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gently caress it, his disc started falling apart on the other side too. Twice daily water changes and the salinity was the same/.001 off which might have been too much. The bucket water definitely was getting nasty and now I know why, he was falling apart. I don't know if I did this when I rearranged the tank, gently caress.
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Jan 11, 2024 19:33
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Is there any chance your star is asexually reproducing? The fission process sounds extremely traumatic/dramatic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction_in_starfish I don’t remember what species you have so I don’t know if this is relevant but wow what a weird way to reproduce. Sea stars have to be about the most alien critters we could keep as pets.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:32
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Stoca Zola posted:Is there any chance your star is asexually reproducing? The fission process sounds extremely traumatic/dramatic. I doubt it. There was a white hole/gash on his disc, and then a second one appeared on the other side. Pretty gruesome. He was def alive and moving but slower than usual, but the water was super cloudy with lots of whisps, like a protein skimmer backed up. Serpent star, not quite a starfish. I do have asterina stars and they reproduce by fission.
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Jan 12, 2024 01:55
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One of my betta passed away, so I thought I'd rescape his tank and do a shrimp colony for a change. Went to the aquarium store and picked up a couple of new plants and a new filter because I didn't like the other one... and a new betta even though I said I wouldn't do it  In my defense, it was a baby girl and she is adorable. She doesn't even really have gills and she is still trying to flare at me. I'm excited to see what she grows up to look like, I love these dumb fish so much.
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Jan 14, 2024 07:27
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On Friday my sister and I called in to the new pet store in town, a different chain store than the existing one as last time I bought some cat food there I’d noticed how clean and healthy their fishtanks looked. We were checking to see if they had telescope eye goldfish and all their fancy goldfish were pretty healthy looking and the tanks still very clean. A really pretty and active blue veil tail betta caught my eye, I’m very very tempted to try keeping one some day. I want to get the guppy colony back in operation and properly housed first though. Friday afternoon we finished deep cleaning and rescaping my sisters tropical tank, rehoming her tetras and corydoras and probably halving the number of plants to try and give the goldfish room to swim comfortably. Her pristella tetras went into my 3 foot rasbora/red sided barb tank, where they immediately fit in and swam comfortably with the existing fish. I was worried they might be a bit intimidated because they are slightly smaller than the other fish but it seems like they are a happy peaceful community. The two remaining sterbai corydoras went back into the 4 foot tank that I’d raised them in, were investigated and welcomed by the corydoras I still have in there. I wonder if they remember each other or the tank, or if they can tell that they are siblings after all this time? The empty tank  The theory is the goldfish should leave the Java ferns alone because they’re coarse and not tasty, but if the bolbitis gets eaten we can swap that for something else since I tossed her extra plants into one of my tanks. Her plants and algae always grew a lot better than mine mostly because she didn’t water change for 6 months and I think the tank balanced itself, the fish it couldn’t support died and the survivors matched the amount of plants/filtration. The peaceful community with new additions https://i.imgur.com/xUOGuKI.mp4 edit: didn't notice my vid didn't work oops Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 09:22
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What do you people use to trim underwater plants? Will normal scissors work? They aren't shipped with oil on them or something?
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Jan 15, 2024 10:57
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I have some S bend style aquascape scissors which are handy because of some of the weird angles you need when using straight scissors. I would aim for all stainless steel scissors, and wash, rinse and wipe down thoroughly with paper towel before use. Any oil will float to the top of the water and you can pat it off with a new clean piece of paper towel (this also works with other filmy coatings you might want to remove from a tank that doesn't have much surface agitation). Oil at the surface is probably only bad for surface breathing fish like gourami, who could potentially get their labyrinth organ messed up.
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Jan 15, 2024 12:11
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Cheap set of aquascape tools from Amazon. It had 2 sets of long handled scissors, 2 long forceps, and a sort of gravel scraper / hoe thingy. I use the tongs and scissors all the time.
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Jan 15, 2024 17:25
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What do you all use to scrape algae off the glass? I’ve got a 13 gallon fluval flex and I started with one of those magnetic glass scrapers. This was a horrible idea because my toddler got hold of it, moved it into the sand, picked up said sand, and scratched the gently caress out of my glass. The magnetic glass scraper is gone now. I don’t have much algae, just little green dots that pop up on the glass. I time my lights so it’s only 7 hours a day. I’ve used paper towels in the past when I do a water change, but I’d like something a little easier to scrub. Maybe just a sponge?
