What are you doing to your tank today?

Found a smaller (hopefully lol) female Betta hiding amongst my French blue Endlers. A lot of moss in that tank, but found her while clearing duckweed. Mostly black with blue markings and in a tank on the bottom rack so I can see how I missed her. Especially if she was hanging out in the back away from the Endlers. Shes in with her bigger sisters now. Probably from the third spawn that I kind of gave up on after my pairing wasn't really working. Egg or fry that ended up in another tank.
 

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I got some pure red line (PRL) caridina and Amono shrimp in the mail today.
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Before I put them in, I notice I also have some newer A. Borelli fry.
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Here's a couple PRL hanging out with my one remaining cherry neocaridina. Picture is dark because I turned out the lights for them to adjust.
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I picked up my special LFS order of 15 Chili Rasboras to QT until I add them to the 9 blue neon rasboras in my micro rasbora 20g long tank.IMG_6083.jpeg
 
I got to spend time watching my 40 gallon planted aquarium today
 

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Never ceases to amaze me how many different colours & patterns there are now in dwarf shrimp.
You can also spend more than you care to spend on them as well.
 
Petsmart had a sale on medium sized Spiderwood today. I bought four pieces.
I've got them soaking in a big tub of scalding hot water. Happy to see some of it has already sunk to the bottom.
 

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Forgot to get the beginning, but I started working on my pnw terrarium. Did a little more mock up on the pond filter too. Thinking about a build thread, but I forgot to take pics of the drainage part before I put soil in it.

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Violets, native strawberries, trailing blackberry, salal, maiden hair fern and moss so far. The drainage layer is lava rocks covered in an inch or so of moss, then soil.
 
I put the chunks of spider wood in the tank this morning. Three out of four pieces were totally water logged.

I just stacked the three, with the intention of formally arranging them on maintenance day. The spider wood actually looked pretty good just randomly stacked.

The forth piece is 75% water logged. It was hovering just below the waters surface. I wedged it between a couple rocks and will arrange it later.

I read a lot about boiling driftwood to eliminate buoyancy. Personally, I think boiling is a quick path to wood disintegration.

IMO, a plastic tub full of scalding hot water, poured directly from the tap is plenty hot enough to achieve waterlogged sunken wood w/o the detrimental effects of boiling.

I was surprised by the dark staining of the tannins released by the spider wood.
 

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Progress - but still so much undone. But the long low tank is moved onto my vanity at last.

Ended up putting a double slab of 1/2” plywood - cheaper & an inch of plywood is more than thick enough.

Doesn’t look like much - just cleaned off the glass (more or less) & am taking a tea break.

All the plants & algae are now floating in a scud tank to be cleaned off & I will have to see if I can finish up my light fixture to use over it so I don’t provoke another algae outbreak, which I will if I keep using that 8000K fixture!

I need to find a way to use that fixture to grow green rocks - it should be outstanding for that.

The vanity is opposite the foot of my bed & beside the corner east by south window about 16” away from it.

I am hoping the tank will look great in the summer sun once I put it all back together. It’ll only get morning rays of sun but it’ll get the oft-advised bright indirect light that’s perfect for houseplants the rest of the day - let’s hope it’s not sufficient to stimulate algae into growing.

It’ll be the first thing I see when I get up each morning.

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I sucked out the A. Borelli fry today with a siphon hose and a turkey battery. I thinknI got around 10 that are now in a fluval breeder box.

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I put some Hikari First Bites in there. I think that will last a couple days. I also put some of the junk growing on wood in there.
 
So my life has drastically changed since I used to spend so much time on here.

I have gotten married, became a father to an amazing little girl that turned 1 this week, and downsized from 7 tanks to one 40 Breeder.

In this time, most of my old fish are gone. I've got a few tetras that I want to get rid of. Today I went to Petsmart to get a bulb for my snake and took my daughter with me. I decided to take her back to the fish. My old blue gourami recently died. It was the only really interesting fish to her in there. Anyway, she took notice of and seemed to enjoy the mollies and red platys. So on somewhat of a whim, I got her a dalmatian mollie and compromised on 3 blue calico platys.

We'll see how it goes!
 

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Live food cultures are doing well. Still no mosquito larvae, but a lot of bloodworms and little white filament like worms that are very active in the water. The sticklebacks are loving whatever those are. The usual daphnia etc... are also doing well :) Yay warmer weather:)

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The young Betta that was hiding among the French blue Endlers.
 
