biodives

I've been planning to check out Edmonton's metal supermarket as they seem to have a very good selection. There is one in Calgary as well. Probably better chance to find it there and get knowledgeable support. https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/calgary/

If these were the decapsulated brine shrimp eggs and fry foods then I would contact ACE. I bet they would not have allowed expired food to be auctioned if they had noticed and maybe can contact the seller to address the issue.

We did go on the "expedition" to dig up sand below Quesnell bridge. The sand looks very nice and is extremely fine, much smaller grain than play sand. Unfortunately, having some of it sit in RO water overnight increased the pH from 5.9 to 8.1. This may or may not be a problem, depending on if it has a large buffering capacity. If not, it should be easy to bring the pH down again. Anyway, I need a tank ready to accept wild caught Apistos by next Sunday so I went back to the playsand setup but instead of river valley pond goop I added a layer of peat moss in hopes of it helping to reduce the pH of the water. So far I haven't found a natural way to get the pH below 6.9 and I'm not having too much hope the peat moss will do the trick. But is shouldn't hurt either.

Like Jason I have my plants growing in dirty playsand, I just add a bit of river valley pond goop as a bacterial culture starter. I also don't mind, and actually prefer, that the deeper layers of the substrate become anoxic. It is that way in nature and most plants transport oxygen down to their roots so it is not a problem. In addition, anoxic conditions help to reduce iron from ferric (3+) to ferrous (2+), which is what plants need. I find that I need no fertilizing apart from very infrequent small amounts of Seachem Flourish micro nutrients. This winter I do want to experiment with richer substrates and last weekend I bought "Aquascape pond plant potting media" which contains soil from sediment deposits found in lakes and streams. It is targeted towards ponds but I am going to give it a try as I expand my fish room. It costs $13 for 9L so 1/3rd of the ADA soil. I also got some other special soils from a local aquaponics specialty store to play with. Finally, I bought a CO2 system from another ABaquatics member to attempt growing some more demanding plants with both the low and high tech approaches. This weekend me and a friend are going to dig up some North Saskatchewan riverbank sand below Quesnell bridge. It is very fine sand but considerably darker than playground sand and I think it would look nice in a tank. I also hope that it is sufficiently "dirty" to be a good plant substrate without need for potting soil. As far as real playsand is concerned, I looked at Quickcrete from Home Depot but it had lots of larger pieces in it and it didn't look that nice to my eyes. I ended up getting 2 cubic foot of playsand from Canar for something like $6 for sand and a super-strong bag. I set up a 20G long and 80G "frag" tank (48x24x16) with it. It looks very nice and the corydoras and apistos love it. Last Saturday, after two weeks of cycling, I put in some wild caught Pyrrhulina australis. On Sunday they started nuptial behaviour but there was no broad leaved plant to put their eggs on. I planted a baby swordplant from my other tank on Monday and by evening I had the male guarding a clutch of eggs. Just anecdotal/lucky perhaps, but I've now done this with three tanks and fish and plants are happy in all of them.

Thanks. I joined ACE last September and already have some books of their library here at home. I will have to ask more specifically about who to talk to at the next club meeting. I would love to see some breeder setups, share stories, and learn from their experiences.

In the past my fish have occasionally spawned in the tank and I enjoyed the show but had no interest/time to take on breeding as a hobby. I now have more tanks and am interested to make a more direct effort to breed the fish I keep. Mostly for the challenge and to observe their behavior. If it subsidizes the hobby a bit that would be a bonus. Searching for resources online or books at amazon there is tons of information on how to get species X to breed but I haven't found much on breeding in general. How to select breeding stock, breeding with wild caught specimens vs captive raised, do's/don'ts of hybrids, inbreeding, line breeding, culling, how to maintain live food cultures to feed breeders and fry, use of medications to prevent fungus, etc. Amazon has a bunch of books aimed at breeding of tropical fish but they are all for the Chinese market. Can you guys recommend a place to start reading up on "best practices" to generate high quality offspring. I am not interested in hybrids or line breeding of special traits, just healthy fish that are as close to their wild ancestors as possible.

