What did you do with your tank(s) today?

[sir_keith]

I had a 10-hour power outage yesterday, this after a 12-hour outage two weeks ago. The power went out at 8 a. m., and I got a notification from PSE with an expected restoration time of 10 a. m. These kinds of AI-generated estimates are unreliable, because they simply assume the repair will take two hours, even before the cause of the outage has been established. I subsequently received texts with updated restoration times of 1 p. m., then 4 p. m. At 3:30 p. m. I received a text saying the power had been restored, and I could see that the power was on in homes that had previously been without power across the bay, but my place was still without power. It turns out that there were two outages, one that affected ~400 homes in the area due to 'trees/vegetation,' and a smaller one within that area that affected ~30 homes in my immediate neighborhood due to 'equipment failure.' The expected restoration time for that failure was 7 p. m., but the power was actually restored at ~6 p. m.

Power outages are a nuisance for everybody, but they're particularly worrisome if you have a fishroom that houses delicate fishes. Fortunately, I installed a backup system in my house several years ago, with a hard-wired generator that is powered by a dedicated 100-gallon tank of liquid propane gas. That's enough fuel to run the generator continuously for many days, so power outages are no longer a threat to my fishes. In fact, yesterday I had a houseguest, and we were able to have lunch and a pleasant day together despite the PSE outage, thanks to my backup system. Since its installation, this system has been one of the best investments I ever made, and more than pays for itself in peace-of-mind alone. Not to mention happy fishes.

Running on home-generated power-

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Kiddo is having a decent day in school, so I spent some time staring at fish and figuring things out lol

My purple body female tank tossed me a double sword from the French Blue influence in them. So now I have a female to breed back to my French blue "lace" that I now know isn't lace but a homo cercal extended double sword.


Genetics, yeesh lol But at least I'm getting red caudals out of what I thought was a genetic dead end until I started finding this mutation in her great grandmothers.


The males I have are like this currently. Tail is larger than normal Endler tails, but still not a full big veil tail like guppies. Center is clear with faint markings that hopefully the purple gene she carries will enhance. Three of those males plus a blond bodied male with full body snakeskin and that tail gene are being colony bred with other females carrying that tail gene. Eventually I want males with snakeskin body and tail, but a smaller veil tail like what I have. All the males and females in this tank carry this Asian blau linked gene, just in different combinations lol All the genes are in the tank to assemble what I want, I just need a couple more generations

That said, apparently the new fish store in Bothell has dumbo ear and dragon genetics as well as koi (and ribbon, ew) in stock. I have been wanting to do a nice big patio ceramic pot of something big and showy like that.


Then incorporate the dragon scale gene into my pond cobras and see if they can go colder.....

 

[BPSabelhaus]

The intentional spawn



The "We're just gonna keep on keepin' on" spawn a few days later when I thought she was done. But nooooooo Petunia wanted to have a third spawn lol

Having coffee and watching teeny tiny mouths make baby brine shrimp disappear. Going to scrape some algae and pull duckweed to feed the goldfish. I can toss that in and let them munch even mid winter if they want and not worry about bloated stomaches. Why try to beat it when you can feed it? Same with snails, though I have to save those for warm weather. Easy enough to grow out as goldfish and loach treats though.

Nice day so we're going to walk to the nature park with the kiddo and dogs and gather free microfauna and moss at the vernal pond nearby. Hopefully the tree frogs and salamanders are laying eggs I can transfer over to the nature park too.

So big day maybe for somebody dealing with depression and such

lol


Got out, caught a lot of microfauna and water boatman larvae. Separated those and large daphnia unfortunately with a net and fed those to the fish. Petunia in particular is really knocking them back. Fun watching her hunt.

Brought home some moss covered dead salmonberry canes. The in tank spawn Betta fry are hanging out in between

 

[lloyd378]

I did a gravel vac on the bedroom 75g discus tank, a complete substrate change in my 75g living room tank ( that was a bigger project than expected as I have a ton of live plants and their babies in the previous substrate, and finally I ran to aquarium paradise for some frozen bloodworms and some new filter media.

 

[John58Ford]

I played trappy net-y this morning and managed to get the larger of the two female albino BNPs out. @Ruturaj Hagavane was able to meet me at my favorite Asian market with his family for the hand off, it was a pleasant meet up in beautiful sunshine. I was also fortunate enough to make it to the front of the line for a roasted duck today, the last few trips I was 0 for 4 on the duck, so it's a great one in my books.

I'll probably do some planting work this evening but it's time for more sunshine.

 

[DMD123]

@lloyd378, you warned me about the leporinus arcus… they are fin nippers. They nipped the trailers off the severums so I moved them with the sajica for now. Will give the sevs some time to grow fins back

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Moved some Betta fry from the spawning tub to a 2.5 gal microfauna tank and added 4 turkey basters of infusoria. Nice to be able to view them now.

 

[DMD123]

Don’t usually do much midweek with tanks except to feed and watch the fish but yesterday cleaned two Aquaclear 110s on my 90 gallon with my red spot sevs. Just trying to keep tank extra clean and encourage the fins to heal and grow back after the recent nipping incident. I need to look for some new schooling fish for this tank. The roselines proved to be a bit too delicate, so maybe some rainbows.

