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Doc Fission posted:Still new to this hobby. Is an ammonia level of .25 ppm something to worry about? I'm using the API test kit. Ammonia should be undetectable (0 on your test kit). Do frequent water changes to keep it from getting too high and burning the betta's gills. Add a plant, Java fern is decent looking and durable. pH is fine for the betta, but the snail would like a little higher.
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Mar 9, 2019 18:33
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I'm moving my betta to a 5.5 gallon and want a lid. I don't want the aqueon versa top that fits it because it's got that huge black seam. Anyone have suggestions on finding or making a clear 16x8 lid?Doc Fission posted:Still new to this hobby. Is an ammonia level of .25 ppm something to worry about? I'm using the API test kit. Any level of ammonia is undesirable but I don't know the ranges it becomes an emergency vs just bad. 6.6 is too acidic for snails, you can easily buffer you water with crushed coral or wonder shell which will immediately add more calcium to your water and should also slowly increase your pH.
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Mar 9, 2019 18:36
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Doc Fission posted:Still new to this hobby. Is an ammonia level of .25 ppm something to worry about? I'm using the API test kit. What's the state of the tank? Is it brand new? Planted? 0.25ppm isn't the worst and I think bettas like around 7.0 pH from what I can see online. Changing the pH rapidly can be really harmful so I wouldn't neccesarily try to 'correct' it to a more alkaline pH with a liquid solution. If it's not an established tank I would add some quick start which should take care of the ammonia and seed the tank with nitrifying bacteria so you don't have to add that stuff constantly.
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Mar 9, 2019 21:25
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I have a 5 gallon with 3 nerites, and a betta. It's planted. Could I add some nerites or ramshorns? I do feed the snaily mcsnailersons.
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Mar 10, 2019 03:42
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Aerofallosov posted:I have a 5 gallon with 3 nerites, and a betta. It's planted. Could I add some nerites or ramshorns? I do feed the snaily mcsnailersons. If the snails aren't able to subsist off the existing algae (if you're having to feed them) wouldn't it be a problem to add more in terms of making sure there's enough food for them? Out of curiosity, how do your nerites deal with staying upright in the tank? I have a fairly busy 5g with a couple hardscape pieces and quite a few plants and the nerites I had fell on their back within the first day I had them and couldn't right themselves. Does this ever happen to you? I would think with a betta swimming around they'd be scared and fall off poo poo all the time.
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Mar 10, 2019 03:48
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New tenants
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Mar 10, 2019 03:50
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mango sentinel posted:I'm moving my betta to a 5.5 gallon and want a lid. I don't want the aqueon versa top that fits it because it's got that huge black seam. Anyone have suggestions on finding or making a clear 16x8 lid? Buy a sheet of lexan and cut it to size
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Mar 10, 2019 09:29
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Is lexan more resistant to sagging than acrylic? I've inherited a few acrylic lids and they need to be periodically flipped due to sag. If you don't need it to be super optically clear, double walled polycarbonate like they use for greenhouse walls is stiff and light. I think people seal the edges with silicone or hotglue though or the channels get full of moisture and dust.
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Mar 10, 2019 13:09
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 My cycle has been like this for a week. 4ppm of ammonia disappears in less than 24 houra but my Nitrates don't seem to be moving up
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Mar 10, 2019 15:24
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Ammonia is processed by one set of bacteria and nitrites by another. You're just waiting on the latter to fully colonize now that they have available food.
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Mar 10, 2019 15:28
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I have questions: How warm is the tank? Bacteria will grow faster if its warmer; no need to go berserk but if you aren't heating the tank to the temperature you'd be keeping it once it's set up, you probably should. How's your pH? If it dips under 6 the bacteria don't like it and might stall their growth. Otherwise everything looks to be in order, it really is normal for this part of the process to stall as the bacteria are really slow. Just keep dosing! Have patience and don't give up. Maybe check your filter to make sure there's nothing clogging the media and preventing good flow across the whole of the filter?