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Jan 15, 2024 19:21
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While we're speaking tools, I just moved over to a razor blade based scraper after a decade of mag floats. Brought the tank back to like new in mere minutes, it's a mix of relief and feeling stupid.
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Jan 15, 2024 19:23
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I love a single sided razor blade for tanks where the fish aren't all up in my business trying to see what I'm doing. Or tanks where my arm is long enough to reach everywhere. This isn't true for a number of my tanks, I've developed a special razor blade grip that prevents fish from gouging themselves on the corners of the blade by pressing the entire blade flat against the glass with my finger tips, but tanks where this is not possible I have used an old credit card wedged into a glass scraper holder, and also I got a pretty nice nylon scratchy pad that does take off that green spot algae with a few passes. The razorblade is the fastest/easiest but also riskiest. I have a razor sharp 4 inch blade on a handle which works well in my largest tank but I hate using it because I know a fish has been cut with it, between me using it on the glass and pulling it out of the tank. The other downside to that kind of scraper is replacement blades don't seem to exist, whereas anything that uses a standard single sided utility razor is better since those are pretty much everywhere. My sister used a firm bristled toothbrush on her tank, and that shifted her algae really well too, with the advantage of being silicone safe. Some tanks you have to be careful at the joins not to get the razor under the edge of the silicone.
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Jan 15, 2024 19:46
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I've had good results with a melamine sponge (magic eraser). Just make sure to get the plain, unscented, no cleaners added kind.
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Jan 15, 2024 19:51
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nwin posted:What do you all use to scrape algae off the glass? They make long handled algae scrubbers with an abrasive pad. This one is probably poo poo but you get the idea. SLSON Aquarium Algae Scraper Double Sided Sponge Brush Cleaner Long Handle Fish Tank Scrubber for Glass Aquariums and Home Kitchen,15.4 inches https://a.co/d/0b3gBsR I use a magnet scraper but I keep it high enough where it’s not an issue.
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Jan 15, 2024 19:55
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Chunderbucket posted:While we're speaking tools, I just moved over to a razor blade based scraper after a decade of mag floats. Brought the tank back to like new in mere minutes, it's a mix of relief and feeling stupid. Razor scrapers are it. They're like $10-15.
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Jan 15, 2024 19:59
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I have a single nerrite snail in my 10 gallon and she keeps the glass sparkling clean unless I've got an algae flare up in which case it goes back to normal in a week or so. I'm genuinely curious are some people not using snails or what's happening that you need to manually remove algae
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Jan 15, 2024 20:15
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I have too many mystery snails, and they will eat all my frogbit before clearing all the algae. They do graze the glass, but they're not the best for algae. Much better results by using a siesta and reducing lighting hours. Takes a lot of small adjustments, and waiting periods after every change to get it dialed in, but I'm at the point now, where the plants grow well, and the glass gets only a slight fuzz after around 3 months. Magfloat clears that right up. Eta The snails pack their own algae too 
B33rChiller fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 20:21
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Hadlock posted:I have a single nerrite snail in my 10 gallon and she keeps the glass sparkling clean unless I've got an algae flare up in which case it goes back to normal in a week or so. I'm genuinely curious are some people not using snails or what's happening that you need to manually remove algae Rams horns leave a nice zig zag path of noms cleaning haphazardly except for the two tanks with snail eaters and the one tank that hasn't enough mineralisation to keep snail shells healthy. I have MTS but they are substrate stirrers more so than glass cleaners and nerites are expensive and hard to come by here (AU). So I've got to clean up what's left myself.
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Jan 15, 2024 20:41
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Amazon sold me a razor scraper with 3 feet of handle so my arms stay dry and my tank stays clean.
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Jan 15, 2024 21:17
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RadioPassive posted:Amazon sold me a razor scraper with 3 feet of handle so my arms stay dry and my tank stays clean. That's the one! The handle is ridiculously long but drat does it do the trick
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Jan 15, 2024 23:45
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Hadlock posted:I have a single nerrite snail in my 10 gallon and she keeps the glass sparkling clean unless I've got an algae flare up in which case it goes back to normal in a week or so. I'm genuinely curious are some people not using snails or what's happening that you need to manually remove algae I have a nerite snail and a mystery snail.  
