What did you get done today?

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/1/2022 at 4:01 PM, anewbie said:

It actually rotted in the middle about 8 months ago - i think the rot has stopped as it is still alive - the leaves were a *lot worse* but the panda gara have done a good job cleaning them.

That's awesome.  I wish I had a panda gara.  How are they?  Where do you usually see them cleaning?

[anewbie]

On 12/1/2022 at 8:17 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

That's awesome.  I wish I had a panda gara.  How are they?  Where do you usually see them cleaning?

They are friendly. They clean much like otto and bn - sucking everything; both biofilm and algae.

[nabokovfan87]

 4K video takes forever for youtube to process!

I made some repashy tonight.  a blend of bottom scratcher and then topped off the measure with soilent green.  Probably is just something they should jar and label it for corydoras because it works so well.  I mixed it up in the container, then tossed it into a bag to set, then I placed that bag onto a silicone mat so it has some gridline marks on the backside making it slightly easier to break this time for me.

I sat in front of the tanks for about 30-45 minutes.  I just watched the fish enjoy the food and watched the interaction between all the different species.  In the main tank I saw a lot of amano shrimp doing their thing, which always makes me happy.  It's a sign I'm not overfeeding, but it's also just a sign that they are making progress on this algae farm I have for them. 

The otos spent the morning on the S. Repens trying to clean off the leaves.  I had the thought they might be doing that for the sake of breeding?  We'll see.  I have never see otos lay eggs and it is definitely something I would really enjoy seeing.

Corydoras fry were eating their late night bug snacks and I just let them do their thing.  I didn't shine a light or anything, but just watched them do what they do in the low blue light glow from the tank.

Interestingly enough.... my 24" light has pure blue on the blue light mode while the 36" light has a blue and a soft green LED that turns on.  Very interesting when I turned them on and there was such a difference.  One of the main reasons I changed the light on on the tank to the right was because it didn't have a button on the lights for the different modes, and because the blue on the aquasky and the planted are so harshly different.

I'll feed the repashy tomorrow morning, hopefully they enjoy it. There's enough of the other stuff I fed tonight where I don't wan't to foul the water easily.  The black corydoras were being shy and I always overfeed the pandas because I am fully expending about 10-20 more to just magically appear somehow. 😂

Edited December 2, 2022 by nabokovfan87

[nabokovfan87]

Can't edit to add on text on mobile because of the emoji.... Weird.

Update: warning, this is going to be a terrible update, but it makes my life a lot easier.

My current lighting in the room is a ceiling fixture with a bulb that is behind me. This means I'm constantly dealing with shadows.

Before:

Now, with the string lights hung and terribly photographed.

 

I have a coffee station to the left there, tanks on the right. If I setup the 75 the coffee stuff moves and so lights are above all the useable tank space so to speak.

I tried to find some "Edison bulbs" that were very dim, easy on the eyes, just looked nice. Because I also wanted LEDs, this is the result. I'm happy with it. BOY WAS THE TANKS MESSY when I could see it.

Also..... I can hang a fluval light now if I wanted to. 🤔

Edited December 3, 2022 by nabokovfan87

[DaniV]

Set up the quarantine tank!  A tub, heater, seeded sponge filter, and 2 pieces of pvc pipe for the fish to swim through.  Gonna have it run overnight then pick up some new fish tomorrow.  Here's hoping I get this right!

[DaPrawf]

Started setting up two new tanks. One 12 gallon and one 7 gallon. The seven gallon will house a male betta (I really want a mustard gas), a mystery snail(?), and some shrimp (I know, they may end up being expensive betta food, but my female betta in my community tank leaves the shrimp alone, so fingers crossed). I'm open to suggestions for the 12 gallon.

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/3/2022 at 3:37 PM, DaPrawf said:

I'm open to suggestions for the 12 gallon.

Maybe a Bolivian ram and some false julii corydoras?

For me today, I woke up with another fun headache from my neck and attempting to sleep. I woke up, fed the fry and the rest of the fish. After about 2 hours I was getting tea and couldn't remember if I fed the tanks so I gave the corydoras a pinch more and some calcium food for the shrimp.  Fry got their second meal a little later.

I got the QT setup done for the sword I need to move. I'm not sure how long or how much I worry to QT the fish. I have one male that is going in there first while I monitor the stressed/wounded female while she recovers.  I did she her perked up a bit and chasing the fry around which was good to see.

Ultimately, I just want both of them to have low stress and be able to have a calm time in whatever tank they are in. I added the QT sponge filter and the new ACO heater and will let things stabilize for the fish. Right now it's just cycling and getting going, but I may move the fish tomorrow just to make sure stress issues don't happen.

Salt should be here shortly, for whatever reason it's taking forever to get here.

