BettaFishMommy

my moss balls fared just fine during treatment for those nasty lil worms last year. you can even keep marimo balls in a jar with frequent water changes. it's up to you. i'm not planning on selling any of them to anyone else at this time, so no rush.

when i treated my tank i had apple snails and ramshorns in it. i did have one apple pass away shortly after, but that may have been due to it being a heavy breeder and it was at the end of its short life span anyway (focusing energy on breeding shortens lifespan, IMO, and apple snails usually only live a year to 18 months). i believe i had a few cherry shrimp in there at the time too, and they fared fine. my plants suffered a little browning but bounced back in a short time with no problem at all. i did frequent parameter tests during treatment and never had an ammonia or nitrite spike, so i believe my beneficial bacteria didn't take any damage. when i dosed using the 5 grams per 100 gallons method, i had no fish stress and worms were passing within hours of dosing. if i ever have to go through callamanus again (knock on wood that i don't!), i will try the 1 gram per 100 gallons. buying fish from stores is just fine as long as they look healthy and you quarantine them in a separate tank for a minimum of 30 days. if during that 30 days they take ill or have any infectious issues (parasites, etc), then the 30 day quarantine restarts after treatment of the issue is completed.

treat the whole tank, and any other tanks that may have had contact from shared equipment (nets, gravel vacs, even your hand unwashed between tanks!). an adult female callamanus worm will spit out TONS of eggs, so removing the infected fish does nothing, it just creates another infected tank that you have to treat. i have read that callamanus used copepods in the tank as a intermediate host, and it's not the fish eating the eggs that infects them, but eating the callamanus in a certain stage after it has left the copepod. this is why running a tank fallow (no fish in it) isn't a cure for callamanus like it is for ich (which requires a fish to survive). with levamisole (the only callamanus treatment IMO!), you want to keep the lights off during treatment. do the first dose, wait two days, then do a HUGE water change and vacuum your substrate as well as possible (if you have plants, just float them for the duration of treatment, they'll be fine). as mentioned, you need to dose again in two weeks to get all those eggs that would have hatched in the meantime. 5 grams of levamisole will treat 100 gallons of tank. you want to make a stock solution first, then use that stock solution in the tank. never put dry powder levamisole directly in a tank! mix the 5 grams of levamisole with 100 ml of water. each ml will now treat 1 gallon of tank. if you only have, for example, one 20 gallon tank, then cut the dry powder into 5 equal piles and use only one pile in 20 ml of water. it's pretty hard to overdose on levamisole. i used it last year when my one 55 gallon had callamanus, and most likely went over the dose by a little (my pile eyeballing skills are not that great, lol). thankfully, i had separate equipment for all my tanks then, and there was no cross contamination.

i've had some moss balls for over a couple years now and they haven't grown huge at all, maybe gaining a couple inches or so at most. you do need to turn them and give them a squish now and then to keep them healthy. that's right folks, gotta squish your balls! hahaha! DragonNeko, if you want to come down to millwoods, i have a moss ball i could part with. $5. pm me if you want it.

I loved going in to the old store! haven't had a chance yet to go pester Henry and Gillian at the new one yet, lol.

sand is actually the substrate that cories prefer, and most sands won't hurt their barbels. what can potentially erode barbels is a high amount of the wrong kinds of bacteria in/on the sand in a tank that doesn't receive the required maintenance. when choosing sand for your tank, take a handful of it in the palm of your hand and feel it with your other hand, putting a good amount of pressure on the sand. this way you will be able to tell if the particles are sharp or jagged. play sand and pool filter sand are both perfectly safe for cories.

you can switch your substrate bit by bit, if you are concerned about losing bacteria. do it in thirds and you should be fine. don't clean your filters for a while if you can. if you are using play sand (like from home depot), make sure you rinse it really well, multiple times, before adding to the tank. the silt in play sand can get pulled up by your filters and ruin the motor/impeller. IMO, those 'live sand' bags are a crock of you know what, lol. think about it - beneficial bacteria need oxygen to survive. is there any oxygen in that sealed bag of sand, sitting on the store shelf for who knows how long? nope.