Unless you are interested in South American cichlids

I'd like to know if people feel fertilizers are necessary even just to keep plants healthy or if you add them to maximize growth rates. My plants seem to be perfectly happy with no/minimal fertilization (micro-nutrients fertilizer). They could probably grow faster with more fertilizer and especially with added CO2 but that just means more frequent trimming and thus more maintenance. My strategy is to run a "nitrogen-starved tank", so plant growth is limited to the amount of nitrogen they can acquire, which is limited to how much I feed my fish. The idea is that that ensures low ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels to keep my fish happy and robust but not excessive plant growth (although some still grow like weeds). So far out of 9 plants tried, across 3 tanks, all 9 are growing and doing well. Am I just lucky?, are fertilizers over-used?, or are you guys all growing highly demanding plants that need CO2, high light intensity and fertilizers. PS: my tanks are on soft/neutral water (1 dGH, pH 6.9) using only RO for replacements. Substrate is "dirty sand" but no potting soil, clays, or other nutrient-rich materials.

Do they eat them because the eggs spoiled with fungus or was it just inadequate breeding instincts? Lower pH may give some protection against fungus. If it was "cannibalism", it is often said that breeding instincts are better if there are some other fish that form a potential threat to the eggs. My first apistogramma spawn was meticulously guarded by the female from a pack of 16 red phantoms until she started a second spawn about 5 weeks later. She just transferred all the new fry by mouth from a hollow stone to the "lair" where the eggs were originally hatched, just as the lights were starting their sunset dim-down. Not sure if that happens every evening. It is the first time I noticed it. Very cool to watch. I do use RO water for the tank and have observed no ill consequences of doing water changes while breeding was going on. I did not feed the fry for the first 5 weeks with their mom just relying on the tank to have enough to nibble on for them. 20 of the first spawn are now in a 10G tank where they get fed nauplii 3 times a day. 6 of the fry were left behind in the display tank and are still surviving on whatever they can find as they do not yet take food that I provide to the other fish. Yet the 6 in the tank are growing faster than the ones getting lots of nauplii. I do daily 2 gallon (20%) water changes in the 10G tank, replacing with water from the main display tank which has the same temp and water parameters. Again no ill consequences so far. Hope you have more luck with the next spawn. It's a lot of fun to watch them grow up.

I've got one of the portable systems (RO buddy) but didn't like the way it was supposed to hook onto the tap as it prevented proper use of the tap and I didn't want to (dis)connect it each time I needed it. I now have it connected permanently with a T-valve between the building water source and the faucet, so inside the cabinet below the sink. It has been working well since end of July but in time I may need a bigger unit.

I'm in a similar boat. Started with one tank this summer and am running 5 now. All low-tech heavily planted. I will be at the Nov 1 Aquarium Club of Edmonton meeting and the ACE auction on Nov 6. Maybe we'll meet there or if you just want to see some other tanks and talk fish then you're welcome to visit.

Welcome and nice to see your planted tank. The last image has a nice dark appearance yet the plants seem to be doing pretty well and I expect it worked well with you goal to achieve low maintenance. Might be nice to get a few larger but gentle fish as a focal point. A small school of pearl gouramis would look very nice IMHO.

Thanks Jay, Where do you get your flubendazole. I can find it online in the States but haven't seen it here in stores. I hope to get wild apistos and other cichlids in the future and will try out your routine.

I'm also liking macro a lot and for smaller critters you can often move the lens flush against the glass to avoid reflections from windows and flash. Now that the days get shorter hopefully it will also get easier to take full tank shots before/after sunrise/sunset. The shrimp pictures are very nice. Never had any myself but need to give the a try some time in the future.

Looking forward to see the actual images and perhaps a tip or two of photography tricks you picked up along the way.

When I picked up a pair of Apistogramma macmasteri I was very pleased that they started cavorting soon after entering the tank and in about 2 weeks I had the female parade around the tank with a clutch of fry. However, a few days after the mating the male, who had been eating very well, stopped eating. He would still bite at the food but then spit it out. At first I wasn't too worried but then he developed white/translucent stringy feces and a week later he passed away. I just had a second mating with a new male. Like the first time I did not observe the mating itself but the female turned yellow and I can clearly see the eggs which are deposited on a vertical well-protected piece of driftwood rather than in a cave. There also seem to be a lot more eggs than the number of free swimming fry from the first spawn. However, the male again stopped eating and this morning I found him dead. I should note that there is a second female who has taken occupancy of a coconut cave and she has also turned yellow. It will take a few days to find out but the male may have had his hands full with two back-to-back spawnings. I have not observed any clear aggression between the male and females so unless the mating itself is highly aggressive I can't see aggression being the culprit. Yesterday I shot some video of him looking pretty, nice round (but not too round) belly, normal colours and showing off his raised fins. Apart from the disinterest in food everything looked excellent. This time I actually cut him open to see if there were worms or other indications of disease but it all looked nice pink and clean. If there was any parasite it was too small to see even with a magnifying glass. So question is; what caused this and how common is it for Apistogramma males to die shortly after mating. I don't think it is normal and I would like to prevent it from happening again. Of course it may take a long time before I can find a new male given the dearth of dwarf cichlids for sale in Edmonton. It is actually more likely that my half inch fry from the first spawn will end up providing the next male.

