerge afterwards. It is really funny though 🙂 

 

Today I am posting pictures of my pygmy corydoras. They are still adorable, but they are a bit static and especially if in the tank alone, the tank looks empty most of the time. But I am hoping they will breed and make it up to me. I fed live bbs and manage to count all nine of them, no loses, so yay!

 

 

[beastie]

So I am going to experiment with my clown killifish. I have  two confirmed fry from the matings in August, but nothing since , presumably because the juveniles will eat the fry.

But my tank also dropped to 21 degrees and I am not sure if the eggs will hatch, so I moved one male and a female to a spawning box filled with java moss, placed in a pygmy corydoras tank, which is at 25 degrees. I will leave them for 24 hours I guess and move them back to main tank and see if in two weeks I get any baby clown killifish or not

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Any luck?

[beastie]

I returned them back to their own tank, I saw some spawning behavior but I am not a pepping tom do not sure exactly when and if they didnt eat it 🙂

I will keep the moss in the cube, but the hatch rate is 10-12 days, so nothing to be excited about for now 🙂

[beastie]

Hmm, not a good time planning on my side.

I have the breeder box with moss in for the next two weeks, but I saw today at one of the petco sorts of LFS the least rasbora (boraras  urophthalmoides), for 0,4 euro per fish (other stores had quadruple the price) sooo I didnt resist and got 12. They all go to the cube to the pygmy corydoras, who are btw LARGER than the rasboras!!!

Luckily I had my trusty thermobox in my car and did slow temp acclimation. They are a bit skinny but I assume it is feeding from the large store, there were no sick fish in the tank, no dead bodies and they havent been there more than a week. Lets hope no issues as I do not have a quarantine and they will appreciate this leaf filled tank more. I turned the light on for a short time to check on releasing them, the pygmy corydoras immediately went to check on them and swam alongside them

 

Excited though

 

[beastie]

So while i know i have had them only for a short while and their behavior is not necessary how they will behave after a while, but still.

They colored up nicely, given they were in a bright lit box and now in nice leaves dark forrest. All of the rasboras have a prominent stripe, which leads to fun times. Pygmy corydoras will sometimes school with them, confusing them for their own kind, but same goes for the rasbora. Will swim and follow a pygmy cory for a while 🙂

I saw them swim in a full school twice, what a view. They are starting to be bit fuller in their bellies because i feed them heavy, bbs and microworms, to give them the best chance to acclimate and make it

[beastie]

Maintenance day. Had to clean the clown killifish tank filter sponge since June if I am not mistaken 🙂 ah well

One of the clown kilifish fry is a male, it has a distinct tail pattern now. Kind of soon after only three months but hey, I have one male one female fry.

All the other tanks are ok, I did maintenance on all except indostomus one ( once a month, but I did top it off) and luminatus tank ( i do so mondays/tuesdays)

We have heavy snowfall and one of my dogs love it. The other wishes to go home :))

 

 

[beastie]

So, I just noticed. My indostomus tank is chock full of cyclops!!! Mostly on and near the surface, in the hygrophila, salvinia. But there are A LOT of them. I do not see them in the bottom parts of the tank.

 

On one hand amazing news, cause hey, free food source for the indostomus. I am fairly sure I introduced them when I fed frozen cyclops some weeks back ,I read that the cyclops can have eggs that later on hatch from the frozen ones, I guess it was true. I will scale back on feeding the microworms/bbs, will do more no feeding days to help maintain the population.

Now to the question. In the setup I have with the feeding I have, I should have had some indostomus babies. And I dont. Is it the ramshorns or is it the shrimp. I am contemplating removing the shrimp and bumping them to the clown killifish tank. Any tips on how? Much appreciated

[beastie]

I lost one rasbora (well I think just one, the tank is planted) but otherwise it is doing ok. Some of the least rasboras school together, some dont, some still swim with the pygmy corydoras

Overall it works I hope 🙂 Rest of the tanks are good too, I bought 20 no color/ white/ mix shrimp to my Asian tank, to clean the moss

 

[beastie]

I lost one sewellia, found it dead today. No idea why, I didnt use new food, didnt fertilize, didnt skip water change, didnt do anything yesterday and they were all fine 😞

So I guess there is that. It is either the female from June or the male/female from October. No clue but sad. Not ever getting another one, as even with feeding, with extra airstone,... still not happy. This means at some point, I guess next summer maybe, I will tear down the rocks in the middle, do a lesser pile, redo it and maybe find a different species.

