DevonCichlid

Finally decided to dedicate at 90G for these F1 Moba. Only 9 of them available but it's a start!

Admittedly I've been on the road a lot but how did I miss this little guy? About a nickel sized F1 Moba Frontosa from my Wild Caughts. I guess I should pay closer attention.

Does anyone know of a supplier of actual 6ft LED aquarium fixtures in Canada? I have a 4ft on both of mine but would prefer full coverage. I've seen them on Aquatraders but haven't heard any feedback so just checking on here. I'm also not looking for super expensive models, it's just for lighting and not for growth.

I've been using AlgaeMax for a couple of months now with my Tropheus, likely after seeing RD suggest it. They go absolutely crazy for the small pellets. I was still using the HBH wafers a couple times a week just to watch them eat their "family" meals. Anyways, I'm super happy this far with the AlgaeMax, give it a shot

Put in a QT tank, use Paraguard. That's what I've done in the past and raised the temp on the tank. If the whole main tank is possibly affected maybe just remove your chemical filtration and treat the whole tank. Some fish are more sensitive to chemicals then others so this is always a risk. Do your water changes as well.

I haven't used freeze dried but use frozen brine shrimp (thawed) frequently. I also use some sinking hikari pellets once a week that are veggie based too that they destroy too.

I've only had Concept do custom for me before. I was looking for 4 similar custom sized tanks, no bells and whistles. They were quick, the quality is good and so far they are reliable tanks. I happened to be doing a trip down south so I was able to pickup the product but I think they do monthly deliveries to Edmonton. I've had Aquarium Illusions quote a few different bigger tanks for me. I can't get past the price unfortunately even though I know their quality is top notch. I'm sure everyone is the same for the top notch aquariums so I'm not really trying to single anyone out, just giving my limited experience. Is the tank going to be a showpiece? Is it for your personal use where you're the only one to see it? What are your standards? You can really get out of hand with all of the options that are available to you. If you have to have the top of the top, you'll pay for it and you can get it locally from Aquarium Illusions. I'm not sure but Neil (Edmonton) was doing custom tanks but I haven't been in contact with him in years. They can get stands made for you (steel or wood) and skirting for the steel is that is the direction you go. Sorry for the non-answer but its very case specific based on expectations and budget.

$25 is not too much for piece of mind but due tell where you find them most LFS and on line shops don't carry or list them is this a DIY project? I got all of mine from Dr Foster and Smith online. Its the Azoo temperature controller for $25 each. Two plugs for a total 700w total, 1 sensor of course. Shipping is kind of slow but reliable. Hope that helps.

Pygmeus

Good question. Gotta check my invoice when I get home.

So I've been keeping fish now since roughly 2010. Mostly cichlids, seemed to be all I could keep alive for a while hah. I could never figure out why people would rave about Corie's, they just kind of seemed to be there. I would buy one at a time and they last through everything really. I finally decided to get a medium sized group of Sterbai, I liked the looks of them and thought they might be fun to watch as a group. They have been a lot of fun. Recently I picked up 20 pygmy cories and put them in a very simple tank with some plants, cardinal tetras, another bigger Cory and a bristlenose. Last night when I fed them and just sat there and watched something went off in my head. I get it now. They are truly amazing to watch. Its taken a few years but it all makes sense, I guess it took a large group of them for me to get a true sense of appreciation for them. I don't know where I go from here (probably a bunch more of them now) but I see why people were talking so passionately about Cories. Would like to hear any similar thoughts or stories too.

I have all Eheim Jagers and run them on temp controllers. Prbably overkill but is a piece of mind for $25.

You'd be surpised how many you can get in a 90g and maintain with good filtration and reg water changes (be realistic about your maintenance habits) . As far as types just pick about 6-8 different variations/colorations and 5 of each. I am partial to the Stuartgranti Chiwindi, I like the Strawberry or Sunburst is nice. Anyways just my two cents.

Harold has definitely been quite accommodating for many of us in Edmonton as well. The monthly trips or finding a way to piggyback an order with someone, or delaying shipment to fit our schedule. I find the quality of the fish that I've purchased from Harold to be very good and have been more then satisfied every time I've ordered from him.

My Sterbai Cories are extremely social, they are my first big group of cories and I've been pleased with how non-skittish they are. When I owned the odd single cory they would also just hide as soon as I came to the tank to feed them but these guys are very social. They are in a tank with some Ember Tetras, Harlequin Raspora, Endlers and a bristlenose and are always out and always right in the mix when its feeding time.