I drove to the city yesterday and checked out one of the few Mom & Pop shops left. Although a wide selection of fish were offered, numerous tanks were shut down due to illness, and the prices were unbelievably high.

A standard Tiger Barb was going for $5.25, and tiny Angelicus Botias were nearly $20 a piece. Those prices are double what they were last year. No sale there.

Next, I drove to the suburbs and went to my favorite Petsmart. I got a great deal on a group of uncommon Platinum Tiger Barbs there last month.

As luck would have it, 11 more Platinum Tigers were available, and naturally I bought them all. Lol.

The price had gone up fifty cents a piece since last month, but $3.00 is still a bargain for the Platinums.

Just a word for the wise, the Petsmart, I frequent runs all their 30 tanks on one system. If a disease exists in one tank, other tanks might be infected as well. This style of water management is likely universal for most big box fish stores.

Before buying fish at such places, it would be a good idea to scope out each and every tank to evaluate the general health of the livestock.

As usual, I was the big dork carefully examining each tank. Lol.
No signs of Ick, Oodinium or Flukes were seen and only one Platy in all the 30 tank looked subpar.

I apologize for the novel. I'm just killing time while acclimating the new Barbs.
 
Did water change on the discus aquarium and tweaked the light a bit to restore plant growth - an hour later they displayed for me:
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If you look careful you will see a few of the Dicrossus maculatus - these things are incredibly colourful but they never sit still hence no dedicated picture. I'm working on freezing one in a video but it will take effort ;) They also grow incredibly fast probably because they stole fdbw from the discus who are kind of sloppy eaters.

Then i took a side track to watch the a. sp ipiranga frys - I had these guys nearly a year before they bred (compared the nijjensi and wolli that bred after a few weeks):
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These are not very common species and the mother is definitely not over joyed when i feed the frys - very different from the winkelfleck and nijjensi who are over joyed to eat their baby's baby food which is bbs.
 
I hadn't seen one of my female a. borelli since I noticed the first one had fry. I had a suspicion that maybe she did, too. When I got home from work today, it was confirmed. Both were near the front of the tank. Daddy fish is going to be frustrated for a while.

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tinylostwine I really like the wild caught Discus colors. They are looking good.
 
Added a few more plants to the terrarium plus water to the small bowfront, elodea, pond grass, willow and daphnia etc... So now it's a planted tank within a planted tank. Aside from the daphnia etc the dirt side has a lot of isopods, worms, millipedes and such. There are a few small snails in there, but will be removed when larger. Maybe one, but they poop a lot on the glass.

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I got in an order of bacopa carolinia, but it was almost completely gone, not worth planting. It was in the mail for a full 7 days. It had a 3 day rest stop in Indiana. I'm requesting a refund.

I also sucked a few more a. borelli fry out of the tank. One mother was down to almost nothing left, so I figured now was the time. I got the others a few days ago. I'm still not a good judge of when they are ready to come out. They haven't done so well in the breeder box. I set up some brine shrimp eggs to hatch. I don't think the fry are ready for those yet, but if not, the rest of the aquariums will get a treat.
 
I went to a LFS today and got rid of some tetras. While there I picked up some wisteria because I'm not the greatest at plant keeping and hope to beef up my plantlife with an easy stem. I also found a huge crypt that I couldn't pass up.

Here's my tank before...
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And after...I moved some ludwigia stems around a bit, tiny ferns, and hoping that crypt doesn't melt too much.
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They also had some little pieces of ambulia floating around that she threw me a couple shreds of in the bag when I asked about it. I just kind of tucked them in to see what happens and threw a tab under because why not?
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Now that I'm down to one tank, I'm trying to approach the hobby more easy minded and for fun. It's taking some serious effort, but I'm a lot busier than I used to be. However, while there I grabbed a blue mystery snail for funsies and a tiny little albino pleco for free in exchange for the tetras. It's strange not having a pleco and I've had several colors, but never an albino.
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I'll be setting up an aqaurium at work. 15 g Fluval flex, low tech planted tank with aquasoil topped with gravel. It will have the usual low to medium-light plants and I'll eventually put in koi swordtails.
Oooo I'd like to see pictures of that with those swordtails.
 
