McTurtle

Great photos. What a beautiful tank!

I need to trim back some of the stem plants again, but this is the current setup. I have 2 rasbora fry so far. One is almost adult size now. Hopefully there will be more in the future. These are the other tanks I have setup, except for my original 10 gallon which is upstairs... Empty 5 gallon awaiting a heater, 5 gallon betta tank, 10 gallon adult guppy tank (6 guppies and a bunch of fry that will be moving out soon), 10 gallon betta tank (soon to be guppy fry tank #2) 20 gallon guppy juvie tank, 2 x 5 gallon tanks setup/running no fish yet (reserved for killi's if I actually manage to hatch any) - I'm also awaiting a new heater here too since the one I have in it is too large and keeps the water at 30C on the lowest setting :P I'm excited to hatch out the killi's but also a little scared. I want them to live. I've also got to set up my 2nd brine shrimp hatchery to make sure I have a constant source of food since my microworm culture died while I was away. :P

I have the San Francisco Bay Brine Shrimp Hatchery - black box - and it works, but I'm fairly sure it's not efficient. I did drill a hole and put an air stone in, but it is a box, so I'm sure eggs get stuck in the corners. I also don't have a way to keep the temperature up and so it sits at 20C and only gets light when I add the collection bottle. I'm ready to move on to a better setup, possibly by cutting up some pop bottles. Anyone have suggestions or a setup you like? Do you rinse off your shrimp before feeding them to your fish?

Thanks for the info! I guess I'll be investing in some new books.

So, getting guppies to breed is easy, breeding guppies is more of a challenge... I have two galaxy boys and I'd really like to get the line going, but I haven't found females. So I have 4 females of unknown lineage, 2 red tails, 2 blue tails, and we'll see how far I get. I have about 12 fry that are about 2 weeks old and have just moved into a 20 gallon. I have another 12 or so that were probably born last night and survived because I moved their older siblings out. My first batch of fry are going to be rehomed because the females were probably preggers when I brought them home. The second batch too, unless anybody happens to look like dad... This is probably going to be hopeless, or at least a long slug, but I'm going to have fun trying it. Anyone ever get a line out of fish store guppies? I'm also looking for info on guppy genetics if anyone knows of a good source.

Well, at long last Frank has made his triumphant (I hope) return to his new home. His tank has gravel, plants etc and has been up and running for two weeks without him. I put a piece of filter material in front of the HOB outflow to break the current and he seems pretty happy. It's only held on with an elastic so I'm going to have to find either more elastics or another more secure method because I'm sure the current elastic won't last forever.

HOB is a Whisper EX45. I put some gravel and plants in today. Looking at the plants there does seem to be a fair amount of current in the tank. Maybe I can dampen it a bit., but he was nowhere near the input. I'm going to wait until next Tuesday to reintroduce him to this tank. Should I change out the water? I think the Prime breaks down over time, so maybe I don't need to?

There is a HOB filter. It is rated for a larger tank and should be providing a lot of oxygen. It's much larger than the one on my tank at home. I don't rember the model off the top but I will add it in later. I was thinking Prime might be the cuprit, but I added about just under 5 ml for the 20 gallon tank since Edmonton water has had ammonia spikes I usually double dose. He doesn't have a problem with that dose at home. It could be that he doesn't like the filter current... But it's not that strong. The water might be a few degrees warmer. 23C vs 21C. Not a huge change either.

I moved Frank my goldfish to my work this morning. He had his 20 gallon tank all set up and some filter media from an established tank in the filter. I also added Prime to the water when I set it up. I put him in the tank around 9:30 am and by 5:00 he was having issues swimming and gasping at the top of the tank off and on. I took him back home with me tonight and put him back in his old tank. He seems back to normal. I brought some of the tank water home with me and there is 0 ammonia, 0 nitrates and the KH is 8 drops which is the same as the tank at home. I don't have a gH kit so I can't test that. The strange thing is that the Betta I had at work developed a similar problem, but it occurred over a month and I thought it was constipation. The goldfish is not constipated. I don't think the betta actually was either. Any ideas what could be in the water that would cause a swim bladder issue? The water is plain old Edmonton tap water, but it is going through some potentially old pipes and probably sitting in them for a while. I would really like to take Frank back to work as he was adopted as the office mascot, but I can't see myself lugging 20 gallons of water to work. He's got another week at home to get over the stress and for me to figure out the issue. Any suggestions would be most welcome!

