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SynthOrange posted:Yeah, it's alright for now but goldfish get huge eventually. Good luck with tankmates though, they will try eat anything smaller than their mouth.
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Aug 13, 2015 08:43
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Fish Noise posted:I once saw a rather small feeder goldfish that could shuck MTS right out of their shells, and would go after any snail dropped into its tank because it knew they were edible, and more importantly, HOW to eat them. That is awesome. I've always wanted a 55 with 5 or 6 goldies. One day. After I find room for a 55 for my hillstream loaches. gently caress. Woke up this morning and my big P typus catfish was dead. Slightly swollen stomach and bleach white. Was dead overnight at least. gently caress all kinds of duck. I don't know if it was the male or female but it was half of the breeding pair. But hopefully finding a new one in the spawning cave with the now-widowed partner means babies in the future?
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Aug 13, 2015 11:15
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When you guys were first starting out did you have any fish or inverts die directly because of your inexperience/lack of knowledge? And do you ever feel guilty about it or just chalk it up to learning and not making the same mistake?
republicant fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Aug 13, 2015 11:49
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After enough time in the hobby you will deal with a lot of dead critters. Many times there is something you could have done better to prevent it, but just as often it's something out of your hands. It still sucks losing a favorite fish, but at the same time you can't let it affect you the same as say losing a dog or cat would.
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Aug 13, 2015 15:13
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I accidentally killed a guppy fry tonight. Lost count of how many were in the net vs how many came out when I was relocating them between tanks, so one got left behind and suffocated when I put the net down momentarily. Next time I used the net his sad little body floated out. I put it in the main tank and one of the beacon tetras ate him so it wasn't a total waste. It was totally my fault but for the first time I didn't feel that bad; there are still 40ish guppy fry and 11 adults left. I'm just going to take a lot more care when netting fish in future. Normally I'd go one by one but they weren't scared of the net at all and 3-4 were swimming in at a time so I went along with it as a shortcut. Now I've learned why that's a bad idea. Prior to that I lost a few shrimp due to them climbing out then drying out, but I think all the shrimp that were going to climb have done so and I haven't lost any for a while. That was my fault for not giving them enough flow I think, so I'm trying a different set up for the surviving two rednose shrimp. All you can do is keep trying until you find something that works. Republicant, I saw your mosquito larva idea before you edited it out, during summer I was netting wrigglers from my outdoor pond fairly regularly and the fish loved it, I think it's what encouraged them to spawn so often. I think mosquitos prefer green mucky water so the larva have something to eat so you might do better with a standing bucket of old tank water than your turtle water which you'd want to keep cleaner.
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Aug 13, 2015 17:46
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republicant posted:When you guys were first starting out did you have any fish or inverts die directly because of your inexperience/lack of knowledge? And do you ever feel guilty about it or just chalk it up to learning and not making the same mistake? Forget first starting out, stupid poo poo happens all the time, usually for us due to not doing any research and/or not using your brain. Most recently, we decided it would be cool to put an Egyptian Papyrus plant into the tank. They start out small/under water but eventually grow tall enough to stick out the water. OK - cool, first source the plant. It's not a traditional aquarium plant so had to buy it at a gardening store where it was potted. Brought it home and rinsed off all the dirt and well, no reason not to just put it in right? Put the new plant in, went out for a walk, came back an hour later to every single shrimp in the tank crowding the top corners desperately trying to get out. We immediately took the new plant out and did a massive water change, but still ended up losing ~300/500 shrimp, it was a complete massacre. The culprit? We still don't know but most likely a type of pesticide that is used on either that particular plant or most garden plants before being sold and doesn't just rinse off in the water. Oddly it only affected the shrimp, the fish were totally fine. Other examples include: -when first setting up the injected CO2 and reading quickly somewhere that 20bps was a good rate for the plants. Only, I didn't think to consider the size or how heavily planted the referenced tank was. Queue to flushing 20 cardinals that suffocated due to high CO2 levels. The rest were gasping desperately but thankfully caught it early enough. -Introducing new fish because they look cool, only to find out the parametres they require are completely different from the existing inhabitants and they die ( or the tank mates die when trying to get to a level in between ), and/or new fish eating the others or getting eaten, and/or new fish brings a random disease not present in the store that decimates the existing fish -Introducing a cool looking snail, not realizing it would gently caress itself to the point the tank was overrun -Treating a tank with Tetracycline to try to cure a random bacterial infection on 1/40 fish, only to have the meds completely decimate and kill every single live plant -the list goes on I feel bad every time we lose a living thing, poo poo I cried when I lost my first weather loach, he had such a personality.  But the longer it goes on the more callous you get. [edit] But also the fewer mistakes you make. Sometimes lightning just strikes though and there's nothing you can do about it ( random deaths, random disease resurgence, etc ).
