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This might be kind of a stupid question, but how do people decide on a fish diet? I've had my little fishes for a month or so now (some Corydoras habrosus and some Pseudomugil luminatus) and I've tried probably 12 or so different foods to see what they'd actually eat. I've ended up with 5 well received dry/freeze dried foods and a couple of frozen options, which seems like (hopefully) a reasonable variety, but I'm not sure how I should be deciding which ones to feed and how to rotate them. Should I be picking a staple food and rotating in other stuff for variety, and if so how do I figure out what food(s) make good staples? Or should I be rotating through more or less equally? I have read that frozen food is generally better, but they seem to like some of the dried food more so maybe I'm just feeding the wrong frozen poo poo. The luminatus are very small and seem to have a hard time mouthing certain things. They'll eat frozen brine shrimp but only the smallest pieces of it—what's the smallest readily available frozen food option? I wasn't able to find anything useful googling and I'd rather not spend hundreds of dollars trying every frozen food under the sun. Wallet fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 14:47
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I'm hoping someone here can help me out: I had to take in an Albino Bristlenose Pleco from my niece, and adopting it out isn't an option. I read that they grow to about 4-5 inches and require 20 gallons. I have it in a Fluval Flex 15 Gallon with a couple of guppies, a couple of corydoras and a snail. I've been doing two water changes a week, got 7 plants growing with some more clippings on the way, have driftwood in the tank, wash the filter about every two weeks, and Fluval biological cleaner that I throw in every two weeks. Unfortunately, there are no floating plants available in my area to use for bio-load reduction, but I'm interested in putting either a sweet potato or spider plant at the top to suck out the nitrates. Does anyone here you have any harm reduction recommendations for my predicament? I don't have room for a bigger tank and, again, adopting it out and giving it away isn't an option. I just want the little guy to have a good life given his limited area conditions. I asked a couple of experts and the answers ranged from "15 gallons probably ok but you will want to vacuum the gravel often, replace 30% of the water and don't get anymore fish" to "You are a horrible monster for raising a beautiful fish in a tiny tank."
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Dec 30, 2021 15:13
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I think your pleco will be just fine in that situation. I don't think you necessarily need to be doing 2x water changes a week, but it's certainly not harming things either. You've got a small bioload for a 15g tank, and with a chunk of driftwood to munch on he'll be quite happy. Sounds like you've got a handle on things. Just to clarify, when you say you wash your filter every two weeks, presumably you mean washing with tank water? Washing with tap water will kill the beneficial bacteria colonies.
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Dec 30, 2021 15:21
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I've seen frozen Daphnia, and you might be able to feed ocean nutrition instant baby brine. Growing your own worms (micro, Walter, banana, grindal, whatever culture you can get) can help too. You want to make sure you have an appropriate mix of protein and plant matter depending on the fish, and quality dry foods often have a better blend of nutrients than frozen whole foods. Frozen whole foods have roughage (from exoskeletons) which can help fish digestion. Variety makes sure you cover all your bases, all you can really do is read labels to try and avoid or minimise filler ingredients and watch the condition of your fish. If they eat readily and look healthy it doesn't matter if it's frozen or flakes. Edit: to the bristle nose adopter, you don't want a clean filter, you want it full of bacteria. Just knock the muck loose if it gets clogged and flow through the filter is reduced. Bristle noses aren't super active, as far as I know, so they don't need room to zoom. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 15:22
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Enos Cabell posted:I think your pleco will be just fine in that situation. I don't think you necessarily need to be doing 2x water changes a week, but it's certainly not harming things either. You've got a small bioload for a 15g tank, and with a chunk of driftwood to munch on he'll be quite happy. Sounds like you've got a handle on things. Firstly, thank you very much for the quick response. I would have been guilt ridden if I condemned the little fellow to a hellish environment. Secondly yes: When I do a water change, I throw the sponge in with the vacuumed poop water and wash off any chunks of debris or waste and put it back in the rear holding area to not lose any bacteria.
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Dec 30, 2021 15:31
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Cowslips Warren posted:Stupid question but freshwater, right? What's the stock? Freshwater, the stock is a handful and of cherry shrimp.
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Dec 30, 2021 16:20
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Entorwellian posted:I'm hoping someone here can help me out: As long as he has driftwood, your pleco should be fine. You probably don't want to know how many bristlenose plecos I have in my tanks, although it'll be fair some of the tanks are just for the bristle nose, like my 55 gallon that probably has close to 20 of them in there, with a lot of driftwood, lots of duckweed, and lots of sponge filters, and I do a lot of water changes to make up for it, but a 15 gallon is going to be fine unless you end up with a super rare xl bristlenose. Edit: my fish all get fed a mixture of repashy, mostly bottom feeder and morning wood, with a little bit of fry grow in there, or I toss them fluvals bug bites, which seems to be something that all of the fish go crazy on.
