Fish at Bag End

[Hobbit]

Well today I collected mosquito larvae from my outdoor tubs.

Definitely one of the grossest things I’ve done for my fish. The way they wiggle... eeeEEEeee.

They really, really liked them though. Even Dad Fish, who’s currently guarding babies and almost never eats, had a round belly tonight!

ETA:

@Daniel I hope you’re proud of me. 😄 The whole time I was thinking, “This is what Daniel would do!”

Edited May 5, 2021 by Hobbit

[Hobbit]

Feeding frenzy!!

 

[Hobbit]

Well earlier this week when it was nice and warm, I decided I was going to go ahead and order platys for the ponds. I was getting nervous about the mosquito larvae turning into clouds of mosquitos, even while I did my best to collect some every day. So I made my first Aquabid order and also ordered from a different online seller. (Aqua Huna doesn’t sell platys 😭)

Then the temperatures dropped again and the water in the tubs got down into the 50’s. So when the first order of fish arrived today—two days earlier than I expected! 😬—we had to move the tubs inside real quick.

So here they are, in the kitchen, extra cloudy since they got sloshed around. I’ll be hanging some lights from the shelf soon.

We had to drain the water half way so we could move them and then fill them up again. I got to see the dwarf aquarium lily bulb I got a while back, and it looks like it’s sprouted! 😃

Thank goodness also for Aquarium Co-op test strips so I could quickly test the water the fish came in, and make sure the tubs matched as close as possible in terms of pH and hardness.

One tub has gold-bodied platys and the other has neon blue-bodied platys. I have some variety among them (tuxedo, wag, red tail) to keep things interesting. At the end of the summer, I’ll be moving the best of them into the 55 gallon breeding setup.

It was really fun getting new fish. Platys are so cute. My husband liked them right away, even though they were super pale from shipping. So that’s a plus, too!

And I’ve caught sight of them a few times today, so I think they’re still alive in there. Hopefully eating their hearts out.

[Hobbit]

Well, it’s been a few days. Health stuff and work have kept me busy.

One blue platy leapt out of the tub the first night. I found it before it had crisped, so I put it back in water, and lo! After about an hour it was swimming again! Unfortunately the next morning I found it dead in the tub. I guess the ordeal was too much for it, poor thing. So now the tubs are totally covered.

For several days after that, I could never find any platys in the blue platy tub. I even turned the pot over looking for dead bodies. I wondered if any had jumped into the orange platy tub, which would ruin my breeding plans, or if they had jumped out of the tub entirely and my cat had nommed them.

I also wondered if they’d just died from stress and poor water conditions. The cycle isn’t well established in these tubs because of all the issues I’ve had with the plastic leeching chlorine, so I’m constantly using those coop test strips.

One evening’s test:

Another evening after adding 5 gallons of clean water to each:

Unfortunately the little plays are not doing a great job eating the mosquito larvae. And despite my efforts to net out the extra and feed them to my very appreciative tetras and honeys, plenty of mosquitos are making it to adulthood. There are just too many I guess... so every morning and evening we spend a few minutes vacuuming mosquitos off the ceiling.

Next year if I order fish early, I’m keeping those tubs outside and using a heater!!!

At least it was my husband’s idea to bring the tubs inside, not mine. 😅

But today there was good news. I saw not one, but TWO fish in the blue platy tub! They survived! They’re just really hard to see from the top. Supposedly they’re neon platys but I don’t think that makes a difference from above. I have more arriving soon from a different seller to round out their group.

This is a fish, I promise:

A few fish in the orange platy tub. I’ve seen five at a time, and I put six in there, so I think that’s pretty promising.

And here’s the hornwort that I added from my grow-out tank, which promptly dropped all its needles.

This tub thing is an adventure!! 

[Streetwise]

@Hobbit, I always enjoy your updates.  

[Hobbit]

Today I tested the tubs and. Um. Nitrites.

The good news is I’m not seeing any more chlorine. Maybe that’s why the cycle is finally kicking into gear.

A water change was clearly in order. Since the tubs are on the floor, it’s a little hard to get water out of them. I do have a pump, but I save it for clean water. So I figured I’d aim for whatever I could get into two buckets.

That ended up being about 25%. The new water went in without any additives. And I ended up with this:

Basically no change. Sigh.

I looked up symptoms of nitrite poisoning and learned that it interferes with the blood carrying oxygen. The good news is my fish aren’t showing any signs of oxygen stress at all. The platys in the orange tub are just swimming around as usual, loosely staying in a group near the bottom of the tub. No one looks like they’re breathing rapidly, and everyone seems active, but not in a manic way. Their colors look great, too!

I did read that some fish are more tolerant of high nitrite than others. I’m crossing my fingers that platys are on the tolerant end!