TollTheHounds fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Aug 13, 2015 23:02
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sparatuvs posted:I'm assuming I should replace the water? If your goal is to actually be able to see the fish then you should drain that pond and wash out the algae, scrub out the sides etc. Then get a bio filter and some pond water-conditioner. Then you can get whatever tepid-water (non-tropical) fish you like, like fantail goldfish etc. Just be aware that 12" deep water isn't deep enough to deter predators from a fishing trip.
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Aug 14, 2015 00:53
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republicant posted:When you guys were first starting out did you have any fish or inverts die directly because of your inexperience/lack of knowledge? And do you ever feel guilty about it or just chalk it up to learning and not making the same mistake? I started out with two goldfish I won in a carnival game. Thought I could just put them in a bowl, change the water, feed them flakes and they would be fine. As soon as I got home and looked up goldfish online...I was in for a surprise for the type of animal they actually are and what it takes to take care of them in an ethical way. Did my best for them but they didn't make it. Decided to try again since I had bought a tank for them and stuff, didn't add fish again until I felt more like I knew what I was doing. Stuff went a lot better. Felt a little guilty for the goldfish, but hey, I tried. The real unethical thing is the carnival games.
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Aug 14, 2015 02:20
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Okay so the fish are coexisting happily right now. But I have a feeding issue. When I feed the new food the danios eat what they want, but the two fantail will only eat what sinks. They won't come up to the surface very often. The two ryukins, on the other hand, are loving half vacuum. Especially the big one Mrs Dots. She will vacuum drat near everything off the surface so not much sinks down. She is growing faster than the other three combined. I bought her at maybe 1.5 inches long and she is easily over 3 now. The fantails are maybe 2 inches long and the other ryukin is about 2.5. Is there any way to make sure everyone gets enough food or will they figure it out? I can't feed and skim since the pond is 6 feet across and the pump and lily pads keep me from being able to skim off excess.
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Aug 15, 2015 21:25
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Well I found out what happens when you try to plant a turtle tank.      He also murdered a Malaysian trumpet snail that I had hoped would maybe just live inconspicuously under the rocks. So he has to have a giant tank because he's going to live 20+ years and grow to be up to 8 inches long, but you can't put a single other living thing in it with him, not even plants. Turtles would be the worst pets ever if they weren't so drat cute and intelligent.  Time to start looking for really cool rocks I guess.Actually if I could source cheap lab-created semi-precious gemstones and crystals, that could be really awesome. http://www.pikespeakrock.com/Bulk-Gem-Mix.html Oh god I'm getting inspired in a very expensive way. republicant fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 08:54
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This little guy is so smug and it's awesome. quote:Actually if I could source cheap lab-created semi-precious gemstones and crystals, that could be really awesome. http://www.pikespeakrock.com/Bulk-Gem-Mix.html Oh god I'm getting inspired in a very expensive way. Not gravel-sized, but you can totally buy bags of garnet sand for relatively reasonable prices. It's sold as a media for sand blasting and you can get in different sizes.
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Aug 16, 2015 12:58
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Something tells me my fish are wanting a little more minerals in their diet
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Aug 17, 2015 03:01
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Or they have their eye on stealing your car.
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Aug 17, 2015 03:07
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Ah godfish, dogs of the water. "FOOD FOOD GIMME FOOD"
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Aug 17, 2015 07:56
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SynthOrange posted:Ah godfish, dogs of the water. "FOOD FOOD GIMME FOOD" Sit down and let me tell you about our black cat we adopted earlier this year, his nickname is 'Hoover'..
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Aug 17, 2015 11:55
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Ah yes cats. Dogs of the land.