 

[fishguy1978]

Pulled a couple juvenile male endless from the 55g.

 

[sir_keith]

Over the last few days I moved 3 holding females from my Cyprichromis leptosoma Mpimbwe 'Tricolor' colony into a 40L brooding tank, and now have about 12 fry that have been released and are eating baby brine shrimp and crumbled flake food. At least two of the females are still holding some fry- it's my impression that they release just a few at a time- so I have no idea how many fry there will be in the end. I'm very happy that they are spawning so regularly now that they are in a 125 because I would really like to expand this colony. I started out with 8 fishes from the Wet Spot- that's all they had, and you don't see these for sale very often- and now have about 20 in the main colony, but would like to have at least twice that number. There are many different populations of Cyprichromis in Lake Tanganyika, but Mpimbwe is my favorite; the males with their jet black fins are truly spectacular. Here's a pic showing one of the brooding females before I moved her-

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Pulled our recently twice bred male from the bottom of his tank this morning. He hasn't eaten since conditioning and mating. Then he did his Dad duties, mated again and did the full Dad duty in tank. Not eating at all. I should have prevented that second mating, but they were in the middle of it so I let them be. Water temp was low and I was going to cohabitate them because they got along well and we're working together on the nest, eggs etc... When she was in the tank with him and fry she only ate the live foods I was putting in for them. Never went after fry. Milic guarded the nest as a great dad and even accepted her help to a limit (she could babysit, but got pushed out the door when he got back lol) Pretty sure he just exhausted himself being a back to back Dad then continuing to be a good dad.

 

[John58Ford]

Today I had my amateur swing bands trombone section over for a sectional and quartet listening session, played my fish some music. We also watched them quite a bit. Otherwise, not a lot directly involving my tanks.

Indirectly, I ran across an article someone linked to in a thread on water parameters and read it quite intently. We (most of the active Members that talk and share fish, plants and advice in this section of this forum) have all seen or had experience with the magic huge Anubias that @sir_keith grows into trees and inspired my huge example, as well as the crypt Wendtii that I discovered grew into elephant ears in my Tanganyikan tank and pondered it a fair bit. I always knew the pH in those tanks changed the uptake of nutrients but really just ran trial and error with whatever I had too much of and stabbed it in there. This article has a cool take on it, and lists a few plants I haven't had too many of. They list "Ceratophyllum demersum, Cryptocoryne becketti, Echinodorus bleheri, Egeria densa, Elodea canadensis, and Vallisneria" all as doing quite well in this situation. Have any of you tried these?

Here's the link, it's a nice 5 minute read to ponder over: http://wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/fwhardness.htm

 

[fishguy1978]

Cryptocoryne becketti looks very much like C wendetii bronze. I have several varieties of crypt and am not surprised to hear this one is just as happy in higher ph water.
I have grown Echinodorus bleheri in the past but not since moving to the PNW. I have tried swords a couple times in the fish room without success. I do have a sword in the science room tank at the HS and half a dozen in my buddy's tank that are doing well.
Egeria densa is anacharis which will grow anywhere.
Elodea canadensis can be found locally in some lakes and ponds.
Ceratophyllum demersum not a fan of the fine leaves so I haven't tried it.

 

[sir_keith]

I am always in the market for Cryptocoryne specimens for my Tanganyika tanks.

 

[Oscars Rule]

Did a 30% water change to all of my 8 tanks, but my 125 gal. is a pain only because Charles likes to attack anything on that side of the tank. But how do you not love this face!

 

[fishguy1978]

Bought a 10in Silver arowana on a non planned stop at Aquarium Paradise.
Edit: they're always bigger in the telling. Probably more like 6-8in.

 

[lloyd378]

Bought a 10in Silver arowana on a non planned stop at Aquarium Paradise.

Love them… I inquired about a 6” jardini arrowana up north but it’s currently pending pickup.

 

[lloyd378]

Did a 30% water change to all of my 8 tanks, but my 125 gal. is a pain only because Charles likes to attack anything on that side of the tank. But how do you not love this face!

I currently don’t have any Oscar’s but I’ve had many over the last 25 years.

I had a tiger and red Oscar I bought in highschool, they came with me to college, and then came home with me to my first adult apartment and a few years later to my first rental home.

They were called cowboy and tombstone. Haha let me see if I can find an old picture of them ( yes, the old style that were developed at the store ) and I’ll upload it for you to check out.

 

[lloyd378]

I currently don’t have any Oscar’s but I’ve had many over the last 25 years.

I had a tiger and red Oscar I bought in highschool, they came with me to college, and then came home with me to my first adult apartment and a few years later to my first rental home.

They were called cowboy and tombstone. Haha let me see if I can find an old picture of them ( yes, the old style that were developed at the store ) and I’ll upload it for you to check out.

While I hunt for a pic, here is a pic of my old 13.5” inch tiger named “Reggie”

 

[lloyd378]

Here are three more recent ones that I relocated last summer… the tigers were wild caught and the red was used just to bring the tigers out of hiding