Beyond that, just a calm day watching fish videos. Thankfully.

[anewbie]

On 12/3/2022 at 5:37 PM, DaPrawf said:

Started setting up two new tanks. One 12 gallon and one 7 gallon. The seven gallon will house a male betta (I really want a mustard gas), a mystery snail(?), and some shrimp (I know, they may end up being expensive betta food, but my female betta in my community tank leaves the shrimp alone, so fingers crossed). I'm open to suggestions for the 12 gallon.

My a. pucallpaensis do quite well in a 10; they are probably the only apistogramma like fish you can pair in something less than a 20; the primary difference between these and borelli is that (a) they are a bit smaller (b) less colourful (c) less violence between male/female when breeding as borelli are you typical polygamous style fish where the female chases the male away when caring for the youngs. The pucallpaensis aren't exactly pair forming but the male will contribute a tiny bit to the caring of the young and the female is less prone to attacking him. Also these are a white water fish; they breed readily in my tap water which is gh 7/tds 120:

[anewbie]

Talking about a. pucallpaensis; just yesterday i was trying to determine if her eggs hatched and were now wrigglers but it was too dark where she keeps her nest; but today i think i have the answer:

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Placed the root tabs - a monthly to do.

Performed water testing.

Discharged Roy from the hospital. He was in-patient for a few months. He is now columnaris free! 

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/4/2022 at 11:37 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Discharged Roy from the hospital. He was in-patient for a few months. He is now columnaris free! 

Yay Roy! Nicely done 🙂

You've done an awesome job helping all the fish recover through that disease. Such an awesome day for you when this happens after so long treating them.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/5/2022 at 7:06 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Yay Roy! Nicely done 🙂

You've done an awesome job helping all the fish recover through that disease. Such an awesome day for you when this happens after so long treating them.

Thanks!  He was first to the top for his brine shrimp this morning. 🙂

[nabokovfan87]

Just finished moving the new fry to the breeder box. I definitely need a new turkey baster that works better.

I recorded a video. Had two files and deleted the good one instead of the bad one, which sucks because I was going to count how many I had.

Definitely "enough" and I should have a good size herd of corydoras.

On 12/4/2022 at 9:49 AM, anewbie said:

Talking about a. pucallpaensis; just yesterday i was trying to determine if her eggs hatched and were now wrigglers but it was too dark where she keeps her nest; but today i think i have the answer:

Beautiful photo!

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Made tea for Geppetto! 
 

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

I made the base for a snow Murphy!

[Odd Duck]

I have Pygmy cories (Corydoras pygmaeus) breeding in quarantine.  I got them about 1.5 weeks ago and when I fed them today, most of them were super active.  The more I watched, I realized they were breeding.  They have scattered tiny eggs all over the tank - on glass and on various plants.  The eggs are proportionate to their size but only about 1/4 to 1/3 the diameter of other cory eggs since pygmies are so small.

These guys will eventually go into my 14 G cube with the hummingbird tetras.  I have excess scuds in there, so I needed tiny cories to hopefully not eat tiny tetra eggs (maybe???) because dwarf shrimp were not enough to limit the scuds.  These tiny cories won’t eat adult scuds, but I’m hoping they’ll eat the baby scuds and eventually eliminate, or at least control, the scud population.

The sponge filter in the first pic is a very fine foam.  These eggs are just less than 1 mm across.  Bronze cory eggs are around 2.5 mm across.

 

Edit to add: I will not be trying to move these eggs so if they hatch, I guess I’m raising some Pygmy cories after I get the adults out of the tank.  It’s going to be a challenge to keep track of any babies.  These eggs are sooooo small!

Edited December 10, 2022 by Odd Duck

[cavdad45]

Didn't do much, just trying to get a head count on the baby endlers. Two batches, three days apart.  Every time it's a joy!

[Odd Duck]

I also got some new plants in yesterday and they came out of their seltzer bath today.  The angels are now obsessed with them.  😆  The “new” pair (the female “dumped”her old mate and has hooked up with the larger BSP male) are intermittently “cleaning” the sparkling clean plants and the rest of them are watching and hanging out amid the stems.  I just hope they don’t pull them up, the plants don’t have a lot of roots, yet.

 

[drewzero1]

Tore down my desktop tank at work and brought everything home. I'm cutting office hours soon and won't have time to take care of it, plus I'll hopefully be able to enjoy my fish at home more. The fish and snails seem to be integrating well back in the 40B. Still need to clean out the old tank though.