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Aug 17, 2015 12:03
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He inhales his food, we chase him out of the area while the other cats eat so he runs over and tries to muscle out the dogs who sit there with a "WTF?" look. Since we feed all the animals at once we have to lock him up in his room until everyone is done. Now I caught the fucker in my office sitting in front of my 55 looking at his menu choices so he is banned from being in there.
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Aug 17, 2015 12:07
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republicant posted:When you guys were first starting out did you have any fish or inverts die directly because of your inexperience/lack of knowledge? And do you ever feel guilty about it or just chalk it up to learning and not making the same mistake? Yes, even after 20 years in the hobby, I have done something as stupid as 'be too distracted and forgot to dechlorinate the water'. I lost all my hatchetfish and discus once because of that. Absolutely no excuse. :<
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Aug 18, 2015 00:35
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Fusillade posted:Yes, even after 20 years in the hobby, I have done something as stupid as 'be too distracted and forgot to dechlorinate the water'. I lost all my hatchetfish and discus once because of that. Absolutely no excuse. :< I've done that. I've also not reset the lid proper on a marine tank and the five foot eel, which never had noticed the lid before, did notice the crack and got himself out of the tank. I found him on the floor the next morning and couldn't revive him. A five foot eel is surprisingly heavy dead weight. Years ago I was too cheap to set up 2 different QT tanks and figured I'd just toss both orders, from different suppliers, into one tank. $200 worth of new fish and after all said and done I had one survivor.
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Aug 18, 2015 01:08
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I spent a pretty penny today ordering the stuff to switch our filter media over from bare bones basic carbon to Purigen and Matrix. Instead of having to buy new filter cartridges regularly I will have enough Purigen to last all of my tanks for the next 2 1/2 years. And Matrix never has to be replaced. My SO has some obsession with sponge filters now so I ordered three little ones and a couple air pumps, can't hurt to try them out. And then I got a 300 watt glass heater to keep my turtle properly toasty in his 55 gallon, a couple backgrounds and fake plants and miscellaneous decor, and a couple more timers so ALL of our lights will be timed. There are only a couple more things left to buy until I genuinely won't be able to think of any more improvements for my tanks and it's kind of exciting. I started with a half gallon betta tank with a space heater blowing on it and now I have all this fancy stuff.
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Aug 18, 2015 09:12
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Sorry if this is the wrong place for posting but the saltwater thread looks like it for photo's and you guys seem to know your stuff. I'm considering getting a jellyfish tank from here: http://jellyfishart.com/, The site gives the whole spiel about them being easy to look after and fine for a beginner but there's a good chance that's just marketing. Does anyone have experience keeping jellyfish?
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Aug 18, 2015 16:46
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Your first instinct that it looks too good to be true is probably the correct one. Aren't those jellyfish torture prisons ridiculously expensive too? Ok that's probably an exaggeration, I'm against putting animals in tiny tanks that "look cool" but I don't think a jellyfish experiences stress or boredom in the same way a fish would in one of these small tanks. You're going to have the same feeding, water changing, and salinity checking as any other salt water set up so I don't think it's true that this is an "easy" option. It's probably comparatively the easiest way to keep jellyfish due to the style of tank, I believe the same concept is used to raise baby sea horses as the water flow keeps the animals safely suspended in the middle. What are you after from a tank like this? If you just want something soothing to look at you're better off downloading a jellyfish screensaver. If you want an aquarium but have limited space why not set up a freshwater shrimp tank? You probably could still ask in the saltwater thread too, they have probably talked about these kind of tanks before. (I bet thread regulars can guess which bit I added in with my post edit) Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 17:30
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Here is a good link.. http://jellieszone.com/jellies-in-captivity/ seems like it is not difficult but you have to have the right environment else they are going to live short lives. I do not think that aquarium in those thread is proper for them, it's just way too freaking small. I am not an advocate of small aquariums for any type of creature jellyfish included.
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Aug 18, 2015 18:36
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What are some good beginner's guides/FAQs for converting my tank to a planted tank?
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Aug 18, 2015 18:48
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Sir Bruce posted:What are some good beginner's guides/FAQs for converting my tank to a planted tank? Look for "low tech" planted tank guides. This is the best place to start, should be able to get an idea of suitable plants and so on.
