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I bought one of these last year and it’s been a total gamechanger for water changes
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Nov 8, 2023 21:10
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Stoca Zola posted:I use a wider piece of hose for faster suck but I also have a piece of sponge or spare filter inlet guard (or both) attached to the end to stop the smallest inhabitants from being sucked up. This means I don’t have to babysit that end of the hose. I also have each tank marked with a small piece of tape at the side/corner to know the water level I want to remove and I clip my hose in place such that the siphon breaks once the water level drops below that height. Another clip to keep the end inside the bucket if a cat brushes past. Even going from a 6mm hose to a 12mm hose would speed your water changes up if that’s something that interests you, I use a 19mm hose for my largest tanks or it would take forever (although an airline left overnight can easily drain 60 litres on to the carpet as I found out the hard way). Okay I gotta remember this trick, it's been a tricky prospect to use the gravel vac and maneuver around the shrimps. Mind you I've done like one water change in the last 8 months and nobody seems much the worse for wear (understocked, lotta frogbit, some Pothos growing in one of the filter reservoirs), but still, I'd rather not kill stuff when the occasion presents itself.
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Nov 8, 2023 21:13
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Speaking of preventing things from getting sucked up, I want to add a power head to my saltwater tank to get the water flow around a lot more. The only problem is that I have five good size serpent stars and a bunch of asterina stars and a few snails. So even with a protector around the power head, short of building another exterior protector or sticking it into a sponge filter. I'm not sure how to prevent anyone from getting sliced and diced by the powerhead.
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Nov 8, 2023 21:41
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Asterite34 posted:Okay I gotta remember this trick, it's been a tricky prospect to use the gravel vac and maneuver around the shrimps. For a gravel vac, I wad a piece of sponge in the end of the wide bit, a piece of pantyhose held over the end with a rubber band works too if the mesh is fine enough. Cowslips Warren: I feel like that is a good use case for airstones or airlift style water jets, they aren’t pretty and they aren’t natural but there’s no moving parts to hurt fragile livestock. Stoca Zola fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Nov 8, 2023 |
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Nov 8, 2023 21:45
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Cowslips Warren posted:Speaking of preventing things from getting sucked up, I want to add a power head to my saltwater tank to get the water flow around a lot more. The only problem is that I have five good size serpent stars and a bunch of asterina stars and a few snails. So even with a protector around the power head, short of building another exterior protector or sticking it into a sponge filter. I'm not sure how to prevent anyone from getting sliced and diced by the powerhead. Yeah, in that case I might consider putting a second outflow nozzle on your filter/sump return where you would want the powerhead to go, or getting a pump-style powerhead that you can put a fuckton of prefilter/foam/floss/etc in front of trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Nov 8, 2023 |
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Nov 8, 2023 22:21
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The tank has three good size sponge filters in it already, plus there's a external breeding box that acts like a mini filter but I just want some more surface motion. Maybe I need to remove one sponge filter and put a large air stone bar or something.
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Nov 8, 2023 23:13
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Since you only have a 10 gallon tank you really don't need to siphon. Just scoop it out. I have an old yogurt container that I use to scoop out the water into the bucket I use. Then I pour the new water in straight from the bucket. All told it takes like ten minutes and that's with letting the new water sit with the conditioner for five. My shrimp in my classroom tank have started hatching. It's crazy that the babies are basically adults, but only a millimeter long. 
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Nov 9, 2023 00:53
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Ok Comboomer posted:I bought one of these last year and it’s been a total gamechanger for water changes This isn't the pump I have, but yeah. I got a utility pump a few months ago, it's taken almost all of the work out of water changes.
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Nov 9, 2023 15:25
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I need a longer hose for the python I bought, so it can actually reach the kitchen sink with some slack. As it is now, I siphon out the front window to water a cedar, and fill this bucket in the bathtub. The double handles helps carry the weight centered, and you don't get lopsided back strain. I also have mountain stream tap water, and guppies, so the pitcher and bucket combo is useful for dissolving minerals and buffer.
