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Thanks for the help guys! 
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Oct 21, 2013 01:23
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demonR6 posted:What's your filter intake like? I had one who liked to rest against the filter and found his tail shredded to poo poo one day. Some who have longer fins get fed up and chomp on it too. I read that once in a betta forum.. tailbiters. It's very unlikely to be the filter. It's a hob with a sponge prefilter on the intake. I've had this betta and another in this tank for years now without anything like this. Guess I'll have to look into tail biting.
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Oct 21, 2013 01:30
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Okay back to the betta, on a question not related to the fins. Metallic pigments! When I got him back in... April? his eyes were completely clear and black. Now you might be able to see that the metallic pigment is covering a lot of his eye. It started from the top. Now it's pretty much a lower crescent of the eye that isnt covered with the pigment. He still seems to be okay with finding food and responding to visual stimulis. Should I worry about this?
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Oct 22, 2013 08:21
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So I've just had a platy die after have 3 and a Cory in my new tank for about a week. All the levels seen to be fine, but is there anything I should be looking into. Not sure if it's a case of over feeding or just fish acclimating to the tank or what. Being that I only have the 3 fish right now, I'm also wondering if it's too soon to consider adding more fish to the tank. It's a 20 gallon. So I was thinking of going up to 2 Cory's and 5 platys for now. I also know I'm supposed to switch out about 25% of the water once a week. Should I be holding off a few more days because it's a new tank, or should I do exactly that?
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Oct 22, 2013 18:04
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w00tmonger posted:So I've just had a platy die after have 3 and a Cory in my new tank for about a week. All the levels seen to be fine, but is there anything I should be looking into. It might just be weak fish depending where you got them from. If the tank is truly brand new I would perhaps wait on anymore fish other than a school of rosy minnows to really kick start the process. You have a really low biomass for your tank so that's most likely not the issue.
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Oct 22, 2013 18:44
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SynthOrange posted:Okay back to the betta, on a question not related to the fins. Metallic pigments! When I got him back in... April? his eyes were completely clear and black. Now you might be able to see that the metallic pigment is covering a lot of his eye. It started from the top. Now it's pretty much a lower crescent of the eye that isnt covered with the pigment. He still seems to be okay with finding food and responding to visual stimulis. Should I worry about this? I am not too familiar with Dragonscale bettas.. they are a fairly new hybrid aren't they? I can check on the betta forums and ask around.
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Oct 22, 2013 18:44
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w00tmonger posted:I also know I'm supposed to switch out about 25% of the water once a week. Should I be holding off a few more days because it's a new tank, or should I do exactly that? There is debate about water changes during cycling, but I saw a pretty convincing experiment that ultimately concluded that water changes help keep ammonia levels low enough not to stress fish, but high enough not to slow down the cycling. I would say keep it up, and worst case scenario expect a slightly longer cycling period. A safer one though.
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Oct 22, 2013 18:47
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I think 25% would be a safe bet but even the 33% that I normally do it not bad. You are not removing 100% of the ammonia with a 25% water change. Let it go for another week and the residual ammonia level has now increased by X amount beyond the level prior to your first water change. That continues to compound itself and then you end up with the "oh poo poo my ammonia level is through the roof!"
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Oct 22, 2013 19:51
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w00tmonger posted:So I've just had a platy die after have 3 and a Cory in my new tank for about a week. All the levels seen to be fine, but is there anything I should be looking into. Did you add any of the supplements to cycle the tank? If not, water changes could set you back in going through the nitrogen cycle. If don't know what I'm talking about at all, just say so and we'll walk you through it. When you do add more fish I vote cories. They are schooling fish that get  when kept alone.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:16
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demonR6 posted:I am not too familiar with Dragonscale bettas.. they are a fairly new hybrid aren't they? I can check on the betta forums and ask around. There are some betta hybrids, but 'dragonscale' is like crowntail, combtail, etc, just another version of B speldens.
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Oct 22, 2013 23:42
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Its a scaling difference instead of tail shape.. just thicker pigment on top of the betta. Which sometimes causes the pigmentation to grow all over the eye  I see it a lot in white bettas/dragons. Shouldnt be a big issue unless its really really bad (covers all of the eye)
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Oct 23, 2013 19:25
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I'm really digging lacrosse's tanks in the OP, anyone know what's in it?