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Jan 15, 2024 23:59
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:They make long handled algae scrubbers with an abrasive pad. abrasive pad for a deep cleaning and the magnet scraper for day to day. btw those work great for your typical algae, but getting the corraline off my glass on the saltwater tank is an ordeal
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Jan 16, 2024 01:35
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I want coraline algae on my glass but so far none is growing, barely any remains on my live rock. I recall some additive years ago, some A and B mix, I think was by SeaChem, that was supposed to help seed/grow coraline algae.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:44
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it took me about 9 or 10 month to start getting some corraline algae but its still ugly the ugly brown kind so i wanna get that poo poo off the glass but its annoying
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Jan 16, 2024 06:16
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Hadlock posted:I got a HOB to attempt to polish the water a little bit and increase the size of surface area for beneficial bacteria (intake foam filter+ apparently you can "mod" them by adding additional large cell foam below the main foam block in the hopper) Above is from Dec 16 almost exactly a month ago Added easy carbon, had a massive algae outbreak, but now the hair algae seems to have disappeared by about 80% Also stuck a "devil's ivy" pothos plant in the HOB and about a week ago it started sprouting two root nubs so I suspect the algae is struggling to compete with it Kind of baffled at where the hair algae went but whatever Added some airline tubing to block the floating plants from the HOB but the airline is twisted and only partly effective Edit: also reduced photo period back to 6 hours for both lights; I had increased the little one (18w?) from 6 to 10 hours and the big one (27w?) stayed at 6. Water quality went way up when I went back to 6 More edit: it's 7 and 10w, not 18 and 27 
Hadlock fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 23:47
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We had to get some floating cages to keep our water lettuce away from where the HOB dumps. The duckweed doesn't care about that though, and just goes where it wants.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:00
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So I've been evangelizing rice fish in this thread for a long time I met my latest new first shop owner (JJ Aquarium) and was telling him about the glories of platinum rice fish back in November, I might have even tagged his shop in a couple of random rice fish online crusades in recent weeks; Middle of December he offered to buy some of my hatchlings for his personal collection and I kind of brushed him off Today I saw him offering platinum rice fish online at his store! Curious to see where this leads. Rice fish are ideally suited for bay area climate which runs from 32-102 but typically stays in the 49-85F 95% of the time
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Jan 22, 2024 08:04
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Hadlock posted:So I've been evangelizing rice fish in this thread for a long time Neptune aquatics in San Jose has them. Are they unusual? They seem like something that's around in the hobby, but I'm sure there are weird color varieties that's rare. DeadlyMuffin fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Jan 22, 2024 |
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Jan 22, 2024 08:08
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You definitely can't find them at Petco or whatever Yeah I'd say they're moderately rare in the US. I think rice fish have been on the up swing in the last two years; two years ago you couldn't buy rice fish in the UK now they're getting common Concord aquarium had them last fall.... Mixed in with similarly colored guppies, which was kind of weird. The way it was setup I think they were just trying to sell customers "small silver fish" which... I don't agree with Outside of a handful of places they seem pretty hard to come by. They breed like crazy so it's possible to scale up production with demand on about a 6 week cycle In Japan rice fish are sold as feeder fish like goldfish and rosy red are sold here, so it's not hard to import them.
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Jan 22, 2024 08:15
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Adam Ragusea used them as his foray into tank YouTube so they’ve had a brief blip in popularity, but yeah—it’s weird how rare medaka are in the hobby in the West considering how established they are as a model organism in research (I guess zebra danios are way more ubiquitous here for that purpose tho).
