T Dawg

One of Fred's companions, Mrs. Blue, was sitting on the bottom a lot for the past week or so. She would swim to the top for food, but would just sit on the bottom most of the time. She passed today. Fred has always had a disintegrating tail, but today his belly appears swollen. He is eating and swimming, but the belly swelling is a worry. He does not seem to be rubbing on anything. He is swimming at the top of the tank, were he normally varies depth more. I think it could just be constipation and want to skip a few days of food. I also debated tossing in a skinless pea. Other guppy and 15 or so fry all seem fine but the two issues could be related, so I figured I would post and get some opinions.

My Dad had several salt water tanks in the '70s '80s (and used to drive for hours for fish) and when I told him I was getting a tank he asked about my under gravel filter setup and started to give me a lecture on old water. As his son I listen respectfuly then was apropreatly cruel while describing my canisters and the progress of technology in general, but I was careful to say it was out of style and people still use UGFs. I laugh that most of his stories describing aquiring fish sound like drug deals, waiting in deserted parking lots at 4:30am looking for some guy... For the 18g we have a 200watt heater for the bucket which we fill with cold water and let it sit a few hours after adding the prime. It used to sit overnight and reach room tempature, then we had a "spare" heater. For the 90 I just fill from the tap and hope, still convinced on some deep level it is all going to go horibly wrong but strangly giddy from having a hose with water in the livingroom.

500ml Prime $15, 7ml-10ml a week for both tanks, so for us $0.25-$0.30 a week. Given how some of you trade however that could be a few 10G tanks, a bit of duckweed, and a light fixture a year!

Our small tetra whisper 20 is the loudest part of our setup, and reminds me of an old frige ready to die. Our Whisper 100 was turned on for all of 5 minutes before it was reboxed due to the racket. We are going to try setting the airpump in the basement and running the airline up. I would by one from a store with a decent retun policey and keep the recipt, and look to noise reduction options, such as running on a bit of sponge, behind a shelf, etc. . Noise is subjective at the best of times.

They tend to be very low cost if you already have an air pump, with complete kits ranging from $5-$15. Also good canidate for DIY. You can attach to the back of the tank, leave floating, or hide under a bit gravel. Differnt brands or shapes lend to differnt use. I'm lead to beleive if you do not have snails they last a very long time(5+ years), with just a rinse and squeeze in old talk water one every few weeks. Need to watch they do not disintigrate or plug up. Google searching sponge filters will bring up lots of good info and even dome demo youtube videos. I realy found this artical by Carl Strohmeyer very helpful as it talked about the good and bad of many filter types. We bought a small trangular sponge at the LFS then cut a hole in the middle and placed it over the pickup of our hang on back filter to keep the critters out. I find it easy to clean by placing the net over and unplugging the filter to catch any junk trapped on it.

Our house tempature fluctuates enough that we need heaters. I do not think using a single additive like prime is to mystical or expensive for new comers. When you add water add this, if the fish act different add a bit more and take water to the LFS for testing. The bottle lasts a long time, still on the origonal bottle even with adding another tank. The biggest issue I had when we started was the conflicting advice. Don't change too much water, don't change too little. An all in one dip strip is all you need, you need to the full blown master test kit. Toss out the carbon and add sponge, you need what the filter people give you. A guy who sadly no longer works at the LFS was the first that simplified it. Add prime, it will all work out. Yes what is going on is complex, but you don't need to understand it all. Don't worry about the rows of product, you have simple fish with simple needs.

What can I say, the product of their school not having a s@# ed program.

I guess I would need to find something other than Prime to dechlorinate with.

Could try and add a few Pygmy Cory Cats.

Another guppy minor today, Fred has been busy indeed. Fry everywhere. An Endler just started to shoot them out. No longer able to count them. Guess the Endlers were busier. Moving adults to 90 since we are getting a lot of harrasment.

The big issue is heat. Even if you had a candle in a glass holder floating in a glass bowl the heat given off would be enough to harm the fish.

Another guppy minor today, Fred has been busy indeed.

So we now have 4 baby fish darting about the tank. Given the frequency of births we seem to be having and seem to be able to expect from the Endlers we are trying to be better parents. While the normal tank dweller diet is flake food and freeze dried blood worms we have feeding tried frozen brine shrimp. A day after the shrimp feeding we noticed a Nitrate spike. While my guess if over feeding I figured if this was a good time to ask if this was a good mix of items to be feeding and if Nitrates could be a sign of over feeding or an expected side effect of shrimp. Feedings are twice a day, normaly flakes but occationaly instead of flakes we serve worms(once or twice a week) or brine shrimp (twice ever).

