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Enos Cabell posted:Assassin snails are the best type of infestation. They look cool, and I can sell them back to my LFS at a buck a pop. I've gotten over $200 in credit this year so far, just from trading in extra assassins. Hmm, it appears I'm gonna have to start asking around at the local fish stores and cash in on this.
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May 27, 2015 17:50
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Rallos posted:Sounds like I need to get some then... You don't happen to be in the Chicago area do you? I'd take some off your hands. Nope, I'm about 9 hours west of Chicago in Nebraska. Medicinal Penguin posted:Hmm, it appears I'm gonna have to start asking around at the local fish stores and cash in on this. It's the best! I got into saltwater this winter, and so far 3/4 of my corals have been purchased via snail trade-ins. Every time I want a new frag, I just scoop a few cups of sand out of my cichlid tank and pick out 30 or so assassins. Enos Cabell fucked around with this message at 18:07 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 18:03
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The snails have tricked us into helping their plans for world domination!
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May 27, 2015 18:21
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So... one of my coworkers saw my little Fluval tank and decided that she wanted one also for her desk. She just wants to keep one betta in it. She emailed me > This < Is this as much of a deathtrap as it looks? She wants it to be pink... Any suggestions on where to point her for a little tank for a desk?
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May 27, 2015 18:28
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Rallos posted:So... one of my coworkers saw my little Fluval tank and decided that she wanted one also for her desk. She just wants to keep one betta in it. just get a 5g at walmart for like $20... comes with a little HOB filter and light and everything.
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May 27, 2015 18:33
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As far as I can tell the only fish place around me is Petsmart and they don't have java moss. Anyone know a place I can order some? I keep looking at pictures of moss carpets and they look so cool I want one.
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May 27, 2015 18:51
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Len posted:As far as I can tell the only fish place around me is Petsmart and they don't have java moss. Anyone know a place I can order some? I keep looking at pictures of moss carpets and they look so cool I want one. Just order some off aquabid or some other online plant store, moss ships easy. Rallos posted:So... one of my coworkers saw my little Fluval tank and decided that she wanted one also for her desk. She just wants to keep one betta in it. If I recall that thing is like, less than half a gallon. Link her to a Fluval Spec2 or something and tell her to rubberband a piece of sponge over the filter spout to baffle the flow. She's not going to be able to get a pink desktop tank that isn't also horrendously small.
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May 27, 2015 20:05
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aerialsilks posted:If I recall that thing is like, less than half a gallon. Link her to a Fluval Spec2 or something and tell her to rubberband a piece of sponge over the filter spout to baffle the flow. She's not going to be able to get a pink desktop tank that isn't also horrendously small. I linked her that on amazon and she went through and found Tetra 29008 Waterfall Globe Aquarium which doesn't look too bad and is a major improvement over her previous choice. Aside from a small heater are there any improvements that you would suggest for this? She will either keep a betta or a few guppies.
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May 27, 2015 22:03
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1.8 gallons is still too small, and the water flow from that pump would be probably too strong for bettas. Rumour has it that even a little betta heater would heat that volume of water too high because you're supposed to keep them in more water than that. I did some quick maths and it would be around 9 inches at widest point, why doesn't she get a cube of that size? She'd be getting more like 4 gallons instead of 1.8; that's still small but much better use of the space; probably easier to clean too and more real estate on the bottom if she wants decorations or plants.
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May 28, 2015 11:12
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Also sphere tanks are dumb and cruel.
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May 28, 2015 11:14
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Stoca Zola posted:Also sphere tanks are dumb and cruel. Why are they cruel?
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May 28, 2015 12:28
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Small volume for the space they take up, small surface area for oxygen exchange, they're almost always picked due to "looking cool" rather than with the wellbeing of fish in mind. I'm sure there are more reasons; I can't imagine a shy fish could find much shelter when there are no corners to hide in, a glass orb is about as far away from a natural habitat for a fish as I can think of. The biggest BiOrb sphere you can buy for example is only 28 gallons (100L approx) which isn't terrible but its not big enough for a single goldfish, and you could fit a 60 gal tank in that space. Why wouldn't you give your fish more living space for the same footprint? Choosing looks over the needs of the fish is cruel.
