Since changing their diet from purely New Life Spectrum Algaemax to Algaemax + Tetra cichlid flake the change in body shape and color has been tremendous. Clearly the tetra flake provides something they need and were not getting with the New Life food.
This guy has held about 6 times in the past 2 months. Never for more than about a day and a half. He values meal times too highly. I don't think he will ever hold eggs all the way thru.
About a month ago, my ten gallon planted tank leaked all over the floor all the way down. It's toast. I scrambled to save the shrimp that lived in it and the plants, and quickly setup this 10 gallon that was sitting empty. The Seachem flourite substrate in the old 10 gallon was infested with malaysian trumpet snails so I used some fresh aquasoil for the new one, and most of the plants dried up when the previous tank leaked but I was able to take little stem cuttings from the base of the stem plants, maybe just 2" worth, and nI planted them all over this new tank. I didn't really aquascape much. I was more in a rush to save the plants. But so far so good and every plant I've moved to this tank is showingn growth and vigor. If anybody knows any methods to completely and permanently eliminate duckweed from the surface of an aquarium please let me know because this tank has a bit of a problem but it is doing well. Shrimp and plants are good. I instantly cycled the new tank by moving over a sponge filter and hang on back filter from another tank--I have many tanks running and all run multiple filters. Knock on wood this new tank has been solid.
Next step is to move some wild guppies (they look like endlers but they're P reticulata I was lucky to score a group in a trade) and also some more cherry shrimp from another tank andn really get this thing vibrant and Looking good. I'll be moving those critters over today as well as adding a couple of small caves andn a little piece of cuttlebone for the shrimp to munch on. Just wanted to share.
Why won't my goldfish grow? I am new to goldfish with 24 years of tropical fish experience. I've been keeping a male/female pair of Ryukin goldfish since December. I bought them at about 3.5" total length. I don't know their age but they don't have the giant eyes typical of stunted fish. Since December (It's now June) they've only grown about 1/4 to 1/2" in length. I do frequent water changes and I keep the fish at 75 degrees F in my local tap water which has a pH of 8.0 and quite high hardness. I'm feeding a mix of veggie and protein based fish foods and the fish have absolutely vibrant color and have been spawning nightly for me since the beginning of May. But they will not grow. Can you help me? Do I need to change diet? More frequent water changes? I currently change 40% of the water weekly. The two ryukin live alone in a 55 US gallon aquarium that is 48 inches by 13 inches wide by 18 inches tall. The tank is very overfiltered and has good oxygenation. Please help me. I really look up to you all and your goldfish skill and expertise!
Current diet of my fish:
New Life Spectrum Algaemax (40% of diet)
Hikari Vibra bites/Fluval bug bites (40% of diet)
Tetra cichlid flakes (15% of diet)
Hikari Goldfish Wheat Germ (5% of diet)
They also get weekly boiled and skinned green peas.
Hi guys! My male antuta is about 3.5" and my female is 2.75". They have spawned. The male has a mouthful of eggs. Currently they are housed together, trouble free, as they have always been trouble free. Never any aggression. The male has been holding for about 3 days now.
Do I remove the female? Should I put her in her own cycled tank or should she go in a community tank with just bushynose plecos and guppies? Or should I remove the male? Any tips of any kind on antutas and breeding them would be appreciated.
What do I feed the fry? I've never hatched brine shrimp I've always fed livebearer and cichlid fry Hikari first bites or similar powdered fry food. Is that ok for baby antutas?
Please help :)
Hi guys! My male antuta is about 3.5" and my female is 2.75". They have spawned. The male has a mouthful of eggs. Currently they are housed together, trouble free, as they have always been trouble free. Never any aggression. The male has been holding for about 3 days now.
Do I remove the female? Should I put her in her own cycled tank or should she go in a community tank with just bushynose plecos and guppies? Or should I remove the male? Any tips of any kind on antutas and breeding them would be appreciated.
What do I feed the fry? I've never hatched brine shrimp I've always fed livebearer and cichlid fry Hikari first bites or similar powdered fry food. Is that ok for baby antutas?
Please help :)
I've just had my young male and female antuta spawn for the first time, and the whole thing happened right in front of my eyes. While the tank was faintly lit by room light after the tank lights had been turned off for the night, just now, around 11:30PM, they flirted, then embraced, and now I see the male has a very 'pronounced chin' and ocasionally opens and closes his mouth really fast while swimming around. Also I fed them after the spawning behavior, some sinking bug bites pellets. The female ate, but the male came up to the food, looked at it, and didn't take a bite, which he has never done. They quite like that particular pellet and have always eaten it quickly. So I'm 99% sure the male is holding.