Considering those test results, I was rather nervous when my second order of platys arrived this afternoon! Though honestly I was mostly excited. These are more blue iridescent platys—spotted this time—to go in the blue platy tub. They were my first order off of AquaBid and they were coming from Hawaii.

I had not paid for rush shipping, but thankfully all the fish made it through the mail. And they’re tiny! Look how cute!!

I plopped and dropped them into the blue platy tub and watched for signs of distress.

And then I was very tickled and relieved to see them color right up and go off exploring.

They were so clearly excited about their new home!

And they weren’t the only excited ones. One of my favorite things about new fish is watching the old fish get soooo excited for new friends.

I happened to catch on film (before I changed my light source) the first moment one of the big platys came out and found the new ones:

You can barely see it, but the big dark one stops in her tracks in surprise. Then the little ones gather round to check her out.

And now the big platys, who used to hide most of the time, are out and about, swimming with their new pals!

I sat there for a long time watching the new platys explore. I also started to feel sick to my stomach, so I think that’s a sign I need to keep doing water changes to get those nitrogen compounds down.

You remember when I added that Osmocote a few weeks back? Yeah, I’m starting to regret that.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Hobbit

[Hobbit]

It looks like the cycle has fully caught up in the orange platy tub! 😃 We’re getting there in the blue tub, too!

The nights are still getting into the 50’s here, but I think I’m going to put the tubs outside with some heaters because daytime temperatures are going into the 80’s and I want the fish to have some time to acclimate to the heat. I’m honestly going to miss having them inside! I love watching the platys swim around!

An update on the 55:

A few days ago, when Dad Fish’s babies had mostly swum the nest but he hadn’t gotten any new eggs out of Mom Fish yet, I went ahead and took his nest down. I pulled out the floating plants, re-planted some, put others in the tubs, and took the tiny sponge off the mouth of the power head.

This little makeshift sponge cover is my secret to controlling my gouramis’ breeding cycles. Too much flow, and Dad Fish can’t build a nest. No nest means no breeding! Unless they’re trying really, really hard, which only happened when they were very young.

Dad Fish is always very tired after several weeks of courting Mom and guarding babies. He tends to rest in worrying positions.

He was totally fine—but he scares me a lot like this right after a breeding cycle. 

That’s not to say Dad Fish and Mom Fish stop flirting, though. Oh, they’re still very much in love! Here’s a picture of them laying on the bottom of the tank mid-flirt because they wore themselves out:

Note the lack of blur because they literally stopped moving. They picked up again after a few minutes. They seem to flirt more when there’s no bubble nest. I guess the pressure to produce is a bit of a turn-off. (Plus with a bubble nest, Dad Fish gets all manic and unpredictable. Hard to blame Mom Fish for keeping some distance!)

Lastly, here’s a video I took a few days before taking down the nest. One of the loaches was playing his circling game and was just so hilariously un-threatened by Dad Fish’s attacks. Near the end of the video the loach even gets close to the nest on purpose. “Nah nah nah nah nah!” Dad Fish is not pleased. The loach doesn’t push it though and politely (and slowly) swims away.

They’re really kind loaches—I’ve seen them stop their circling game if the pleco gets on the suction cup because they don’t want to knock into the pleco’s tail. ❤️

 

[Lemon]

loaches are adorable 🙂

[Hobbit]

Lots of fun things going on in the 55 gallon. For one, I have a sword flower!

Those pictures are a week old or more. It’s made it out of the tank now, but it hasn’t bloomed. We’ll see what happens!

I decided to do a water change and make things look real pretty so I could get a new full tank shot. For some reason I got really determined to find a way to add water back into the tank without having to stand there the whole time, and without hooking up the hose to the bathroom sink. I borrowed a water pump that came with some exercise equipment my husband bought, and jerry-rigged a stand for it out of an A-clamp and a kitchen spoon. It was tons of effort and the pump took a really long time to empty 5 gallons. Plus it was really loud! The hose would have been easier, but I guess I was feeling stubborn.

After much algae-scrubbing, the final result!

The most exciting part for me is how much the plecos have changed the log. It used to be dark brown with algae and now it’s a light color.

Old picture for comparison:

The creatures are doing pretty well too. An Amano closeup:

Feeding-time chaos:

The tubs are doing well, too! We moved them outside now that the weather’s warmer. I did put heaters in both tubs since the night time temps still get into the 60’s.

Kitty is sad though because she really liked drinking out of them.

The platys weren’t bothered by her at all. In fact, they’d sometimes come up to her face to taste her whiskers!

My husband and I are happy to have them out of the house though. We were still having mosquitos emerging from the tub—only 4 or 5 per day at the end. 😛  

Edited June 6, 2021 by Hobbit

[Patrick_G]

Wow, you’ve been busy! I love the Rube Goldberg tank filler! 