i personally wouldn't breed any betta that came out of a store, since they are such 'mutts' and you don't know the lineage or genes you are working with. there are so many pet store bettas out there already, why add to it? as for nippy shrimp, i've never seen my green and cherry shrimp nip at one of my bettas' fins in the 2.5 gal, and he's a veil tail.

most stores get their bettas in at the 6 month age at the minimum, since it takes time for the finnage to grow in and nobody wants to buy a betta without the pretty fins. 6 months is getting close to full grown and also the start of breeding prime age. his body may gain in size but i think his fins will stay at plakat length. he doesn't look to have any fin damage from the shrimp at all, and he is a pretty boy for sure!

oh my Jason! if i put all the fish except the rainbows and the sharkie from the 55 in the 20 they'd have just about no room to swim! lol. the 55 is pushing the limit on stocking IMO, and i think with that many fish in the 20 there would be fights and injuries. i'm thinking of keeping just mine and my kiddo's favourites, and selling the rest. her betta in the 2.5 isn't looking too good these days, and i think it might be his time to go fairly soon but that means one less tank to worry about, what with my interest waning. i'm just going to put the 2.5 in my storage room, and keep it handy for a qt/hospital tank, since the fish i'll be keeping for the 20 are all going to be smaller sized. since last night i've been tweaking the 20's future stock list in my mind over and over, trying to figure out who to keep, who will work well in the 20, and who i absolutely will need to sell. a lot of the 55's plants are going to go in the 20, but some i will be selling.

how old is he? he looks about full grown, so i don't think his fins are going to grow out much more at all. just by looking at the photo he looks to be a delta or super delta plakat, due to the shorter finnage. the splitting of the rays at the end of his tail fin tell me he has some crowntail genes too. he's from a pet store, eh? he could be a motley assortment of different betta tail types if so. pet store bettas are usually 'mutts', and you never know their exact gene pool. ETA - in the first photo he isn't flaring fully, so he could very well be a HM. put a mirror up to his tank to see him flare all the way, and if his caudal fin edges make a straight line @ 180 degrees, then yes, half moon.

the filter that is having issues is the rena xp4 canister that i have on an unplanted tank. all my filters on my planted tanks are running just fine. for larger tanks i always run two filters for this very reason, in case one should crap out, but with the 55 that had the canister problem last night, i need all the filtration i can on that tank, since there's an oscar and a paratilapia polleni in there, and they're big messy guys.

i know, i know, i'm double posting, but what does everyone think of this stock list for the 20? all these fish are currently living together in the 55 with no issues. 1 x Betta [Male] 3 x Rose Danio 1 x Kribensis 1 x Platy 1 x Black Ruby Barb 1 x Bristlenose Pleco 2 x Albino Cory 1 x Emerald Green Cory i realize it's a bit of a hodgepodge, but some of the fish, as mentioned, belong to my kiddo. i really don't want to see my female pleco go (the male is such a recluse he might as well not even be there, lol), and the cories i chose are my favourites although i know it's best to have more than 3, they should be alright. i ran the above list through Aqua Advisor and other than the silly warnings it gave regarding how some of those fish couldn't live together (come on now, a betta and a pleco together is not recommended? obviously Aqua Advisor has never heard of a community tank, lol), it says my stocking is 82%, and i know my filter can handle the bioload.

