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

DMD123

DMD123

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BPSabelhaus said:
Stranger danger ;) "Fish don't have feelings, personalities etc..." Sure, right. Try keeping some lol
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lol, fish can definitely have their own personality and sometimes its not as expected. My Oscar for example is the most anti social, inactive fish Ive ever owned. It loves to just sit in a hidden corner until feeding time to come out and eat for a moment and then go sit again, totally standoffish personality! Not what most think of when you think of Oscars.

Yesterday had another interesting personality moment with the giant gourami. The fish loves to eat... what he likes, lol. I put in a new food (Hikari Vibra-Bites XL) and all the fish went gaga over it except the gourami. I dont think he liked the small stick shape and wouldnt eat it while every other fish was chowing down on it. As soon as I put in his favorite foo he was going at it like he was starving. interesting too because it is also a Hikari product (Blood-parrot pellets) so you think the taste pallet of the product likely very similar. He also doent like spirulina mysis shrimp, while all my other fish absolutely love it. He does like frozen brine shrimp and krill however. Quirky personality!
 
DMD123

DMD123

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My heater came in for the 40B so I am setting it up right now. Pulled a filter off the 90g which is seeded and cycled and put a clean filter on the 90g. Since the 90 had another Aquaclear on it, no worries. I am the pulling water out of established tanks to fill. Pretty much ready to use as QT
 
DMD123

DMD123

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A bit of splurging this month with getting the 40B set up and buying a new heater. Decided to splurge just a little bit more and get a new heater for the puffer tank. Im slowly switching over to the Fluval T series heaters and trying to prevent issues by replacing my Finnex heaters early.
 
BPSabelhaus

BPSabelhaus

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lloyd378 said:
Those are beautiful fish…. Are you breeding them for these specific traits or did you stumble upon them and then decided to continue breeding them?

Either way, very nice
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Breeding for purple. When I started the project the genome wasn't yet decoded and there was a lot of belief/ misunderstanding etc...
For me it's just flesh and pigments. Doesn't matter if it's Betta, livebearers etc... Pink reduces melanin production and reduced melanin production limits fin size. Pink with black in little bits with blue irridescence is going to make purple. I learned color mixing in kindergarten but genetics took a bit longer lol The genes work the same way, we just have a more specific road map now for Bettas.

But, I also kind of got bored doing that lol What I really want to do is turquoise with a pin tail that doesn't carry the long fin gene. That's where the genetic mapping is helpful. Like the red genes (Cambodian) the turquoise and pin tail are related to a collection point. The basic pin tail is what allows for things like veil tail, long fins etc... So isolating that would be cool, but also give me that sort of original Betta before things got outta hand. I like the sort of vintage / ancestral strains of things. It gives a much better idea of how we got to things like pugs lol

Edit: Mom is the pink orchid in the pic. I chose her as a maybe inch long fish. Didn't have any pattern etc... But I noticed she was one of few that had a purple irridescence. At the time I just really liked her and knew she was a bit unique so for $3.99 I figured she would be a fun addition to my pink Endler tank. At the time the kiddo had a black crown tail male and we had a royal blue male and he had been begging to breed Bettas for awhile. So once she was old enough we have it a shot. He really wanted to breed his crown tail, but no lol From livebearers I'm well aware of that gene and how it functions (kills off skin cells in the fins) and the downsides in livebearers (skin disease, water sensitivity etc...) The royal blue have me an opportunity to explore purple, fin extensions, larger body etc...
What I learned: I hate cellophane and Cambodian genes lol Mainly because sexing is such a pain. Everything is basically clear instead of easy to see black lol
 
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DMD123

DMD123

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Yesterday when I was doing some additional cleaning in the puffer tank, I noticed that the water felt a bit cooler. Didnt think much about it but pulled out the digital thermometer this morning and tank was only 75.9 degrees. I looked at the heaters digital readout and it was reading EE error. So I got it just in time as the heater failed. Glad we had warmer temps and the heater stopped as opposed to stuck on and overheated. I had just purchased a new heater so timing was good too.
 
lloyd378

lloyd378

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Went up to tropical fish world and pets…. Good selection but nothing I wanted.

Then I stopped by aquarium paradise to inquire about special ordering in a couple lake Malawi cichlids …. Dom told me to text/ call him Tuesday to see if they were on his list from the supplier. So that’s what I’ll do. For the other tank , I picked up a couple of beautiful butterfly koi. I’m going to raise them up then add them to my uncles ponds in his Japanese garden in the spring.