[Hobbit]

@Patrick_G thanks! Progress feels slow in real life, but when I save all my pictures and post at once it definitely makes me feel productive!

[Hobbit]

After I lost the honey gourami I had bought on the way back from New York, I ended up also losing the three amano shrimp that were in my grow-out tank. I posted about it in Diseases, and though no one could confirm it, I was concerned that they died of a bacterial infection that had come in with some cherry shrimp from the LFS, killed all those shrimp, and then survived in the tank without any shrimp at all for months. The shrimp all turned opaque and whiteish-pink before they died. ☹️

Because of this, I decided to take down and totally disinfect the grow-out tank. I bleach-dipped all the plants (killed most of them by not getting them in clean water fast enough—oops!), sprayed everything with rubbing alcohol, and soaked the sponges and air stone in hydrogen peroxide. It was a huge pain but I didn’t want to risk having a bacterial disease around, even if I never put shrimp in that tank again.

Thankfully I never cross-contaminate from my grow-out to my main tank, and the amanos in there look fine. Though I go the other way without worry—that’s where the baby fish come from, after all! 

Tonight I finally started to set up the 10 gallon again. I have three surviving babies in the fry box right now and they are going to need a bigger home soon!

I had previously tried he tank both bare-bottom and with gravel, and this time I’m trying mostly bare-bottom with a corner of gravel for interest. That way the fish can still eat food off the bottom in most places. I had some fun “aquascaping” using stones from the backyard. I also tried covering the bottom of the tank in some dark craft paper to hopefully make the bare spots look less poopy.

The sponge for the filter has been seasoning in the 55 for about a week. I’ll transfer it in another week or so, and I’ll pull some plants from the outdoor tubs around the same time.

Water parameters right now (just straight out of the tap):

I’m excited to have a grow-out tank again!! Only having one tank in the house just felt wrong. 😄

[Hobbit]

My smaller bristlenose pleco has been having a problem. Her fins look like someone’s been chomping on them.

I couldn’t figure out who the culprit was. The plecos seem like the toughest things in the tank right now. Could the bigger pleco be doing that much damage?

Then I saw this:

The little stinker’s been squeezing herself behind the lava rock!!! I’m pretty sure she doesn’t realize how much she’s grown.

It took me a few days to think of a solution—initially i thought about trying to stuff some java moss down there—but I found something that was way easier.

Hopefully that will take care of it and the pleco’s fins will heal quickly.

The outdoor tubs are doing well! The hornwort has finally, finally started to grow back:

And I have a lily pad! I’m so excited. 😄 

[Hobbit]

Well the silly pleco was still squeezing herself behind the sharp rock. She looked like someone had shaved her, poor thing.

The rock had to come out. I chose a new rock from the yard that doesn’t quite go with the rest of the tank, but it’s smooth!

Replacing the rock kicked up a ton of soil and mulm. Dirted tanks are not meant for re-scaping! And I was out of black gravel so I had to use some other stuff. I wish I’d done the whole tank in the lighter gravel or something similar, but oh well. Live and learn.

I’m also getting flowers out of the sword plant! A few more bloom every day. (Pictures taken pre-rock replacement.)

[Hobbit]

Aaaaaaahhh I have platy babies!!!!!!!

But I can’t show you because the forum won’t let me load pictures. 😭 I tried both safari and chrome. I’m on my iPad (where I normally use the forum). Maybe I’ve hit the max total size limit for a thread already. ☹️

They are cute and smol and they are in the orange platy tub.

I’m so excited!!!!!!!

[H20CultureLabs]

I love your kitty! So cute! Also, congrats on the new fry!

[Hobbit]

Well, now that nerm week is over and I no longer have foster kittens, I can start updating this thread again! 😄

A lot has happened! First the sad news—none of the fish I brought back from Long Island survived. The three tetras got super sick—first it was ich, then it looked like fin rot plus columnaris. The little loach looked fine, but I think all the meds were too much. Usually I wait to treat fish until I see symptoms, but I’m now a believer in the quarantine med trio. 

The miracle that came out of this tragedy though is that my husband said to me, without prompting,

”It probably makes sense for you to keep an extra tank up and running all the time, just for quarantining fish.”

😍🤩

In happier news, the hubby and I have finished the fish tank stand! 😃

One day the cabinet will get a door. For now, it looks something like this!

The three gourami fry that survived my fry-raising failures back in April are now in the main tank. It was really fun introducing them, watching them explore, and seeing how they interact with Mom Fish and Dad Fish. I transferred them one at a time. The first one was the most eventful…

The little juvenile went up to Dad Fish with curiosity and Dad Fish reached out his feelers and welcomed it at first… and then realized this was NOT the gourami he had expected! 😆 Thankfully everyone is getting along well now. As long as Dad Fish doesn’t have eggs.

