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r0ck0 posted:My celestial pearl danios are spawning, eating the fry. I have 2 males and four females, not planning on breeding them but if somehow the fry survive I wont mind. Aaaaaaah thread algae!
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May 3, 2015 12:31
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One of my RCS is berried!
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May 4, 2015 07:14
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My DIY co2 jello mix lasted a little more than a week. Trying it again and if it doesn't last at least 3 weeks I'm switching to pressurized co2. I also exchanged my finnex stingray for the fugeray planted plus 16".
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May 4, 2015 17:21
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How active are red cherry shrimps in general? I got a bunch for my former hospital tank and they just tend to sit on the bottom or decorations all day and do something with their disgusting little armlegs.Plotterboy posted:One of my RCS is berried! I think one one mine was already when I got them. Free shrimp soon! Edit: oh poo poo, I can see at least 4 babies already  Hopefully the others are hiding and didn't get sucked into the filter or something. mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 17:53 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 17:37
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Top down shot
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May 7, 2015 17:51
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r0ck0 posted:Top down shot That is beautiful. I wish my tank could look like that 
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May 7, 2015 18:03
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I want to replant my tank, based on how some of my plants are growing, foreground plants too tall, want to move things around, so on. Have no idea what the best process is. What's the best way to make sure my critters don't get too freaked out? How much of my original water should I put back in? (10 gallon) Would putting in new substrate be a bad idea? I tried doing a carpet of marsilea minuta that didn't take, and would probably be easier to swap out the substrate than picking all the clover bits out. Should I take the opportunity to clean the tank with bleach? (It has some hair algae that's taken up residence on one of the tank walls, my bad for leaving the lights on too long, and don't want it to come back edit: oh, hair algae is due to nitrate/phosphate. I apparently suck at feeding, not lighting) Will I need to reacclimatize my fish to the tank like when I bought them? TIA Fejsze fucked around with this message at 19:12 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 19:06
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I've heard it's best to rapidly jiggle a plant on the spot to remove it and leave the substrate behind instead of just ripping it out and making a huge mess. Haven't yet tried it, mostly I'm replanting stuff my fish have pulled up not moving rooted plants. Moving and replanting can be a bit messy but if you vacuum your substrate before and after, and turn off your filter during, the muck settles out pretty quick. I've heard of people having nitrogen spikes after disturbing muck in the substrate so maybe have a water change ready to go to try and clear out some of it if your fish might be sensitive. When I'm vacuuming or replanting and have my arms up to the armpits in the tank I don't do anything special for the fish aside from the hood light is off and sometimes the filter is off too. My guppies don't seem to care at all, my beacon tetras carefully avoid me but don't panic, and my barbs vary between panic racing, hiding, nibbling my arm hairs, and getting right in the way to see if there is any food near what I'm doing. If you take it slow and gauge their reactions you might find it isn't that big a deal to your fish that you are moving things around. I'd hesitate to do a bleach on a tank, it'd need a full breakdown and rinse before rebuilding it. Yeah I think you'd have to cycle your tank again if you mess up and get bleach where it shouldn't go, and the algae will just come back if you keep doing things the same. Maybe your lights are putting out wavelengths that the algae love, are they a bit old and maybe need replacing? To me bleach is a last resort after all the fish have died from a horrible disease and the tank is a contaminated mess. Don't do it on a healthy living tank.
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May 7, 2015 20:09
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Stoca Zola posted:I'd hesitate to do a bleach on a tank, it'd need a full breakdown and rinse before rebuilding it. Yeah I think you'd have to cycle your tank again if you mess up and get bleach where it shouldn't go, and the algae will just come back if you keep doing things the same. Maybe your lights are putting out wavelengths that the algae love, are they a bit old and maybe need replacing? To me bleach is a last resort after all the fish have died from a horrible disease and the tank is a contaminated mess. Don't do it on a healthy living tank. Alright, nix on the bleach, thanks. Maybe I'll just upgrade from $0.99 toothbrush to a real algae scraper. On a related note, anyone have suggestions for a gravel vac? And the light is new within the last 2 months, got an LED strip to replace my CFL, and still getting the timing right on it, but it certainly has different wavelengths than I was using before. Never had a problem with hair algae before this new light, but my plants love it, and between that and some flourish tabs have doubled in size, so maybe I need to increase my CO2 dosing to starve out the algae? I'm also wondering if my  assassin snails are doing too good of a job, and the incredible decrease in the snail infestation has caused the nitrates to rise since snails aren't covering every inch of the floor anymore and hoovering up any leftover foodstuffs? Maintaining a stable micro-ecosystem is tough.
