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@Guppysnail of course you can! Here are the beads I use. I found it hard to find a big sized glass bead without a metal thing in the middle.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L3Q2Q3K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I had never seen anacharis flower until I kept it in a bucket with massive fertilizer for a week. I think it was more fertilizer than was technically healthy. Maybe they flowered because they thought they were dying. 😅

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Not really. Originally I added the anacharis and hornwort to the platy tubs to provide cover for the fry. But I always know in the back of my mind that if something does well, I’m going to sell it. 😁

If the LFS likes them, I may have to keep the tubs set up over the winter just to grow plants. Which of course would mean I’d need fish in them to eat the mosquito larvae. Which opens the possibility that the fish may breed. Which could give me yet another fish to sell to the LFS. 😇

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My tubs are in the shade for almost the whole day. I also have floaters that nearly totally cover the surface. Sometimes I’m surprised anything grows under all that cover, but sunlight is very intense! Do you have any floaters?

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On 8/18/2021 at 9:57 PM, Hobbit said:

My tubs are in the shade for almost the whole day. I also have floaters that nearly totally cover the surface. Sometimes I’m surprised anything grows under all that cover, but sunlight is very intense! Do you have any floaters?

It’s almost totally covered with dwarf water lettuce. Its also taller than it is wide so that doesn’t help with light penetration. 

Edited by Patrick_G
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First fish money!!!

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The trip went great. The LFS owner didn’t price everything out—after I showed him everything he just said, “How about $20 bucks?” Fine with me. It’s about $12 in gas money to get up there and back so it’s a net positive! 😄 

And then, when I got home, I was staring at the ricefish I have left and discovered there’s a BABY swimming around in there! The adults try to eat it but lose interest when it darts away. I’m shocked—and I’ll be shocked if it continues to survive. But it’s pretty neat to see my first medaka fry! 🥰

Very terrible picture taken with my macro lens:

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It’s been a while since I did a full tank shot so here’s the 55:

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You can see the new sword plant up at the water surface growing from the old sword plant flower! Still not sure where I’m going to plant it. Right now it’s still attached to the parent plant.

The five gouramis are getting along great! They seem to like to hang out together. Here’s Mom Fish and son. I find the size difference hilarious.

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The orange platy tub is TEEMING with fry, and it has a THIRD lily flower!

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I managed to get some pictures of the blue platy fry, and a blurry picture of a very very round mama.

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I’m leak testing the new (to me) 55 gallon and so far so good! It would be great if I didn’t have to reseal it—resealing a 10 and 5 gallon was already so much work.

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And here’s a little video of the medaka broodstock I kept. I accidentally kept some of the more silver-eyed fish when I was trying to sort without a light. They might end up in the tubs outside. I really want to get a line with popping blue eyes!

 

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@Hobbit I wait for them to have a couple Of strands of rooms and then cut the whole stem down near the crown then separate them from The stem and replant them. Think I used a Dustins fish tanks YT video to learn the techniques not hard in the least. I have a new one that just popped up this week that hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be able to replant. I think I’ll take in the 5 I have now and some guppies and shrimp to the LFS in September to get credit for stocking the Sad Bowl and the 15 g column. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well well well it’s been an interesting few weeks. My husband broke his hip. No he is not old, and no his bones aren’t weak. He just had a really unlucky fall off his bike. He wasn’t even moving—he wasn’t even clipped in!!

After navigating the hell that is our COVID-overloaded hospital system, he got surgery and is home. He can’t put weight on his leg for three months. 48 hours after he got home I left for some medical travel of my own while his parents came into town to take care of him. I’m finally back but I’m on caretaker duty for a good while, so the fish projects are going to have to slow down.

They can’t stop entirely though because I’ve got to get my platys out of their tubs soon! It’s starting to get cold at night. I have heaters in the tubs, but one’s only 25 watts. I’ve been covering that tub with towels on the colder nights.

They fry are growing and multiplying…

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The lily has a fourth flower!! These pictures were taken on a cloudy day so I think the color came out more true to real life.

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The cycle in the 5g where I’m intending to breed the medaka was going sloooow. So what do you do when you want bacteria from your filter mulm, but not baby snails? Strain the mulm with a brine shrimp sieve!

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A few days later…

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Cycle’s finally going somewhere!