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Nov 9, 2023 18:47
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So I stumbled across $22 on Monday and was going to check out Concord aquarium and get some cherry shrimp since my local Petco has been out for the last couple of months Well Concord aquarium had a bunch of cherry shrimp, but the tank was literally infested with planeria. Like, easily 50 adults and maybe a hundred juvenile planeria, just on the customer facing pane of glass. Not even counting other surfaces or gravel substrate. So that was a no go By chance I called "J&J aquarium" in Antioch Wow. These guys are pretty new, 8 months I think, they took over a long time aquarium shop in the same space and I was really impressed. They put a lot of work into the place. Really impressed https://maps.app.goo.gl/5W61okM85h1y6m8HA Anyways bought 5 cherry fire shrimp from them. I guess they also have a breeding program in the back for shell dweller multis? Will probably order three pair from them for that project Anyways anyways. I murdered like, 4 or 6 cherry shrimp so far due to bad water parameters. Tank is finally cycled, got 5 more shrimp. I had one shrimp just... Sit in exactly the same spot for about 8 hours. Finally moved. Probably having a hard time acclimating. Looks like after ~2 days all five are still swimming, but they're still low on energy. This is after a 90 minute modified drip acclimation. Hoping they all survive, and can make a dent in my string algae Was looking at adding an amano shrimp but read one too many reports of amano shrimp attacking small fish and all my rice fish are juvenile so, yeah. Gonna roll the dice on Cherry shrimp
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Nov 10, 2023 09:52
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Hadlock posted:So I stumbled across $22 on Monday and was going to check out Concord aquarium and get some cherry shrimp since my local Petco has been out for the last couple of months You can get very small amano shrimp. They’ll grow, but not faster than the rice fish. I kept enormous amano shrimp alive for like 2 years. Rarely saw them all at the same time, and they never bothered any fish as long as the fish didn’t nip at them and they had enough algae. They do such a drat good job cleaning up, that when you don’t have much algae you gotta supplement with algae wafers and such. The cherry shrimp never seem to be able to get big enough to make enough of a dent. I dumped like 30 in my tank recently, and I’d guess there’s like maybe 10-20 left after the slow ones got picked off, but they’re just so small they don’t have the same impact.
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Nov 10, 2023 16:17
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Yeah everything I read says amano shrimp are the way to go My ricefish are still juveniles (the ones in the outdoor Hadlock fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Nov 10, 2023 |
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Nov 10, 2023 21:22
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Hadlock posted:Yeah everything I read says amano shrimp are the way to go https://aquahuna.com/products/amano-shrimp-medium Lots of other shrimp specific places sell em small too. This place is flat rate $12.99 shipping though which is rare.
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Nov 10, 2023 21:34
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:You can get very small amano shrimp. They’ll grow, but not faster than the rice fish. For me amano shrimp have been the hardiest shrimp. I've had a handful of them for about 3.5 years and last week lost the very first two in my 70G tank. During that period I've gone for several 2-3 month periods with no water changes, moved them from the original 40G to a 70G, and generally have never had to dedicate any time to feeding/caring for the shrimp specifically. They're even buddies with the rainbow darters, who obliterated every RCS in the tank inside a week. These guys are constantly busy grazing - they work hard! That said my 7G tank is cursed when it comes to shrimp - I've only had a handful last longer than a month or two in there and those handful were oddball Darwin Algae Shrimp. The water parameters seem solid, the tankmates are zero threat (CPDs) and the fish do fine with ~10 CPDs and a pair of otos. Yet even here I've had amanos survive for months longer than anything else (barring the Darwin Algae Shrimp) by hanging out in the canister filter.
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Nov 11, 2023 20:14
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Is this white patch anything to be concerned about? https://imgur.com/a/lWCdxaf
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Nov 12, 2023 07:15
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On anything other than a goldfish I’d be worried, but goldfish have lots of reasons to turn white. Sometimes they change colour as they mature, could be a patch where they experienced trauma (and goldfish are very rough when they breed). Check your water parameters to make sure that everything is as it should be and keep an eye on that fish for changes but a spot like that in isolation with nothing else going on wouldn’t overly concern me. It doesn’t look like an injury but zooming in I can see black speckles over that area which are more worrying to me than the white spot itself. Those could be more signs of trauma or of skin irritation ie from ammonia burn. Can you see if the scales are intact on that white spot? Is the fish otherwise behaving normally (same goes for any other fish you have in that body of water)? I think testing parameters, checking your water source too, and if your source water is ok, doing a big water change, is a good starting point.