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May 7, 2015 20:42
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mobby_6kl posted:How active are red cherry shrimps in general? I got a bunch for my former hospital tank and they just tend to sit on the bottom or decorations all day and do something with their disgusting little armlegs. Yeah, mine kind of slowly crawl around on the decorations and plants, scraping up crapola with their claws. And that's about it, unless a fish knocks against them. Then they jump way up into the water and zip away. Ghost shrimp seem more active. I have one and he spends a lot of his time just hanging out, but will sometimes take a tap dancing tour of the glass perimeter.
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May 7, 2015 21:16
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Leaves on one of my java ferns are starting to turn yellow. Any idea what that means? Also how long do shrimp live. I had one just kinda die and not sure why. Do snails eat the same thing shrimp do? I'm having a problem with these snails with clearish shells. Assassin is starting to clear them out and make headway though. Edit my red cherries are active when my fish aren't. They are usually hiding, but if they feel safe I'll see them picking through the grass or plants all through the day. Even managed to have some fry survive recently. Krataar fucked around with this message at 21:32 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 21:26
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Fejsze posted:On a related note, anyone have suggestions for a gravel vac? I have a cheap lovely plastic tube type unpowered one that I've extended the hose on and I just siphon off all the loose poop at the surface of the substrate. I don't really suck up the gravel and give it a good deep clean as the gravel I have is small and fits together fairly tightly, I don't think it has big gaps between that are trapping lots of waste. With a longer hose and a bigger drop down to floor level I get pretty good suction, definitely better than the original short hose so if you've got something like that already and your tank is high enough off the floor you might be able to do a suction upgrade on the cheap just by lengthening the hose. For my shrimp tanks I use either an airstone on an airline to just suck up the water, or if there is a lot of snail poop to suck up I use the body of a small syringe with the plunger pulled out as the gravel suction tube, stick an airline on the nozzle end, and put a small loose wad of filter fibre in the tube to stop any shrimplets from being sucked all the way up. The snail poop gets caught in the filter fibre but doesn't block the flow or stop the suction so it seems like a safe way to clean shrimp/fry tanks. I haven't had any mishaps with it so far. The advantage of the tube type unpowered suckers is you can fill the tube up then hold it above water level to get the siphon started without needing to suck on the end of a filthy hose. I fell in love with the tunze magnetic plastic scrapers for algae cleaning, they have a plastic scraper blade on each end and the way it's angled make it really easy to clean right down to the substrate or up to the corners of the glass. It is NOT safe for acrylic despite manufacturer claims. But the manufacturer claims about fish eating the crap that gets scraped off is true, they love that gross brown gunk. You could probably get the same result from a plastic scraper on a stick for a lot cheaper.
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May 8, 2015 05:34
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To see shrimp go insane busy, throw in a piece of raw cocktail shrimp. The frenzy will match anything from NatGeo.
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May 8, 2015 10:17
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Cannibalism! 
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May 8, 2015 10:27
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I prefer some imitation crab meat myself.
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May 8, 2015 14:40
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SynthOrange posted:Cannibalism! Different species, though. It would be like us eating a monkey. And I don't know about you, but I'd totally eat a monkey.