While I was traveling I had to stop at a LFS (duh) and I ended up picking up two of these little guys:

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Yes, assassin snails. The Malaysian trumpet snails are out of control. I never thought I’d get assassins because I just don’t like the idea of snails dying a slow, painful death, but I don’t know what else to do. I’m still scraping snails out myself as well. The last batch all ended up walking in a circle, which I thought was funny. (Video is sped up 2x)

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Lastly, I got up early to help my husband one morning, and discovered that my medaka tank gets just a little bit of morning sun from the window over the kitchen sink. The fish looked lovely.

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Edited by Hobbit
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I am sorry to hear of your husband’s accident.  I hope he has a complication free recovery. The brine shrimp sieve was very ingenious.  I would have never thought of that I’m glad it kicked everything into high gear for you. Those assassins are just lovely 😍 but I understand your thoughts on the other snails demise. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress. That is so curious how they are all traveling counter clockwise. Adorable 🐈‍⬛ kitty

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The cycle finished in the 5 gallon! It was time to move the medaka over to their new home. I used a tank divider I made out of craft mesh to push them all to the front, then I scooped them out with the new coop net. I love the way it holds its box shape and how big it is. I also got to use the coop’s specimen container for the first time! I wanted to make sure all the medaka were of good breeding quality. I decided to keep them all, even though some have slightly grayer eyes than the rest.

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Their new tank is full of algae (no snails) and was also full of little crawlies. They nommed those critters immediately. It was like Christmas in there!

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In other fish news, it looks like my younger pleco is growing whiskers. I really thought I had two girls! Now I have to decide if I want to keep them both in the 55 and let them breed, or if I want to are one out. I don’t need two in the 55, but I don’t need them anywhere else, either.

Here’s a picture of him flaring his gills. Sassy boy.

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And the lily has a fifth flower.

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I hope you husband recovers quickly, not being mobile really sucks!
 

I really like the awesome images of the lily. It's getting cold enough at night here in Idaho I think I'm going to have to bring mine in to overwinter soon. Love the rice fish updates, Ive been toying with trying some in my 75 gallon. Good to hear the nets work so good,I got a few and haven't tried them out yet. I'm about to move my young kubotai out of the quarantine tank, I'll try out the new net then.

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There’s a lot going on in my fish world. Short(ish) update today, hopefully long update soon!

Mainly: I have so many baby platys.

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The nights are getting a bit colder, and I do have heaters in the tubs, but I’ve been starting to worry that one mistake will cause me to lose all the babies I’ve “worked” so hard for. 😄 (Honestly I’ve done nothing but feed them. Can’t take too much credit here.)

So I decided I’d grab a few and put them in the 10 gallon that used to be my gourami grow out tank. It’s been sitting empty since a failed quarantine in June. RIP little loach. 

After testing the water in the tubs and the 10 gallon, I learned that my tubs are way low in pH and hardness. Whoops. Working on fixing that now.

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The water in the 10 gallon was a little better hardness/pH wise, so I did a water change and called it good enough.

Then I went out with my new coop net and my new coop specimen container 😎 and scooped a few scoops from each tub.

I caught more than 60 babies without even trying. 😳

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This is crazy. I’m hoping to sell these to my LFS, but I have to get them at least a bit bigger first. How in the world am I going to raise all these platys!! 

I decided I’m going to need at least two 10 gallons dedicated to growing out these fry. One for boys, one for girls. Good thing I had an extra coop sponge filter laying around! It’s now seeding in the old ricefish tank. I caught two tiny, centimeter-long babies canoodling last night (you’re too young!!!) so I know I’m going to have to be on top of sorting. I have to rethink the plant arrangement for maximum ease of scooping.

Several of the platys have either malformed tails or chunks of tail missing (or both). I’m hoping it’s just fin nipping and not fin rot. I’m going to feed them some baby brine over the next few days to get them as healthy as possible. Hopefully they can regrow any damage and fight off any rot on their own.

I also decided to start setting up the 55 gallon that will be my platy breeding tank for the winter. But that’s the long update for another day.

Oh and lastly—I replaced the powerhead in my 55 gallon with the new coop one! I love it! Used a zip tie to secure my old prefilter sponge on there. I definitely need the thin sponge over the outflow, otherwise the flow would be too high for my tank. The gourami juveniles say hi!

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