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Mar 10, 2019 15:29
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Stoca Zola posted:I have questions: How warm is the tank? Bacteria will grow faster if its warmer; no need to go berserk but if you aren't heating the tank to the temperature you'd be keeping it once it's set up, you probably should. How's your pH? If it dips under 6 the bacteria don't like it and might stall their growth. Otherwise everything looks to be in order, it really is normal for this part of the process to stall as the bacteria are really slow. Just keep dosing! Have patience and don't give up. Maybe check your filter to make sure there's nothing clogging the media and preventing good flow across the whole of the filter? Filter flow is good; Temp is 24.5C/closer to 25 PH is high, about 8
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Mar 10, 2019 15:40
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Yeah nothing out of line there so don't worry too much. It'll get there eventually. So I've been finding out it's much harder to raise 5 fry than it is to raise 50; I lost two already to fungus, possibly due to overfeeding, or they might have been duds. One of the eggs vanished and I don't know if it hatched or went bad. The two surviving fry that I've seen, seem big and vigourous anyway but how do you feed two fish the size of a '0' in a way that they'll find it before it goes mouldy? I'm hoping they can survive on sparse microworms and sparse fry powder as I'm not game to feed anything else. I added extra snails because the initial two didn't seem to be enough, but now the snail brigade is eating all the indian almond leaf and pooping up a storm. With 50 fry I needed to feed a decent amount 4 times a day and a single snail was enough to clean up anything left. I'm just using the same hang on breeder box technique as last time. I've had a near miss on one of my sterbai grow out tanks today; I noticed the fish looked a bit listless yesterday but didn't really think anything of it, I'd planned to water change the tank today anyway. Now they're covered in shedding slime coat and some look to be on deaths door. I've done a big water change which perked MOST of the fish up but I still think there is a good chance I'll lose one or two. I have added extra ceramic media to the filter and I'll probably transfer these guys to a bigger tank; or at least try to spread them around to more tanks or something. There's something not quite right with this tank even though it has a lighter fish load than some of my tanks, I really can't afford to be late on any water change or it starts to crash, this is probably the third time it's happened. I was hoping to sell a few from this tank because its obviously becoming overloaded but both of the people who expressed interest flaked out on me so I'm stuck with them. Tank has frogbit and a fine layer of sand and that's about it; my usual style is to have a ton more plants floating but I'm limited by the available lighting. And on my big catfish tank I found all the guppies really struggling at the surface, some dead, some dying. In the same tank rasboras, corydoras, platydoras all fine although I did lose the last of my loaches in that tank earlier in the week. That tank has 2 filters and is heavily planted and all I could think to do was net out all the affected guppies to a different tank, and remove a bunch of plants to make sure the surface wasn't getting choked, it kind of looked like oxygen issues despite a wavemaker spreading microbubbles all over the tank. The few odd guppies that remained in that tank recovered, all but one of the guppies I moved to the other tank also recovered, and I'm none the wiser as to what the problem was - I suppose the other thing could be that they were just exhausted due to the extra flow from the wavemaker? I did turn that off too. I added a canister and spray bar to my juwel tank and the water is immediately clearer and the flow around the tank much better. I feel like at least with that tank everything is going right (even with the hideous amounts of algae).
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Mar 10, 2019 17:23
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Doc Fission posted:Still new to this hobby. Is an ammonia level of .25 ppm something to worry about? I'm using the API test kit.
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Mar 11, 2019 00:13
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Re: fish breeding chat, I only started seeing reliable success when I setup automatic water changes. All you really need is a water reservoir, a timer, a pump, and overflow drainage for your tanks. Depending on what kind of eggs they are I keep them in a solution of meth blue with an air stone for a day or two as well.
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Mar 11, 2019 01:47
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Ah, to make the tank blue. A terrifying procedure.
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Mar 11, 2019 02:05
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A solution of meth blue? It turns out Breaking Bad was just about the aquatics industry the whole time...
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Mar 11, 2019 15:15
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New morning ritual: turning on the light in my 16gal and watching the kuhlis scurry into hiding like roaches.
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Mar 11, 2019 16:54
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Very normal water parameters but lethargic shrimp--anyone have any ideas? They've been chilling mostly at the bottom of the tank for a week or so. Normally fairly active swimming around etc. They're eating well enough.
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Mar 11, 2019 17:21
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It looks like Petco is having a $1 / gallon sale now. I still haven't gotten a tank.