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Dec 30, 2021 21:29
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Stoca Zola posted:I've seen frozen Daphnia, and you might be able to feed ocean nutrition instant baby brine. Growing your own worms (micro, Walter, banana, grindal, whatever culture you can get) can help too. You want to make sure you have an appropriate mix of protein and plant matter depending on the fish, and quality dry foods often have a better blend of nutrients than frozen whole foods. Frozen whole foods have roughage (from exoskeletons) which can help fish digestion. Variety makes sure you cover all your bases, all you can really do is read labels to try and avoid or minimise filler ingredients and watch the condition of your fish. If they eat readily and look healthy it doesn't matter if it's frozen or flakes. Thanks—I'll give Daphnia a try at least. How does freeze dried compare to frozen re: roughage? Cowslips Warren posted:Edit: my fish all get fed a mixture of repashy, mostly bottom feeder and morning wood, with a little bit of fry grow in there, or I toss them fluvals bug bites, which seems to be something that all of the fish go crazy on. The smallest bug bites are one of the things they take, but none of them are aggressive feeders. If the luminatus have a favorite it's crumbled up freeze dried brine shrimp, everything else they're pretty chill about. I haven't tried any gel foods so far, but maybe I'll give that a shot. No one (except the snails) seems to have any interest whatsoever in even the smallest sinking wafer foods, but maybe they will when they're bigger.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:06
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hey yall. im new to the hobby. I wanted to share my growing pains and encourage any lurkers to keep going if things get hairy. and also the triumph of finding a fish morph you've been looking for I have a 33L heavily planted tank that has been running for 7-8 weeks. I am still trying to find balance in the tank and I got a powerful plant light and over did it right away ( what do you mean plants dont like immediate 100% power ????) for a huge algae bloom which resulted in a mini reset with bleach dipping a lot of the plants and hardscape. I also didnt realize that such a short tank made it so that 100% power will never be used. I had some algae crew of 5 otos but when things were that out of whack they were a fly on the windshield, also they dont eat hair algae (which i learned). Also I got 3 Powder Blue Gourami which liked my tank so much that they kept pulling out the plants for their nests and then began killing each other ( I thought they would have enough space to each have own territory and enough plants to break line of sight). I returned them and replaced thier bioload with panda corys which are way cooler to observe then beautiful blue murder fish. I have dialed down the light and am working up a few % week by week until I will eventually get to 50% power. I want to get some floating plants to help with this too as only my carpeting plants and the stem plants I have really like the full light. And I like floating plants. I added amano shrimp which are cool and growing FAST and nerite snails bc also cool and are eating machines. I also got the algae inhibitor from the aquarium coop which is local for me. There is still algae, significantly less and not overtaking anything, so I also wanted to get bristlenose pleco bc they are cool looking, have a job, and stay within the fish absolute maximum fish size for my tank and I like feeding my fish veggies sometimes (probably why the fat otos are making minial impact on the non-hair algae). I loved the look of the calico and the straight up super red ones but had not been able to find any in my LFS (seattle area). UNTIL I went back to Aquarium co-op yesterday to see if the had German Blue Rams (which is a fish I am interested in for a smaller tank I have laying around once I become more seasoned) and see if they had blackworms for my wife's new axototl and the co-op had a bunch of bristlenose plecos for $5 each and low and behold I saw there was one super red calico BN amongst a sea of other reddish and brown BN in the tank and I almost poo poo myself, only $5!! The staff told me that if his manager was there the manager would upsell it and charge more but for him the label was the label. Maybe he told me that because I was visibly stoked and he was enhancing my experience , but i definitely felt like. a kid getting away with something. No black worms but I got the pleco i've been looking for. Felt like winning the lottery tbh. It was the first time I was looking for a specific singular fish and just stumbled across one. My total stocking: 11 Harlequin Rasbora 5 otos 5 panda corys 1 BN pleco 5 nerite snails 4 amano shrimp 4 orange shrimp assorted pond snails that came with plants So far I have only lost 3 fish. I originally had 12 raspora, 6 otos, 6 pandas. but as i introduced them to the tank each group lost one as is wont to happen. but this group outside of the pleco have been in there together for about 3 weeks (replaced the gourami 3 weeks ago) and they are all jiving and appearing healthy. the otos and raspora have been in there for 6-7 weeks. Otos remain fat as they were the ones i was worried about keeping alive. one of the orange shrimp is turbo preg so i am excited to see if any shrimp fry survive. I do semi weekly water changes right now. about 6 gallons on thursdays and then 10-12 gallons on Sundays. Anyway hyped about my fish madness.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:23
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Is aquarium co-op actually a co-op?
