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This is my bolivian ram that I've had for over 4 years now, so he's probably 5 or older now. Pretty good life for a ram afaik, doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon (although I think he's devolping catarachts, poor guy)  Also tried putting a piece of foam on the output from the filter on my spec V (to see how it would work in case shrimp had trouble with the normal flow) and after a few days took it right off because all it seemed to do was get all the poo poo that would otherwise live in teh substrate living somewhere else to try and get some oxygen http://i.imgur.com/X4Putkr.gifv Mostly went away within a day of normal water flow through. At least there aren't any detritus worms crawling on the glass anymore. Also the shrimp tank now has shrimp in it! 
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Mar 2, 2016 19:22
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| # ? May 15, 2024 22:12 |
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Well, I think my glorious plan for putting 130W of PC bulbs on my Spec V will work, but it sure is ugly. Bet I can grow plants pretty well, though. 
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Mar 3, 2016 03:06
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skrapp mettle posted:Well, I think my glorious plan for putting 130W of PC bulbs on my Spec V will work, but it sure is ugly. Bet I can grow plants pretty well, though. nice wood
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Mar 3, 2016 04:14
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Any AZ goons, less than a month to register for the Southwest Aquarium Keeper Event (SAKE).
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Mar 3, 2016 10:23
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skrapp mettle posted:Well, I think my glorious plan for putting 130W of PC bulbs on my Spec V will work, but it sure is ugly. Bet I can grow plants pretty well, though. I think you are going to cook your fish.
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Mar 3, 2016 13:33
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So I'm about 1 week into cycling the tank, getting bored of having no fish, look today and and it turns out there's some life in there after all...  A snail and a million weird tiny worm things. I guess they came in with the plants. I didn't notice them until now. So... 1) What are these? 2) Are they going to be a problem? and 3) What do I do about them?
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Mar 3, 2016 21:09
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Worms? Or snail poops? Or baby snails? A week is long enough for a pre-existing snail egg deposit to hatch and mini snails to start cruising around. If you don't want snails at all, act now before it's too late! Spoilers, if your little guys are baby snails it's probably already too late. You'll be picking snails out of your tank forever more. If you can get a magnified look at the suspected worms and they are flat and slug like there is a good chance they are planarian flatworms. Not a huge problem unless you want to have shrimp because some flatworms can be predatory and will harass shedding shrimp and baby shrimplets. Their numbers will grow in proportion to how much excess food there is around, usually the best way to get rid of them is to starve them out or bait them with fish food into planarian traps and manually remove them that way. When I was keeping microtanks with copepods, ostracods, snails and various other micro pond life, planarians when left to their own devices would eat everything and produce enough slime to foul everything up and make a horrible smell but in a normal sized tank this is fairly unlikely. If they stay in the substrate eating gunk then they're doing you a favour, same as detritus worms which are thinner and a bit more threadlike. Generally fish will eat detritus worms if they see them but I don't know of anything that eats planarians. A close up view of a detritus worm should reveal a row of hairs either side of the worm. Hairless threadlike worms are nematodes, and potentially parasitic although if you see one free swimming in your tank maybe it's not a parasite, I don't know that much about freshwater nematodes and whether the parasitic ones ever roam freely. Snails can actually carry worms and flukes too, which can be parasitic on both the snail and your fish, which is another reason you may wish to avoid having snails in your tank. I think these critters are limited to certain geographical areas and not sure how prevalent they are in aquarium snails. A lot of interesting stuff can happen in your aquarium even without fish! It's just usually too small to see. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Mar 4, 2016 |
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Mar 4, 2016 04:02
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Also with cycling a new tank with stuff like plants in, worms always turn up then die off. As for the snail, see thread title.
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Mar 4, 2016 04:22
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At least one snail hitched a ride with the 4 rcs that I got this week, but I was able to keep it from entering the tank hopefully I didn't miss any 
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Mar 4, 2016 05:11
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My 6" severum has been staying in the same corner of the tank for the past 2 months. I haven't seen him not there for more than a few minutes total and I can't remember the last time I saw him eat. Water parameters are all ok. He used to be inquisitive and swim around when he shared a tank with a 12" oscar. Since the oscar died he has been in a 55 gallon tank with a 2" firemouth and 3 black skirt tetras. I haven't seen the firemouth doing anything worse than flare his gills at him a few times. By mass the firemouth is legitimately probably 1/10th his size. All i can chalk it up to is.....cichlids.