With that said, in order to keep them through the winter, I think I’ll need to upgrade that tank in my classroom to a 55g, so please be on the lookout for anyone selling an acrylic ( preferred as they are less likely to shatter in the event of a naughty student in the classroom), but also beggars can’t be choosers so if you know anyone selling a decent glass 55g, I’d love to know about that too.

Pic of the Africans I looking for. I’ll take some new pics of the koi on Monday once I get them into their new tank… right now they are in the guppy breeding tank for the next two nights…..IMG_1801.jpeg
 
lloyd378

lloyd378

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BPSabelhaus said:
Proof of life lol
View attachment 15394View attachment 15393
Also, never tell me the odds lol
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This betta looks rather large, I looked at one today at tropical fish world and pets…. They were called giant koi plaket bettas. I really liked one that looked like your fish above( had slightly more red) but they were charging far too much for a betta for my liking . It was truly the only fish I found to be overpriced.
 
BPSabelhaus

BPSabelhaus

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lloyd378 said:
This betta looks rather large, I looked at one today at tropical fish world and pets…. They were called giant koi plaket bettas. I really liked one that looked like your fish above( had slightly more red) but they were charging far too much for a betta for my liking . It was truly the only fish I found to be overpriced.
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Something I've been wondering myself. None I bought were listed as giant, but daddy was a pretty big boy. It looks / feels like my white bodied ones with blue markings are a bit larger than the rest. I haven't looked into those particular genes just yet because in my eye the difference is subtle enough I wasn't sure if I was just seeing growth differences between spawns (first breeding was an accidental back to back breeding)
 
BPSabelhaus

BPSabelhaus

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Tossed some pond sticks in for the dojos before dumping a bunch of duckweed in for the goldfish. Big Momma is always happy to eat but Zoidberg is rare to get a picture of. Caught him in the background while filming big momma lol
 
DMD123

DMD123

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Helped my brother with a car purchase where we were up in Shoreline so just a bit further of a drive and I was able to stop by the new and improved Aquarium Co-Op. Very nice with the expansion, staff was welcoming and the tanks were nice. They have a new LARGE tank that I believe the person said was about 1500 gallon. It was full of small fish, which was pretty amazing when you see a good hundred of so tetras swimming in a school. Didnt stay that long since it was close to closing but it was a nice visit.
 
lloyd378

lloyd378

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BPSabelhaus said:
Tossed some pond sticks in for the dojos before dumping a bunch of duckweed in for the goldfish. Big Momma is always happy to eat but Zoidberg is rare to get a picture of. Caught him in the background while filming big momma lol
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Great little pond!
 
lloyd378

lloyd378

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My son and I drove down to the wet spot in Portland.

Found the mbuna nicknamed “rusty” cichlids and then bought a could have acei mbuna too. All are said to be on the more peaceful side of the mbuna family.

I almost changed my mind as they had many ( 50 +) calvus cichlids of various types ( featherfin and black just to name a few) from juvenile to adult sized and also the gold head compresseseps. These are truly my favorite Tanganyika rock dwelling cichlids, but I knew I had my tank set up for mbuna with the conditions….

I also saw both the traditional and skinny “Buffalo head cichlids and some beautiful turkani jewel cichlids.

They had a ton of young bichirs, crazy look silver dollars ( standard, red hooks, thick black lined, and black sided ones).


If that store was any closer, I’d probably be back to 10-12 tanks in the garage with a number of them being lake Tanganyika species. Haha. I wanted to spend an easy 500, but I showed self control and only purchased the fish I came for ….. I did end up buy my son a young juvenile true parrot cichlid to replace the breeding guppy project I had going on in his room. He barely remembers the one I bought from dmd years ago that was absolutely beautiful. And also crazy peaceful.

Dmd, I did see the giant red tailed gouramis, and you definitely snagged the nicest one of the group.

If anyone hasn’t been to the wetspot yet, I’d highly recommend it. It made for a very nice day ( even if there was a ton of traffic).
 
DMD123

DMD123

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Spent morning on the garage tanks. Got all 6 cleaned up and water changes done along with one getting the filter cleaned up. While I was into this work, I did a preemptive replacement of a heater so now I have 4 of the tanks with new to near new heaters. I do plan on replacing the other two and hopefully get another back up in the wings too. I feel as if its time to do the 300g heaters too since they are the oldest of the Finnex branded ones, of which Ive had a couple fail on me already.

Added some decor items to the 40B so it wasnt so empty looking to get prepped for some fish. Still leaning towards some clown loaches and roseline sharks to QT in there to eventually go into the 300.
 
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