Currently I have the bettas together in a 10 gallon planted tank by themselves. I do however currently have another 10 gallon planted tank available that only has cherry shrimp in it and a bunch of small snails. I have heard it's best to separate males from females and let the male hold and spit in peace, then leave the male with the babies for some time to regain his strength, and only reintroduce the pair when I'm wanting them to spawn again? Rinse and repeat?
If I do successfully get fry, what do I feed them? Are regular fry foods like Sera Mikron and Hikari First Bites good enough?
Any tips on how to make the male more comfortable during this time? Im not worried about him not eating for a bit as you can see here he is quite a filled out full bodied dude and eats well. The female eats well too.
Currently both the pair's tank and the tank I'm thinking of moving the female to sit at a pH of 7ish in moderate hardness water and both tanks are at 76F. Frequent water changes and the plants keep the nitrates undetectable.
I have a colony of these livebearers and I don't know if they're wild type reticulata or if they're wingei. Also here's my betta antuta male. This is about the livebearers though :)
I know its not ideal but the bettas have been moved from their sad bare 10 gallon to this planted 10 gallon. Please excuse the slight haze I did a little filter maintenance just before recording the video and it clouded the water slightly. I've just got the male on video here. The lights were about to turn off and the female had settled in with some floating plants and was sleeping. Since they've gone in here there has been zero aggression or chasing with the female clearly flirting with the male and with him being receptive. Every time they've come away from and back to eachother they show no signs of having any kind of cohabitation issues. Previously they were in a divided 10 gallon.
The new tank has a small population of endlers and cherry shrimp, and I don't mind if those get eaten, thought the male in particular has gotten a bit fatter bodied since moving to this tank a couple of days ago. I've seen him catch some baby shrimp so that's clearly the reason.
I think he looks much better than he did before his color has improved. The female is more pink as well. Will try to get them both on video together tomorrow when the lights are on again. I'm still working on getting my 30ish gallon cube tank ready for them but I need time to establish plants, get it firmly cycled etc.
Can we talk about duckweed? I know duckweed is the most disliked and unwanted freshwater aquatic plant, but I decided to try to see what would happen if I got it to work for me not against me, and the results have been spectacular.
I now keep most of my tanks very highly lit and every tank has a full cover of duckweed. There are gaps in the duckweed where the bubbles of the sponge filters reach (all my tanks are massively over filtered too) but generally speaking the full surface of all my tanks, except, for 2 (about 12 tanks) is fully covered in dense duckweed.
With very high light (not necessarily expensive, just bright), I'm able to remove half the duckweed from each of these tanks every 2 days, and in that 48 hours the half cover of duckweed I removed fully grows back. This has given me absolutely spectacular results combatting nitrate, especially in heavily stocked tanks, and I'm proud to say every tank I do the duckweed thing on has consistently tested undetectable levels of nitrate for several months now without fail. Also the duckweed is a great snack for my goldfish and mbuna who gobble it up when it's removed from the duckweed tanks and offered to them. I looked into it and duckweed is an excellent food for the fish that will eat it. It is great for hydrating the gut, super easy to digest, and offers excellent nutritional value apparently.
In my heaviest stocked tank, I have a 30 gallon tank that houses an adult pair of bristlenose plecos and about 80 of their fry. This filter is running an Aquaclear 50 with one foam and a ton of biomedia directly on top of it in the bucket, as well as a 30 gallon rated Aqueon hang on back full of biomedia, and 3 large size sponge filters+ an internal jet filter to keep the current at its most enjoyable for the plecos. This tank eats so much food every day- and yet, before my water change every 4 days if I test, zero detectable nitrate. I've even left it for a week, and still zero. I figure if I had no removal method this tank likely would produce about 100ppm of nitrate weekly.
Is duckweed gross? Yes! Every time I stick my arms in one of these tanks they end up coated in duckweed that quickly dries on and needs to be wiped off afterward in the sink. And sometimes I miss some and I find it on my shirt hours later. I even once somehow got a few pieces on my mustache. But folks- this is a miracle plant. And it asks nothing in return. No ferts, nothing.
Just wanted to share. Happy fishkeeping everybody
Hope you are all having a wonderful summer and I hope everyone's tanks are doing well.