We saw a baby on the wrong side of the tank divider, and thought we had an escape from the Endler side as we could not see two of the baby Endlers. So we reinforced the divider (found a few bottom gaps) then netted the little one and stuck on the other side. Shortly after we found the other babies hiding in the ship. So on the one hand, I am glad the baby is on the safer side with more places to hide and smaller mouths, but I am wondering if I will be able to identify the Guppy and move it back over before it reaches breeding maturity. I am impressed after taking a few months off Fred seems back up to father/stud status, but his offspring have not lasted long in the past.

Great. Thanks for the advice. A tablespoon is about 15ml, and I put about 5 in tablespoons. I think we are at about 4ppm, but the offical tester says 5ppm. Now to wait for her to go to sleep so I can raid her tank for more gravel...

I think I figured out why my tank is not showing much progress after a month. When I took the example ammonia amount for Smokey’s 29 and tripled it for my 90 12mls got me 0.6ppm on my API tets kit. I figured the decimal point was off and gave it no more thought. Now I have added about 75ml of the safeway brand ammonia to get to 5ppm. Does that sound correct? Should I re-seed with gravel from the other tank or will the bacteria in/on it still be alivefrom the stuff I stold from the last tank since the ammonia has not been under 0.03ppm?

How do you get your tank up above 85c? I must have cheaped out on heaters. But having said that I mis-read and have been keeping my tank at 0.5ppm instead of 5ppm. Time to start over I guess.

There seems to be a lot of back and forth in general on this mixing, much like the debate on if they are a guppy. I have also now seen a few pics purporting to have fancy hybrid moms popping out nice male hybrid Endler. I suspect some of the cross breading comments can be tied to the general fragility of many fancy guppy lines. Sounds like since Endlers in general are small and the growth is rapid there is only a few hour window where the parents can eat the fry, and typically only do when overpopulated. Of course most of that hinges on if you believe what you read and see on the Internet. Our female guppies could still munch junior so for now we have a divider keeping the guppies separated. The fry we have seems to alternate between hiding and swimming with the school.

Yes, Endler, that's it. I could not find the bag and Cori had already gone to sleep. One of the many times I wish I knew more. I get the impression if we let them loose with the guppies we get sterile hybrids. While we are not looking to breed specificaly, having the tank self populate is a nice thought. Guess we need another 90.....

We scored some non guppy guppies with a bonus baby and a not so bonus snail. We also got a backup filter for the 18 Gal tank that we are aparantly no longer retiring that needs a part or two and a good cleaning. All and all a good day. Now off to update my signature.

Thanks for the clerification.

I'm still in keep poor Fred in his harem alive mode. Long story short we started with three fish and have, um, learned not to name them and to accept lost. Fred is one of the three origonal fish from before we learned not to name them, and he has had two girlfriends since november. My mandate is Fred must make it hapily to his new home. Fred goes, so does the tank. If Fred and the gals are on the move, no new fish for a while. If there is a worry this could be high risk the significant other has said would rather keep both tanks running and have new fish test the new tank. Sounds like unless there is some other issue (I failed to rinse out some bad stuff, got hand soap in the tank, etc) there shuold be no reason not to move them over.

I could do a variant of that. I could take gravel from the old tank and use it to fill the trays in my XP3, then load the XP2 with the supplied media, then move the HOB over, give that an hour or so to circulate, and then move the fish over. While the water does not have much bacteria in it, I thought it may be easier on the fish to have the water they were used to. I'm not planning on any new fish for a few weeks.

I was hoping if I am moving the filter over I would not need to cycle the tank. From the other replies I was gathering that was the case, but your last line seems to cast doubt on that. I was not expecting that my few days of having the tank running was starting the cycle, but testing the equipment for leaks, noise, and failure. I am trying to find out if I need to start a cylce, or if I can just move everything over since the old tank is being retired.

If well washed, is it safe to use stainless steel nuts on the plastic tubs to hold them down? Our air stones keep drifting off the bottom and the tubing keps workings its way above the gravel. Any other sugestions to keep everything on the bottom?