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Nov 12, 2023 07:36
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Hadlock posted:So I stumbled across $22 on Monday and was going to check out Concord aquarium and get some cherry shrimp since my local Petco has been out for the last couple of months Hadlock just do what I do and
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Nov 12, 2023 07:52
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I had to euthanise one of my red sided barbs, she had some kind of tumor coming out from behind her gill plate which at first didn't seem to be bothering her, but got big enough that it was starting to wrap under her head and another tumor in her midbody also got big enough to affect her ability to swim. She had started doing that style of swimming where the fish struggles to just stay in one place and isn't showing interest in her surroundings and so on, so I knew it was time. What I wasn't expecting was how much clove oil it would take. I don't know if it was a function of her gills not working properly any more because of the tumor but the normal amount didn't have any effect at all - except, where I was dropping the emulsified clove oil into the water, she was swimming into it instead of shying away from it like they often do. It took maybe three times as much oil as usual and maybe three times as long, but she went peacefully in the end. Getting a good look at her afterwards, the tumors were really a lot bigger than they looked when she was in the water. I've been seeing a few of these weird growths in fish I've bred myself, I wonder if I'm not feeding them well enough when they are young so that they're unhealthy later in life, or if that's just a natural consequence of breeding from a very narrow genetic stock. Mostly I just let the lumpy fish live their lives normally but this poor girl was past that point. The guy that was coaching me on breeding rainbowfish swears black and blue that there is not enough vitamin C in prepared foods and always adds more to his feed mix so maybe there is some truth in that.
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Nov 12, 2023 18:48
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My shrimp tank, overnight, has exploded with like 60 or more bladder snails. Fantastic. Cool. I think it's way too many for me to even entertain the idea of picking them out individually. Tank inhabitants: 3 Endler's 1 Rabbit Snail 1 Nerite 15-20 neocaridina Is the move to remove the other snails and drop an assassin snail in the tank?
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Nov 14, 2023 18:59
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Adding snails to fix a snail problem is just switching your brand of snail, in my opinion. You could probably get a dent in that population manually by feeding less and netting them out, thing is they didn’t come from nowhere and they didn’t reveal themselves now for no reason. Obviously they came in on plants, that’s not a problem, but for the population to be large you must be overfeeding. And maybe they are stinking up the tank with their wastes or maybe there’s a circulation or oxygenation problem, there has to be SOME reason they’ve come out of hiding. So keep your eye on that tank and look for the message the snails are trying to tell you.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:18
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Sockser posted:My shrimp tank, overnight, has exploded with like 60 or more bladder snails. Fantastic. Cool. Just feed a little less, pest snail populations tend to explode when food is available, it will stabilize to more manageable levels in due time. There are worse things to have in a tank than pest snails. If you're SURE you want them gone, then yes you could introduce some assassin snails, though I've heard those will opportunistically go after shrimp if easier prey isn't available.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:18
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I don't know if it's possible to feed this tank any less I give my main tank a sprinkle of flakes in the morning, and whatever little bits of flake that are stuck to my thumb get scraped into the shrimp tank Honestly I'm not sure how these Endler's haven't starved with how little I feed them
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Nov 14, 2023 20:20
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Sockser posted:I don't know if it's possible to feed this tank any less In general, fish stomach is about the size of its eye. Shrimp will graze non-stop.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:14
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Spent a good chunk of time pulling out a bunch of bladder snails and staring pretty deep into the tank I've spotted at least a half dozen of these guys. Are these larval shrimp or have I managed to pick up another pest along with the snails? Biggest ones are maybe 3mm long. My shrimp are sky blue, these guys are all dull brown. They swim around like shrimp and their tail sections hook around like shrimp, but they don't super track as shrimp
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Nov 14, 2023 22:04
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Sockser posted:Spent a good chunk of time pulling out a bunch of bladder snails and staring pretty deep into the tank Looks like a scud, a kind of small amphipod crustacean. They can be something of a pest and can nibble on soft mosses, but are otherwise a mostly harmless detrivore. Fish tend to prey on them pretty aggressively when they can catch them, so it might explain how the Endlers are faring so well. Well, them and shrimplets. e: All that said, they DO compete for food and resources with your nice shrimp, they fill a similar ecological niche after all, so they're a bit bad in that regard. Doesn't sound like their population has totally gotten out of control though. Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 22:15
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Scud yes. Pretty cool little guys, but I noticed my population exploded when they started devouring my plants. As in my Java ferns, anbuias, etc. This was despite me feeding the tanks pretty well, but apparently it wasn't enough. The population has definitely dropped a lot since I started getting with guppies, and now the scuds remain hidden in the duckweed, and they barely make a dent in that stuff.