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Mar 5, 2016 13:44
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Might want to invest in a few assassin snails to eat the pests before they really take off. The assassins do breed but not nearly as fast. Plus they are cool and you can take extra back to your LFS for credit usually because people want to buy them.
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Mar 5, 2016 19:23
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Rallos posted:Might want to invest in a few assassin snails to eat the pests before they really take off. The assassins do breed but not nearly as fast. Plus they are cool and you can take extra back to your LFS for credit usually because people want to buy them. Seconding this. Assassin snails own. I bought a couple a few years ago and still have a steady colony in my community tank. Can't remember the last time I saw any other type of snail in the tank.
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Mar 6, 2016 04:40
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I bought 3 assassin snails for my little shrimp tank and in about 3 months time I went from having 3 assassins and 1000+ pond snails to over 60 assassins and 0 pond snails. Best part is once they eat all the other snails they will clean your tank and eat any food.
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Mar 6, 2016 04:53
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 Between Saturday and now, one of my tetras died. I definitely saw them all Saturday, that's when I waterchanged and tried to do a fish count. I could only count 5 panda cories but they swim around a lot and/or hide, and all look the same so I shrugged it off. Found one of the two smaller penguin tetras floating belly up today, quite a few of the other fish are looking a bit patchy, some fin rot here and there, everything is rapidly going down the toilet from what it was like on Saturday. I'm desperately hoping the medication I have (which I've had success with in the past) will stave off a total wipe of that tank, but it looks pretty bad in there. My best guess is that one of the panda cories did die and has fouled up the tank or at least allowed disease to proliferate. Although, I did search pretty thoroughly and found no corpse. I've been doing the same water change weeklyish for quite a while, everything has been pretty stable, although maybe this time it was closer to a week and a half between changes but that doesn't usually matter. Everything looked fine Sunday, and even this morning it looked okay even though I was in a hurry. It's scary how fast things can change for the worse. Tank is around 90lt or 23 gal so its not like its a wildly fluctuating nanotank either.
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Mar 7, 2016 12:59
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No dead fish this morning. Shrimps seem fine. I can only see three cories, two look same or better, one looks like he has an ulcer but it's hard to say since he's hiding. Two or three of the remaining tetras look reasonable, fins not too rotten, others worse: one of the big ones has almost no fins left and the remaining small one looks reasonable but is very lethargic. If I didn't have work I would consider euthanizing the finless fish but I've seen a guppy grow a whole tail back from nothing in a few days so I will wait and see how they are this afternoon. The guppies in that tank all seem completely fine. Either a fast acting columnaris has sprung from nowhere, or one of the ghost shrimp I bought was a juvenile macrobrachium and it is stealthily eating chunks out of the slow-moving fish during the night. 
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Mar 8, 2016 02:45
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Stoca Zola posted:Don't forget to test your source water too! Your source water might have dissolved lime or other chemical treatments to raise the pH, as an example my local tap water is often 10+. If you can rule out your source water then it might be worth doing a bucket test with your rock - stick it in a bucket with water of a known starting pH for a week or longer, then test again. Over time, standing water will lose pH I believe, as dissolved gases slowly dissipate, so if the pH goes up in your bucket you know the rock is to blame. I put the rocks into a bucket to do this bucket test last Wednesday, but during the weekend someone moved it from the shelf onto the floor and so the dog has been drinking from it. Do I need to start over now?
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Mar 8, 2016 14:03
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According to this thing I just googled: http://www.ijvm.org.il/sites/default/files/ph_values_and_mineral_content_of_saliva.pdf It depends on the dog and how much backwash of saliva they left in the bucket. It's possibly not enough to skew the results much. Test anyway, if the stone is very prone to dissolving it will far outweigh the effect of dogspitwater I think. Plaguetank update: Still no obvious dead fish, tetras seem a bit perkier apart from the finless wonder, although he swam away when I tried to net him out because I thought he was dead. Cories are hiding so its hard to see what state they are in. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Mar 8, 2016 |
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Mar 8, 2016 15:05
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4am plague tank update: still no further fish deaths. I would say the attitude of the tetras has definitely improved, even the one with most of his fins gone has improved from limply resting on the bottom or floating on his side and is now orienting himself correctly in the water. Some of the cories are out and and nosing through the sand like nothing's wrong. It's looking slightly less bleak in there now. So far no sign that I've spread anything to other tanks, too.