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May 8, 2015 17:03
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My brown algae is going away with the new better lighting but now I have green algae growing. It's like a green layer on the glass. What's a cause of that? Also I found a fourth fry today Edit: and of course I chased him out doing a water change so all the other bigger guppies immediately started hunting him Len fucked around with this message at 22:42 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 22:27
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So, I'm looking at starting a small, freshwater planted tank. I've got a 20 gal unplanted right now with a couple sunfish and a catfish in it that I've managed to maintain through trial-and-error and stubborn refusal to let anything in it die. While that's worked fine so far, I thought a planted tank would probably require more planning. I've been doing some research, and settled on this guide to follow: http://www.sudeepmandal.com/hobbies/planted-aquarium/low-tech-planted-tank-guide/ The guide isn't very specific on what kind of filters to use for planted tanks, was hoping one of you fine goons would have some more direct suggestions. I've read elsewhere that you don't want a filter style that causes a lot of surface agitation because that will let CO2 out of the water, but I have absolutely no experience with any other types of filter. The tank I'm planning would be 10 gal, no added CO2. Probably going to use it to keep feeder fish alive until I get around to seining or trapping some Eastern Mudminnows to keep as permanent occupants.
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May 9, 2015 21:45
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Just give enough surface agitation to keep your fish alive, if you aren't supplementing CO2 you don't need to worry about CO2 getting wasted as all your plants are going to grow slower anyway. You do need even circulation around your tank so as long as your filter is keeping the water moving everywhere, ensuring that your nutrients are evenly distributed, it's probably fine. I've heard of a guy getting CO2 into his tank via the substrate http://www.aquariumlife.com.au/showthread.php/30650-Cheap-Sand-based-CO2-Generating-Sub which seems like a nice low-tech way to cover that angle of things, if you find your plants require it. To me part of the fun of planted tanks is working out which plants like the conditions I can provide, which ones get annihilated by my greedy fish, which ones melt and die etc. Once you're familiar with plants that work you can start designing an aquascape but its a bit pointless until you know what plants like your conditions. Reading about it only gets you part of the way there, you get better information from testing things out yourself.
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May 10, 2015 11:45
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How do you tell if a fish is dying? My catfish seems really lethargic today and it kind of has me worried. Possibly related I found what looked like the side of a fish floating around the tank but everyone has all their sides accounted for even the catfish.
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May 11, 2015 22:13
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He died overnight ):
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May 12, 2015 10:34
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RIP catfish - maybe that fish side was from the inside of the fish not the outside
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May 12, 2015 10:56
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Stoca Zola posted:RIP catfish - maybe that fish side was from the inside of the fish not the outside Is that a thing? I didn't even think of something like that as a possibility ): If it were an at home tank I probably would have caught it before yesterday and maybe could have done something to help him. It's a work tank though so Saturday/Sunday it goes untouched (hopefully. They won't put locks on my door and the day care is in a church.)
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May 12, 2015 11:01
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I lost a lemon tetra yesterday. He got all bloated up, lost his color and stopped eating about two days ago. Then yesterday, he was swimming with his nose down, staying in one place .Then last night, we was dead. Any ideas what that could be? I didn't see any spots or fuzz or anything.
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May 12, 2015 18:51
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If he wasn't new or old I'd be thinking is there anything different lately that could stress him enough that he'd get sick? Bloat is usually an internal infection, bacterial or viral, or also organ failure from long term damage, could be anything even parasites. Could also have been a digestive blockage but I don't think the bloat would come on so quickly from that. Watch for symptoms in the remaining fish in case it's spreading but it could easily be a once off with only the weakest fish affected.
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May 12, 2015 19:47
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Stoca Zola posted:If he wasn't new or old I'd be thinking is there anything different lately that could stress him enough that he'd get sick? Bloat is usually an internal infection, bacterial or viral, or also organ failure from long term damage, could be anything even parasites. Could also have been a digestive blockage but I don't think the bloat would come on so quickly from that. Watch for symptoms in the remaining fish in case it's spreading but it could easily be a once off with only the weakest fish affected. He was fairly new. About two weeks in my tank,.