Well that makes a lot more sense. I wasn't getting too far with the pH thing. I'll have to get a hold of a TDS meter. Now when you're talking about the buffer in our tap water, are you talking the untreated tap water ie. no prime, etc. or are you talking already treated tap water? Thanks for the feedback.

I've been doing some research on either setting up a R/O unit or just purchasing R/O water as needed. I just wanted to see what anyone on here is doing as far as their R/O setups. Water out of the tap here is usually right around 7.6 so it's a little high for some stock I am looking to bring in. I am just going to start with a 20g tank where I would probably change 5g once a week so it seems like a bottle would be the way to go but over the course of the year I would have easily paid off an R/O unit. The only drawback is that space is limited so it would be tough to have an actual tub sitting around to collect the water and I also don't have a connection other then the faucet in the basement to hook up to. Also if I either buy r/o water or a unit I will have to treat that water to add minerals and was reading that Seachem Equilibrium was useful for plants and I would prefer to try and drop the PH to around 6.5. I have some Seachem Acid Buffer but haven't used it as of yet. I can see the bottled way being easier to do that ahead of time because I can set it up, add what is needed and test to see how things are going and then add from there. Anyways I just wanted to see if I am possibly on the right track here or if there are simpler methods. If this gets too time consuming and too complicated I likely won't enjoy it as I have lots of other tanks that need love too.

Ya he's been tail out the whole time. I just thought it was funny he had his face sitting out long enough for me to take a picture.

Well its attempt #4 for my Angelfish pair. They really do breed like clockwork. I feed them normally for 2 weeks, at the end of the two weeks I switch to a frozen food diet and then do a cold water change about a half a week or week later and the eggs are laid within an hour. The first two attempts were on a slanted piece of slate and the most recent two on an Amazon Sword plant. The last batch lasted almost 3 days before they decided to chow down. The parents were actually doing a pretty good job of removing the white/fungus eggs and you could see them fanning the eggs quite often. I'm going to leave them almost completely alone this time around to see if I have spooked them at all and will be trying the night light idea to see if that makes any difference. Anyways just attaching a couple pics.

This guy has been spending some quality time with this cave for the past week or so now. I don't really want to disturb him but get the feeling that he doesn't just like hanging out in that cichlid cave so much just for fun. There are 3 female albino bristlenose and a female bristlenose in the tank with him although I didn't catch a female around there. iPhone pic....

I pulled 13 of them out of the 90G just now. They went into a tank with a dark background and substrate so they will be difficult to see but there are a couple that are already munching on some zucchini. They were as easy to catch as you'd imagine a tiny bristlenose would be

So I was just about to head to bed tonight when something caught my eye in my 90G tank with about 50 juvie peacock cichlids in it. I don't have any breeding caves or anything in the tank and certainly haven't been attempting to breed them. There is an artificial log in there with really tight spacing that the big male has loved for the past couple years so I'm just guessing that might be where the deed happened. There are a couple of regular bristlenose in there and a couple of albino's as well. Anyone with experience breeding these guys, how old would you say these guys are if you're using the heater in the background for reference. I scoured the tank and it only looks like there are two small guys but then again they made it this far without me noticed so there could be plenty more. Anyways I'm quite excited about this although I really can't stake a claim as to what I did right to get them to breed. I moved the entire tank about a month ago so that would be considered a large water change but other then that just normal conditions for here 7.8 ph, temp set at 26 degrees, 25% water changes weekly, double canister filters, powerful powerhead, LED lighting for 7 hours a day, NLS 1mm for the cichlids, no algae wafers or pellets for the tank for a long time. Anyways anyones input would certainly help as to what I'll do next, I certainly have enough 20G tanks I can move a pair or harem to if that is enough. edit: Haha, I know the pic has the heater at 76 degrees but there are two heaters in there operated off the same temp controller so its certainly at 26 (78F).