Sorry for your loss.

Thanks, I'll check them out. Melafix seems to help when I add new fish. Also I've been dosing my tank that had ich to help seal up any wounds. It seems to be good for minor stuff.

I've noticed I'm going through quite a bit of Prime and to a lesser extent, melafix. Any suggestions on where to purchase more for less?

I ended up with a two 5 gallon tanks, some miniature water lettuce, 3 bandit corries and a goldfish. Why did I buy a goldfish??? *facepalm* Totally not what I was going to put in my 20 gallon. He is fun to watch though, for my $1 investment.

I'm getting pretty excited about it! First one for me too.

Nice!

I bought a new to me 20 gallon and realized I probably shouldn't put it on the resin shelving I use for my 10 gallon tanks. Any ideas for an inexpensive stand? Would a TV stand work? hrmmm... How did I get from one tank to eight tanks again???

Mine is on the output of my canister filter. It works, but I don't know how efficient it is.

Should this be on the upcoming events calendar?

I've been treating with Rid-Ich + - fomalin and malachite green. The fish are enjoying the daily water changes and laid eggs. I think they're cory eggs. Could be the otos, but they're pretty big. I think the chemicals have damaged the eggs and I don't expect any fry. Once the ich is gone I may try to get them to breed again. I still see spots after a week of treatment. I finally gave in and bumped the temperature to 80F yesterday. I know the corys and otos aren't happy about it. I can't treat for forever as my plants all have holes and are struggling. *sigh* Will ramshorn snails eat the eggs? I see them on the eggs, but I don't see any damage. I don't think the eggs are going to develop anyway, so I'm not worried about it right this second. I'd like to know for the future though.

So my tank was motoring along quite happily. I even had a danio fry. That was until I brought in some more punctatus corys. I think they brought ick in with them. I've lost 2 panda corys, 2 punctatus and 3 danios. It's heart breaking. Stupid stupid stupid me for not having a quarantine tank. I'm treating with Ich med, I forget the name of it, but it's basically malachite green. Arg! I would have gone with a milder treatment but it advanced pretty far before I caught it. I hope the treatment isn't worse than the disease... ARGGGG! So I think my recent batch of plant trimmings is going in the trash. I don't want to spread the disease. Stress is...

I got my regulator from Aquarium Central and CO2 canister from Oxipro. I bought my light off Ebay and it works great. Lost of people like the hydroponics places for local cheap lighting.

I usually leave leaves on plants until they start to decay. Then they pollute the water too much so I remove them. If that`s anubias the leaf will last a good while longer. I don't see the harm in leaving it, but if it's ugly/ bothers you you could trim it off. Sorry, can't help you with the rest.

Arg! I hate the touch pad on laptops. I wrote out my post and then somehow managed to close the window. Arg.... This should probably be a journal instead of a never ending thread, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Anyhow, I hit up the LFS for airline tubing for my 2 "new to me" 10 gallon tanks. The initial idea was to divide one for the betta boys and have another for set up for breeding and then house a female in the vacated 2.5 gallon tanks. I couldn't find the slider binder spines to make dividers and I'm kind of bogged down with other things right now, so I'm going to skip trying to breed bettas and just stick to enjoying them. So they've lucked out and have a 10 gallon each. The shelving I have them on is just a tad too short between shelves. The tanks fit but it's really difficult to get my hands in and move anything around. While at the LFS I broke down and bought another cory who will hopefully team up with my "third wheel" cory. I also picked up 6 panda corys. Crazily enough I ran into another AA member who recognized me from my cory horror story and helped me find the right guy to fit with my school. I really like the way the 65 gallon has shaped up. I will take pictures after I do a water change tomorrow. Between the otos and the snails I have no algae to speak of. The Star grass has filled in it`s section nicely and everything else is still reasonable except the parrot feather which needs to be trimmed back again. My ramshorn snails have turned out to be spotted which is kind of cool. There are a few to many so I'm going to move some into the betta tanks. I may have to get some pea puffers if the snails keep replicating.

:rofl:

I went away for 5 days and my plants went insane. My 12" parrotfeather plant is now at least 24" and the green temple leaves are 3" wide and 6" long. Seriously insane. I just finished replanting and I'm going to have to trim it all back again. This time I'm going to try a more severe pruning....