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Mar 8, 2016 18:40
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Still trying to get the temperature to stabilize where I want it to (the settings on this hydor heater don't really match reality at all), but I've got my first few baby shrimp   P3080187.jpg At least one has found it's way into the filter, but the flow is low enough that I'm pretty sure it can just swim out if it wants to. e. Also, in order to help me get my temps figured out I wired up an arduino to my tank and setup a database to store the data, and website to display it. 
Dr. Despair fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 04:39
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Hahah, no shrimp are dumb as gently caress and will be in the filter til you dump them out. They're still cute though.
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Mar 9, 2016 05:01
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SynthOrange posted:Hahah, no shrimp are dumb as gently caress and will be in the filter til you dump them out. They're still cute though. I've seen shrimp walk in and out of this filter, the top of the foam is flush with the inlet so it doesn't take smarts to get out. e. Assuming none got in through the bottom inlet, but I put some foam in there to try and prevent that. Guess I should check tomorrow though!
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Mar 9, 2016 05:03
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So I trimmed all the plants the other day and am starting to have a black hair algae issue. I tossed the anacharis trimmings and all the hornworm into the pond outside where it has exploded. Nice I also had a few waves of fish deaths. I have lost 10 or so various tetras, 3 Oto cats and 2 snails. They happen to die after I do water changes. Which is odd. We do have chlorinated hard water but I pull out 50% and add it back treated with Prime. Oh well The other problem I am having is surface agitation. I have 2 C320 magnaflows and a uv powerhead but the surface doesn't move much. I added one of my old wave makers rated at 800 gph and it just made an aquarium hurricane. The liver bearers went for a ride. So I only let it run for a few minutes a day. I want to pick up something that will increase surface agitation but not blow my fish around. Any ideas? Also my goldfish are dumb. Just letting you guys know.
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Mar 9, 2016 18:44
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NOPE NOPE NOPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-JWkiIozGI
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Mar 9, 2016 18:47
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Errant Gin Monks posted:So I trimmed all the plants the other day and am starting to have a black hair algae issue. I tossed the anacharis trimmings and all the hornworm into the pond outside where it has exploded. I keep the output of canister filter angled up a bit, so it stirs up the surface. Also handy because it's a very audible reminder that I need to top off the water.
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Mar 9, 2016 19:25
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What an informative OP! I'm in the middle of cycling my very first tank and I'm super excited. I should be able to add my first fish next week. I bought a 29 gallon tank to start off with, and I was curious about my max capacity once everything is running smoothly? I love all of the tetras that I've seen. I'd like a betta as well, and those cherry shrimp look cool as poo poo. And maybe some bristlenose plecos. So if I just wanted those to start with, how many could I sustain? With the majority being shiny rear end tetras. Also, how do you get the cool mossy look going? The only moss I've seen in local stores are balls. And they were like 10 bucks a piece!
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Mar 9, 2016 23:34
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stab posted:NOPE NOPE NOPE Those are saltwater afaik
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Mar 9, 2016 23:48
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stab posted:NOPE NOPE NOPE People ask me why I don't do salt water tanks. I usually tell them because it's a hassle, but the real answer is the dice roll that you wind up with something like that or a mantis shrimp hiding in your live rock.  In tank news it looks like I'm moving in a month, and downsizing. One four foot tank and one wee bitty shrimp tank. Not sure what the water's like in the new place so I'm thinking a format/rebuild entirely, not carrying any fish over. Kinda bummed because I like my tanks but also kinda excited to have a whole new setup to do.
