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

DMD123

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Stopped back at the store and picked up a 3” pot for the Sajica. So there is two different sizes for the fish to choose from. I also fed them frozen mysis shrimp to get them in breeding shape. I really want these little guys to breed.
 

DMD123

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Removed a little substrate from the 65B Sajica tank. Was too much for my liking and now its a bit better. Might still take a little more so its not so deep. I partially buried the 4” pot and angled it a bit differently. Then I did a high volume water change and did it cooler on the fill up to see if it will trigger some breeding.
 

DMD123

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Tank cleanings, did a bit extra on the 90 gallon Oscar tank and 90 gallon Severum tank along with some extra scrubbing on the 65B Sajica tank. I know you guys dont believe it but the tanks really were dirty
 

sir_keith

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I have several Cyprichromis females holding eggs/embryos at the moment, and when I tried to move one of them into a brooding tank a few days ago, she spit the embryos into the net. That only seems to happen near term, and the Cyp females are disinclined to pick them up again, so I put the 7 embryos into an egg tumbler for incubation. I was surprised this female had so many fry, as she was quite small.

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Within 48 hours most of the remaining yolk sac had been absorbed, and the fry were largely free-swimming and ready for their first food.

Here they are today in an isolation chamber along with seven other Cyp fry from another brood; I should be able to move all of them into my main Cyp grow-out tank in another week or so.

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DMD123

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More weekend cleaning with 3 Aquaclears being cleaned up and all but on garage tanks getting done. The one left is the 46 gallon bowfront which needs some work with the live plants. Need to trim and attach some Java fern to rocks.
 

lloyd378

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Stopped by the The Glass Box in port Orchard to find an apisto for my planted tank. I found one and also a real nice juvenile angel fish.

Before we left, my son talked me into adopting a rather large midas / red devil ( midevil) for the low low price of $5.99. He is bigger than “red”, my 14” rio naranja amphilophus trimac!

Needless to say, the 125g is no longer for sale. Haha

Here is a picture full of glare of him in my tank and then one in the tote he came with. I’ll get some additional pictures or a video tonight when I don’t have sun shinning in on that tank.
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sir_keith

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Today I'm doing something I've never done before- converting a Tanganyikan featherfin tank into a Tropheus tank. I've done the reverse several times over the last ten years, but now I have a 100g available, and with my current stock, moving Tropheus into that tank makes the most sense. It's a bit of a process because featherfins need a deep substrate (to build nests), but Tropheus do not.

The plan is to give my Tropheus annectens Luagala Point a tank of their own in hopes of expanding the colony. These fishes are very rare in the hobby- I've never seen the Luagala Point population for sale- so propagating the colony is the only way to keep it going. They have not been breeding in a mixed colony with Tropheus moorii Mpulungu, which are more aggressive, so hopefully this will work.

Tropheus annectens Luagala Point; male in the foreground; females behind.

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The pretty blue eyes also occur in some Tropheus brichardi populations-

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sir_keith

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Contributing Member Level III
Stopped by the The Glass Box in port Orchard to find an apisto for my planted tank. I found one and also a real nice juvenile angel fish.

Before we left, my son talked me into adopting a rather large midas / red devil ( midevil) for the low low price of $5.99. He is bigger than “red”, my 14” rio naranja amphilophus trimac!

Needless to say, the 125g is no longer for sale. Haha

Here is a picture full of glare of him in my tank and then one in the tote he came with. I’ll get some additional pictures or a video tonight when I don’t have sun shinning in on that tank.
You should call that fish 'Lotto,' because how many fish in his situation are able to find a re-home with an experienced aquarist who will care for them properly? Really lucky, I would say, and such a deal for you by-the-pound! o_O
 

Madness

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Staff member
I hate it when i get home and find a perfectly healthy fish floating. I am sure it was another one of my beasts. I just wish they would have started picking when i was home and not at work, so that i could have seen the issue and dealt with it. :mad:

This is who i think the murderer is20230403_171314.jpg20230403_171711.jpg
 

lloyd378

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I hate it when i get home and find a perfectly healthy fish floating. I am sure it was another one of my beasts. I just wish they would have started picking when i was home and not at work, so that i could have seen the issue and dealt with it. :mad:

This is who i think the murderer isView attachment 12669View attachment 12670
I’m feeling the same pain this afternoon…. Came home and my son went to the garage to feed the fish, and my female festae is dead in my 220g.

