The Aquarium Thread: Get him an account he's ready for sea spam

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Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Does anyone know if Hairgrass and HC can co-exist?

# ¿ Jun 23, 2013 13:25

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 02:55

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

The Oncoming Storm posted:

What was it? Do I have to nuke this tank? I'm so sad and frustrated, we were gong to set up a 40L breeder and everything, but they just kept dying on us.

Hello,

What kind of PH did you have for the B.macrostoma, and substrates/decorations etc. What kind of filtration and temperature ranges were you experiencing? What kind of heater did you have?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 01:53

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

So today one of my tanks possibly sprung a leak. I am unsure if it was a capillary action thing on the aquatopia's plastic housing, because I overfilled it, or an actual leak.

I lowered the water a little bit, and use some two part plumbing epoxy near one area. Seems to have stopped.

Here is a shot of my Betta tank.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2013 14:01

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

The Oncoming Storm posted:

Ok so I was going to reply to this but then my keyboard died, it's currently in pieces and I've got a USB one now. Heh.

Temp was about 78, though the week before he died it somehow climbed up to 82. Not sure if it was from the spazzy weather (It's 90! It's raining! It's 90...) messing with ambient temperature or if the heater malfunctioned. We usually use Marina or Fluval heaters. It was an adjustable. We got the temp down when we noticed he was a bit lethargic....and he seemed to perk up, but he wasn't eating much.

Water here is soft. The exact water params I don't have but the last time I'd checked them all the ranges were normal - no screaming red nitrite or green ammonia. The tank had also just been cleaned that same week and I went over it good with a gravel vac. He was the only fish in there so couldn't have been that much poop...

I had given him some bloodworms that night and later he had a round belly, we thought maybe he'd finally eaten his fill, but the next morning his belly was hard and he had an ouchie on his bottom lip. Given the situation we had last month with our eel I decided to praz the tank. The ouchie got worse - it was a white circular spot like scale scrape at first, but then it filled in red in the center and got larger. He also had some suspicious redness elsewhere on his body. I did some googling and it looked like signs pointing to bacterial infection so I added erythromycin. A few hours later he was gone and he had even more spots on him, white, slightly raised, and the ulcer on his lip was a full on hole. He was gone by then, but I looked at him for a long time and looked at disease pics for even longer and I think it was Columnaris. The last thing I'd seen him eat was freeze dried bloodworms. I threw away that package just in case.

In happier news, we've got three b.channoides fry left which are big and happy, and a new female adult to keep daddy company.

AND an air conditioner.

If I was going to breed betta macrostoma I'd start with maybe a 2 foot tank, basic led lighting and some hardy anubias.

Substrate wise, Up Aqua soil substrate, and underneath that some ADA powersand. Driftwood etc. You need to maintain Ph between 4 and 6!

I'd have a fry tank next to it, using the same water as the main tank. (maybe you would need a sump to achieve this.)

If you do get fry, put them in a fry trap in the main tank for eventual move to the fry tank.

Filter wise, I would use a small Hob with a shrimp guard on the intake.

Heater wise, Use something like a shogun or Eheim Jager thermostatic heaters. You want something with a real thermostat. If you are still worried, you could use a chiller. Maintain 20-25 degree C.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 03:28

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Weekly, a dash of CO2 booster to my water change water.
Fert tablets every 3 months.

That's it. The reason I get such vibrant green colours and crazy growth is the nano tanks have a very low profile and allow the LED lights to penetrate water easily.

I don't use a CO2 setup.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 09:17

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Cowslips Warren posted:

Hooray for fuckups.

I don't know if I didn't wash my hands enough or the water was too hot, or the new plant I put in did something, but one of my hillstream loach tanks went from 20 down to maybe 5 overnight. The entire tank is aquascaped with lots of rocks, so after work today I get to tear it down and fish out all the bodies, no pun intended. Found one floating, which I thought was odd, and then saw the mounds of shrimp and scuds and assassin snails over more on the bottom.