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Nov 14, 2023 22:21
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Are scuds algae eaters or do they prefer other plants?
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Nov 15, 2023 07:29
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Other plants as far as I can tell. They might go after algae if there's literally nothing else to eat, but I don't know how feasible that is. I look at scuds as floating mouths, if it's edible they will find a way to eat it. Even if everyone says most fish will bother it like Java fern.
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Nov 15, 2023 13:30
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Just had a nightmare of a moving experience, where I hired what I thought were professionals (from a proper LFS), only to have this happen: 1. Only one guy turn up, who expected me to help him move a 20G tank down one flight of stairs and up another 2. He did not remove the livestock from the tank first  3. He drained the water down to '1 inch' but ignored the fact my substrate was on a nearly 45 degree angle, so '1 inch' at the front of the tank was more like half an inch for ALL my livestock to crowd into 4. He moved the tank with substrate and most of the hardscape in it  5. When we got to the new location, he immediately put the big centerpiece of driftwood back in, before refilling the tank, which meant any fish trapped in the plants under it had zero hope of getting free 6. He also didn't bother leveling the stand at all before putting the tank on and refilling it, so now I have to try to jam shims in when I do water changes until I can get it level. 7. He reattached all my cords in the dumbest way possible (a minor thing compared to all of the above, but annoying considering my cable layout both super basic and 100% colour-coded) Luckily almost everyone survived - it looks like I lost 2 green neon tetras and maybe 1 or 2 glowlight tetras. The betta and all the corys made it and are happily out and about and eating again already. If I weren't already planning on upgrading to a new tank I'd be extremely paranoid about the integrity of the tank, considering 'do not move your tank with anything inside it' is literally point number 1 on basically every aquarium moving guide I've seen. But it's holding up for now, and I do have an emergency tank in the kitchen that I can move things to in case of a leak. But yeah. Next time I move I'm definitely going to make getting the tank out goal #1 as soon as the new place has electricity, because leaving it to 1 day before I had to hand the keys to the old place back meant I had basically no ability to say 'hey this seems like not the correct way to do this' and find another option to help me move. Very glad it's over and that I got mostly lucky with the outcome.
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Nov 19, 2023 04:07
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Why didn't you stop him from doing all that?
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Nov 19, 2023 08:34
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From experience moving 150+ plants, including some fairly expensive specimen pieces and bonsai, along with four rabbits, two turtles, and a whole mess of lizards (thankfully no fish that time), you gotta just give yourself like an extra week or two, or three, to do it yourself. Nobody will understand or care more than you.
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Nov 19, 2023 18:22
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Been really missing my aquarium lately. Live in a region with hard rear end water now and don't want to go through all the effort for the stuff I want.
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Nov 21, 2023 15:33
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My last surviving rasbora paviana killed the last female red-sided barb in his tank today, but in doing so he fatally smashed his head on the glass. I think he must have eaten half of my red finned danios too, there don't seem to be as many as there should be. I honestly didn't realise how big he was until I got him out of the water, I mistakenly thought the danios were safe. He was the last fish in that big tank stopping me from putting some schools of little fish in there, he was a bully and an rear end in a top hat, extremely shiny and pretty and I'm just sorry he (and the rest of his school, RIP) ended up in my tank because the species seems way too jumpy and mean for general fishkeeping. A bit like bala sharks I guess, some fish should just be in the wild in a big body of water where they can zoom as hard as they like. Or in the case of these guys, I think they are from fairly sloped rivers where there are riffles and they need to be able to jump to go upstream and that kind of jumping power isn't safe when there's a glass lid overhead or worse, a dry carpet floor beneath. For convenience sake, I moved the guppies from my 15g into the 5 foot tank, and I moved the guppies from the overcrowded 5g tank into the 15g tank and I think I'm going to move the 5g tank out of my kitchen altogether. The usual state of my 5 foot tank is the rasbora swimming where he wants and all the other fish (except the yoyo loaches) avoiding him; I think adding the guppies helped the other fish realise he was gone because the remaining red sided barbs came out of hiding, and the danios started doing breeding/spawning displays at each other. I'm not sure that the guppies like it but there is plenty of plant cover at the surface for them to hide in if they want. They aren't acting timid and can outswim the rainbows that tried to investigate them so I am sure they'll be fine.