Nice work! I've set up an indoor worm composter starting out with 25 red wrigglers. I tried feeding a few small ones I after chopping in short pieces and they got eaten so fast by the red phantoms that they were gone before I could see what happened. It looks like the worms are reproducing nicely and I can start feeding them more frequently to my fish this winter.

I actually got a second 30" one for my new 20G long tank. I'll report if either of them fails and indeed hope that the newer model doesn't use the flimsy power supplies.

Hi David, I only add some Flourish (micro-nutrients) when I did big water changes early on or, this weekend, as I was withdrawing lots of water from the tank to fill new 20G long and 48x24x16 tanks. Apart from that they only get pure RO water with 6 ppm TDS. I am actually amazed that there is no limitation for iron or trace elements. Given how well the first tank worked I've used the same trick digging out some dirt from the same little pond in the river valley. It was blacker and with more of a sulphur smell than before but nothing too offensive. If it works well again then I would say it is not a one-off lucky event. This time I got very fine playground sand from Canar in Edmonton (about $7 for bag and 2 cubic feet of sand). Apistogramma and other fish that like to bite in the dirt should be very happy with it. Perhaps the problem is not that iron is low in city water, it should be a lot higher than in my RO water, but that it is not bioavailable. Plants use reduced Fe2+ and not the oxidized Fe3+ form, which is what you would have under aerobic conditions. I believe iron chelators combined with light form Fe2+ and that is probably in the commercial plant fertilizers. I expect that deeper down my substrate is sufficiently anaerobic that bacteria in absence of oxygen reduce the iron for the plants.

I just got an 48" Optibright plus for a new 48x24x16" tank I am setting up. I had forgotten about this post so hope they have fixed the power supply issue by now. It did work fine right out of the box and I am actually quite impressed by the unit. About 1/3rd the lumens output as the Current USA satellite plus pro that I have for my 24" tall tank, but also about 1/3rd of the price and it has a build-in timer and sunset/sunrise feature. None of this matters if it doesn't live long but if it is durable then I think this is a great light for shallower tanks or tanks that only need moderate amounts of light.