Here's hoping I don't lose the rest of them. This was one of my favorite tanks.

If you don't suspect low oxygen issues, It could be the new plant, outside grown chemically treated etc but this would nuke your snails and shrimp too.

The shrimp and snails are fine?

# ¿ Jul 30, 2013 04:09

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Cowslips Warren posted:

No, the new anubas was from amother tank with fry, so that was clean. Found one adult and 3 surviving fry. Shrimp and snails and scuds continue fine.

drat, could be a virus, bacteria, anything. That's a real shame because I love those fish, and making them a 'River' tank is so much fun.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2013 23:33

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Eifert Posting posted:

Fish stores in Korea are rage inducing because they have poo poo LEDs and no CO2 setup but for some reason unknown to god or man their plants are always rocking and there's never a scrap of algae. witchcraft.

"Mystical Orient" apparently only applies to aquascaping.

I only have nano tanks, poo poo LED's and no CO2 and manage to get some decent growth. I've found that giant duckweed, Darwin algae eater shrimps and some maintenance help reduce algae.
The deeper one still has alot of green but growth is not ballistic like my other tanks.

The soil I use is Upaqua, with some fert tablets and Amano powersand to make up the base with fluorite.

Here is some quick pics.

Deeper nano

Standard nano

# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 13:38

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Eifert Posting posted:

How do y'all gravel vac when you've just planted some rooted plants? I have some hairgrass that is almost uprooted just by current alone.

Never gravel vac soil substrates. Ever.

Soil substrates will become like mud after time, and if you vacuum it will cause cloudiness, and some report spikes of ammonia/nitrites.
Even when I used fine river gravel I never vac'd it because I had good Stricta growth from the fish poop layers forming inside the gravel.

Kharnifex fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Aug 23, 2013

# ¿ Aug 23, 2013 12:38

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

vegemitesandwhich posted:

I renovated my fish tank today and created Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The fish seem pretty pleased with it.

This is excellent, well done!

I too have been cleaning my tanks, I will try and post some pics tonight. I need some decent long scissors to prune all the carpeting plants.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 03:01

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

I need to completely redo the fluval edge tank.

The giant duckweed stuff rooted down in my tanks and started expanding like crazy, so I had to pull out all but 2-3 individual plants.

Waiting for my mountain clouds and maculata to breed. I also have some mountain clouds in my Aquaponics ponds.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 13:27

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

LingcodKilla posted:

Giant duck weed will root? I was wondering why it had such long dangling roots. Do you just bury it with your finger to help it along? It's growing really good in my tank along with two different swords.

I think it's Amazon Frogbit, I think it loves being so close to the LED's that it went through an extensive root growth period and anchored itself, it's not something I wanted to happen. Some of the leaves also extend themselves up out of the water.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2013 23:59

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

mindofme posted:

I have one of those dudes in my 55 gallon. Its known as a reticulated hillstream loach, or a borneo loach. They are semi-schooling in that they like company, but will work just fine without a buddy. My LFS says they'll only eat green algae, but I've seen mine chow down on brown algae too.

They also come in a spotted pattern

I had one of those in my tank too - but when my heater decided to crank the temperature up to 36C the poor thing didn't make it.

They are a lot of fun to watch swimming around the tank during feeding time, they move like little manta rays! Mine likes to chase the corys around, but really can only move in 2 dimensions at one time - the corys just jump up a little to avoid him.

There is a few different types of these happy little guys, from a few different countries.

http://www.loaches.com/articles/hillstream-loaches-the-specialists-at-life-in-the-fast-lane is a good resource for them.

At the end of the year I plan to make a simulated river tank with a low profile and open top to breed some.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 08:15

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

So after reducing the frogbit in my tanks to two plants each, it has started to rapidly fill the tank again. Outside in my ponds, it does not seem to do this well at all.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2013 12:02

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

demonR6 posted:

What the hell is the thing with the hooked claw?