Doing some catch-up work. Was unhappy with my ro system so i replaced with something more predictable (and unfortunately more expensive); this is producing ec 4 water as oppose to the previous ec 20 (which isn't quite low enough for some species); it suppose to be 300 gpd but i only measured 264 so 36 gallons are being sucked away to never never land - however it was important that the waste be minimal and i'm seeing 1.14 (which is almost 1.1). The thing is i use so much water on these 14 aquariums that 1.1 vs 2.1 (for waste) can be 1200 a year. So all of a sudden that expensive ro unit pays for itself in 6 months. The previous rated 1:1 unit i had was probably closer to 1:3 and was costing a fortune.

Anyway i always wanted ro water so i could keep my fishes in nice soft water - good thing my fishes are mostly sa and asian (clown loaches) who enjoy the softer side of life.

There is are only three aquarium i'm keeping on tap water with the major one being the bed room 180. The issue isn't using ro water the ro pipe goes up there but the concern is that aquarium has all my wonderful variant c. nurri whatever (maiden, lumious green, pink lady, ...) and i can't get those plants to grow in very soft water even if cyrpt nurii itself is native to blackwater environment. If i could then it would soften up.

The other two are a 10 with dario dario, anchor cats and clown killi and those guys prefer something not too soft as well the 120 with angelfishes and krobia - this is an aquarium i kind of want to get rid of but i'd need to find someone to come over and cart it away. Still as long as it is there i've been experimenting with some different cypts which grow really well in tap water (my tap is tds 140/kh 3 gh 6) which is medium soft - nothing like coralbandit ny water which is around tds 80. Trade off - live where i can have some really large aquariums or live in ny with nice soft water.
 
I realized that I have not cleaned out my canister filter since my daughter has been born. So yeah....figured I should probably do that. Went ahead and got that done last night and put Purigen in there again.
 
Today is moving day for the white cloud minnows from the quarantine tank to the CPD tank. They've been in quarantine for 13 days. I know that's a little short.

I scooped out some water to out them in. What do you know...
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I counted 3 fry. There must be a ton in the quarantine tank. I guess it's a nursery now.

Got all the minnows in one scoop.
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Acclimating now.
 
Yesterday I finished with my tank reduction. Over the last month or so I have eliminated all four tubs, three of the four 10 gallon tanks, the 5.5 gallon tank, one of the two 20 gallon tanks, and the 40 gallon breeder.

I'm left with my 65 gallon tank, stocked with turquoise rainbowfish and pristella tetras, a 20 gallon long with a dozen or so serpae tetras, and a 10 gallon tank with a handful of guppies that I introduced seven green neon tetras to yesterday. If they do well I'll add more later.

I also still have the heavily planted, very low tech (just a light; no heater, mechanical filtration, or air movement) 5.5 gallon tank on my desk at work. It's stocked with seven celestial pearl danios.

I have also stopped selling plants, fish, and shrimp. I've reached the point in my life where I want fewer demands on my time, so I can better take care of the ones that remain.
 

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I found a light bar, in storage, identical to the one on my 40. With the 40 being so wide, the front half of the tank doesn't really get much light and the ferns up there show the evidence of it. So I went ahead and popped that on the front as well. Trying to take it slow to avoid an algae bloom.
 
It’s always good to do a water change on your aquariums at least once a week
 
Long day - after doing some very large water changes to reset the ec of the aquariums back below 30 (the old ro system was producing water that was out of spec); lights were hung on the two new aquariums and i had a long serious talk with a couple of ill-behaved fishes. They basically ignored me and continue being ill behaved. They seem to think it is ok to grab worms out of the discus mouth and are making a game of it which really annoys the discus. However while they might only be 1 inch by 2 inch; and the discus is nearly 8 inch - guess who is the whimp.
 
After seeing all my fish die except for one bronze cory, I have been just waiting to shut it all down.
Now I'm thinking about a Cory only tank.
I could not for the life of me figure out why the deaths, hence the demoralising effect on me.
I just don't want to go through that again.
My 2 shrimp tanks aren't going well either. In one I never seem to get more than 8 at a time. The other is a little better.
I do maintain and test regularly.
Time will tell.
 
After seeing all my fish die except for one bronze cory, I have been just waiting to shut it all down.
Now I'm thinking about a Cory only tank.
I could not for the life of me figure out why the deaths, hence the demoralising effect on me.
I just don't want to go through that again.
My 2 shrimp tanks aren't going well either. In one I never seem to get more than 8 at a time. The other is a little better.
I do maintain and test regularly.
Time will tell.
I feel your pain. I lost most of a tank a couple of months ago. The fish have stabilized, but now it seems to be devoid of nutrients. The only thing growing well is algae. I'm about to load it up with root tabs when my plants come in.