Alright I want to give a big thanks to Tanker for setting up my journal. Its been something that I've been thinking of doing for a while now so you can all read my disjointed thoughts and opinions and laugh at my many mistakes. I've been keeping a really loose journal, with hardly any dates but keeping track of what I'm stocking, feeding, parameters, etc. I'm sure I'll have lots of topics in here that aren't in order or probably don't make any sense but that's probably me anyways. Back in 2010 I had just finished renovations of my entire basement and had some new open space from a bar that I had removed. I know, not the coolest thing to do by removing the bar but it was part of the reason why I had to remodel the basement. The house was built in '72 and nothing had been updated or changed until we bought it in 2007. We started to do upgrades right away, had a baby on the way and loved the idea of a house that needed fixing up. Long story made short, in late 2009 I was going to rip up the linoleum in the bathroom downstairs and the shower unit that was raised about 6" off of the floor had black mold underneath it. Lots of it. I ordered a dumpster the next morning and started ripping out the shower. That led me to basically 70% of the bathroom needing to be replaced and led into my wet bar area where the plumbing there appeared to have been leaking as well for an extended amount of time. The wet bar was also raised 6" off the ground so until I actually started pulling things out I had no idea what to expect. So after a long winter of work and renos at night I come full circle to my first fish tank. There was a beautiful spot I had picked out against a west wall right under a window, I'm sure you can all see where this is going. I went to the local pet store, the only one in town at the time that sold aquariums and started to fill my cart. I bought one of those awful 20G rimless tanks with a clunky plastic lid and algae enhancing lights in it. I went into this blind, really blind. I didn't know what a nitrogen cycle was, and certainly wasn't going to wait to add fish, I was going to set it up quickly and get the fish in there the next morning. Without fish I think I spent around $900 for the tank with lid and stand, heater, submersible filter, gravel and some decorations. I look back at it now and I just setup 8 - 20G tanks for probably a very similar cost but that's for another thread. So I went home and filled the tank bucket by bucket (small buckets), spilling a little bit of water on my new hardwood floor every pass by but that wasn't going to hold me back. The kit I bought came with Cycle and Aqua Plus or whatever its called so at least the water was at least conditioned although certainly not cycled. Actually once the tank was setup it looked quite nice. My wife helped me aquascape, meaning she told me where to put everything and it turned out really nice. She had drawn a line with the aquarium though. She would not feed, clean or be responsible for the fish at all....fair enough. I went to the pet store right after work and picked out my stock and brought them home. I honestly can't remember what I picked out but the selection was quite limited compared to what I'm used to now dealing with the local Edmonton stores and importers. I can remember buying a few guppies, a few danios, a few cories, a few bloodfin tetras (major fin nippers), a few neon tetras and a pleco. Yup all basically within 24 hours of setting up the tank. That's where it goes downhill, sure I get my enjoyment out of it and disappointment when I would come home and there would be a few more dead fish but the hobby has already got its clutches into me. The algae buildup from what I can remember is amazing for the amount of time I had the tank, I do my cleanings and manual water changes but really don't have a clue what I'm doing. Then comes the next downhill turn. I get offered a promotion in Edmonton, absolutely nowhere near where I currently lived. Its Thursday and I start there on Tuesday. I pack up and get a hotel booked for the next week. Well it turned out that the other employee that was capable of helping out had taken a move(before) in addition to the manager quitting so I wasn't going to be heading home on the weekend as I would have to stick around until help arrived. That lasted a month and I still hadn't had a chance to finish a few things at home on the house as I wanted to list it so we could sell and move. Luckily my banker referred me to one of her clients and we sold w/o any realtor fees which helped out immensely. Since we had bought the house in 2007 we had redone the entire house inside and out except for the kitchen (which was next) so I had chewed into basically all my profits and would need that extra cash for my down payment. Anyways I get off track very easily as you can see. I go into the basement and the tank water is green, dark green. Its disgusting but I gotta clean it up. I am very disappointed but my wife had clearly stated she wasn't helping and that's fair. The mistake was on me anyways. So anyways I proceeded to clean out the tank and was scooping out dead body after dead body when I see some movement. I stop what I'm doing and fill up a 5G acrylic tank I had picked up off a buddy. I end up pulling out a bloodfin tetra and a cory. No idea when the last time they were fed but they were still living and were full of piss and vinegar once they got in their clean tank. So anyways everything got cleaned up and I tasked my wife with at least feeding these guys until we would be moved into our new house. That's enough for today but that's my start. I'll probably keep posting in here as I progress along until I start journaling my current tanks.

I personally run the Eheim Jagers on all of my tanks, never had an issue. big Al's have them, Aquarium Central has them. Just my two bits on the subject, I typically run two heaters per tank and use a temperature controller to run them both. If you are concerned with the suction cups failing there are some good magnetic clips that Big Al's sells to can clip onto filters, heaters, airline, etc.

Ya I am putting in an order for it today. Will provide some feedback. I am going to put it on the 12" deep tank first and then move it to an 18" next. I know they are working on getting accurate readings to provide the PAR but it's a work in progress still.