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Mar 11, 2019 17:41
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GoodBee posted:It looks like Petco is having a $1 / gallon sale now. I still haven't gotten a tank. Can't help but think their tanks are going to be cheap garbage though?
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Mar 11, 2019 17:43
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VelociBacon posted:Can't help but think their tanks are going to be cheap garbage though? Aqueon tanks are Fine. Black rims, messy seams, and lid sold separately, but otherwise perfectly serviceable. The $1 per gallon only runs on the 10, 20, 20 long, and 29 gallon. I think 40 breeders, 55, and 75 are half off, which is still a good price. If I had room I'd definitely pick up a 29g or a 40 breeder.
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Mar 11, 2019 17:55
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I got three Aqueon tanks at the Petco deals. Its the same stuff they sell off the deals so I didn't think much of it. The one just sprung a leak and I still haven't found it so I'm assuming its a seam, but otherwise they've been ok. Although now I'm perpetually terrified of the 20 G leaking.
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Mar 11, 2019 22:49
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mango sentinel posted:Aqueon tanks are Fine. I just got home from a petco, the 75gal was full price. 40, and 55 were half price.
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Mar 12, 2019 02:01
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Zaffy posted:I just got home from a petco, the 75gal was full price. 40, and 55 were half price. Until a few years ago, 40s and 55s were a part of the $1/g sale. Those were good times.
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Mar 12, 2019 14:18
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mango sentinel posted:New morning ritual: turning on the light in my 16gal and watching the kuhlis scurry into hiding like roaches. They're seriously one of my favorites. I love turning on the blue light at night to see the worms wriggling all across the tank. Also yeah, can confirm PetCo aren't including the 75G in their latest sales promotion. Somebody went through and cleaned my local one out of tanks completely.
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Mar 12, 2019 20:34
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Back again. Please feel free to click on my post history for this thread. Our tank's cycle seemed to have crashed ages ago (end of October is when problems started). Ammonia spikes constantly despite water changes. Bought a new, more powerful filter, ran it alongside the old one. Added extra bacteria. We thought we'd solved it after seeing a cycle start again. Barely had a week of stability and the ammonia started climbing again. Still running both filters. Still having to change the water every ~3 days to keep the ammonia under control. Today's Tuesday and the ammonia had gone from 0.25 post-water change on Sunday to 1.0 today. Is there any other diagnostic to use or is it time to just try a whole new, fresh tank with a new cycle? Completely baffling. Everyone seems to be scratching their head with this one. I'm completely confused as to how a tank that's been stable for three years is now unable to hold a cycle.
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Mar 12, 2019 23:23
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I think I remember, axolotl tank, 10 gallons, too much ammonia? All I can think of is that you just need a much bigger tank so that you have more water to dilute the wastes that your dude produces, and to do enough water changes to keep the waste levels down. The only factor that seems to be changed from when everything was fine is time, and time means livestock has grown bigger.
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Mar 13, 2019 01:33
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We always use 30 gallon tanks for the axolotls at my lab.
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Mar 13, 2019 05:22
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I'm having a devil of a time getting my daphnia going  Asides from shipping difficulties/arriving dead, I just can't seem to keep them from crashing after a few days. I'm probably either feeding too much, or maybe the tank is fluctuating in temp too much. Gah.
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Mar 13, 2019 14:08
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I could never keep daphnia due to underfeeding, and I believe they're sensitive to some water parameter (hardness? magnesium? I can't remember. It's not pH, all they need there is stability). They need filtration but as gentle as possible as they can't swim well enough against a current and bubbles will stick to them. From the feeding point of view they need to be fed greenwater/yeast enough to make the water cloudy and it should be clear again within 24 hours. If they're clearing it up sooner it's not enough food, or still cloudy within 24 hours that's too much. When I was a kid we used to find tons of daphnia in little water holes out in the bush, where all they had was sunlight and greenwater algae, no filtration or flow. As the water levels dropped they'd lay little egg packets, two black dots in a white case that reminded me of cartoon eyes, instead of laying live young. These would hatch again after a rain in the same way brineshrimp eggs do. The rocks in the area are granite so I don't think much was dissolving into the water, it's mostly silicate and iron bearing minerals plus whatever decaying organics that are deposited with each wet/dry cycle. So it's probably a different species out in the wild here than what we keep in the hobby as live food, but those ones at least were baking during the day and getting cold at night due to the small size of the pools they lived in. I don't know why it's so much harder to keep them in captivity, maybe the lights we use will never compare to sunlight, or we can't give them the complete nutrition that they need.