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Oct 25, 2013 22:42
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One of the nice things about living in Korea is you can get really nice pieces of Malay driftwood for ridiculous prices.  8$
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Oct 26, 2013 16:16
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Xun posted:I'm really digging lacrosse's tanks in the OP, anyone know what's in it? I can't comment on the specific inverts, fish, and plants in them, but that style of maintaining a planted aquarium in a (typically) small volume where the plants and critters balance each other is often called a Walstad aquarium. Also, envy on the cheap driftwood! Even used pieces will prompt bidding wars at aquarium auctions here, since so many people are into dwarf SA cichlids. I actually picked up a female green (wild-type) severum lady. She and Butterscotch are friendly, but she'll need a few more weeks of conditioning before we can expect any romance. Eye candy: Got an 8" plate or pie pan lying around? Butterscotch would just BARELY fit on it! The not-so-lil lady is camping out behind him.  Fusillade fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Oct 27, 2013 |
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Oct 26, 2013 17:54
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My pond snail invasion is turning into infestation . I feel so tempted to take all the gravel out and boil it to kill them, but I don't know if that's a good idea. It's a 5 gallon tank, so there isn't much gravel to deal with, but I can't add any more fish, already maxed the capacity at 6 guppies/endler's livebearers and one nerite snail. Any suggestions on how to get rid of them without killing my plants and fish?
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Oct 26, 2013 19:26
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Chido posted:My pond snail invasion is turning into infestation Get an assassin snail. My driftwood is leaking lovely lovely tannis into my tank and I absolutely love it. I'm thinking about going ahead and making it a blackwater tank.
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Oct 26, 2013 19:44
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Whale Cancer posted:Get an assassin snail. I googled it seems it might eat my nerite snail too .
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Oct 26, 2013 19:50
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Your tank is pretty small so you might try baiting them out ever day for a while. That's your only non-lethal option. The only other way is to put snail killers in there. Since you can't add any other fish, like loaches, the last option is an assassin snail.
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Oct 26, 2013 19:54
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Whale Cancer posted:Your tank is pretty small so you might try baiting them out ever day for a while. That's your only non-lethal option. The only other way is to put snail killers in there. Since you can't add any other fish, like loaches, the last option is an assassin snail. Yeah, you can bait them with Zucchini. Just put a slice in overnight and in the morning it will be covered with snails.
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Oct 27, 2013 13:21
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You can cut the bottom off of a pop bottle and put our zucchini in that to make it a little easier. then take it outside and kill them with fire!
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Oct 27, 2013 15:56
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Well, I guess I didn't change my water correctly. I have 1 of my 2 corys basically sitting still out of sight, and a platy that is currently barely moving on the bottom of my tank... I did another water change to bring down the ammonia levels, and it seems like they are good, but us there anything else I should be trying to do here? As far as I can tell these 2 are goners.
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Oct 27, 2013 21:39
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w00tmonger, you never answered this. We need more info to help you.Dantu posted:Did you add any of the supplements to cycle the tank? If not, water changes could set you back in going through the nitrogen cycle.
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Oct 27, 2013 23:25
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Stop what you're doing. Get a regulated C02 system. My plants look like they're mainlining Cialis and Viagra cocktails.   Only been running for about 5 days and the hair algae disappeared overnight. The algae that remains is just lifting off of wherever it's attached where it used to be lifting it would pull up the plants it had tangled around. I'm actually planning on upgrading to a larger tank. The Frogbit is only there to kill current and help combat the algae. The hairgrass seems to have doubled in 4 days. Can't wait until the last of the algae clears up. 1 Male betta and 4 very fat and sassy otto cats. Eifert Posting fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 13:26
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Once you notice the snails multiplying, it is too late. Baiting them will only make things better for a little while. Once they are there in numbers it means they are reproducing nicely and for every 100 you capture there are equally as many little snail egg pouches all over every surface of your tank. I spent a good solid month of baiting snails in a very effective traps removing dozens and dozens of eggs. I added assassin snails, a clown loach, removed plants. Nothing short of nuking the tank and starting over but the snails persist. Drop dozens of assassins in there and sure they will help but just like the loach they will only go after them once they are a suitable size for them to snack on, they won't eat every single snail they encounter and even then I have two assassins who prefer the damned algae wafers I feed the cories so that can backfire on your as well. If you nuke the tank, start over with new gravel, if you have live plants bid them farewell and hot water with a 10-15% bleach solution will take care of the remaining snail sacs that hide on the glass. There is a reason the thread tag mentions runaway snail infestations.. they are like roaches.