Not sure who would have killed her as she ran the tank.

Tank mates:

1x wc oscar 7”
1x red Oscar 6”
1x gold saum 5”
1x female chanco 5”
A couple of small bichirs
And some spotted silver dollars.

She was by far bigger than the rest of them at 8”
 

John58Ford

Well-Known Member
The talk of the smaller species of snails the other week has been resurfacing in my head a little as I've been trying to prepare my tank swaps and thinking about who goes where, and when. I took a few shots today, maybe @sir_keith can compare some of these to the ones he had pop up. All of these are in their average adult form, sometimes there are larger specimen but those are outliers of the average.

My thinnest population, and smallest species, the "tadpole" snail in leopard coloration. 1/8" to 3/16" is common. These little ones like to walk upside down on the surface tension of the water looking for biofilm and floating crumbs when the tank is otherwise clean. They whip their shell for propulsion, giving a tadpole like appearance from the top down. Once common in all my tanks it can clean the smallest of details. It can be, and is, eaten by all my tetra species and is easily crushed by any of the dwarf cats in my tanks as well. They only currently thrive in one of my tanks.

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My most common snail is the leopard colored "ramshorn" snail. Accompanying them are "blue" morphs, they share genetics and I selectively breed them in one of my tiny cylinder tanks. Much like other "blue" snails, they are just a snail lacking most of the shell pigment looking more white than anything, in the common blue actinic lighting they really do look blue, in full spectrum they just look like a skungy calcium deprived snail. These three are from the same breeding pool/generation and share water/food/mineral so diet or acidity is not the case. 1/4"-3/8" average.
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The leopard pattern ramshorn do look pretty good in the water under good clean light:PXL_20230405_035828587~3.jpg
Here's an adult with weaker leopard marking next to a juvenile that will be"blue" as it's pigment is thinning as it grows. It's hard to tell a "blue" as a baby.
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Side note: This is why I can't do the long way thread; haven't *ever* cleaned the sides of the tanks on the rack as there isn't enough space to get the magnet between them(and lazy+too many plants). I bet there's a person following this thread itching looking at 5 years of green spot buildup lol.
 
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sir_keith

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@John58Ford- Those of us who keep algivorous cichlids and/or snails know that algae is our friend! What else would one do with dentition like this (Tropheus brichardi)?

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The teeth are even more impressive when viewed close-up [Tropheus moorii, from R. Richardson-Coy, Master of Science Thesis, Wright State University, 2017 (https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2850&context=etd_all)]. These teeth are specialized for food collection; like all cichlids, Tropheus also have pharyngeal teeth for food processing. These trophic adaptations enable cichlids to exploit food resources that are unavailable to other kinds of fishes, and are a major factor that accounts for their remarkable diversity and evolutionary success.

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Regarding the snails, the pics you posted suggest that the little snails in my tank are tadpole snails, not ramshorns. They seem to have maxed out at about the size you indicated, and as you suggested, they are far less 'blue' when viewed under 6500K 'daylight' illumination, as shown below. As you can see, the Gold Mystery snail progeny are now much larger than the tadpole snails.

So thank you for solving the mystery snail snail mystery. o_O

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DMD123

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Im having one of those want to scream moments! So in October of 2021 we had a gas, tankless water heater installed. Well it started to flash an error code and we called out the authorized repair company and it turns out the heat exchange was leaking onto the computer board and wiring harness and long story short we get a new water heater after only 1.5 years. The anger moment is that the parts are 5yr warranty and labor is 1, so we have to pay $1200 to install another water heater! Needless to say pissed! So at the moment we are going through receipts and seeing if we can go through Master Card warranty that we used to pay for the install with. Generally your credit card will double a warranty so we hope they will cover this and double the labor coverage.
 
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