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Dec 30, 2021 23:46
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Is aquarium co-op actually a co-op? I dont think they're employee/customer owned, but he pays well and gives all his employees benefits you wouldn't expect for such a small shop. I like shopping with them because they're close and it seems like Cory tries to be as ethical as possible running a business.
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Dec 31, 2021 00:15
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Are paper-strip water testers reliable, or do I need to go with the vial-and-dropper-bottle kits? Freshwater.
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Dec 31, 2021 01:22
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They're mostly reliable but a lot more expensive and not as accurate or comprehensive. You can cut your strips lengthwise to get twice as much use out of them tho.
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Dec 31, 2021 01:27
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I just coop strips for quick checks when I suspect something weird. They seem to be accurate, but I typically double check with drops if I need to be certain.
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Dec 31, 2021 01:47
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Bristlenose plecos are funny; I put them akin to ball pythons when it comes to morphs. When albinos were new (for both), the prices were insane. Then longfin happened (for plecos of course), and then blue-eyed, and for a while green dragon and blood reds were everywhere. I never got into the blood reds because of the high red (if your fish has internal bleeding you won't see it so well!) and the green dragon were too similar to my lemon/blue eyeds. Now you can't find them hardly anywhere. Calicos/red marbles are new, and I have a few calico adults, and several fry, but Covid has kicked out almost every fish/local keeper meeting, so I've held back a lot of breeding because I don't want to be overwhelmed and stocked again.
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Dec 31, 2021 02:04
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^Out of all the morphs I've seen the calico are the coolest ino outside the blue eyed lemons (which I've never seen in person). One of the reasons I wanted a bristlenose was the wide variety of morphs for a cool and more unique fish for my aquarium vs the other schooling fish I have. Also lmao the moment I talk about how well the otos are doing I find one with the white cotton fungus on one of its fins. Only 1 tho and no other fish appearing to have it. I'm going to assume it injured itself and got it. Took it out and its in the hospital tank. Godspeed little buddy. EmbryoSteve fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2021 03:00
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Wallet posted:Thanks—I'll give Daphnia a try at least. How does freeze dried compare to frozen re: roughage? Should be about the same, I've fed both freeze dried and frozen brine shrimp to my bigger fish and the texture felt pretty similar to me once thawed/wet. I don't think the processing affects the structure too much. With frozen food I tend to thaw it in a shot glass of tank water and then just scoop out the food to feed, leaving as much juice behind as possible. A lot harder to do with daphnia since they're so small!
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Dec 31, 2021 03:43
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Lincoln posted:Are paper-strip water testers reliable, or do I need to go with the vial-and-dropper-bottle kits? Freshwater. I use the aquarium co op water test strips. They're accurate enough compared to some of the more labor intensive tests I've run on the same water. Definitely adequate for alerting you that something is wrong.
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Jan 1, 2022 02:08
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I am breaking down my 10g, slowly, because I need to keep the Chopstick Snails alive until I can re-home them. Most everything is out, except for a mix of Süsswassertang, Marimo bits, and some MTS I want to collect. BUT there is one loving Sparkling Gourami left that I cannot catch. The loving thing taunts me and then disappears. Then I have to wait to try and catch it again cause my substrate is like half "dirt" aka fish/snail/shrimp poop. The plants loved it but it is super easy to cloud up the tank, allowing that loving fish to escape me again. 
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Jan 1, 2022 21:23
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Desert Bus posted:I am breaking down my 10g, slowly, because I need to keep the Chopstick Snails alive until I can re-home them. Most everything is out, except for a mix of Süsswassertang, Marimo bits, and some MTS I want to collect. BUT there is one loving Sparkling Gourami left that I cannot catch. The loving thing taunts me and then disappears. Then I have to wait to try and catch it again cause my substrate is like half "dirt" aka fish/snail/shrimp poop. The plants loved it but it is super easy to cloud up the tank, allowing that loving fish to escape me again. Not sure if the gourami's are as dumb, but I had surprisingly good luck catching my cories in a larger shrimp style trap made from a two liter bottle and a pub mix tub (the kind where the whole top is a flat, twist-off lid). Even caught a few of the ember tetras that way too!