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Oct 28, 2013 15:12
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Dantu posted:w00tmonger, you never answered this. We need more info to help you. My bad. I had assumed at the time that I had a weak fish as I had done a water change and added the couple solutions to our mentioned at the store (I believe a de-chlorinator, bio agent and an anti algae). Did some googling after the post and decided to check the ammonia levels which were quite high considering I had done the water change. Did another water change properly, making sure to drudge up the gravel a bit this time and the levels dropped down to where they should be. Sadly I caught it a bit late and the platy died, but the Cory has recovered as of this morning and it's behaving like a boss. I think the whole mess occurred due to a bad water change as I don't think I tried knocking around the gravel the first time. Edit: On a side note, I wanted to add some plants at some point in the future to my tank, and have considered switching my substrate to something with a finer grain or possibly sand. What is involved in switching the gravel/adding plants to a tank? I know the gravel is a large factor in maintaining the bacteria on the tank, so would it just be a case of letting the new stuff sit in some of the tanks water for a couple of weeks? w00tmonger fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 18:32
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w00tmonger posted:My bad. I had assumed at the time that I had a weak fish as I had done a water change and added the couple solutions to our mentioned at the store (I believe a de-chlorinator, bio agent and an anti algae). The issue is whether or not the tank has cycled yet. When you setup a new tank there isn't much in the way of nitrifying bacteria yet. When you add fish they produce waste, which causes an ammonium spike (technically fish waste contains ammonia which turns into ammonium in the water). This allows the first batch of bacteria to build up and they turn it into Nitrite. This produces a batch of bacteria that break that down into Nitrate. Nitrate is either taken up by plants as food, or removed during partial water changes. The problem is if you don't let the process happen it just keeps restarting so you will always have dangerous levels of ammonia and nitrite. IE, perpetually stressed and sick fish.
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Oct 29, 2013 01:34
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Look on the plus side of a snail infestation Chido, you've got a ready source of snacks for the chickens. Snail infestations can be controlled, but it'll be a long term project if you're not using biological controls like loaches or assassins. They're reproducing because there's an abundance of excess food. It can be because they're eating up all the fish waste and extra algae around that piled up before there were any creatures around to eat them, and there's also excess feeding. Cutting down on the food available to the snails means making sure your fish are eating all they are fed, and waiting for the pest snails to finish off their existing food supplies. You'll slowly see a drop in their numbers. I've got an ongoing population of pest limpets in both tanks. The larger tank has a population of chain loaches that keep them under control. The small tank has no predators, but the situation has never gotten as bad as it was in the large tank where the limpets were basically covering every surface available until I got the loaches. Because the small tank houses only malaysian trumpet snails and shrimp which are both really good scavengers, the limpets hardly get any food at all.
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Oct 29, 2013 01:46
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Dantu posted:The issue is whether or not the tank has cycled yet. When you setup a new tank there isn't much in the way of nitrifying bacteria yet. When you add fish they produce waste, which causes an ammonium spike (technically fish waste contains ammonia which turns into ammonium in the water). This allows the first batch of bacteria to build up and they turn it into Nitrite. This produces a batch of bacteria that break that down into Nitrate. Nitrate is either taken up by plants as food, or removed during partial water changes. I figured as much, and I had the tank sitting for a couple of weeks (arguably should have waited longer). It was a case of having waaay to much ammonia in the tank, and Ill be keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't spike.
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Oct 29, 2013 03:58
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demonR6 posted:If you nuke the tank, start over with new gravel, if you have live plants bid them farewell and hot water with a 10-15% bleach solution will take care of the remaining snail sacs that hide on the glass. Fuckin' aquarium herpes. That's the best description of these annoying bastards if I ever heard of one. When I moved, I nuked the whole tank, and I boiled the gravel meticulously. I actually killed a couple of my plants by dipping them in boiling water which, as it turns out, is a dumb thing to do  .For a few months, I thought I had them under control; I was horribly mistaken. So... Snail killers. I can't get assassins in Australia, and I don't want another loach. The new plan is to use as much baiting/restricted feeding as possible to thin them out to minimum levels, and then use snail killers. There is an angel, a goldfish and a bristlenose or two in there. Is this going to be as dumb as burning my plants?
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Oct 29, 2013 10:47
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Snail killers are mostly copper based products, which aquatic invertebrates tolerate very poorly. So great if you never intend to keep other kinds of snails or shrimp in the tank.
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Oct 29, 2013 11:32
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w00tmonger posted:I figured as much, and I had the tank sitting for a couple of weeks (arguably should have waited longer). It was a case of having waaay to much ammonia in the tank, and Ill be keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't spike. You have to let it spike. And then go down on its own. Then let nitrite spike and go down on its own. Then let nitrate spike and go down on its own.
