Aquarium Hobbyists

Haha welcome to the gateway drug.

Pretty soon you'll be scratching at the doors of every homebrew supply, paintball shop, and fire extinguisher service for some of those sweet, sweet 10 pound fills.

 

You forget, I'm a welder

 

Shit. I should be hitting you up for gas bottles.






I mean, there's a reason why I chose a career as a lab chemist.

 

How you liking that fluval canister setup?

I saw the inline diffusers available for injecting co2

 

Got multiple 150cf tanks, as well as an 80cf tank

 

I've been running the 405 as my primary filtration for years. It's a workhorse. I've run many brands- I think the Eheims are more efficient at both mechanical and chemical scrubbing, but they are a major pain in the ass at maintenance. The Fluval 200/300/400 series are okay-ish at chemical and mediocre at mechanical, but they are amongst the easiest at weekly maintenance.

Currently I have the Fluval 405 hooked inline with a Greenleaf CO2 reactor, and then I have a seachem tidal 110 as my secondary/surface filtration. Between that set, it keeps the tank fairly clean.

 

I have a Fluval XF5 on my 135 fresh. Running continuous for 15 years now and no problems. My reef tank has a programmable light where you can do cloudy days or lightning storms. Too confusing. Just set it up for night and day with sunrise and sunset.

 

Weekly huh?

Why's that

Ain't worried about mechanical filtration fortunately; heck even my sponge filter keeps my tank crystal clear

Just considered the fluval so I can create a better aquascape vs having two sponge filters

 

Just for washing the mechanical sponges. They crud up fairly fast. And on the few times that I'm not being a cheapass and am running a phosphate remover, those packs need changed out regularly. For the bio media I usually leave that alone - it does great when its established.

Speaking of, I probably should buy some more phosphate packs.

 

Been awhile since I posted; tank going strong and I keep trimming the plants down every 2 weeks give or take







Thinking of building a stand for either a 40 gallon or 50 gallon tank, but not sure what kind of fish I'd want to go with on the next one.

 

My favorite freshwater species so far have been Denison barbs (aka roseline sharks). They can get a good 6 inches in size, but most average 4-5. They are schoolers and they are fast movers, and you need a bare minimum of 50 gal to keep a minimum population of 5. They are also part of the "community" group and are good with medium sized tetras and the like. I always get comments on them - they draw the eye. I think I have posted earlier about how they can be prankish little assholes and will rip up smaller plants if they don't like it.



The other route to take is to go full alkaline and do a cichlid tank. They are a little higher maintenance, but the visual payoff can be nice.

 

I kept African Cichlids for a while. Our water back in Georgetown, TX was perfect for them - hard with a pH of about 8. Some of them actually bred and I had 3 generations at one point. They are territorial and mean, so you have to keep them crowded. It's tough to get them in a larger size, so after a while I was down to 2 that would kill any new smaller ones I would introduce. They each staked out an area in opposite corners, dug pits in the gravel and hid, so then it was like I didn't have any fish in there. I went community after that, but they were fun to keep and have an interesting courting/breeding routine.

 

I have looked at those specific barbs before; beautiful for sure and their behavior is a cross between the Bala Sharks I had years ago and the Zebra Danios I have now.

That may be the ticket.

I wouldn't go Cichlid though; I enjoy plants staying where I plant them

 

If you can find the gold variety, they are stunning. (and expensive, at 45 bucks per ). One of mine turned gold after about a year, I'm guessing it accidentally had a recessive gene or something. I kind of want to locate and buy more of those.

I'm also running a few rainbows with them at the minute.

 

Got home from grocery shopping, and I noticed one of my Danios had what would look like a white beard (for visual purposes)





I'll preface by saying I noticed a small "dot" of white some 2 months ago, and I pulled the little guy and put him in a methylene bath to see if it'd help

It's behavior then, and now, is completely normal -

comes up to me to greet me and beg for food

Swims normally

Eats normally

Today though, it seemed pretty big and I didn't notice it at all yesterday or the day before when I looked through my tank

I'm assuming it may be fungal, and just looking to confirm with others here

 

Well, after a half hour bath it seems to have gotten a bit smaller

 

Long update and a question:
I lost a long-time resident today, which was sad, if fairly unremarkable in of itself.
It's just that I got this particular Glossolepis incisus, aka 'Red Rainbow' as a juvenile about 8 years ago. He was 1 of 4 originally that had become a pair for the last ~5 years.
For context, those 2 surviving Reds shared a 72" 125g tank with up to about 20 Melanotaenia boesemani rainbow fish.
It was the last surviving Red that exhibited some idiosyncratic behavior, which I did not film for reasons I will explain shortly, but I found interesting.

I first noticed the problem this morning. One of the Reds was in the corner, at the bottom, upside-down and gasping; he was what I call 'pining'.
He was very dark, a sign of stress. His brother was an unusual mix of bright and dark.
The water was fine, but I did a quick water change anyway- which along with dimming the lights, was about all I could do.

As I witnessed the final hours and minutes of life, his surviving brother hovered over him and intercepted any fish coming too close. Later, I saw the pining guy upright and in the upper water column, but still gasping and unable to maintain his position against the draw of the circulation pump. As he would drift towards it, his brother would swoop in and nose him off into the clear. This happened multiple times while I watched for several minutes.

Later when I saw the pining guy had passed, his brother had started going back and forth from circling just above his late brother to moving himself along side and gently 'fanning' the lifeless upside-down body and giving it little nudges, then back to circling. When circling, he would flex his fins and mouth. Fish do that 'flex' thing, but this flexing was different in that it was unusually repetitive and synchronized.
I came back some time after that, and the nudging had become more insistent but the behavior otherwise unchanged.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the other fish have shown anything but the slightest awareness of the situation, much less a discernible reaction to it.

I have no doubt that for the surviving brother there is a 'measurable elevated stress response' due to the 'acute alteration of the social environment'.

I guess my question is:
am I freak for thinking wasn't right to film someone in the throes of their grief for science and stuff or am I a freak for thinking I should leave the dead fish in the tank until survivor Red has stopped hovering and circling and is done with his grieving (as long as things haven't gone too putrid, of course)?

 

I've never observed that before. That's wild.

I have no answer to that. Though if it were me I'd probably pull it now. I think it would generate less stress in the long term.

 

I’ll play.

 

Yeah, once the lights went out, he drifted away and I took the body out.