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Mar 13, 2019 15:48
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For my setup I split a 10 gal in half with an acrylic sheet (so if half crashes I wouldn't lose it all), put it in front of a south window, and am using just air tubing with the air cranked way way down for just a slow stream of single bubbles. Feeding w/ the yeast/spirulina mix. The water does seem to just stay cloudy, it's hard to put in enough to make the water noticeably cloudy and still have it clear up after. I've been trying to clear it up by taking out a gallon and slowly replacing it with RO water but the population just keeps going down.
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Mar 13, 2019 17:15
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RO might be too soft? Oh hey someone did a paper about it https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00006627quote:The TLDR version: Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 13, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 18:22
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Stoca Zola posted:I think I remember, axolotl tank, 10 gallons, too much ammonia? All I can think of is that you just need a much bigger tank so that you have more water to dilute the wastes that your dude produces, and to do enough water changes to keep the waste levels down. The only factor that seems to be changed from when everything was fine is time, and time means livestock has grown bigger. I think I hosed up working out the gallons and it's more like 15, but yeah. I suppose I'm just surprised it happened so quickly (seemingly...) Azuth0667 posted:We always use 30 gallon tanks for the axolotls at my lab. For a single creature? Absolutely prepared to do this to keep him happy, but I want to make sure I'm not pouring money into another failed solution!
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Mar 13, 2019 19:14
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I think a bigger tank is absolutely never a waste of money - assuming you buy as big a tank as you can afford or can reasonably fit in your space. It is a waste of money to buy a slightly bigger tank each year as your animal grows. I think also if you had a bigger tank you could safely get a canister filter and have much more filter media and the flow could be more easily dispersed via a spray bar, for the comfort of the axy. You can reduce the flow on most canister filters by using a valve on the outlet side anyway. I think there's only one place for the ammonia to be coming from and that's the axolotl itself; it's only going to get worse over time until they reach maximum size. As a temporary solution you could try feeding less, but I'm not sure if that's advisable for an axolotl.
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Mar 13, 2019 20:18
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Bollock Monkey posted:I think I hosed up working out the gallons and it's more like 15, but yeah. I suppose I'm just surprised it happened so quickly (seemingly...) Yeah we used one 30 gallon per axolotl.
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Mar 13, 2019 20:34
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Stoca Zola posted:RO might be too soft? Oh hey someone did a paper about it https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00006627 Hm. Tossed a snail calcium/vitamin block in there, hope that helps!
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Mar 13, 2019 21:16
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Stoca Zola posted:I think a bigger tank is absolutely never a waste of money - assuming you buy as big a tank as you can afford or can reasonably fit in your space. It is a waste of money to buy a slightly bigger tank each year as your animal grows. I think also if you had a bigger tank you could safely get a canister filter and have much more filter media and the flow could be more easily dispersed via a spray bar, for the comfort of the axy. You can reduce the flow on most canister filters by using a valve on the outlet side anyway. I think there's only one place for the ammonia to be coming from and that's the axolotl itself; it's only going to get worse over time until they reach maximum size. As a temporary solution you could try feeding less, but I'm not sure if that's advisable for an axolotl. Azuth0667 posted:Yeah we used one 30 gallon per axolotl. Cool, will get on it then and buy a bigger tank. Both my partner and I had axies before with no issues in similarly-sized, if not smaller, tanks - which is why we thought it'd be fine. I guess ours this time around is just a messy boy. His shits have been way sandier than they used to be for a while now, which is probably contributing. Is there any way of kickstarting a cycle in a new tank (other than trying to seed from the substrate/filter medium) or is any hope of that futile and we just have to hope it takes less than two months? It's been a while! Here's a photo of weird axolotl acrobatic resting: 
Bollock Monkey fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Mar 14, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 23:58
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That sure is a thumbnail.
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Mar 14, 2019 04:23
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mango sentinel posted:That sure is a thumbnail. Hm, was working fine for me but I've removed the timg tag now.
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Mar 14, 2019 08:33
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