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May 12, 2015 20:00
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Cat friends:
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May 13, 2015 08:44
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Is there any way to train fish to eat food floating on the top of the tank? I got some cardinal tetras the other day and when I go to feed them, the food will float around on the top of the tank for a while, before the filter outlet pushes them under water (5 gallon cube with a side-mounted sponge filter). Some of these float to the middle of the tank where the tetras go nuts on them, but about half drift towards corners ignored, and wind up scattered across the floor. This will happen before the tetras finish eating, so I don't think it's an overfeeding issue currently, just that they seem to only go for the food that comes to the middle of the tank where they hang out. I'd like for them to eat it before it sinks, but maybe that's just not in their nature, or something that will take them a while to figure out. At the moment they're the only critters in the tank, and I wasn't planning on adding anything else (got a big enough school that I'm already pushing the bioload... they're just so pretty I needed to have as many as possible). I've also achieved the dream of a planted tank with 0 snails, so there's nothing to hoover up the leftovers on the bottom. It's also carpeted with dwarf hairgrass (ok, like 60% carpeted, but someday!) so using my gravel vac won't work very well until the grass is wayyyyyy more established. I could grab some RCS from my main tank, or pick up some other type of decorative snail and toss them in as a cleanup crew, but I'd like to keep this tetra only if that's possible. Fejsze fucked around with this message at 15:09 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 15:07
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Fejsze posted:Is there any way to train fish to eat food floating on the top of the tank? I had this issue with my x-ray tetras for awhile. They just need to get used to the tank before feeling confident enough to venture outside their normal comfort zone. Eventually they'll realize it's safe to move around everywhere and won't wait for the food to come to them, but it is kind of annoying to deal with in the meantime.
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May 13, 2015 15:32
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Well, I've fully stocked my 30 gallon tank. Does this mean I have to buy a 55 gallon tank now?
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May 14, 2015 06:18
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Inevitable posted:Well, I've fully stocked my 30 gallon tank. Does this mean I have to buy a 55 gallon tank now? I mean, if you wanna half rear end it, sure. Probably better to just get the 125 now though, right? Do it.
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May 14, 2015 16:37
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Slugworth posted:I mean, if you wanna half rear end it, sure. Probably better to just get the 125 now though, right? You'll still want to keep the 30 and the 55 though, you never know when you'll need them.
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May 14, 2015 21:45
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Dogwood Fleet posted:You'll still want to keep the 30 and the 55 though, you never know when you'll need them. This is the road to darkness. And a cichlid tank. And a shrimp tank. And on no someone is giving away an oscar better break out the 75.
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May 14, 2015 21:49
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Indoor arowana pond. Begin.
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May 14, 2015 23:50
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I have a 10 gallon tank at work and I want a bigger one. Sadly the first step is getting a job pays enough to move out because I'm forbidden from getting a tank right now.
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May 14, 2015 23:52
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Desert Bus posted:Cat friends: Oooh, how big is that raphael currently?  They make great cleanup crew for aggro tanks.
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May 15, 2015 01:25
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Fusillade posted:Oooh, how big is that raphael currently? Right around 3". Compared to past Striped Raphaels I've had, this one is super outgoing, which means it's more likely to eat and not be a super slow grower. I think I may actually stand a chance of getting this one to handfeed.
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May 15, 2015 01:42
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Slugworth posted:I mean, if you wanna half rear end it, sure. Probably better to just get the 125 now though, right? Haha, well, the wife has made it clear that she really doesn't want me to get another tank. But you know, I still like to browse craigslist, just to look at what's available, that's all. Just to see what's out there.
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May 15, 2015 03:29
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Mocking Bird posted:This is the road to darkness. And a cichlid tank. And a shrimp tank. And on no someone is giving away an oscar better break out the 75. Aheh, I've been checking on weight loads myself because i'm planning on increasing my tank size this year and was thinking of just putting the 30 underneath to be a shrimp tank and either a 75 or 100 above.
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May 16, 2015 06:38
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SocketWrench posted:Aheh, I've been checking on weight loads myself because i'm planning on increasing my tank size this year and was thinking of just putting the 30 underneath to be a shrimp tank and either a 75 or 100 above. I'm very thankful to have limited space.
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May 16, 2015 06:54
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