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Mar 10, 2016 00:43
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quote:Published on Aug 18, 2012 lol
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Mar 10, 2016 00:50
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I've only got 3 penguin tetras left today, one found dead this morning with his guts burst open (?!), another this afternoon that was bodily intact but both totally finless. The biggest oldest one doesn't look to be getting any worse and his eyes look a bit clearer, same with the other two, all their fins look largely intact. I found a dead panda cory under a leaf too, dorsal fin gone but other fins intact. I think thats the one that looked like there was an ulcer on his face, his barbels were still long but looked a bit shrivelled and curled up. I've seen 3 other cories looking reasonably happy, digging in the sand etc and not a single guppy seems to give a poo poo about whats going on. If I ever redo a tank for corydoras I will avoid plants that grow too close to the substrate, it makes it almost impossible to spot if there is a little dead stinker stuck in the roots. Panda corydoras markings work surprisingly well as camoflage in dappled lighting. I'm pretty certain I had 6 cories for sure last week, saturday could only count five, today can only count 3 but in all that only one corpse located. Frustrating to say the least but maybe the MTS in that tank are converting them from rotten fish corpses to relatively benign snail poop. I would have thought a cory would leave some inedible traces though. Fauxshiz posted:I bought a 29 gallon tank to start off with, and I was curious about my max capacity once everything is running smoothly? I love all of the tetras that I've seen. I'd like a betta as well, and those cherry shrimp look cool as poo poo. And maybe some bristlenose plecos. So if I just wanted those to start with, how many could I sustain? With the majority being shiny rear end tetras. First, aqadvisor.com will let you put your tank dimensions in and choose fish/inverts to see how much capacity you have and whether everybody is compatible. It's a good starting point. Secondly, you probably shouldn't mix a betta in with other fish, both due to different requirements, possibility of aggression or fin nipping, competition for food, etc. Bristlenoses will likely leave your shrimp alone, but tetras will probably go after any shrimplets. Third, there always seem to be people selling mosses on ebay, I've got some nice Fissidens, some christmas moss which didnt do very well, some willow moss which looks great and is growing well, and some stringy moss which the snails seem to eat and of course good old java moss, all fairly cheaply from ebay. That is also where I got ramshorn snails so if you don't want to risk adding free snails, take precautions. I got my malaysian trumpet snails from the red cherry shrimp shipment, the guy packed them with some plant material to hold on to so they'd be happier in shipping and the baby MTS were so small I didnt see them until it was far far too late.
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Mar 10, 2016 12:02
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What're your water readings? Is there anywhere for a ridiculous predatory shrimp to hide?
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Mar 10, 2016 13:06
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This is probably (definitely?) off topic for this thread but thought you might be the guys to ask. I'm looking for a place to buy realistic looking mechanical or electronic fish. I don't mind dropping some cash on it, just want something cool looking. I've had a click through the shops linked in the op, and done some googling and cant find anything worthwhile. An example would be this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxWY5jKQDKI Also I'm sure the correct answer is 'get some real fish you idiot' but I'm away from home regularly for weeks at a time, and I've got this old aquarium sat here I'd like to do something with.
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Mar 10, 2016 14:32
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SynthOrange posted:What're your water readings? Is there anywhere for a ridiculous predatory shrimp to hide? I need to clean out my test tubes and get a proper test done, did a water change today just the same. All I measured was TDS which was around 90. While searching for a possible shrimp, I managed to find an extra cory, right up the back jammed in the roots of a plant, alive; also another tetra, alive. So that's four of each which is closer to what I was expecting but still short by 1 cory. Not sure if the cory was trapped or if he was just hiding REALLY HARD. I poked near him with the handle of a net to see if he was alive and he shot out. The tank this is happening in has a hood, in built trickle filter, with a "no ugly airgap" design but when filled right up it does make it very hard to spot a dead floater if it goes up underneath the filter or under the lid support crossbar so I left the water level a bit lower for next time there's a floater. There's a good chance of a next time, the extra tetra I found looks a bit manky and might be a floater by tomorrow. I went and checked a little while ago with a torch in case the possible muncher is coming out under cover of darkness, saw the wonkiest tetra is still alive, and found only regular sized shrimp with no visible fish murdering nippers. There is a branchy piece of driftwood with moss and a Java fern growing on it, right in the middle, and behind that is eelgrass all across the back of the tank. There are two little plant pot caves for the cories but they face the front of the tank and nothing sinister is hidden within. It's possible something could lurk in the eelgrass, that's where the lost cory showed up. Just thinking, the only thing that has changed in that tank recently was putting a sponge over the inlet of the main filter to prevent shrimplets being sucked up, and I didn't clean the sponge the last two water changes I did because it's too bulky to easily get it out through the slot the pump is mounted in, maybe it's full of gross muck? The flow coming out of the filter isn't reduced or anything. And snails ate enough of one of my banana lilies that it gave up and completely melted, and pulling that muck out after last water change was the last thing I did in the tank before finding all the rotted fins Monday.