The platy fry are doing great! I love watching them swim around the tubs and eat. Just yesterday I discovered a second generation. Here’s a video of Gen 1 a week or so ago:

I’m enjoying mixing fish food for the tubs as well. It’s a Cory trick that I had never tried. Very convenient! This one’s a mix of hikari first bites, hikari vibra bites, extreme krill flake, freeze dried brine shrimp, Repashy powder, and a tiny sprinkle of spirulina. I put it in an old spice jar that has a one of those caps with holes in it. Makes it very easy to feed.

Last but not least… one of the hubby’s co-workers at the college uses zebra fish as his research model. And it turns out that when he ordered more zebra fish the other week, the company sent him 100 rice fish instead.

Hubby came home and asked me, “Do you want any rice fish?”

I thought about it. I had not planned on getting rice fish. I had never even considered getting rice fish. But my overwhelming nerm instinct said GET ALL THE FISH.

”I mean, yeah! I’ll take them!”

”All of them? There are 100.”

I thought for a few more moments. No thoughts appeared to counter my instinct.

“Why wouldn’t I get all the fish?”

So tomorrow I’m going to get 100 rice fish! 😄 Yay!!

[Jungle Fan]

On 6/5/2021 at 7:26 PM, Hobbit said:

Lots of fun things going on in the 55 gallon. For one, I have a sword flower!

Those pictures are a week old or more. It’s made it out of the tank now, but it hasn’t bloomed. We’ll see what happens!

I decided to do a water change and make things look real pretty so I could get a new full tank shot. For some reason I got really determined to find a way to add water back into the tank without having to stand there the whole time, and without hooking up the hose to the bathroom sink. I borrowed a water pump that came with some exercise equipment my husband bought, and jerry-rigged a stand for it out of an A-clamp and a kitchen spoon. It was tons of effort and the pump took a really long time to empty 5 gallons. Plus it was really loud! The hose would have been easier, but I guess I was feeling stubborn.

After much algae-scrubbing, the final result!

The most exciting part for me is how much the plecos have changed the log. It used to be dark brown with algae and now it’s a light color.

Old picture for comparison:

The creatures are doing pretty well too. An Amano closeup:

Feeding-time chaos:

The tubs are doing well, too! We moved them outside now that the weather’s warmer. I did put heaters in both tubs since the night time temps still get into the 60’s.

Kitty is sad though because she really liked drinking out of them.

The platys weren’t bothered by her at all. In fact, they’d sometimes come up to her face to taste her whiskers!

My husband and I are happy to have them out of the house though. We were still having mosquitos emerging from the tub—only 4 or 5 per day at the end. 😛  

Glad to see you too have a resident feline aquarium inspector on site to ensure all is done in the appropriate fashion 😄

Edited July 25, 2021 by Jungle Fan

[Hobbit]

They are here!!!

These are such happy little fish. They seem endlessly hungry, very curious, and not shy at all. I haven’t had any jumpers (yet) but I do have a lid covering most of the tank. Hubby asked if I was going to name them. 😄 

It looks like I now have a third breeding project! Which means I probably need more tanks 🤷🏼‍♀️

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

Rice fish are so pretty. 🙂 I'll enjoy watching this development. 

[Patrick_G]

Wow, have you watched @Ryo Watanabe’s newest vid on Ricefish? I see a mini pond in your future! 
BTW The stand looks soooo good

Edited July 26, 2021 by Patrick_G

[Hobbit]

@Patrick_G thanks!! I’ve definitely been watching @Ryo Watanabe’s videos on rice fish—when I search, his videos are some of the first to come up. The mini ponds in the most recent video are sooo cute!!

[eatyourpeas]

On 7/25/2021 at 6:55 AM, Patrick_G said:

BTW The stand look soooo good

In agreement here, @Hobbit. Which paint did you end up using? It looks great! 🙂

On 7/24/2021 at 10:41 PM, Hobbit said:

These are such happy little fish.

They look like so much fun!

[Hobbit]

On 7/25/2021 at 4:19 PM, eatyourpeas said:

Which paint did you end up using?

Thank you!! I used Benjamin Moore ceiling paint in “bunny gray” for the body of the stand (with a clear polyurethane coat on the shelves). I just happened to have that paint already and it worked! For the top I used Vermont Natural Coatings outdoor wood stain in acorn. It’s already getting dinged up but I’m really happy with it!

[Hobbit]

There are soooo many babies in the orange platy pond!!

Still no sign of babies in the blue platy pond, but maybe they’re there and just really hard to see.

Another haul from the coop came today. I am always running out of usb air pumps. They are definitely my favorite coop product.

And I’m very excited because I got a sticker of @Fish Folk’s fish!