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May 28, 2015 12:55
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I may not be able to talk her out of the orb but I have at least convinced her to not get goldfish. So i guess I will call that a win for now. Trying to make sure she sets this up as properly as I can.
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May 28, 2015 13:04
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I think the best way to set that globe aquarium up is to never put a fish in it. Maybe a snail or two, or maybe some shrimp and moss. Keeping a small amount of water like that stable is hard-mode though.
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May 28, 2015 18:27
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Rallos posted:I suppose I should go over to my LFS and pick up an assassin snail, yeah? Do they play nicely with red cherry shrimp? Don't worry over it. Don't overfeed the fish and Ramshorn go away on their own. I had an infestation and cut back on feeding and after a month the tank was empty of them. They don't bother anything
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May 30, 2015 13:31
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My only comment on ramshorns, apart from that I think they're cute, is that left to their own devices they ate most of my vallisneria down to nubs and same with the floating frogbit plants I had. They do a reasonable job of cleaning gunk off the glass though.
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May 30, 2015 13:38
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So through some odd genetic happenstance a recent brood of cherry shrimp turned out blue. (Have reds, blacks and yellows in the tank, so no idea what combo produced these) I'm thinking about setting up a new tank for them, and try and propagate the strain. Question I have is how many generations until they become Charles II levels of inbred?
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May 30, 2015 22:10
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I have lurked my way through the whole thread, so now I wanted to post my tank. Dump incoming! I have a 20g high that I've divided into 3 for my bettas Ichabod (Ichy for short), Clay and Leonardo. I'm hoping to add some ghost and cherry shrimp as soon as the tank cycles. I know I shouldn't be cycling with the fish in there, but it's better than the little 2.5 gallons they were in (or in Leo's case, 0.5 gallons. Got him from my mom for my birthday).  I've got Black Diamond Blasting Sand for the substrate and I've got some water hyacinth and amazon swords growing in there with root tabs. I also have a neat java moss bonsai on the far right. If anyone could help identify the little patch of grass type plants, I'd appreciate it. They have these weird little tufts of algae-looking growth on some of the ends. Of course there was no label on it, but I was thinking maybe micro-sword? I'd like to go more heavily planted with less decor, but for now the bettas seem to enjoy having lots of nooks and crannies to duck into. I'm filtering with a Tom mini canister filter to get some cross-flow through my diy dividers. The lights are daylight colored led light bulbs in shop lights. They seem to do a good job lighting the tank and they don't get hot like cfls or incandescents would. Not sure if they're good enough for plants, though as most of the discussions you guys have seem to go right over my head. The water's a little yellow because of the catappa leaves I'm using to bring down the pH because it's in mid 8s out of the tap. Does peat discolor water, too? I was thinking about grabbing some to put in the filter, but I don't want the tank any yellower than it already is. My favorite piece of decor is Clay's underwater bubble river on the far left. Of course, the day after I got it in the tank, he decided to give me a heart attack. I'm sitting next to the tank and see a flash of red and lo, there is Clay INSIDE the river.  There is only one open end for the bubbles to escape through, the other just has an airline running out. It took me close to five minutes to coax him out cus he kept turning around when he got to the exit! Needless to say, there are now rocks in front of that opening. The reason I'm posting though is this: Ichabod is changing color. Not like he's marbling, but like, I wake up one morning and he's silver striped! For reference, here's what he looks like normally.  Here's what he looked like yesterday morning:  Ten minutes later, he looks completely normal again.  I thought it might be ammonia stress so I did a partial water change that took it down to negligible levels, but he keeps switching back and forth. It's wigging me out. Thoughts? Bonus, have a couple shots of lovely Leo the camera ham that I got with the camera I got for my birthday!  He's a lovely teal color with a light pink tinge to his fins. It'll be interesting to see if they get any darker, but he's much larger than the other two, so he might already be fully grown.  Very noir.
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May 31, 2015 01:03
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Those are stress stripes, so he's unhappy about something. Are those partitions see through? Pretty nice setup and lovely fish tho!