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Mar 10, 2016 18:27
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Not A Vet Yet posted:This is probably (definitely?) off topic for this thread but thought you might be the guys to ask. I'm looking for a place to buy realistic looking mechanical or electronic fish. I don't mind dropping some cash on it, just want something cool looking. I've had a click through the shops linked in the op, and done some googling and cant find anything worthwhile. Whatttttt the fuckkkkkk those robot fish are dope as gently caress!!! Laser beam eyes? Hell yeah sign me up. I can't believe I've never seem that before, are you sure that video is real? Seems way too awesome to be real
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Mar 10, 2016 18:56
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:Whatttttt the fuckkkkkk those robot fish are dope as gently caress!!! I've not the slightest clue if it's real but it'd be a pretty impressive piece of video fakery if it's not.
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Mar 10, 2016 21:42
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:Whatttttt the fuckkkkkk those robot fish are dope as gently caress!!! I need robot fish with loving laser beam eyes
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Mar 11, 2016 02:11
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I've managed to count 9 baby shrimp so far, with 2 or 3 more still carrying eggs. Things are getting going way faster than I planned... should probably get some thick java moss for my big tank sooner rather than later since at this rate the spec is going to get pretty crowded pretty fast. also baby shrimp
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Mar 11, 2016 02:56
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Also dont forget to add new shrimp in unless you're looking forward to your 10th generation shrimps coming out all quasimodo-like.
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Mar 11, 2016 03:12
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Since your tank is pretty new, are you putting in any extra food for the baby shrimp? Got some testing done on the plague tank, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10 nitrate but the suprising thing was that the water is very very soft. I remineralize aiming for around 3 gh/kh for that tank every time I change water, being wary of mineral build up over time due to evaporation etc - but there was virtually nothing detectable when I did the drip test so where did it go? Used up by the newish banana lilly plants? Got confused and put a double dose into one lot of change water and none in the other? My other tanks are barbs/guppies so there wouldn't be any ill effect from an overdose of minerals in those if thats what happened, but I only do 30% at a time water change so I would have thought something would still be left even if that's what happened. Hardness being this low has never happened before, so it could explain why the tetras and cories got sick. I would have thought the guppies would feel it first but they're probably too hardy to show any effect straight away. I'll try upping my remineralization a little bit in future but still, do you think soft water could cause such severe fin rot? I don't know how to interpret getting no colour change on one drip on both hardness tests, but testing the water with a TDS meter read 90ppm which is right in the 3-6dH range. (still no sign of a rogue fin nipping beast in there, I'm almost ready to rule out this possibility) Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Mar 11, 2016 |
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Mar 11, 2016 06:25
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SynthOrange posted:Also dont forget to add new shrimp in unless you're looking forward to your 10th generation shrimps coming out all quasimodo-like. Not a bad idea. Wonder how big of an issue it is with shrimp in practice. Stoca Zola posted:Since your tank is pretty new, are you putting in any extra food for the baby shrimp? I've been putting in a tiny bit of granular or flake food every day (skipping today though), but there's also a decent amount of algae on the wall that I didn't bother scraping, the shrimplets seem to be chowing down on that for the most part. Also some java moss and a marimo moss ball to nibble on.
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Mar 11, 2016 20:39
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| # ? May 15, 2024 22:12 |
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Well my shrimp colony that started from three females ended up pretty sickly looking a few years down, with bent tails and fragile looking shells. Depends on your initial diversity.
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Mar 12, 2016 02:16
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