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Aug 18, 2015 19:07
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Sir Bruce posted:What are some good beginner's guides/FAQs for converting my tank to a planted tank? 1) Start with Java Fern/Moss. They are cheap, low maintenance, tough as hell - they survive low light/don't need special lighting ( though they will thrive with it ), don't really require special parameters, reproduce easily, don't need to be planted in substrate ( you can just wedge them between rocks, or tie them with thread/fishing line to some driftwood or something ), and no fish I've ever had actually likes eating them. After that it really just depends on what plants you like the look of/want in your tank. Some are very finicky ( pH, water hardness ), but usually even a Petsmart will have basic "Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced" notation for the plants they sell. If you're at the point your Java Fern/Moss is thriving, start thinking about general design and aesthetic, pick a few plants in the "Beginner" column, then progress to more advanced/expert level ones if you feel like spending the money. Then it depends on how big of a hobby you want it to be. Having a planted tank is just like having a garden, and sometimes it is a real pain in the rear end dealing with plants randomly dying off, snails, curbing algae growth on slow growing plants like Anubias, checking nutrient levels, etc. Getting more advanced: Get a light specifically mentioning it is for plants ( ex. FugeRay Finnex Planted+ LEDs are my go to because of how low their power usage is ) Get new substrate mentioning it is for plants ( ex. Carib-Sea Eco-Complete ) Lighting: Make sure you're getting the right amount of watts/gallon of lighting, the right wavelengths, that your lighting will reach the full depth of your tank Nutrients: Look up individual profiles for each plant you have to ensure you are dosing the correct amount of supplemental nutrients/minerals (iron, potassium, manganese, etc etc ), ensure you have enough load ( CO2 particularly ) and supplement with injected CO2 if necessary Personally, I've done all of the above and still just stick with Java Fern, Java Moss, Amazon Swords, varieties of Cryptocoryne, Anubias, and water lettuce. Even with checking the parameters religiously, poo poo still happens. The silver dollars decide they want to eat the red lotus ( $20 down the tube after 2 days ), you get an algae bloom because reasons and the anubias are hopelessly covered, you forget to dose minerals and the leaves start to deteriorate, the water lettuce reproduces insanely fast blocking light penetration to the other plants, etc etc. TollTheHounds fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 23:37
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Just took this pic, water change day tomorrow. I'm wondering if there are shorter or slower growing stem like plants that I could use to replace the ludwigia and moneywort. They grow too tall for this tank. 
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Aug 19, 2015 01:49
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republicant posted:And then I got a 300 watt glass heater to keep my turtle properly toasty in his 55 gallon
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Aug 19, 2015 02:50
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So I had taken out the hornroot in my little planted tank because it was taking over the entire thing. It looked a little empty with just the one plant in there so I picked up a little anubias yesterday and tied it to one of my pieces of cholla wood. What do you guys think? Also, the shrimp babies are big enough that I no longer have to strain to see them!   -e- Yes still lots of snails. But my assassins are breeding! I have seen at least 10 baby assassin snails so the pest snail pop should continue to decrease. 
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Aug 19, 2015 15:00
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 Redid the bowfront. I've only got two danios and a handful of tiny stunted platy babies in it so I'm going to do small rainbowfish. Please ignore water stains on the back, I keep forgetting to wipe it down.  Also redid the Spec 2 betta tank, and the betta died immediately the next day. Water parameters all fine, nothing was wrong with the fish beforehand, still have no idea what did it. Might do shrimp in here or something instead? I don't know.  Meanwhile Mozart is getting old and has age spots/white scales on his body now. I'd get a picture of Cleopatra but she's camera shy and black doesn't highlight well on cameras apparently.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:49
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Slugworth posted:Glass heaters and turtles can be an unpleasant combination. I would invest in a titanium heater, or construct a heater guard out of pvc pipe. I've heard that about turtles before. So far he's still tiny and he's never shown any interest in his heaters, and isn't really destructive toward anything besides living things. I have a couple heaters specifically for turtles that have a plastic shell around them, but unfortunately they're only like 50 watts. If he acts like he might destroy the heater then I'll rig something up to protect it. Speaking of the heater, the instructions say to place it in a vertical position and I really wanted to put it horizontally like I have all my other heaters. I will figure out a way to have it vertical but does it really matter? It is fully submersible and all. It's an Aquatop GH300 if that means anything to anyone.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:02
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So my oscar uprooted a fake plant that managed to snag some pellets at the surface and turned them into what looks and smells like moldy mush. Ammonia and nitrate spiked. 