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May 31, 2015 01:22
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SynthOrange posted:Those are stress stripes, so he's unhappy about something. Are those partitions see through? Thank you! I'm enjoying their personalities tremendously. They're really beautiful fish. And yes, I think that must be it. The partitions are plastic mesh so I can have water flow, so there's a teeny bit of visibility between the partitions. Leo is in the middle and he was only added in on Tuesday. Before that there was empty water. Leo and Clay flared at each other every now and again for the first two hours, but since then they just kinda watch the partitions when the other fish's shadow shows up. Ichy never flared, though, when he sees movement. And just now as I was watching him, he was full black, swam up to the divider, and went pale. A minute later his color was back. He's been doing it a lot less today, it seems, so is this something he'll get used to or should I move him back to the smaller individual tank? -Edit- I also just added the canister filter yesterday (when this behavior started) but before that it was a plain old HOB filter that had a baffle. The water flow in his side of the tank is less, not more, and I just moved the old filter media over so I can't imagine that's the problem... Pistoph fucked around with this message at 02:25 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 02:21
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Yeah he should calm down with time. Let him get used to the situation and hopefully he'll just settle down.
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May 31, 2015 02:27
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This is pretty cool. https://instagram.com/p/3S1jGSoVRL/ National Geographic shared a photo to instagram that was taken at the tiny little LFS just down the street from me. 390k likes and he had a TON of new people checking out the shop today.
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May 31, 2015 05:22
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Rallos posted:I linked her that on amazon and she went through and found Tetra 29008 Waterfall Globe Aquarium which doesn't look too bad and is a major improvement over her previous choice. Aside from a small heater are there any improvements that you would suggest for this? She will either keep a betta or a few guppies. Way too small for guppies, and it's pushing it for a betta. Since the filter comes down directly into the middle of the tank it leaves basically nowhere for the fish to escape the flow if it's too strong, and it needs to be baffled anyway. Considering this is someone who I assume isn't doing research and only wants something that "looks cool" given her taste in tanks I doubt she's going to want to put the actual effort in of baffling the filter and taking care that whatever decorations she chooses don't shred the poor thing's fins. If she NEEDS a tank that has a ~cool shape~ for some reason link her to a mini bowfront tank. The filters still need to be baffled regardless, though. Also probably let her know that a fish tank isn't a cheap investment if she actually wants the fish to live so stop picking out cheap kiddie tanks. Maybe show her this. It looks cool, isn't TERRIBLY expensive for a tiny designer tank, and Marineland is usually pretty legit with their small tanks.
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May 31, 2015 05:41
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I had somewhat of a miracle happen. I had a triop pass away about a month ago, it was a second generation triop that came from eggs laid by another triop I had that also passed away earlier this year (they don't live very long). When it died it had eggs but I didn't know if they were going to be viable or not. I always meant to drain the water and let the sand dry and try to hatch another generation of triops, but never got around to it. I ended up going back to work full time and had a half gallon tank of nasty stagnant water sitting forgotten for over a month, it ended up with a bunch of drowned fruit flies in it and awful things. I started planning to dump the water and clean and repurpose the tank but never got around to that either. Today I just happened to look over at the tank and see a very lively adult triop swimming around. Also very surprising is the fact that there is no heater in the tank whatsoever, and unheated tanks in here drop to the low 60s. republicant fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 23:34
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Second generation boy platies:  I feel like I had a very stereotypical live bearing fish path. I started with one 29g tank with plants three years ago and ramped up to 12 fish. In terribly short order (about as fast as I could buy and cycle them after the first round of fry) I established two 46g segregated by sex and have stabilized at around 40 fish. Hardest part was catching the younger males as they matured in the female tank. I use the 29g as a hospital tank and am going to eventually get around to selective breeding.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:25