well folks, i've been in the hobby for about three and a half years. over that time i've ran three 10 gallons, three 20 gallons, two 55's, and a motley assortment of small tanks and betta bowls. right now i've got the two 55's, a 20 long, and a 2.5 betta tank. i think it's time for me to scale back for now. over the past little while water changes have become something i don't look forward to at all, i find myself enjoying/watching the fish less, my three planted tanks are becoming a bit more work than i want them to be, and i just had my biggest canister filter crap out on me tonight, with absolutely no funds to get a new one just hope the motor for the rena xp2 canister can handle the media of both canisters packed into the xp4 canister body for a while! now comes the hard part. which tanks do i keep? which fish do i keep? i want to only have two tanks running, and i think i only want one of those tanks to be a 55, since i couldn't bear to part with Gus or Chuck (oscar and paratilapia polleni). and there are some smaller fish that i'm not 'allowed' to let go, since they technically belong to my kiddo, lol. so i think it's going to be the 55, the 20 long, and for now the 2.5 (until the kiddo's betta passes away), that stay. the stocking for the 55 is set, and i can't move either Gus or Chuck to a smaller tank (their 55 is pushing the limit on minimum tank size as it is). i'll be moving one of the filters on the other 55 over to the big guys' tank after the other tank is sold. here's my stock for the other 55 and the 20 long. could you folks please help me in figuring out which fish would work in the 20 long (planted, mopani driftwood, sand substrate, AC 50 hob)? albino rainbow shark - he's a biggun, about 6-7 inches one kribensis bristlenose pleco pair three longfin rosy barbs one black ruby barb four bronze cories two albino cories one emerald cory one barbatus cory one peppered cory two boesmani rainbows turquoise rainbow five zebra danios three rose danios five perugiae limia one male betta one male platy many ramshorn snails (in the 55) six australian rainbows (currently in the 20) i'd really like to keep some cories and the plecos, but the 20 just isn't big enough for all those guys on the bottom. the kribensis, black ruby barb, and platy 'belong' to my kiddo. it'll be pulling teeth to get her to let them go, and i don't know if i can get away with having them leave when she's not home, lol. the zebra danios are actually from the U of A science lab, and i did tell my friend that got them for me that they'd be here forever, but i'm not sure if i want them to stay. the betta in the 55 i really like, and he'll probably stay. he's been in the 20 long with the aussie rainbows before. the rose danios i'd really like to keep, since i've never seen them anywhere except for the 'display only - not for sale' tank i got them from back when Aquarium Enthusiasts was closing down. give me a hand folks, i need your input! after the decision is made, i'll be posting my 55 for sale, a bunch of plants, whatever fish i'm not keeping, and some equipment as well. and thanks for 'listening' to my long winded post. i've been fighting with myself on this decision and posting this thread made things easier for sure. i'll be sad to see some of my finkids go, but it's for the better.

regarding the play sand at HD, it's a bag by bag basis. some will be clean, some will need one heck of a lot of rinsing! lol. i've picked up two bags and they were like night and day - bag #1 needed rinsing until i was blue in the face, and bag #2 just needed a couple light rinses before it was ready to go in the tank. another thing i found very interesting was that bag #1 caused a fair amount of diatoms in the 55 gallon i used it in, and bag #2 so far has caused no diatoms in the 20 gallon (set up since Dec 22). i know it was the sand in the 55 causing the diatoms because i recently went bare bottom in that tank, removing all the sand, and haven't had a diatom issue since!

i have all my tanks set up in a way that i can view 3 out of 4 of them from the couch, with the lil 2.5 gallon being on the kitchen countertop out of view unless i'm sitting on the other end of the couch (not my usual spot, lol). i haven't had cable tv in almost 7 years, and have fish for 3.5 of those years. don't need tv when you have fishy tv! lol. quite often when i'm on the laptop, sitting on the couch, i get 'distracted' from what i'm doing and stare at the tanks for a while..... look at the clock after what i think is just a few minutes...... over an hour later. hahaha! here's my view

come on now Jason, you've got the whole front of the tank to hang hobs on! -roll-

i wish i could have made it!!!!! was my niece's birthday party and i couldn't miss that. definitely going to make it to the fall auction :thumbs:

sounds like i've got to take a big long bus ride one day soon and go check this store out!

i kept a huge silver ghost veil angel in with a varied assortment of community fish, snails, and some red cherry shrimp for a couple years with no issues. even perugiae limia fry (a small livebearer) survived and thrived. mind you, my angel was super placid. it's possible the angel may have picked off a few shrimp, but i never did see him near the bottom hunting them. on a side note, i'd separate your male and female betta - it's just taking too much of a risk housing them together all the time, even in a large tank.

nice bettas! fyi, it's not 'twin tail'. the proper term is double tail. and 'veil fin' is actually veil tail. your male blue body red dragon looks like he may have a touch of rose tail in his genes.

i can't make it to the auction have a family birthday party to go to. first auction i'll have missed since the big Sands hotel show! as for not sucking up fry while doing water changes - wrap a piece of old pantyhose around the end of your gravel vac or hose, secure it with a rubber band, and start up your siphon. you won't get as much muck out of the tank this way, but it means your fry won't go for a tube ride, lol.