The least rasboras work, clown killifish are ok, indostomus are ok - I removed all adult shrimp away and feed less to prompt catching the cyclops in the tank. 

I also wonder why I do not see any new luminatus fry. I see them spawning, I added some surface plants. I feed a smidge less, cause the tank is a mess, but still. 

[beastie]

My indostomus tank, As you can see, less sunlight means worse salvinia. I chucked a good portion of it. On the other hand, good for the hygrophila. I removed some of the algae, did increase lot of muck, hopefully all will be ok. will check in the afternoon, I also put in 3 liters of water, evaporation there is fun. The only tank without a lid

 

[beastie]

After the loss of the sewellia I decided to redo some of the asian tank.  I took out many many many stones and vacuumed debris and placed the java fern in a bit different places. I had to do at least a 60% water change, so the tank is super cold and will take some time heating up in the room temperature (so I filled it in over the span of at least an hour)

After filling it up it is at 17 degrees, so lets pretend we are having a cold season 🙂 There is a lot of floating debris in the water column as is to be expected

I will make better pictures later on once it settles

 

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by beastie
duplicate photo

[beastie]

More photo

THe fish utilize the space more now I guess and I almost cant tell the difference by looking at the tank

[beastie]

Sun managed to hit just the right way on my cube tank. The rasboras are so active but the pygmy corydoras less and less so. I wonder what I can change to help them feel more at home

 

[Guppysnail]

On 12/18/2023 at 9:05 AM, beastie said:

the pygmy corydoras less and less so. I wonder what I can change to help them feel more at home

I’ve had 2 groups for close to 3 years that I eventually put all together. Cute little buggers that used to stress me out. 
They would be crazy active and then for seeming no apparent reason hide for weeks/ months and then come out and be active again. 
I tried every change I could imagine and nothing changed this pattern of behavior. 
Both groups have been with my melini Cory in a 40 B for about a year. 
My melini have become very overpopulated because it’s so hard to catch them out. 
Fir roughly 2 months I only saw 1 adult female during deep vacuuming.  I really thought the melini had outcompeted them for food and they starved out. I was sad. 

Last week there were easily 30 Pygmy in there being crazy including some small babies. 🤷‍♀️

I guess since fry are still surviving this is just their normal type behavior and they are happy. It’s just me that’s unhappy about not seeing them for periods of time. 
 

 

[beastie]

On 12/18/2023 at 3:29 PM, Guppysnail said:

I’ve had 2 groups for close to 3 years that I eventually put all together. Cute little buggers that used to stress me out. 
They would be crazy active and then for seeming no apparent reason hide for weeks/ months and then come out and be active again. 
I tried every change I could imagine and nothing changed this pattern of behavior. 
Both groups have been with my melini Cory in a 40 B for about a year. 
My melini have become very overpopulated because it’s so hard to catch them out. 
Fir roughly 2 months I only saw 1 adult female during deep vacuuming.  I really thought the melini had outcompeted them for food and they starved out. I was sad. 

Last week there were easily 30 Pygmy in there being crazy including some small babies. 🤷‍♀️

I guess since fry are still surviving this is just their normal type behavior and they are happy. It’s just me that’s unhappy about not seeing them for periods of time. 
 

 

Thanks for your experience! Based on what I read in other forums/threads most people have some problems with the activity level of the pygmy corydoras as they can go from completely crazy to completely hidden in a matter of days. What I find curious in my tank is, the biggest corydoras that was obviously older than the others in the batch, is always active, always somewhere front and center, and from the others I can hardly see them. They do a lot of leaf resting and under leaf hiding 

case in point. On the other hand I just counted the visible rasboras and got to 11. Last week  I couldnt get above 5-6. Where the heck were the other fish hiding, did they take a vacation and came back recently? Confusing, but loving the fact that they are more out. If you however notice they hang out in this one particular spot in a strange manner. Is that a normal behavior for them? I have to watch some videos I guess

[Guppysnail]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:49 AM, beastie said:

f you however notice they hang out in this one particular spot in a strange manner. Is that a normal behavior for them?

For mine it’s normal.  They lived in the back left corner for almost a year. Then for no reason I know they all up and moved to the far right corner under the moss nursery.  
There was a 5-6 month period where one was always hovering over mom n dad plecos log.

If there is rhyme or reason to their behavior I have not cracked that code.