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Oct 29, 2013 12:25
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demonR6 posted:Once you notice the snails multiplying, it is too late. Baiting them will only make things better for a little while. Once they are there in numbers it means they are reproducing nicely and for every 100 you capture there are equally as many little snail egg pouches all over every surface of your tank. I spent a good solid month of baiting snails in a very effective traps removing dozens and dozens of eggs. I added assassin snails, a clown loach, removed plants. Nothing short of nuking the tank and starting over but the snails persist. Drop dozens of assassins in there and sure they will help but just like the loach they will only go after them once they are a suitable size for them to snack on, they won't eat every single snail they encounter and even then I have two assassins who prefer the damned algae wafers I feed the cories so that can backfire on your as well. If you nuke the tank, start over with new gravel, if you have live plants bid them farewell and hot water with a 10-15% bleach solution will take care of the remaining snail sacs that hide on the glass. I didn't find this to be the case. I probably had several hundred in tank before I added 3 assassins. Now I have maybe 10 assassins and less than 10 visible pond snails at any time. They seem to have reached equilibrium, YMMV of course. I do have some assassins that prefer algae wafers though 
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Oct 29, 2013 12:27
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My 20 L infestation has dropped considerably with only trapping and cutting back on feeding. Since that is a shrimp only except for one Oto I can cut back the food considerably and everyone will survive. My 50 tank though is a tougher issue to tackle because the mix of fish. The cories only eat bottom feeder pellets so I have to drop in enough for the entire school. The clown loach will eat snails and wafers. The Otos need a wafer as well. The Cardinal Tetra school and CPD school both eat flakes but gently caress my life if they don't eat the stuff when I drop it in, I have to stick my fingers in and swirl it so it disperses and they catch flakes on the way down. The Cards will go after it aggressively and the CPD's hang back and catch it if it makes it to them so I end up having to spread the food all over to try and get them to eat. The German Blues will eat anything. The shrimp I don't worry about since they scavenge. Plenty of leftover food for the snails who are everywhere. I am trapping but even hundreds at a time they still reproduce like rabbits. Just gotta live with it in some situations.
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Oct 29, 2013 13:29
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Well, I'm planning on dumping the gravel into a bucket of hot water to kill the snails in it, and I'll see if I can safely remove my anubia from the driftwood I have, so I can boil the wood too. I did a google search about how to kill snails in plants, and a couple of sites mentioned using aquarium salt or alum, and basically dip the plants in the water with either of them. I really don't wanna get rid of my plants, this anubia and a java fern are the only two plants I've managed to keep alive and that have actually grown. Still, I see so much waste in the gravel that I'm getting worried using a gravel vacuum every week might stress my fish. Also, I have 6 tiny fish and I know I'm overfeeding them. How much flake food should I actually feed them, and how often?
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Oct 29, 2013 17:00
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Chido posted:Well, I'm planning on dumping the gravel into a bucket of hot water to kill the snails in it, and I'll see if I can safely remove my anubia from the driftwood I have, so I can boil the wood too. I did a google search about how to kill snails in plants, and a couple of sites mentioned using aquarium salt or alum, and basically dip the plants in the water with either of them. I really don't wanna get rid of my plants, this anubia and a java fern are the only two plants I've managed to keep alive and that have actually grown. Still, I see so much waste in the gravel that I'm getting worried using a gravel vacuum every week might stress my fish. I think the rule of thumb is "as much as they can eat in two minutes". I generally give my white mountain minnows a couple of crumbled up flakes at a time and wait till they've finished before putting more in.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:43
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I remember when I was setting up my 10 gallon and planting it I came to the tank one day and out of nowwhere I had what seemed like hundreds of pond snails. I added 3 dwarf puffers, which I planned on doing anyway, and it was a snail holocaust. The substrate turned from eco complete to dead ramshorns. I tried breeding them in the tank after that and they couldnt competew with the puffers. If I ever do another massively planted tank it will definitely be a puffer tank.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:16
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Talking of snails I just noticed that my red ramshorns have been doing the nasty and my glass is covered in baby snails. 
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Oct 29, 2013 20:30
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Whale Cancer posted:I remember when I was setting up my 10 gallon and planting it I came to the tank one day and out of nowwhere I had what seemed like hundreds of pond snails. I added 3 dwarf puffers, which I planned on doing anyway, and it was a snail holocaust. The substrate turned from eco complete to dead ramshorns. I tried breeding them in the tank after that and they couldnt competew with the puffers. If I ever do another massively planted tank it will definitely be a puffer tank. Snailocaust 
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Oct 29, 2013 21:13
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Tiny tragedy, my goodeids dropped a stillborn fry. Water needs hardening and increased pH. Water temps could stand to be a bit higher, too. The adults were and still are so perky that I made the mistake of thinking the water parameters were fine.
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Oct 30, 2013 01:49
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I have some neat small pieces of beach driftwood that I'd like to throw in my tank for my pleco to nibble on. I've been boiling them off and on for a few hours now, but I'm not sure exactly how long to boil or soak the wood since all the information I've found online varies from "Boil it for 15 minutes" to "Boil 12 hours, soak 2 weeks". I would be absolutely heartbroken if I somehow killed off my massive goldfish or bristlenose from throwing in driftwood that wasn't okay. I feel like all the saltwater has been boiled out but the water is still tinted like weak tea every time I change it and reboil. Would the tannins hurt my fish? How can I tell if all the salt water is out of the wood?
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Oct 30, 2013 01:59
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