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Aug 24, 2015 01:28
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I got a new plant, rotala h'ra to replace my ludwigia at some point. It should look better in the smaller tank since it has smaller leaves.
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Aug 26, 2015 15:55
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That Rotala is really pretty, I tried it in my tank but not enough light so it did not thrive well.
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Aug 26, 2015 17:13
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Stoca Zola posted:freshwater shrimp tank? I'm thinking about setting one of these up. I picked up another 5 gallon tank that has an airpump and heater for $10 the other day. How difficult is it/what should I do to make a nice freshwater shrimp tank?
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Aug 26, 2015 17:48
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Len posted:I'm thinking about setting one of these up. I picked up another 5 gallon tank that has an airpump and heater for $10 the other day. How difficult is it/what should I do to make a nice freshwater shrimp tank? Make it a planted tank. Shrimp love them some plants. Also indian almond leaves (can buy in bulk on amazon pretty cheap) and cholla wood is good too. Make sure to give them plenty of places to hide. Don't put any fish in there or your shrimp will do nothing but hide all day. Neocardinera actually have very interesting behavior and are interesting to watch. They are very hardy little creatures and dont need much maintenance. I do a 25% water change every week or two to keep the nitrates down and I feed them shrimp food/algae wafers. They also love blanched zucchini slices (gotta make sure its really soft). If you want something for display I would purchase my shrimp online and IMO paying extra for good color is worth it because the fire red ones really pop and then babies inherit this color. I bought mine on ebay. I would start with at least 10 so you are sure to have a decent mix of male/female. After a month or two you should start seeing berried (eggs) females and then a month or so after that you will have babies. This is my tank, been running about 4 months now and going great. I started with 12 shrimp and they have already reproduced. I purchased mine from Imperial Tropicals and had a great experience.  -e- I bought mine online because the ones my local fish store had were more expensive and had really poor color.
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Aug 26, 2015 21:38
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Probably the most critical thing with shrimp is making sure they get copper-free water. Some de-chlorinators also have components to remove dissolved metals so that's one way of handling it. Second most critical thing would probably be don't over feed, or feed them in a bowl to keep food out of the substrate and discourage pests like flatworms. Thirdly is that shrimp like having lots of surfaces to stand on, so plants, substrate, driftwood etc are important but it's also important to make sure everything is rinsed of potential pesticides and is shrimp safe. They'll nibble at wood a bit so don't just use random stuff from your garden. Some of my cherry shrimp that I haven't seen for a while are out and about and saddled, and the chameleon shrimp seem to be constantly berried. I'm seeing shrimplets ranging from clear to greenish to brown stripes to red speckles but they're still small enough that it is hard to tell whether any of them are red nose shrimps that survived. I'm going to have to move some to a new tank soon I think or it will get overcrowded.
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Aug 27, 2015 05:16
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The babies in my tank were born pretty translucent but as they grow up are coloring up nicely. Thanks for the reminder about the copper. Yeah. Don't wanna kill your shrimp. I use tap water de chlorinated with seachem prime and it's worked well so far for me. I didn't look to see if it specifically removes minerals but I'm on city water and not well water so I figure I probably have less of a concern there.
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Aug 27, 2015 12:51
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Some buildings have copper pipes I guess, as long as its under ~1ppm it's considered safe for people but I think that is not safe for shrimps. I still run mine through filter/carbon/partial RO to get the water pretty clean as my house is old enough that I don't trust the plumbing at all. YMMV.
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Aug 27, 2015 13:57
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Stoca Zola posted:Some buildings have copper pipes I guess, as long as its under ~1ppm it's considered safe for people but I think that is not safe for shrimps. I still run mine through filter/carbon/partial RO to get the water pretty clean as my house is old enough that I don't trust the plumbing at all. YMMV. You might not even have copper pipes then. My tank is at the office which is in a 28 floor Federal Building in downtown Chicago so the plumbing is pretty good.
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Aug 27, 2015 15:07
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