My coworkers will be disappointed, but they don't know my pickle jar plans. 🤫

[anewbie]

On 12/9/2022 at 7:53 PM, Odd Duck said:

I also got some new plants in yesterday and they came out of their seltzer bath today.  The angels are now obsessed with them.  😆  The “new” pair (the female “dumped”her old mate and has hooked up with the larger BSP male) are intermittently “cleaning” the sparkling clean plants and the rest of them are watching and hanging out amid the stems.  I just hope they don’t pull them up, the plants don’t have a lot of roots, yet.

 

I'm curious what you did with the female's previous mate. Not sure about your tank; but in mine she would not let him remain....

[Odd Duck]

On 12/10/2022 at 7:18 AM, anewbie said:

I'm curious what you did with the female's previous mate. Not sure about your tank; but in mine she would not let him remain....

It’s 100 gallons and she doesn’t hate him.  She just switched allegiance and hangs out with her new beau instead.  His feelings are hurt and he tries to go see her and the new beau chases him away but not violently.  There are other angels in the tank to diffuse aggression but I’m making plans to move the pair to a 20 high soon. I just need to figure out where to put the excess plants that are currently in that tank.  I’m also going to move some of the largest, best looking koi angels into a 29 hoping I’ll get a pair since they’re getting to that size now.  The pair will stay in the 29 and the rest will get moved back to the 100 gallon.  I’m thinking its getting to be time to sell a few of the smaller or plainer koi angels.

[anewbie]

 

On 12/10/2022 at 1:02 PM, Odd Duck said:

It’s 100 gallons and she doesn’t hate him.  She just switched allegiance and hangs out with her new beau instead.  His feelings are hurt and he tries to go see her and the new beau chases him away but not violently.  There are other angels in the tank to diffuse aggression but I’m making plans to move the pair to a 20 high soon. I just need to figure out where to put the excess plants that are currently in that tank.  I’m also going to move some of the largest, best looking koi angels into a 29 hoping I’ll get a pair since they’re getting to that size now.  The pair will stay in the 29 and the rest will get moved back to the 100 gallon.  I’m thinking its getting to be time to sell a few of the smaller or plainer koi angels.

A little different than my situation; i had 8 in a 120; and the female decided she no longer liked the old male and attacked him non-stop till i removed him. This is a bit different than when a female lets two males 'share' her - she was vicious monster. Anyway that was a while ago - new set - just reaching maturity so i'll see how they break down.

[Odd Duck]

On 12/10/2022 at 1:10 PM, anewbie said:

 

A little different than my situation; i had 8 in a 120; and the female decided she no longer liked the old male and attacked him non-stop till i removed him. This is a bit different than when a female lets two males 'share' her - she was vicious monster. Anyway that was a while ago - new set - just reaching maturity so i'll see how they break down.

So far, so good here.  I can keep a close eye on the tank most days since it’s beside the TV across from my favorite chair.  Of course if she does go hellion, it will no doubt be during one of my long Sunday shifts.  You know, because cichlids.  If I had more ambition on this rainy day, I’d already be done with moving the loving couple into the 20, but I really am not sure where I’m going to put all the plants yet.  🤷🏻‍♀️ 😆  I’ve got a bunch of Java ferns on a long wood piece, clumps of Java ferns on smaller wood pieces, pots with Crypts, pots with stems, etc, that will nearly all need to be moved.  I was planning to sell the long piece but it turned out so well, I want to keep it now.  😂 🤣 Story of my life when it comes to plants.  🤷🏻‍♀️ 

Edited December 10, 2022 by Odd Duck

[anewbie]

On 12/10/2022 at 1:19 PM, Odd Duck said:

So far, so good here.  I can keep a close eye on the tank most days since it’s beside the TV across from my favorite chair.  Of course if she does go hellion, it will no doubt be during one of my long Sunday shifts.  You know, because cichlids.  If I had more ambition on this rainy day, I’d already be done with moving the loving couple into the 20, but I really am not sure where I’m going to put all the plants yet.  🤷🏻‍♀️ 😆  I’ve got a bunch of Java ferns on a long wood piece, clumps of Java ferns on smaller wood pieces, pots with Crypts, pots with stems, etc, that will nearly all need to be moved.  I was planning to sell the long piece but it turned out so well, I want to keep it now.  😂 🤣 Story of my life when it comes to plants.  🤷🏻‍♀️ 

If she was going to drive him out of the tank she would have done it by now. Mine did it the day they broke up. I could take him out for 3 months; but if i returned him to the tank she went right after him.... eventually after about 6 months i gave up and gave him away. Lovely fish - oh well.

 

[castiel]

Took a break from working on one of my final papers to do some work on my pickle jar moss storage. It's a layer of gravel with a bunch of mini Christmas moss and some floating pearl-weed and Bacopa (all covered in hair algae). It also has a bunch of Ramshorn, MTS, and bladder snail babies. Added an airstone that is circulating the water to help start to break up the algae, also replanted some of the pearl-weed.