Can we talk about duckweed? I know duckweed is the most disliked and unwanted freshwater aquatic plant, but I decided to try to see what would happen if I got it to work for me not against me, and the results have been spectacular.
I now keep most of my tanks very highly lit and every tank has a full cover of duckweed. There are gaps in the duckweed where the bubbles of the sponge filters reach (all my tanks are massively over filtered too) but generally speaking the full surface of all my tanks, except, for 2 (about 12 tanks) is fully covered in dense duckweed.
With very high light (not necessarily expensive, just bright), I'm able to remove half the duckweed from each of these tanks every 2 days, and in that 48 hours the half cover of duckweed I removed fully grows back. This has given me absolutely spectacular results combatting nitrate, especially in heavily stocked tanks, and I'm proud to say every tank I do the duckweed thing on has consistently tested undetectable levels of nitrate for several months now without fail. Also the duckweed is a great snack for my goldfish and mbuna who gobble it up when it's removed from the duckweed tanks and offered to them. I looked into it and duckweed is an excellent food for the fish that will eat it. It is great for hydrating the gut, super easy to digest, and offers excellent nutritional value apparently.
In my heaviest stocked tank, I have a 30 gallon tank that houses an adult pair of bristlenose plecos and about 80 of their fry. This filter is running an Aquaclear 50 with one foam and a ton of biomedia directly on top of it in the bucket, as well as a 30 gallon rated Aqueon hang on back full of biomedia, and 3 large size sponge filters+ an internal jet filter to keep the current at its most enjoyable for the plecos. This tank eats so much food every day- and yet, before my water change every 4 days if I test, zero detectable nitrate. I've even left it for a week, and still zero. I figure if I had no removal method this tank likely would produce about 100ppm of nitrate weekly.
Is duckweed gross? Yes! Every time I stick my arms in one of these tanks they end up coated in duckweed that quickly dries on and needs to be wiped off afterward in the sink. And sometimes I miss some and I find it on my shirt hours later. I even once somehow got a few pieces on my mustache. But folks- this is a miracle plant. And it asks nothing in return. No ferts, nothing.
Just wanted to share. Happy fishkeeping everybody
Hope you are all having a wonderful summer and I hope everyone's tanks are doing well.
On a scale of 1-10 how would you guys rate the overall quality of my female breeder super red bristlenose? She and her young husband have produced two batches of fry so far. They are an unrelated couple from separate breeders. I think they're quite high quality and even the irises of their eyes are red. I love this girl.
I have a 55 gallon saulosi only species tank with soft medium grain sand (about 1-3mm grain size). It's a standard issue 55 gallon at 48" long by 13" wide by 20?" tall. It's overfiltered and the nitrates are kept extremely low. There are 20 adult saulosi in the tank.
My friend has offered me some baby Syno multipunctatus that he produced at home near me. I was wondering if I could house say 5 multipunctatus with my saulosi? I'm not worried about aggression or the cuckoo behavior of the catfish. My main concerns are bioload, feeding the catfish, and whether the catfish will eventually get too big for this tank.
I've kept syno petricola in the past, and I have lots of experience with corys and plecos who always do super well for me. I have a couple of questions:
1)How do I feed the synos with the ravenous saulosi in the same tank? Do I wait until after dark and then feed the synos? Which staple foods are most recommended for them? I'll buy whatever's the best food for them.
2)Bioload- I'm not super concerned about this as the tank has filtration for a tank 4X its size and a ridiculous amount of biomedia. It also has a lot of dwarf water lettuce growing in it and I scoop out half the lettuce every week or so and my nitrates stay extremely low (below 20 and usually below 10ppm). Any thoughts though?
3)Size- Not sure how fast multipunctatus grow or if they could outgrow a standard 55. I've read that in captivity they've been known to get up to 6" but this is apparently rare and also they grow very slowly? I have some loose plans to eventually upgrade the saulosi group to a 75 gallon or 90 gallon tank (48"x18"x20ish) and I figure the synos would definitely be ok in that size tank if not the 55 long term. Would appreciate feedback.
I realize they look unhappy. Tomorrow I am moving the pair into an extremely densely planted (overgrown with stem plants) standard ten gallon tank and I will monitor them all day to make sure they're ok. One time the female already jumped to the male's side in their current tank and they got along great so I have high hopes. I will be setting up my 35 gal cube for them but I just got the aquasoil in today and the plants will take probably a month to grow in. Just wondering what people think of these two. Do they look ok? This video is right after they ate their daily meal today.