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Jan 1, 2022 22:44
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candystarlight posted:Not sure if the gourami's are as dumb, but I had surprisingly good luck catching my cories in a larger shrimp style trap made from a two liter bottle and a pub mix tub (the kind where the whole top is a flat, twist-off lid). Even caught a few of the ember tetras that way too! I am planning to make a snail trap soon because I want to collect all of the Malaysian Trumpet Snails (Melanoides tuberculata var. Brown) from the 10g. Maybe it will catch that last loving fish too??? I am at a loss, 30+ years in the hobby and I can't loving catch a fish. The Malaysian Trumpet Snails (Melanoides tuberculata var. Brown) are my own line and the 29g has Malaysian Trumpet Snails (Melanoides tuberculata var. Big), also my own line. I don't see any issues with mixing them? BUT I CANNOT loving CATCH THIS loving SPARKLING GOURAMI I'm cool with my MTS mingling and poo poo, I have been breeding them/culling them like crazy for 18??? years. I can fold the brown line into the big line and call it good and call it good and have done do. But this loving Gourami. The instant it sees me see it? It disappears. We are going on like 3 days worth of this bullshit. This 3/4" inch fish it just loving outsmarting me and defying me and I just want to give it a better life in a bigger tank.
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Jan 1, 2022 23:05
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Desert Bus posted:I am planning to make a snail trap soon because I want to collect all of the Malaysian Trumpet Snails (Melanoides tuberculata var. Brown) from the 10g. Maybe it will catch that last loving fish too??? I am at a loss, 30+ years in the hobby and I can't loving catch a fish. Leave the net still in the water for a minute or two then sprinkle some food inside it so he wanders in, then nab him? People have known for millennia the best way to catch fish is with bait.
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Jan 1, 2022 23:07
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Asterite34 posted:Leave the net still in the water for a minute or two then sprinkle some food inside it so he wanders in, then nab him? People have known for millennia the best way to catch fish is with bait. Scroll up, the net is in there. It's a tiny loving fish and I run my tanks bio-active af so it's always well fed from the micro-fauna etc. I tried food anyway. No luck. TBH my life is pretty boring so trying to outsmart a fish is good and fun but when I have failed for like 3 days? I have been doing this whole hobby for like 30+ years and nothing has been quite so frustrating. Most aquarium poo poo you can resolve fast but this tiny fish is just.... I can't just drain the tank in order to just see what gets floppy,
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Jan 1, 2022 23:22
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https://i.imgur.com/DzRnmAh.mp4
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Jan 2, 2022 06:18
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Shreeeemp!
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Jan 2, 2022 07:35
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I'd love to get some shrimps for my planted tank, but so would my denison barbs 
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Jan 2, 2022 16:28
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Enos Cabell posted:I'd love to get some shrimps for my planted tank, but so would my denison barbs sounds like you need another planted tank
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Jan 2, 2022 17:48
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big dong wanter posted:sounds like you need another planted tank That was the plan until my oscars decided to be jerks, so now one is living in that 55g I was gonna make into a low tech planted with lots of shrimps and stuff. Jerks. My madagascar lace plant decided to throw a flower today though:  
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Jan 2, 2022 23:09
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My Cobalt heater in my 20 gal failed hot last night - happened to notice the red light right when I was turning in at 11:30, temp had (only) gotten up to 80 from 72-74 so no harm done... but could have been unpleasant had I not noticed. Fortunately had an extra to swap in. Hadn't had problems with this heater before but not really a fan of this failure mode... trying Eheim next time. I have a Fluval heater in my bigger tank that works great but just too big for this one. Testing it out this morning more, seems to be stuck set on 94 degrees and doesn't respond to any inputs. It's about 3.5 years old. If you're really paranoid, probably worthwhile to have the heater hooked up to a temperature controller so you can be certain it cuts out over a certain limit. Mozi fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 16:14
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I just realized I don't think I've seen a thermometer that just sends the temp to an app on your phone. You could set alarms to catch that kind of emergency which seems like something a lot of people would like, especially if you could package it with monitoring of other variables, though that might get expensive.