Time for an update, starting with the plants as this in the "planted tank section". Let's start with an overview picture. As you can see the plants have really taken off. The Brazilian milfoil that was initially struggling along the left has taken over the entire left corner and now perfectly hides the pump and heater. It also partially hides the giant hairgrass, which is unfortunate and it looks like I have to move the hairgrass a bit to the right and more in front of the pump outlet so it gets blown horizontally. Toppings of the milfoil have been planted to the center right and started a new bush that is already approaching the surface. The amazon sword plant is still creating 2 new leaves a week and hasn't lost any. So it has become quite a massive central feature and the favourite hangout place for the red phantoms. Recently it has started to form a first reproductive stalk which is forming pairs of new plantlets on three nodes and the tip has now emerged and with some luck may form white flowers. The dwarf sword plant (tenellus) has taken over the foreground of the left half of the tank and the pepper & salt corys (C. habrosus) love to search for scraps under the leaves of this "carpet". The micro sword plant (Lillaeopsis braziliensis) was and still is the slowest grower but it is healthy and creating a few runners that have grown about 4 inch by now. Since the last post I have replaced the old low-power internal filter. I never vacuum the substrate and there are a lot of small particulates kicked up as the corys and, in particular, apistos search for food in the mulm. The old filter couldn't get rid of these very small particulates. The new filter is a Marineland Magnum Polishing internal filter. I may write a post on it elsewhere as I really like it for the "polishing" part. Maybe not that good when you need biological or chemical filtration. The new filter also gives a much stronger flow which I have directed upwards to give constant agitation of the surface. In conjunction with the LED lighting this gives a nice shimmering effect. The filter also completely prevents the formation of an organic film on the water surface. Previously I needed to remove this film every other day or so. Finally, the current is so strong that mulm in the open sandy areas has been blown off and taken out by the filter. Fortunately, mulm still remains around drift wood and in the tenellus carpet because I like having some of it. However, if you like squeaky clean than that is another reason to consider this filter. The pump current is directed so that all floating plants accumulate along the right end of the tank where they don't cast a shadow over light-demanding plants. Only the hornwort is partly shaded by them and not nearly growing as fast as before, which may be a good thing. Also, as the milfoil forrest expands I am removing the hornwort so in a while all of it may be gone. The one new addition, purchased yesterday from Aquarium Central, is Mayaca fluviatilis. A soft-acidic water preferring plant so I hope it will feel right at home. I still have to plant it but it will probably go in between foreground and background somewhere. On the fish front, the male macmasteri dwarf cichlid stopped eating shortly after spawning and developed white/translucent feces, normally a sign of intestinal parasites. I tried treating him in a quarantine tank but couldn't find the right medication quickly enough. Some dwarf cichlid experts also say that Apistogrammas are hard to treat and the best strategy is prevention. In this case it is not clear what triggered the disease as the mating suggests he was in good condition. Perhaps the mating itself, which I did not observe, was too stressful. A replacement male seemed perfectly happy and showing off for the female. Unfortunately, after 4 days I woke up to find it dead on the bottom of the tank. I took a water sample to the LFS and it tested just fine. They thought the transition from hard/alkaline store water to my soft/neutral tank probably did him in, but offered me to pick a new one for free. I ended up picking a new male as well as a second female as further reading indicated that A. macmasteri, like many apistos, likes to form a harem. This time I put them in quarantine for a week to slowly replace treated tap water with tank water. A week later I transferred them to the main tank where everyone, especially the two females, needed some time to stake out their territories. Everything has settled down with the biggest "old" female claiming the right 2/3rd of the tank, and the newcomer occupying the left third. The male is wooing both females so I hope to have new spawn(s) in the near future. The original spawn has about 25 survivors left out of 40-50 hatchlings. Twenty are in a 10 gallon tank raised on nauplii and the remaining ones are left in the main tank to fend for themselves. Mom has lost her yellow breeding colours this week suggesting they are really on their own now with mom preparing for a second spawn. The babies are starting to get the caudal peduncle spot and vertical bar patterns typical for apistos. I have even seen some "tail swiping" between babies as if they are starting to claim a territory, but more likely they are just practising this tactic. As of yesterday I have two new tanks. A 20 gallon long and an 80 gallon 48x24x16 inch "frag tank". The intention is to get some wild-caught South American fish in there, including Laetacara dorsigera and Apistogramma agassizii. But I will report on those projects elsewhere.

I thought I replied earlier but it seems I messed up. Anyways, I use a mix of water lettuce and frogbit. Water lettuce is better at soaking up nutrition. Water hyacinth is even better than that but gets too big for me though if you are interested, Aquarium Central's facebook indicates they have too many and sell them for $5 each, or for free with >$10 fish purchase. I have a bin full of water lettuce supposed to go into new tanks but you can have two handfuls for free if you want to. I'm in the UofA area. PM me if you want to stop by. Andrew is right that at first sight floating plants have nothing to do with substrate. But in Diana Walstad's book and several stories/youtube postings online people who use potting soil as a substrate often have algae problems in the early weeks when soil-derived nutritients are high and plant growth is still slow. Floating plants are perfect to quickly absorb nutrition right from the water column as they have plenty of CO2 and light.

I recommend getting a good dose of floating plants to suck up nutrients released from the soil into the water as the tank starts up. Once the tank settles there should be very little release of soil nutrients into the water and you can reduce/remove the floating plants. However, I always like to keep floating plants. They grow faster and thus remove a lot of waste products without competing with the other plants for CO2. They are also easy to harvest. I direct my pump outlet so all floaters end up in one corner where they do not affect light-sensitive submerged plants.

If you search for white stringy poop you get lots of hits. Seems to be reasonably common and caused by intestinal parasites (flagellates, nematodes, ...?). Metronidazole was suggested by Andrew and also based on further reading it should be a good medicine. I ordered a fish disease book so in a few weeks I hope to be better informed about prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment. In this case the only thing I can think of is injecting metronidazole. Apparently there is an injectible form but you would probably have to have a vet to get it, and likely to deliver it. Not sure if how easy it is to find a vet who knows what to do with fish.

Yes that is the store and they do have some with high iron content to give the clay/pottery a reddish color. If you go let us know how it worked out.