Just do the best you can and keep trying. Be sure not to contaminate any other tanks from the bad one. That's been the hardest part for me, keeping everything that gets near the bad tank away from everything else. Good luck!
 
After seeing all my fish die except for one bronze cory, I have been just waiting to shut it all down.
Now I'm thinking about a Cory only tank.
I could not for the life of me figure out why the deaths, hence the demoralising effect on me.
I just don't want to go through that again.
My 2 shrimp tanks aren't going well either. In one I never seem to get more than 8 at a time. The other is a little better.
I do maintain and test regularly.
Time will tell.
I feel your pain. I have one cory remaining out of a dozen. I put a new cichlid in that was supposed to be safe. It killed several all in one night after being in there a couple weeks. I'm pretty sure the stress did in several too.
 
Another trip to my favorite Petsmart in order to round out my Giant Danio group.

I picked up four baby GD's which upped my group number to 11 or 12.

The Danios were sharing a tank with several baby Clown Loaches, which isn't necessarily a good thing. IMO, Clown Loaches are Ich magnets. Fortunately I didn't see any signs of Ich.

I'm about ready to hang the no vacancy sign on the show tank, but plan on adding 2 or 3 more YoYo Loaches, when things warm up.
 

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I feel your pain. I have one cory remaining out of a dozen. I put a new cichlid in that was supposed to be safe. It killed several all in one night after being in there a couple weeks. I'm pretty sure the stress did in several too.
May I ask what type of cichlid it was? I was considering a couple of blue acaras.
I hear they're not aggressive?
 
If you are talking about the Electric Blue Acara, they are relatively peaceful as compared to most South American Cichlids. Like most fish, they will eat just about anything that can fit into their mouth.

A standard true Blue Acara is somewhat more aggressive.
 
May I ask what type of cichlid it was? I was considering a couple of blue acaras.
I hear they're not aggressive?
The only issue I had with an EBA was it nipping the fins on some corys. The one I tried that was a big time mistake was a kribensis. What I had read on them and what I had been told sounded like it would be okay. It wasn't after all.
 
If you are talking about the Electric Blue Acara, they are relatively peaceful as compared to most South American Cichlids. Like most fish, they will eat just about anything that can fit into their mouth.

A standard true Blue Acara is somewhat more aggressive.
Thanks that's the one's I'm after.

The only issue I had with an EBA was it nipping the fins on some corys. The one I tried that was a big time mistake was a kribensis. What I had read on them and what I had been told sounded like it would be okay. It wasn't after all.
Really, I didn't think krebs were that aggressive. Something learnt today.

Oh, sorry for the flood. One last question. Will a 33 gallon tank be okay for a pair of electric blue acaras and 10 bronze cories?
Also, I'm not keen on them breeding, are 2 males okay together.
Thanks.
 
A 33 gallon might be a little tight for two EBA's, but doable for a mated pair.
Usually need more space and several more EBA's in the group in order to keep multiple males in one tank.

If you choose to keep two EBA males together, start them both as juveniles.

I've never kept Cory Cats with EBA's. Your tank is plenty big for a group of them. Provide plenty of cover and retreats.
 
Thanks. No problem, I might nix the EBA's for now and stick with the cories. I can look into other species in the meantime.
 
Been around 18 months since i last tested nitrate level in my 500 and 600; so i did it today with grit teeth. The last time it was probably around 1 and today my guess it was around 3 (precise readings between 1 and 5 are a guessing game). So that isn't great - i'll have to do a defacto water change in a month or so when we work on the sump that should be around 150 gallons on each aquarium still long term i'm facing and upward creep :(


-- unrelated merged post --

So i decided to check on my green neon tetra - this is what i normally see when i look into the aquarium:
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There is a hint of one to the right that i missed; but if i shine a light into the aquarium:
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You can see more - i can actually see a lot more that the phone missed - not sure how many but i think 15 to 30 adults green neon tetra; sadly i rarely shine a flash-light into my aquariums so never see them :(

And because i never see them i kept buying more which is why i have so many !
 
"Dad, can we get some peppered corydoras? I read they're a good tank mate for Bettas."
Check the girl Betta tank, not only do we have those we have long finned ones too lol
Ooooooh lol
Also, going to need to maybe move a few things around in Woodstocks tank or maybe he just wants his plastic cave on its side buried halfway lol Silly little engineer lol
 
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