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Jan 3, 2022 17:02
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VelociBacon posted:I just realized I don't think I've seen a thermometer that just sends the temp to an app on your phone. You could set alarms to catch that kind of emergency which seems like something a lot of people would like, especially if you could package it with monitoring of other variables, though that might get expensive. Unless it changed, both real-time monitoring and alering (plug turning off the heater) does exist in the neptune apex controller. I got one with the intent to do that ( I never got around to understand the programming, though). Also, use the ph probe to monitor my ph and have it adjust when too low back when I did co2 injection. As you said though, expensive.
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Jan 3, 2022 17:12
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Hey hey, I havent stopped in the thread in a few months since summer time. I was having algae issues in a new planted aquarium and Flourish Excel was suggested. First let me say never have I run into such a simple solution that has fixed so many problems so efficiently , the stuff is amazing. That said, the reason Im posting is to ask about land (sea?) scaping the plants.   As you can hopefully see, the plants are doing great, many of them have rooted and begun to spread out and grow new shoots through out the tank which is awesome, all of them are double or more the size of when they were purchased. My question is in regards to the super long, sea grass for lack of knowing its actual name, in the background... thats a 75g tank and that grass is easily 4x the height of the tank, so it rises to the top, blots out most of the light and now sinks back down in the corner. Its not hurting anything, but I was wondering how one goes about trimming it? I am kind of assuming, given how closely it resembles giant overgrown underwater grass, coupled with a life time of living on a lake tells me once the stuff is healthy and established its nearly impossible to get rid of, so taking a pair of sheers and cutting 6 inches off it so it at least doesnt sink back down in the corner and just rises to the surface and floats there isnt going to harm the plant in the long run. But, I figured Id ask before I go cut all the plants I spent all summer getting to grow in half and possibly accidentally kill them all.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:08
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The long stuff is jungle vallisneria, and grows about two feet a week or more in my 75g. Shoots out tons of runners too! I trim the heck out of it, down to about an inch or so below the water line, and it doesn't slow down one bit.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:31
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VelociBacon posted:I just realized I don't think I've seen a thermometer that just sends the temp to an app on your phone. You could set alarms to catch that kind of emergency which seems like something a lot of people would like, especially if you could package it with monitoring of other variables, though that might get expensive. I think one of the Inkbird variants can do that. I've been pretty happy with the dumb controllers. They come with a waterproof probe, plugs for heating and cooling, really granular temp adjustment and an alarm for high/low temps. I'm slowly putting one on every heated tank I've got. For tanks without Inkbirds I just run multiple undersized heaters. At least if they fail on they'll struggle like hell to get the temperature into a dangerous range. Mozi's experience is like my worst nightmare. I gotta think most people would pay a bit more for a heater with an external temperature controller if it meant they wouldn't cook their fish through no fault of their own.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:39
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Yeah today would have been really awful if I hadn't happened to notice.
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Jan 3, 2022 20:42
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Heaters are for suckers. If it can't live between 69-82f it doesn't belong in my tank.
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Jan 3, 2022 20:50
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Desert Bus posted:Heaters are for suckers. If it can't live between 69-82f it doesn't belong in my tank. the goldfish-axolotl house
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Jan 3, 2022 20:59
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My Oto with the fungus succumbed after 2 days. I suspect he got injured as there are no signs of infection in the remaining 4 and everyone else in the tank looks and is behaving healthy. There was a bit of decaying plant matter by the heater where the otos hang out during the day time so I wonder if that low flow area needed some more extra attention from me during water changes. was the big focus for my sunday water change yesterday. I added some gold laser corys to the tank and they are amazing fun frenetic fish (bio load with the extra filter, all the plants, and the semi weekly water changes should be fine I think). A bit expensive but they really pop and bring some energy that I thought was missing. The pandas and them will even group up from time to time. I also added a few floating plants to help with the extra bio load. I think the floaters helped everyone chill out more as there is more open activity by the raspora and the corys with the floaters taking up some of the light. Maybe they feel more safe or the light was too bright for them to start with? dunno but enjoying the results.
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Jan 3, 2022 22:16
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Ok Comboomer posted:the goldfish-axolotl house Eh, that's how native tanks run and it's pretty great not having to worry about the heater. My tank runs between 70-72 degrees and everyone is pretty happy. I've finally decided to move the smaller shrimp to a heavily planted 5 gallon dedicated shrimp tank in the near future and, afterwards, adding some darters. Had a small sponge filter running on my air stone for the past few weeks I shifted over along with a nice helping of sponge squeezings to jump start the cycle.
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Jan 4, 2022 00:31
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70-72 is like 4 degrees warmer than I keep my house this time of year lol. Unheated tanks in my fish room get down to 55ish without heaters.
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Jan 4, 2022 00:34
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