Hello, as mentioned previously, it's a snail.

I think my LED's do well due to the short depth of the nano tanks I use.

While watching my Betta, I noticed he has a very interesting trick to devouring snails. He waits for them to extend their foot, and crawl along, and quickly bites them and flicks the shell against the glass, popping the meaty part out.

He is slowly building a throne of 'skulls'.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 08:08

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

I like snails, they play an important role in my tanks, like surgeons removing the dead/damaged parts of plants.

I did have an issue the other day where a very large one crawled down through the outflow pipe of a pump I have, and stopped the impeller, as his shell and meaty bits were ground into a mess inside the pump.

Today I saw a Pseudohemiodon catfish at my local aquarium, probably one of the only ones in Australia. Very odd species.

He was an offspring from a breeding pair that had died, I was told they are carnivorous and require fine sands etc to sift through and hide, kind of like a sole.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=1824

He looked like these ones:

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 10:04

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Found a very very long freshwater bristleworm in one of my shrimp tanks. It was sandwiched against the glass in the Aquasoil and a bright white colour with red veins, It fled as soon as I grabbed it with my tweezers, and changed to a deep red colour as it moved.

Any idea if these guys are bad news? None of the online forums seem to have any clues.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 15:33

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Excellent, I'll try to catch it. He was about 4 inches long, 5mm in diameter.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 22:29

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

jamontoast posted:

So with all this talk of worms, I thought I might upload a [very old, and low quality] video of something I found when I was migrating my old shrimp tank. It popped up out of the substrate when I was netting out the last of the babies and shocked me more than a little.

If it helps, it appeared to have tightly packed spines running up and down each side of its body. Anyone have any idea what this guy is?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYg9EFlP0Y

Hah drat! that looks exactly like the one I saw (save the colour changing)

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 14:20

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

My Betta enjoy all my culls (Cherry shrimp), they start by tearing all the legs off them and breaking the bodies apart.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2013 13:12

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

jadebullet posted:

I need your guys help. I have a 39 gallon tank with sand substrate, brackish water, and a fish that loves to kick up sand. I have gone through one impeller based filter since I bought the tank, and the second filter is dying quickly.

As of right now the impeller rattles really bad, and I have to wash the inside of the filter once a week due to sediment build up.

Anyway, as I have a job now, I am in the market for a new filter, but I don't know what to get. I need some sort of filter where the suction happens post filtering, due to the amount of sediment that gets kicked up. I was looking at maybe getting a canister filter, but I don't know how they work, so I am not 100% sure if that would suit my purposes.

I tried using a prefilter sponge, but that just resulted in such a reduced water flow that it wasn't worth it.

short term fix, take out the impeller and use vaseline on it.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 10:06

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

jadebullet posted:

Already did that. The sediment sure abraded that off real fast. It unfortunately didn't help the noise too much, and the next day all of the Vaseline was gone.

Are you able to show us a picture of your current setup?
Canister filters are very easy to use, and there is a few online guides for the generic and specific branded ones.
They usually come with decent instructions as well.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2013 02:56

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

Happy New Year!

While pulling out frogbit I managed to rip up two very large 4 by 4 inch mats of HC, which I gave to a bud. Now Im waiting for new growth by the remainder.

Time for Hikari algae wafers.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2013 14:59

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

I agree, shrimp are so fun to watch!

# ¿ Jan 31, 2014 13:43

Kharnifex: Sep 11, 2001; The Banter is better in AusGBS

The freshwater bristleworms are back in my tank, the fluke poison didn't harm them, I was tricked!

I will try and catch one at some stage, as they are breeding and I worry my shrimp are doomed.

Check out this little blighter, a Weather loach, a pest in Aus, 2 of them found their way into my backyard pond, I've added them into my aquaponics system with the Koi carp.