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Life finds a way... sometimes. Similar story here. I had a few containers of water plants sitting on my windowsill. No heating, water was just plain tapwater topping up any evaporation and various containers had different types of plants. One day while sorting them out to sell I noticed movement in one. There was a full grown cherry shrimp which had probably hitched on as a hatchling when I took the plants out of the tanks. That was months ago and it survived in there somehow in those lovely conditions.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:27
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I found three more itty bitty guppy fry today. Every time I find them I feel like I'm finally doing my tank right. I started in July not quite knowing what I was doing and it's been hit or miss. But my guppies are finally breeding and things have mostly stabilized. My green algae is slowly going away off the decorations so the lighting must have been what was doing it and things are looking great. I'm hoping this next pay to be able to swing buying some java moss because I think the moss carpets look really neat and I want one, plus it sounds like having a moss carpet makes it easier for fry to hide and survive. Even my ghost shrimp haven't been dying! I bought six more the other day and none have died.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:43
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Hey friends. So I've had a tiny 5.5 gallon tank with a betta since January and added a mystery snail a few weeks later. They are doing fine and dandy and I think I've done a good job with everything so far as far as water changes go, cycled the tank beforehand, feed them properly, added a few plants...etc but I want to upgrade the size for them. Since it's just a male betta and a snail I don't need to go huge but I think a 10 or 15 gallon would make the betta so much happier (I don't think snails give a poo poo, although they do poo poo a lot). So what's the best way to get a new transfer tank set up? I can already answer this with what I plan on doing, but I want to make sure with some more experienced people and get some insight. So I need to get the new tank and cycle it. I've read it's ok to include some prior water or gravel to help promote the bacteria and jumpstart the cycle process. Should I do that or just cycle it as if it was a fresh and new tank? I always keep the levels good on my tank now, but because of the size and poop factor the ammonia level is the hardest to keep normal.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:03
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Throwing in water and filter material from the old tank will definitely speed up the cycle.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:11
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SynthOrange posted:Throwing in water and filter material from the old tank will definitely speed up the cycle. Freshwater Aquariums: Throw in your old garbage to make it go faster.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:49
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Have pictures!    My 5gal dedicated shrimp tank with 100+ shrimpies! Shrimp and plants in harmony make me happy e:holy gently caress those were huge I LIKE COOKIE fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 11:25
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:My 5gal dedicated shrimp tank with 100+ shrimpies! In other news, I set up my betta's old 2.5 gallon with a heater and filter as a quarantine tank for the ghost shrimp I was gonna add. So far 6 of ten have died.  They had these weird red spots on them that looked like little wounds, which is weird cus they don't have blood? Why would it be red?Also, I think I cooked the weaker ones. The temperature was at 80 when I checked, which is on the high end of what they can handle. On the up side, the four that are left are really active and fun to watch! I split an algae wafer in two and dropped it in the tank and the two bigger shrimp immediately claimed them and started swimming around with them.  It's too funny to watch a shrimp try to swim across the tank carrying something as big as they are! They also decided after a while that they wanted the half the other shrimp had and got into a slap fight over it.
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Jun 3, 2015 14:50
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So I just came back from vacation and I found one of my nerites had escaped the tank and was sitting on my desk out of water (not sure how long it's been there). I dropped it back into the tank but the back part of the shell is "floating" so to speak. As in it won't sit all the way on the bottom. Is it dead? 