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Nov 21, 2023 20:14
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Stoca Zola posted:My last surviving rasbora paviana killed the last female red-sided barb in his tank today, but in doing so he fatally smashed his head on the glass. I think he must have eaten half of my red finned danios too, there don't seem to be as many as there should be. I honestly didn't realise how big he was until I got him out of the water, I mistakenly thought the danios were safe. He was the last fish in that big tank stopping me from putting some schools of little fish in there, he was a bully and an rear end in a top hat, extremely shiny and pretty and I'm just sorry he (and the rest of his school, RIP) ended up in my tank because the species seems way too jumpy and mean for general fishkeeping. A bit like bala sharks I guess, some fish should just be in the wild in a big body of water where they can zoom as hard as they like. Or in the case of these guys, I think they are from fairly sloped rivers where there are riffles and they need to be able to jump to go upstream and that kind of jumping power isn't safe when there's a glass lid overhead or worse, a dry carpet floor beneath. If you want that silvery gofast fish look, might I suggest something like the Redfin Shiner or spotfin shiner? They jump, but I've never had them kill themselves on a lid. Never had issues with them killing or even especially harassing other fish, including stuff that could absolutely fit in their mouths. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Nov 21, 2023 |
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Nov 21, 2023 21:14
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I’m in Australia so I have rainbowfish as my go-fast native, I don’t think we can get shiners here. The whole rasbora saga came about from buying some unknown juvenile rasboras and hoping they’d turn out to be more r. cephalotaenia to match the one I got in a mixed batch of brevibora dorsiocellata, brevibora cheeya and one other rasbora-like fish that I was not able to identify. This kind of thing is from either overseas suppliers sending wild caught fish, or they don’t have good separation in their breeding ponds from wild fish coming in via supply water. The store I got the paviana from didn’t know what they were and had not ordered them but got them in a shipment anyway, it took weeks before they grew enough for me to work out what they were compared to all the other silver rasboras with lateral body stripes. Mostly I was intending to keep peaceful but active fish in that tank, which has ended up being a mix of Asian and Australian fish. South American fish have not been able to compete in that tank at all, I’ve even had to relocate the corydoras to a different tank after seeing them struggle to get food before the yo-yos stole it all. So the guppies will be an interesting experiment, as feral drainage ditch guppies they are small with uncomplicated fins and they’ve been fairly unflappable even with cats drinking out of their tanks. I think guppies are strong and versatile feeders too so I’m not worried about them being starved out by the other bigger fish.
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Nov 22, 2023 08:56
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Checked how the guppies were doing in my big tank today: Aw yiss! the good vibes are back. All the fish seem a lot happier and the guppies were out and about picking at food from the surface. I fed some floating micropellets and saw a guppy go for the same one as a rainbow fish without flinching, by length the rainbows are easily 4 times bigger. So it seems like a much happier tank now and everyone is chill with each other. A yoyo loach could probably slurp up a baby guppy if it wanted but maybe that is a feature rather than a bug.
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Nov 22, 2023 18:36
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Haven't posted any new corals in a while. I spent about $150 on aquarium stuff last weekend and promised myself I won't get anymore livestock till after new year. I forget exactly what this leather is called, but its growing fast.  birds nest, SPS, just got this a few days ago. I wasn't sure about i at first i got it cause it was on sale, but the polyps on it look really cool and have good extension  torch and hammer frags. the hammer looks so puffed up when the lights are on full  candy canes! 
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Nov 23, 2023 06:16
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So, uh, I've got a bit of an incest dilemma on my hands... I started with four mollies (2f and 2m) and three of them died off leaving one mother as well as 8 offspring. The other female was the first to go so it's possible that one of these offspring aren't hers but more than likely they are all her kids. The offspring look to be 3 male and 5 female but those three males just happen to be older than their siblings so they only have one target. I moved into a fairly small apartment this year so I only really want to have the one tank. I think I'm talking myself into getting a second tank (obviously, it will be bigger and cooler) but is it worse to murder my male fish or to be an accessory to fish incest?
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Nov 24, 2023 00:48
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Call Your Grandma posted:So, uh, I've got a bit of an incest dilemma on my hands... get an $11 Home Depot bin and a $10 air pump and a $5 sponge filter and separate out your fish for a bit?
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Nov 24, 2023 00:57
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Or make your own floating fry trap: get a plastic shoebox, poke/drill small holes in the side for water flow, and ziptie styrofoam on the top sides of the box. Male mollies go in, nothing gets out (unless they jump).
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Nov 24, 2023 01:04
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