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Jan 22, 2024 08:20
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They’ve been pretty rare to see here in AU until recent years and I think it’s through the efforts of a few enthusiasts that they’ve started to take off. They’re way more appropriate for the average beginner fish keeper than goldfish, and some interesting colour lines are around. I’ve seen available here: black, blue or steel, white, platinum, yellow, orange, gold, tiger (orange and black) and the ones I end up buying were sold as kohaku (white body, orange head/orange markings across back) but frankly seem like someone’s culls, one has definitely got some platinum/shimmer scales and another one has black tiger markings in the orange markings. I know there’s a hobbyist breeder who sells mixed lots of Medaka so it doesn’t surprise me that there are jumbled strains now being sold. I think it is likely to end up like the hobbyist guppy/endler breeders who don’t know enough to keep their breeding lines straight but I don’t mind because they’re still good fish and I’m not a purist. I mean up to a point anyway. Editing to add: Absolutely 100% a purist for geographic region fish for conservation purposes, hybridisation is irresponsible in these cases. I definitely prefer if fish are selected for health for breeding and I know the wholesale mass breeder suppliers are not doing that even if they are keeping the colour morph lines separately. And there isn’t really a strong culture of breeding to show standards here, so there’s no value to breeders to take the time and effort to breed prestige fish, so it’s not possible even to pay more for healthier fish. In livebearers at least, it’s very possible that a weak body form results in higher mortality during reproduction. Athough it seems like a problem that should solve itself, in the meantime you end up with so many fry carrying those poor genetics forward since even a sickly female who dies during her first attempt could still have 10+ viable at birth fry. Maybe less of a problem with egglaying fish, since they don’t get the same cushy internal upbringing that livebearers do? Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Jan 22, 2024 |
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Jan 22, 2024 09:14
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trilobite terror posted:used them as his foray into tank YouTube so they’ve had a brief blip in popularity, but yeah—it’s weird how rare medaka are in the hobby in the West considering how established they are as a model organism in research (I guess zebra danios are way more ubiquitous here for that purpose tho). Looks like Adam Ragusea did a video on them in the last month. Also "aquapro" released a video today about them, raving about them really. Hadn't heard of Adam R before but seems like a quality channel. Yeah ground swell is happening in the western world I forget exactly but medaka were definitely one of the first fish in space, I forget exactly but I think they shipped medaka to the international space station (ISS) had them breed and hatch the eggs since the whole process takes less than three weeks. But yeah weird it took this long to see them in the ornamental trade. In recent years (last 18 months?) A bunch of sparkle galaxy style strains have been developed. Maybe the main big reason they never got traction is that they're really ideally viewed from above, and the aquarium trade is to breed fish seen from the side
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Jan 22, 2024 09:24
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Hadlock posted:You definitely can't find them at Petco or whatever When I was looking at online shops a few months ago nearly all of them had multiple rice fish colors.
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Jan 22, 2024 19:47
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Damnit. I picked up 6 hillstream loaches about a week ago. Lost one Saturday, okay, it happens. Today one looks dead, and two more have large white patches, non fuzzy, on their sides. Well gently caress. Thankfully they're in QT but what a loving waste. The lfs is usually pretty good, I shouldn't have bought them so fast. They'd only been in the store for 4 days. Moron. Edit: I messaged the store to find out how the other Hill streams were doing, and they told me they were doing fine and even sent me a little 6 second video about it. Then they told me that the fish were in RO water only, and while that is my fault for not asking, I think it would be somewhat important to have that on a sign somewhere in the store or even told to people when they're buying a lot of expensive fish. That's on me as well though because I didn't ask, and that's even what they passive aggressively told me in the text message. Another loach dead this morning. Cowslips Warren fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 01:52
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Is there any problem with running the light on my tank for the same duration each day, but starting late in the day so the light is still on around 10PM? Or should lighting roughly align with daylight hours?
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Jan 30, 2024 15:34
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Absolutely no problem with same duration and late in the day. I have one tank that doesn't turn on until 2PM and turns off at 10PM. It gets a bit of sunlight in the mornings and then ambient room light but I have not seen any issues and wouldn't expect any.
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Jan 30, 2024 15:57
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i run my reef lights from 1PM to 12AM cause i'm a night owl and i like to be able to look at them late at night. if its a fish only tank you can run the lights whenever, cause they dont care.
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Jan 30, 2024 16:05
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That's exactly why, I get home from work late and I want to see brightly lit fish. Plenty of plants in this tank, so I'll keep the timer, but set it to run late. Thank you. 
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Jan 30, 2024 16:44
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Good golly, nice mollies
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Jan 30, 2024 19:12
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I'm at my wits end with bladder snails and scud in my shrimp tank. I scoop out over a dozen snails every day, and somehow the next day there's three dozen more. The scuds I have no solution for, they're hard as hell to catch, and they've completely eaten all my java moss  What's the optimal move here? Should I move all the shrimp + good snails into a quarantine tank and nuke this tank with copper or something? e: research has suggested quarantining the good livestock and then just loading the tank with seltzer water to CO2 nuke the scuds is a viable option, short-term Sockser fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jan 30, 2024 |
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Jan 30, 2024 23:05
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Sockser posted:I'm at my wits end with bladder snails and scud in my shrimp tank. You could throw some assassin snails in there, but you might want to do that after you pull the good snails out.
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Jan 30, 2024 23:15
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