Rallos fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 16:49
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Rallos posted:So I just came back from vacation and I found one of my nerites had escaped the tank and was sitting on my desk out of water (not sure how long it's been there). I dropped it back into the tank but the back part of the shell is "floating" so to speak. As in it won't sit all the way on the bottom. Is it dead? i would wait a bit. i had a nerite that escaped that i found 5 days later. i thought he was dead but put him back in the tank just in case. next morning guy was alive and moving around as if nothing happened.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:25
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kontona posted:i would wait a bit. i had a nerite that escaped that i found 5 days later. i thought he was dead but put him back in the tank just in case. next morning guy was alive and moving around as if nothing happened. Will keep observing him then, hope he perks up.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:27
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What to do with a betta that can't swim? A few weeks back noticed he was quite bloated and always listing to one side when resting, eventually he permanently made a home on the gravel sometimes on his side or upside down. Nowadays he will occasionally charge to the top of the tank to gulp some air but obviously it exhausts him because after 1 charge to the top, maybe 2-3 seconds, he sinks back down and doesn't do it for the rest of the day. Occasionally I see him trying to move around on the substrate but it's not really swimming so much as he's kind of walk/hopping like a drunk. I went to the LFS when this was first happening and the guy there said he was probably constipated from only eating pellet food ( office fish ), causing bloat, which inhibits the swim bladder and to dose with epsom salts for a week or 2 ( no more so he doesn't get anaemic ) and only feed him bloodworms. I've done this and now nearly a month later it's still the same story. The fish seems relatively hale except that he's always on the bottom and almost always on one side or the other and can't swim very well, he always eats as long as I can direct some worms in front of his face. The tank is a 3.5G Fluval ( older model Spec III? I think ), it's well established at this point, perfect water parameters, water change weekly, he's even got a Nerite buddy in there keeping the algae down. So I'm not sure what to do - I think at this point whatever caused the bloat ( it wasn't dropsy or anything for sure - no distended scales he just looked fatter in his gut area ) has permanently damaged his swim bladder. He is the oldest betta I've ever "owned" after I took over care of him about 3 years ago ( previous guy had him for a year ) so he's approaching 4 years old. Most of the time my home ones tend to die after a year or 2 so I stopped getting them. Do I euthanise him ( clove oil OD )? Wait for him to just...die of old age and hope it's soon? It's kind of sad because I know he's just a fish but it must be pretty frustrating to not be able to do basic fish things like swim. I can't tell if he's really suffering though, so I've been holding off on just putting him out of his ( possible ) misery. TollTheHounds fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 17:57
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My shrimp community tank has suffered some losses. The filter intake sponge was fairly clogged so the return flow was a small trickle. I wasn't worried because I have two sponge filters going in there as well. I should have been worried! The red nose shrimp like/need more water movement than that and weren't happy. They're hard to spot at the best of times so I didn't notice that some were missing; they'd climbed out looking for some faster flowing water. I found a dried up one, long dead and only counted 3 left - I'm guessing they used the power cord from the heater and went through the gap in the lid. 2 more unaccounted for. Cleaned out the sponges and got the flow rate up so the remaining red nose shrimp have perked up. And there are still uncountable baby shrimp. The baby red cherry shrimp are quite big now so the smaller ones I believe are either red nose shrimp or possibly some much newer chameleon shrimp as the berried females aren't berried any more. I was a bit iffy about whether I'd be able to successfully keep red nose shrimp, they seem more fragile and a bit fussier about what they eat than the others but hopefully the ones that hatched in the tank will grow up accustomed to the conditions of the tank and do a lot better. They aren't growing anywhere near as fast as the cherries but also they were a hell of a lot smaller at time of hatching so they have more growing to do. If I manage to keep the red nose shrimp alive until they are bigger I might move them to their own tank where I can work on setting it up to better suit them. I'll have a spare soon since the big tank I got for the penguin tetras to move into arrived this week! I also ordered some really fine soft river sand so I can finally get some corys too. I've put a twiggy bit of goldvine driftwood in the middle and I've planted long vals behind it, with a row of shorter growing vals in front of that, some water wort around the middle of the "trunk", some grasswort further out to the sides and I'm hoping some pennywort will carpet a little in front of that. Whoever was talking about moss carpets inspired me to snip up some Java moss and poke bits into the sand in between the other plants so hopefully that will work. It does look really nice with a simple layout, it seems bigger or maybe deeper than my other tank even though it definitely isn't. Probably helps that it will be viewed from one side only so I've been able to plant accordingly. I'll post some pics once the cloudiness settles down.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:28
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Stoca Zola posted:Shrimp stuff Please post pics. I'm gonna order my shrimp today from theshrimpfarm (should ship next week). I'm excited! Re: My escapee nerite; He still hasn't shown any signs of movement since I placed him back into the tank yesterday. Fish are pretty easy to tell if they are dead. Snails...  How long do I give it before I consider him dead and remove? Rallos fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 15:30
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Rallos posted:Re: My escapee nerite; He still hasn't shown any signs of movement since I placed him back into the tank yesterday. Fish are pretty easy to tell if they are dead. Snails...
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Jun 5, 2015 00:42
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Got tired of DIY yeast so I went DIY pressurized with all new parts off ebay. 
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Jun 5, 2015 15:33
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